The Dodgers’ new owners will pay $14 million per year to rent the parking lots from an entity half-owned by Frank McCourt, according to land-use documents intended to “facilitate the orderly development” of the property surrounding Dodger Stadium.
The potential uses for the property include shops and restaurants, homes and offices, and another sports venue, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times. The documents also discuss the possibility of parking structures on the land.
Mark Walter, the Dodgers’ controlling owner, said Friday that his group is not contemplating any development at this time.
“Someday, there could be,” he said. “We have no plans to build now. We have no plans for parking structures now. In the next 100 years, that could easily happen.”
Guggenheim Baseball agreed to a 99-year lease with the company that owns the parking lots, a joint venture between McCourt and an entity affiliated with the new team owners. Walter said McCourt would get some portion of the annual $14-million rent, after accounting for expenses and return on investment.
Tripon
Posted: May 05, 2012 at 12:59 AM |
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Building "homes" (other than co-ops or rentals) on ground-leased land is not going to happen. Isn't a football stadium/mall-park the most likely use?
And, it was ####### awesome.
i'd like to hijack this thread to let any L.A. primates know that i have tix to the cardinal games on may 18 and 20. i have to talk to my g.f. about inviting some friends we owe, but i'll definitely have a spare pair for one of those days. please contact me via my btf email connection if you are interested.
Man, I'm really freaking sick of comic book movies. Just a stupid and emotionally shallow genre.
Is this right? Didn't X-Men come out before Spiderman?
Hollywood can make a movie in any genre stupid and emotionally shallow.
I think the first Bryan Singer X-Men really set off the trend of comic book movies that were both excellent movies and stayed relatively close to their comic origins and therefore green-lighted all the rest. (Unlike, say, the Tim Burton Batman, which was excellent but mixed in all the stuff with the Joker killing his parents.) That led to some real garbage (Watchmen remains one of the only movies I've ever walked out of) but also some pretty good flicks.
Yeah, Ghost World was just one mindless action scene after another.
You said that the success of The Avengers would lead to a bunch more greenlit comic book movies. I am just stating that I am sick of them. The vast majority of them are very, very similar to each other.
However, it is worth noting the kind of movies that comic book movies are pushing out. What do we have fewer of now because of the prevalence of comic book movies?
Probably fewer action movies not involving comic book characters. Schwarzenegger type stuff, I think. Maybe fewer comedies? There are many fewer comedies made now than there were 10-15 years ago. Fewer cop movies, probably.
The thing about comic book movies, is that even the good ones, like Iron Man, or Spiderman or even Scott Pilgrim are very shallow--one line type messages.
(Even more so because, as you point out, if they are crowding out other kinds of films, it is more in the shallow-but-fun at best style.)
The action hero of the 80's is dead with I think Statham being the closest thing to one of them nowadays.
I'd also say there are probably less adventure/saga movies out nowadays as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are "less" major motion pictures coming out nowadays than there were 10-15 years ago.
Well, I interpreted what you wrote that they sucked, period, not that you were all of a sudden NOW sick of them. Calling it a stupid, shallow genre I believe is what made me determine you were a grumpy crabbypants.
Based on the trailers and previous two films, I have nicknamed Nolan's upcoming film thusly - BATMAN: L'ÉTRANGER: L'ÉXTREMITÉ
It seems dumb to say that Dark Knight or Avengers was better or worse than the other, the two films were going for utterly different things. I find Nolan's Batman timeline and message to be completely, utterly overwrought at this point. (I also acknowledge this isn't entirely his fault.) And Nolan's a very good director, but he's not freaking Kurosawa. I know this will probably bring a WHEDON NO response, but I don't think that anyone ever talks about Whedon's directing the way they do about the Nolan's. I enjoy Whedon's far more, but I admit they are simply not going for the same thing, at all.
I also think that the rebooted Spider-Man is going to be hurt - and badly - by how good and how much fun the Avengers is.
BTW, I know that a lot of superhero movies are complete garbage. That's why I'm so excited this one isn't. As far as Spider-Man II and Singer's X-Men bringing about some kind of renaissance, I found both of those franchises completely underwhelming. I'm pretty sure my expectations were too high, but I found - and find - very little to be excited about in them.
This doesn't seem like a real obstacle. As soon as Nolan does his last Batman they will begin working on the reboot.
There's still a movie about the Riddler that I believe can be told. A more serious version of Mr. Freeze character would also be great. Hell, just doing a film version of Batman: Cataclysm would be amazing, and that story was a survival story.
