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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The first seasons of ER were actually pretty good (when Crichton was more than just a name on the credits). It was the first time someone had taken a realistic look at the stresses of working in a public hospital. If you go back you'll see that the story arcs are all about the stresses in their lives, getting through internship/residency while balancing adult responsibilities to family and such. It didn't become a prime time soap opera until it became the George Clooney show and it maintained soap status afterwards when it became the Noah Wiley show.
That's a decent counter-example. I think it was more of a Ben Affleck problem than a continuity problem, but that franchise had, what 4 movies then died? I don't think I ever heard anyone say "Hey, Ryan had kids in movies 2 and 3 and then he's getting married in movie 4? That makes no sense.", though.
I think they suffered from the end of the Cold War.
Like most of his books, when they had the Ruskies as villains they worked pretty well (Red October, Red Storm Rising, Cardinal in the Kremlin), when they didn't, meh.
Four? Red October (excellent), Patriot Games (OK), that one in Colombia (shitty), and...?
I think it was more of a Ben Affleck problem than a continuity problem
I guess the fourth one had Affleck, but I have absolutely no recollection of it.
They're talking about rebooting Fantastic Four. I mean, the first movie wasn't very good and the second was terrible, but to me that just means that you make a better movie. I really, really don't want to see an hour on their origin again. Get some new actors, a good script, and go. Everyone who goes to see Fantastic Four: Diablo will know everything they need to know. And really, do you need to know the origin to make things realistic anyway? Open the movie with the team rescuing people from a capsized cruise ship and you can show each character and how their powers work in under 4 minutes.
The Sum of All Fears.
Is it known if Marvel got a bad deal? Given their prior track record (the 1990 Captain America movie, for example), they may not have been worth too much.
Hmmmmm, vaguely familiar. Don't think I read that book.
Patriot Games (1)
Hunt for Red October (2)
Clear and Present Danger (3)
Sum of All Fears (4)
but they were written in this order:
Hunt for Red October (2)
Patriot Games (1)
Clear and Present Danger (3)
Sum of All Fears (4)
They were made into movies in the same order, except in the movie version, Sum of All Fears was a re-boot that takes place chronologically before any of the others (and the villains were changed from Middle Eastern terrorists to right-wing terrorists).
And there were three different actors -- Baldwin (2), Ford (1, 3), and Affleck (4). However, other characters were played by the same actors (James Earl Jones, for example) in the three films prior to the reboot and there is an attempt at maintaining continuity.
Wow, that's gutless.
Yes, but it's Bond continuity. Q was played by the same character while he was alive. M, too, I believe, or at least the same actor was in multiple movies.
It's not that Marvel got a good or bad deal. Management and licensing and ownership was in flux for a long time as who owned what and who sold/licensed what was a problem for the company for a long long time. And Marvel never really had the cash to make (market and distribute) a quality movie (or tv show).
That is until Iron Man. Marvel finally got some good business managers or strategy, got the creatives and business aligned, and worked out some reasonable financing deals. Which made Marvel a hot property and got bought by Disney.
Yes, because 1000 films in the last 15 years with Middle East terrorist villains isn't enough. We really needed that 1001st to show we have guts.
There's no "we" here. It's a comment on the particular producers. Society does not collectively make decisions about movie production.
I have no complaint about a work using right wing terrorists, right wing terrorists, middle eastern terrorists, Amish terrorists, whatever you want. But, to speciifically change a book that has Middle Eastern terrorists, in 2002, strikes me as either gutless (like Comedy Central stopping South Park from showing Mohammed), or a naked political statement (don't worry about the Muslims, it's the right-wing that's the real threat).
I'm feeling charitable today, so I'll stick to gutless.
I guarantee your use of "gutless" is a greater political statement than what the producers were doing. Stupid, inconsistent, incomprehenisble, all these would be fine descriptors that make sense to me. "Gutless" is just your continued persecution complex talking.
So, I have (in my persecution complex) made up the phenomenon of Western Media going out of their way to avoid offending Muslims, while taking glee in poking fun at other religions?
US newspapers, and Yale Press didn't refuse to re-publish the Danish "Muhammed Cartoons"? Comedy central hasn't stopped South Park from depicting Muhammed, like they do Jesus and Buddha?