There's a lot more any director can do than just retelling the story of the Joker for the umpteeth time.
As far as why The Avengers worked so well, it's good writing, period. How good writing works so well and yet so many people ignore this factor and continue to produce crap is still a great mystery of the universe.
The reboot is annoying the crap out of me. I mean, can't you just tell another Spider-Man story with a different actor? Do we really need to see origin and everything again? I never thought of it like Bond, but that is exactly what they should do for the superheroes. Is there anything else in movies comparable to Bond? Where they can just put in whatever actor and tell a story. That should be the blueprint for superhero movies.
Instead we have a reboot of Superman, a reboot of Spider-Man, a reboot of Batman coming.
I wonder how many easter egg moments/inside jokes there are that I missed. I guess I could search if I really wanted to. Wondered if Widow whispering to Hawkeye at the end of the movie was an homage to Lost in Translation and if true wondering if Wheedon wrote it or Scarlett suggested it.
Wheedon at one point was writing a Wonder Woman script and wanted Cobie Smulders to play her.
I'm wondering how well Mandarin is going to play in Iron Man 3. I had assumed that Favreau was doing IM 3, just found out that Shane Black is writing and directing it and just found out who Shane Black is.
Am really curious to see Nolan's take on Superman. IMBD also has Nolan writing the script for the Batman Reboot in 2015. I do agree with others - seems weird to have to reboot a franchise after just 10 years.
If you really want to see the action hero of the 80's, keep in mind that The Expendables 2 is coming out later this summer. If you just pretend these guys are thirty years younger, it's perfect!
For the record, I was not aware that there was actually already a Batman reboot planned. It just seemed very obvious that they would do it. Batman is a brand that guarantees hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales - with the way that Hollywood has become so absurdly conservative and avaricious, there is no way on earth that they would possibly let a brand like that lie dormant.
Other than the fact that they might be running out of enemies, I think that redoing the origin story allows the studio to present the new movie as something other than just a third or fourth or fifth sequel. It makes the story fresh again, and is a good way to orient the marketing push. And they will want the reboot itself to kick off another 2-3 sequels. Will audiences be lining up for Batman 9? I'd rather market it as Batman 2.
I don't know if Bond is a good example, because he doesn't even have an origin story, so you can't retell it. The lack of an origin story seems important to his essential Bondness. Even so, the last couple Bond movies did try to mix up the style, and introduce something like a psychological backstory. (The whole thing came off like an uninspired Bourne Trilogy ripoff to me)
Speaking of which, I'm curious if the new Bourne movie with Jeremy Renner will be a reboot or not.
Really? And meanwhile Y: The Last Man languishes on the drawing boards. It's not so much that comic-based movies are a bad idea, as that they seem to follow the inevitable law of American mass culture: a few dominant brands relentlessly crush diversity.
(Disclaimer: I LOATHE superhero movies)
Hollywood has also made The Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Not that those are examples of good movies, just examples of making movies beyond the characters that Cartoon Network or Disney XD will have (I do like what those networks are doing, BTW, Ultimate Spiderman is fun).
Probably the best way to approach it. Good call.
There are a ton of great alternative universe super hero stories that can be told, which can always be a ready made cop out for changing continuity. Or just having fun. Marvel Zombies?
And I haven't seen Avengers yet, but it wouldn't surprise me at all that it's better than Dark Knight. If two face never existed in Dark knight, it's probably a near perfect movie. (outside of the silly bomb on the boat bit) It's as if nobody gets two face. To do a good two face, you have to have him married, you have to have him be a close friend of Bruce Wayne. If not, he's just a gimmick character. Two face is behind Ra's al, in Batman's rogues of best villains(Joker, Riddler and Catwoman can fight for the third spot)
There are a lot of comic properties in the right hands, that I think could make for some excellent enjoyable tv show. A hawkworld sy fy channel tv show, using sets from Highlander 2(yes I know crappy movies, but the technology in that movie has a hawkworld feel) or a Heroes for Hire show with a credible Luke Cage and Danny Rand would fill the A-team niche.
What? You don't remember the Saturday morning cartoon of Watchmen?
I agree with those that think an episodic approach to characters would be great. I'd rather go see "Batman: Killing Joke" than watching yet another origin story or seeing him take on some third-tier baddie. "The Death and Life of Superman" could make a nice string of movies.