I WOULD like to hear David's take on what he meant by Marvel being all good with its properties, however, when they cannot end up together in many films. I really REALLY want to have them under one studio for the previously indicted continuity issues.
There may be some truth in that, but the film also has 52 on Rotten Tomatoes (compared to, for sake of example, a 93 on Avengers and an 84 on Hunger Games) and a 34 with Top Critics. The marketing didn't the film any favors, but when you're getting slaughtered everywhere from The New Yorker ("A mess") to The Christian Science Monitor ("The reported $250 million price tag for John Carter gives one pause. I suppose one could argue that masterpieces have no price. Then again, John Carter is no masterpiece") to the San Francisco Chronicle ("There's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes") it really doesn't matter.
Anyhow, it wasn't a GREAT film, I don't think that. But it was quite fun and rather superior popcorn fare. My own judgment sits in a rather subjective place, I'll certainly grant.
Agreed.
It's added another $200 million overseas. This still adds up to a money losing movie.
I realize that it's based on a formerly popular series of books, but because nobody's read that #### in a couple generations, from the perspective of the average ticket buyer it might as well have been invented out of whole cloth.
The thing that's really sad about John Carter's failure is that it's only going to bolster the most conservative voices in Hollywood: "See what happens when you release a film with characters that nobody's ever heard of?"
Here's what I wonder about the trend. Hollywood doesn't really care about fidelity to source material, they just care about the familiarity of brand name. The Lone Ranger and Battleship (yes, based on the board game) both look like they involve aliens or zombies or some such nonsense. If the trend continues, will the next generation of creative Hollywood talent be able to make a name for itself while working within these confines? Will a producer say, "Hey, next Scorcese, here's $140 million. Make me a movie that's called Thundercats. I don't care what happens in it."
On the other hand, worshipful fidelty--I'm looking at you, Watchmen--can be a problem as well. I think ultimately I'd rather see next Scorcese do whatever he wants with Thundercats than next McG do a loyal-to-the-original version. Quality is king.
No, but there's no reason for them to work within those confines. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a movie without having to go through the Hollywood system. If you're okay with your work being seen on computer screens rather than in movie theaters, equipment's remarkably cheap. If a young director wants to get known, it's totally possible.
I'm not David, and this is overly simplified, but for X-Men and Spiderman it's unlikely to ever return to the Marvel/Disney fold. Marvel might regain the rights if Sony and or Fox don't continue to make their respective comic book movies or they sell the rights back to Marvel. But a sale back might be too expensive. And the rights are so valuable, the other studios will keep churning out movies no matter the quality.
There might be a chance Fantastic Four returns to Marvel/Disney just because that franchise hasn't quite taken off. Or basically the public will have to lose interest and endure some pretty awful X-men and Spidermen movies before something happens.
Other than that, Marvel still has some good characters to play with. Dr. Strange would be awesome.
This was mentioned in the lounge, but I think changing the title from John Carter of Mars to John Carter was a pretty big mistake.
Since nobody know WTF John Carter is, why not "Conquest of Mars", or "Warlord of Mars"? Something with a hook.
I agree that it does. Word on the internet sci-fi street is that it isn't so terrible, though. I'll have to hear or see more of that before I decide how insane the word is.
Since nobody know WTF John Carter is, why not "Conquest of Mars", or "Warlord of Mars"? Something with a hook.
After Breathed's Mars Needs Moms disaster, and years of various Mars bombs, the execs all decided the problem was the word "Mars". No, really.
I have not seen John Carter, Warlord of Mars but I probably will. I actually liked the pulpy books... but either you remake Indiana Jones / Conan on Mars or ... you flub it up. Not sure that these kids today "get" it.
Sort of like why there has never been a decent Lovecraft movie (with a nod to Re-animator)
Heh, I remember reading some interview with a nameless Hollywood suit who declared, in all seriousness, that "People don't like Mars.", which is why they went with the title they did.
God, Hollywood execs really are as dumb as we all think.
Nope. They are in fact far dumber than any of us can imagine.
Exactly. You need to let people know that it's a sci fi movie set on Mars. Lots of people didn't get that.
Apparently. I feel like any Hollywood studio could avoid half their disaster by paying me a modest retainer to quickly review their planned movies. I could identify at least half the bombs from a simple title/cast/one paragraph plot summary spreadsheet.