Oh, and The Rock is a pretty good action hero. "GI Joe" is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, but I'm considering the sequel just because of Rock's involvement.
Yes. The thing is that the studios don't seem to understand that movies are different than comics, or even TV shows. A successful TV show that runs 5 seasons needs to have over 100 episodes. You have time to drag out a story line. You have time to have multi-episode arcs. But you need continuity. And since in the super hero/super villain world, you can't really come up with 100 super villains and make them all interesting. So you have to keep recycling them. Same with comics, they run for decades.
But for a movie, it's 2.5 hours! There are probably a dozen Batman villains that you could make movies from. Just keep doing that. I mean, the Batmans with Kilmer and Clooney were bad movies, but the idea was right. Get a new actor, tell a new story. Bond is truly the template that they should follow.
True. Vin Diesel and Jason Statham also qualify.
Not restricted to Batman, but the main difference between movie and comic books is that the comic books rarely kill the villain. In the movies, Joker, Dr. Octopus, whoever gots to die. Which is one of my main objections to the movies. If the studio or creative team focused more on stories (and story arcs) and less about fulfilling revenge fantasies, the movies and franchise would be a lot better.
So I should go catch Avengers?
This is why I the last time I went to a movie theater was 2008.
Also a thumbs up to whomever said The Dark Knight was an incoherent mess of a film.
Hah! Gotta be close to that long for me too.
The funny thing is that the wife and I plan to go to the movies fairly frequently, but every time we look at what's playing and say, "Meh, we'll just watch some old movie on Netflix".
I loved The Dark Knight. Some of you didn't, which is fine, but what about it was incoherent?
Prior to seeing Avengers, my favorite mainstream comic book movie was probably X-Men 2.
We made it a sort of Joss Whedon double feature, as we also saw Cabin in the Woods. It was quite good as well. I avoided reading anything about that movie, and was definitely rewarded for it. It is both completely conventional and totally original. Certain scenes felt like they could have come straight from Buffy or Angel. I definitely recommend it!
EHHHHH while I wish that was true for my fav shows, I don't think it is any more. Justified, Wire, Breaking Bad, Burn Notice, others.....
I loved The Dark Knight. Some of you didn't, which is fine, but what about it was incoherent?
I mention this above, but while I really liked Dark Knight and don't think it was incoherent, I do think Nolan's OVERALL version of Batman will end up so. This trilogy offers no real chance for a regular Batman, just an EVENT Batman, which is weird and confusing and all jumping around, timeline-wise.
We made it a sort of Joss Whedon double feature, as we also saw Cabin in the Woods.
I'm annoyed that Cabin in the Woods seems to have passed out of my shitnowhere part of northern NY, as an old friend from college is the editor. While I hate horror films, I've heard this is a lot more sci-fi.
EHHHHH while I wish that was true for my fav shows, I don't think it is any more. Justified, Wire, Breaking Bad, Burn Notice, others.....
He's talking about financially/syndication. Those are all cable shows for who syndication rights are extremely limited. For a show to sell into syndication and make really big money for the studio and those involved, it needs 100 episodes. Those are all good shows, but they won't be nearly the financial windfall a boilerplate 100-ep sitcom is. Burn Notice, easily the worst show on that list, might be because they're going to end up with a ton of product, it's on a much bigger network, and has way more viewers than any of those others. It could very well end up making more money than the rest of those combined.
The problem with superhero movies is that studios know that whether they are good or not doesn't really matter financially - it's all about whether people already want to see the movie going in. So it becomes about trying to grab the most popular heroes available, guessing on which actor is going to be/can be cool by the time the movie comes out, getting a director with his own fan club, putting together a look or style that people will think is cool ... whether the movie is actually good or not is pretty far down the list.
Here's wikipedia's entry on the 100 episode threshold.
I don't think that's entirely true. The opening Friday is determined by advance hype, but by Sunday, the quality of the movie is the primary determinant of success.
Episode count (or initial audience) isn't the only problem. Serialized shows of any type fare far worse in syndication than shows featuring standalone episodes (whether comedy or dramas like Law and Order).
Oh, and you guys forgot Mystery Men and The Tick - of Flaming Carrot fame.
You no longer need 100 episodes to be syndicated (see Arrested Development).
But isn't this substantially mitigated by the foreign box-office being huge for all sorts of "action" films?
The story's going to suck anyway in the dubbed Chinese version, so they just go for FX and explosions.
I will, however, admit to having a spark of desire to see the Avengers.