Hell, just based on "stars Ben Afleck", and "stars Kevin Costner" I could have saved somebody $1B in the last 10 years.
For the love of god, no.
If you just embrace the dark side, you'll really come to enjoy it.
What a ponderous universe that would be.
I believe Costner has had his own production company for awhile now and most of the movies he does nowadays are movie he produces. For instance Mr. Brooks was a movie he produced and I believe he got the funding for it. He didn't do well domestically and it only made 48 million worldwide but because the movie was all Costner's he made a ton of money off the movie. I don't recall the exact amount but I remember him talking about it in an interview and it might very well have been his biggest payday up to that point.
Hey I'm just talking about making money, which is all the studios care about anyway.
FTFY. There are many devices by which you can stream Amazon Studios or Netflix Studios produced content.
* Spiderman (With great power comes great responsibility; vulnerable teenage kid secret identity inside that power superhero body)
* Iron Man (Former arms dealer now trying to change the world for the better by going back to his genius-engineer roots and having his life saved by someone killed by his guns)
* Batman (PTSD-suffering crime-fighting psychopath)
Superman is kind of borderline. But FF? The Hulk? Eh, not so much. Captain America as a noble patriotic weakling now fighting for the underdog was a compelling story too.
It's not that the origins aren't important, it's just that everybody knows them already. So I really don't want to see half the movie dedicated to an origin just because the actor didn't want to return to the role.
Half the cast was rather pointless. Robert Downey Jr stole the show.
All that said, Green Arrow >>>> Hawkeye
I kind of figured that's who you were referring to. 1) there needed to be a non-superhuman element to the movie, 2) if there's a second movie you'll be glad they were already introduced so we don't have to figure them out in the next one, 3) they were backup, think of them as nameless grunts if you want to, they took up a combined 20 minutes of screen time in a 2:20 minute movie, 4) they were there because Joss hasn't lost touch with the original Avengers fan base, anybody who loved the comics loved those two characters and they were there to reward us long-term fans.
edit: 5) they also help to reference the scope of the problem. The four super humans couldn't handle the problem alone, so they needed help. It's not as apparent if the helping characters aren't known, which means some level of development.
Ha
Fair enough, should have read "when there's a second movie"
She had subversive skills that assisted in interrogating Loki, a skill that none of the others had. I emphasized with the Hawkeye story arc, you may not have, but I've talked to more people who did than didn't.
edit: I think comic book fans are going to enjoy the Hawkeye and Black Widow story lines immensely. Their future import on the series makes them interesting to comic book fans and we know the characters well enough to emphasize with them. In a movie that has tremendous mainstream appeal, I refuse to hold the 20 or so minutes the movie reserved for us fanboys against them.
I love this slip when discussing a billion dollar superhero extravaganza.
And how was that useful?
I could have stood more of Hawkeye AS Hawkeye (kind of odd they don't really refer to him as such, ever, I don't think) but again, it's an ensemble film.
And how was that useful?
Gave them a jump on his plan to have the Hulk freak out in the carrier?
Which proved useless. She found out at pretty much the exact point in time that it became useless info. And really Loki getting captured on purpose was a pretty stupid storyline. The Loki-Black Widow interface only exists so ScarJo has something to actually do in the movie.
In an ensemble film, some characters get less to do and are less important. Someone's gotta bat 8th.
Sure somebody has to bat 8th but that doesn't mean they have to devote as much screen time to the 8th batter. The movie was 200 minutes long and ScarJo's character did absolutely nothing to move the story along. She was a spy character in a movie that did not require or could even possibly use a spy. I found her scenes of shooting a pistol at an alien horde to be laughable. So I guess there was that. All she was there for was to provide a pretty face on a poster.
I think there could have been ways to effectively use Hawkeye and Black Widow but because it was an ensemble movie they couldn't devote the first half of the movie to ferreting out the villain and his plot.
Watchmen's problem wasn't "worshipful fidelity". It was that Zack Snyder, while a fan of the material, is an extremely limited and unsubtle director with only two or three tricks in his bag. All the digital stuff lacked blood and grit, so it seemed fake, and he never really seemed to have a handle on the fact that NONE OF THE CHARACTERS ARE GOOD PEOPLE. THAT'S THE POINT. RORSCHACH IS NOT A HERO. There's something intrinsically wrong with ANYONE who wants to dress in a costume, hang out in a dingy alley, and beat up criminals, just like there's something intrinsically wrong with a society that spawns (and to a certain extent, requires) those sorts of people. When you spend fifteen minutes in an alley watching the heroes beat up punks in slow motion, waving their heads around like they're in a shampoo commercial, and then transition into a lazy montage under a Boomer-friendly pop song, that's all going to get lost.
The acting was also pretty marginal, which didn't help. Patrick Wilson sleepwalked through his performance, Malin Akerman showed the emotional range of a toaster, and don't even get me started on the stupidity of casting Billy Crudup, making him try and play a serious dramatic role in a unitard covered by light bulbs, ripping his head off and digitally sticking it onto someone else's body, and then altering his voice so he didn't even sound like himself.
Honestly, the best part of the whole Watchmen experience was going to the Dark Knight and - without having heard it was going to show - seeing the trailer, which actually made me tear up.
As far as McCoy's complaints about the Black Widow, I do think the human element gives people things to relate to. I think her hijacking her way to the Stark Tower was worthwhile, I think her fight with Barton was worthwhile, I think her acknowledging they were out of their league was worthwhile, I think that her shooting at the aliens was the same thing the army and Cap was doing, as well as fighting them.
Want to have it anyway? Could be fun...
I thought that Watchmen was great, although it had 3 mistakes that brought it down from an A+ to a B.
How so?
I've seen people complain about the static camera, but that's not "fidelity" to the page layout of the comic - that's just Snyder being a hack director.
I can only imagine how awful the "Ultimate Cut" (3.5 hours long) must be to try and endure.
Snyder's going to ruin Superman. I just know it. 200 minutes of Supes wearing a new costume saturated in blue standing against a purposely colorless background, punching some guy in super-duper-slo-mo to some jarring, grinding soundtrack? You know it's going to happen. I hate this horrible misuse of Matrix-style filming; Snyder just enjoys pulling camera tricks for the sake of heroic posing. It's a damn action movie! POSING IS NOT ACTION! Constantly slowing down the action doesn't actually help the action at all.
I don't see why that's a problem. Most movies are developed from a storyboard, and follow it fairly closely. So why is it a problem that the storyboard for this particular movie happened to have been printed and sold as an independent work years before?
I would argue that it's only "painful" because Snyder didn't handle the material well. He treated it like a superhero bust-'em-up action flick, rather than a character study about a group of crazy people (who happen to be superheroes), which is what it is.
Length is not the problem, quality and watchability are. (Or should be.) If the actors and direction and editing are such that the film is compelling, 2:45 just shouldn't be a problem. I'm not entirely sure Watchmen was really meant to be adapted for the big screen (mostly due to what we got), but the back story and scene-setting is needed. If it's not there, it's just a different story.
YES, EXACTLY. Rorschach has many positive personal qualities (toughness, determination, loyalty), but those don't make him a hero, or even a good person.
Maybe its not a very good movie storyboard?
I don't understand this. That's exactly how Snyder portrayed them. It was pretty clearly a character study about a group of crazy people.
Anyways, here's what I think needed to change:
The music. I've never felt that there were dumber choices of music than in Watchmen. Eliminate Sounds of Silence and Hallelujah and you improve the film.
You can't have a character fall down on his knees and yell "NooooO@@@" in 2010. That no longer works in a serious movie.
I would have considered putting Dr. Manhattan in a loincloth, since half the theatre laughed everytime he showed up.
I actually think that the ending of the movie makes more sense than the ending of the book.
I disagree, I do think the change in the ending was a confusing mess. I think a better change would have been multiple sites of an atom-bomb alien event rather than just NYC, which may have worked in an alternate-universe 1987, but doesn't work in cinema right now.
But this just demonstrates a values disconnect between Moore and the majority of people. Yes, Rorschach is kind of nuts, but his positive qualities are those that most people understand, value and identify with. Toughness, courage, honesty, determination, and loyalty are all positive qualities that any human can aspire to. Ozymandias was tough, courageous and determined, but he lacked honesty and loyalty. He was a well intentioned extremist for whom the ends justified ANY means, and those sorts of characters are a really hard sell for audiences to embrace unless their cause is one that resonates personally with the audience member. To everyone else, he was just an arrogant, know-it-all jerk. If the chips were down and you had to be stuck in a foxhole with one of those two guys, I'm guessing most readers would pick Rorschach.