Beyond that though, all the Batmans sort of run together in my mind (doubt I've seen all of them, but I've at least snoozed to most of them on cable). The only Superman I remember well was the one with Richard Pryor... oh yeah, and the one with the krypton villains - they were pretty cool. Spiderman, I think I quit watching half-way through.
The Incredibles, though, I found to be excellent... does that one count?
The Incredibles, though, I found to be excellent... does that one count?
Don't know, but it was excellent.
The origin is really the only compelling part of most superhero movies. Its the only place any character development happens.
This is the best way to do it, IMO, in both comics and movies. Trying to retain continuity and canon over so many issues, years, writers, etc seems ludicrous. Superheroes are a concept, not a tangible thing. The concept can be expressed in so many ways, all of which are canonical.
I'd say this is completely wrong. Topically, there's a lot of character devleopment in the Avengers (Iron Man, especially) and no origins at all.
Superheroes are a concept, not a tangible thing
I disagree with this, too. Superheroes are a concept, individual superheroes are not just concepts on their very own.
The story's going to suck anyway in the dubbed Chinese version, so they just go for FX and explosions.
Man, you really do hate China.
As far as syndication, isn't Sex and the City doing quite well? 6 seasons, 94 episodes. Sopranos, too?
Hah! Good one.
I think this too, but the problem is that continuity sells. People want to live in a universe.
For proof, see the existence of Wheel of Time fandom. It's basically nothing but continuity.
Everliving, undying, continuity.
Bets on Sanderson dieing before the finish as well?
it's done. Comes out in January.
I still think it's the best superhero movie ever made.
Every part of it was excellent (story, characters, dialog, action, humour, development).
How do we know this, at least as far as movies are concerned? James Bond is a pretty huge counter example.
Again, I'll go back to movies vs. TV. I guess I probably shouldn't have used 100 episodes in my example because my point was not syndication. My point is that over a large number of hour-long episodes you can create story arcs. There's no need for that in movies. Continuity in a TV show is pretty big. Over movies it seems to me like people don't care too much.
I mean, sure, if a movie is a direct sequel and then contradicts some thing, that's a problem. But it's a problem because the producers have declared something (it's a sequel) and then broken the premise. If you declare that it's like Bond, I doubt that people will care.
Meh. I really, REALLY don't care for kids-as-superheroes storylines, so that was a big negative for me.
Sure, sure. Until it needs to be split because it is so long. Again.
I'm sure it would be too expensive to do big special effects shows, so mega powers would be out, but there are enough street level or espionage stories that could be told with SHIELD, Winter Soldier, Nomad, Punisher, the list goes on. A good Punisher series on FX could be very cool (Obviously not Disney/ABC - just speaking of what could be fun).
For the lawyers or just people smarter on this than me - if someone did a comic series on TV and lifted or based stories based on comics from the past - do they need to get writer permission, or does the work belong to Marvel and the author may get a royalty based on their contract? I don't know how a royalty could be determined on a single episode, so that probably wouldn't work.
The thing is is that Bond is pretty much unique in modern movies and even with Bond they went away from the stand alone movie to a story arc with the last two (and presumably third movie when it comes out) movies.
My guess from the Daniel Craig Bond movies is that some executive said that there should be more story arc. It certainly wasn't hurting the movies to not have an arc with the Brosnan movies from what I can tell.
EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the position is "people want continuity, with an origin and a conclusion" then I'd like to see some examples of movies not giving that and audiences rejecting the movies. It's not enough to say that the continuity movies succeed.
AV Club 13 failed attempts to start a franchise
Those movies have a surprising amount of internal continuity, which results in the fourth and fifth movies being technically set between the second and third, because a really fun character was introduced and killed off in the third movie.
I assure you that the previous sentence does make sense if you work hard enough at it.
(EDIT: The Nicole Kidman/Polar Bear movie was The Golden Compass)
Character development is just one of a dozen or a hundred things that can contribute to a good movie. A list of the greatest fictional characters will have plenty that experience very little development in their core works: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Indiana Jones, the Man with No Name.
Origin stories can be fascinating. They can also be the part that is not fun. The last two Bond movies have tried to create some psychological development for the character, and it's been a stupid distraction.
I'm glad you said this. It looked like an enjoyable mess to me, and I still aim to see it. No longer in theaters in my large metro area.
I can't really refute this - it's just amazing that movies are now seen as the less ambitious art form. Fifteen years ago you would have been insane to say this.
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