The inability of Moore to understand this says a lot more about him than the belief of his audience that Rorschach is the hero says about them.
As I said, I'm not arguing for 90 minutes (which would basically turn it into the Saturday Morning Watchmen that someone linked earlier), but you are adapting the film, not just putting everything in the comic on the screen. That means sacrifices have to be made, even of beloved scenes. Even great scenes. Synder didn't seem to get that.
Rorschach is an attractive hero because he is that relentless, true-to-yourself lone wolf that romantic heroic characters often are, but let's not forget who Rorschach was or why he ultimately did what he did. He was a slave to childhood insecurities that he could never conquer, he was insane and cruel and utterly without remorse or mercy, he played judge, jury and executioner without regard for actual law. That he was honest and uncompromising in his insanity isn't a feature, it's a bug.
Ozymandias wanted to save the world, and was fine with the deaths of millions as collateral damage. Rorschach could barely live with himself. Both are monsters in their own way; Rorschach's just more relatable to people. That audiences found him not just relatable but heroic is what bothered (and still bothers) Moore.
I used to refer to my undergrad Chemistry adviser at UCLA as "Emily Carter, Warlord of Mars"... but no one got it then, either.
I agree. Plus, I don't care what the author thinks about his own characters. If he didn't want people to have opinions about them, he shouldn't have let them be published.
Right, but it shouldn't surprise Moore at all. By juxstaposing Rorschach with Ozymandias, it was inevitable that audiences would compare them and find Ozymandias wanting. Ozymandias was that guy who thinks he knows better than you and is willing to use any amount of force to get you to do things his way. Everybody, no matter what your political/religious beliefs, hates that guy. Rorschach was a nut, but he was a nut willing to fight the good fight against Ozymandias til the bitter end. A flawed hero to be sure, but I'm always more surprised when I find people who don't consider Rorschach the hero.
Congratulations, you just described Otto Skorzeny. Doesn't mean he wasn't a Nazi, though.
Actually, I think Moore understands that just fine.
Just because Rorschach isn't a hero doesn't mean that he's supposed to be a villain, or that you're not supposed to identify with him. He's a well-intentioned man who's unable to transcend his own limitations - just like pretty much everyone else in the story.
Look at it this way: Ozymandias is akin to a Stalin or Mao, or perhaps Ghengis Khan. To him, the slaughter of millions is justifiable because of the greater unity/peace/etc. that that would allow him to bring to the world. (A grandiose vision worthy of someone who would call himself Ozymandias, no?) Rorschach, on the other hand, is somewhere between a terrorist and a serial killer — not someone you should root for. In many ways, Ozymandias is just Rorschach with vision. A world run by Rorschach would be a terrifying place, but unlike Ozymandias, Rorschach just doesn't have the brains to carry that off.
Really? I think the Comedian is the only one who it's impossible to like.
Rorschach was a huge ####### hypocrite. Ozymandias was willing to kill and maim innocent strangers in service of what he saw as the greater good. That choice is the action that Rorschach is opposing so implacably, and it's also a choice that Rorschach himself makes again and again throughout the course of the story. He tortures innocent bar patrons for information that they don't even have. He lights a cop on fire and shoots another in the chest with a ####### jet-propelled grappling hook. He instigates a full-scale prison riot, without one whit of concern for the safety of the guards or jail workers who will be caught in the crossfire. The only differences between him and Ozymandias are a) the scale and b) the identity of the specific individual making the decision.
Rorschach isn't fighting Ozymandias because he's standing up for the innocent people who will suffer when New York is destroyed. Back in the beginning, he fantasized that they'd ask him to save them, and he'd say, "No." Rorschach is fighting Ozymandias because Rorschach doesn't recognize any legitimate source of moral authority other than Rorschach himself, be it the politicians or the government or the Smartest Man in the World.
YES. Endorse 100%.
Rorschach would've cheerfully killed every person in New York if a) it had been his idea and b) he'd had the opportunity to evaluate them on a case-by-case basis, rather than doing it as a group event.
Yes, but what percentage of people have ended up or WILL end up stuck in a foxhole with anyone, ever? Basing your judgment on that seems an even worse disconnect.
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