Omid Scobie, author of Endgame Photo: Shutterstock
Every year gives birth to its heroes and villains — be it Ryan's «Me» Gosling's Barbie-themed Am Kenough sweatshirt (yay) or the new Doctor Who-inspired sonic screwdriver (yikes!). But when it comes to actual mustache curlers, 2023 was a year of its own. Stock up on rotten vegetables and prepare your best jokes as we bring you the final countdown of the bad luck of the last 12 months.
Ticketmaster
Taylor Swift, The Cure's Robert Smith and Neil Young need a special talent to pounce on you within 18 months. This is exactly what the ticket wing of the almighty Living Nation has achieved.
In 2023, the brick bats flew with particular fury. Ticketmaster appears to have learned nothing from last year's fiasco, during which Taylor Swift criticized the company when its servers crashed during her Eras tour in the US. Despite this, Ticketmaster continued to operate. 2023 had barely arrived before he drew the ire of The Cure's Robert Smith. He criticized the tricky markups on tickets for the band's North American tour. Smith called Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing model, in which prices rise based on demand, «a greedy scam and all artists have the choice not to participate… if artists didn't participate, it would cease to exist.»
Music fans rally against the concert ticket industry outside the US Capitol, January 24, 2023. Photo: Getty
It's a message echoed by the grumpy grandfather of grunge, Neil Young. He said Ticketmaster's opportunistic prices took all the fun out of touring. «It's over. The old days are gone. I'm getting letters accusing me of buying $3,000 worth of tickets for charity. That money isn't going to benefit me or benefit me. Artists have to worry about fans- scammers will accuse them of being Ticketmaster add-ons and scalpers. Concert touring is no longer fun. Concert touring is not what it used to be.»
There was also criticism of Bruce Springsteen's tour, whose use of dynamic pricing in the US caused prices for his shows to skyrocket to more than $5,000. Ticketmaster achieved the impossible by dragging even Bruce Springsteen's impeccable reputation into the controversy. Covid threatened to destroy the concert industry. But in 2023, the disease that has plagued business is uncontrollable greed.
It was just a warm-up for another fiasco when tickets for the European leg of Swift's Eras concerts went on sale. Or should it be «selling»? Ticketmaster crashed in France. Elsewhere, the decision to distribute tickets by random lottery was seen as Ticketmaster's panicky reaction to Swift's disastrous handling of Swift's US concerts. It's been a brutal summer for Ticketmaster. Even more cruel to the players who are forced to put up with the hellish landscape of the website.
David Zaslav
Since taking control of the newly merged Warner Bros Discovery empire, CEO Zaslav has seemingly been trying to alienate as many people as possible. Over the summer, he was singled out as one of the villains of Hollywood writers and actors. “How many private jets does David Zaslav need?” Left-leaning politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wondered at a cast rally.
Zaslav's typically tone-deaf response was to point out that while he used a Warner Bros Discovery jet, he did not own a private jet. Incredibly, after the WGA dispute was resolved, he declared that the striking writers were “right about almost everything.”
Zaslav hit with “Pay your writers” chants in Boston. This is very good. pic.twitter.com/00pL4ahAqZ
— Mike Collins (@mikescollins), May 21, 2023
His lack of self-awareness was highlighted by his decision to give a speech at Boston University in May, at the height of the strikes. To his shock, the students booed him. He then apparently started taunting the writers by throwing a champagne-soaked party in Cannes to celebrate Warner Bros.' 100th anniversary. He was also the first Hollywood shill to scrap already completed projects—first the Batgirl movie, then the Looney Tunes adaptation. Coyote vs Acme — to take advantage of tax write-offs.
Zaslav then went further and began removing content from the HBO Max streaming service, which he confusingly renamed Max. This practice was adopted by Disney boss Bob Iger, who chose the Disney cast. Sequel to Willow into the Abyss. Meanwhile, Max's latest is Damon Lindelof's fantasy sequel to Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchman on HBO.
Horrible CGI
Unreliable graphics have been a reality of cinematic life ever since Hollywood realized that digital wizardry was cheaper and easier than practical effects. Despite this, the onslaught of terrifying CGI was especially noticeable in 2023. For example, Disney's live-action reboot of The Little Mermaid was drowned in a muddy color scheme of grays and browns. «Rusalka» was not an outright failure. Yet it did not achieve the success that Disney expected. As one executive told Deadline, the project «wasn't a big disappointment, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.»
Meanwhile, the visually terrible Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania highlighted the declining quality of Marvel films. Here, FX looked like a fever dream cooked up on the Atari ST. Privately, FX employees accused Marvel executives of constantly interfering and diverting resources to another Marvel film, the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever. There was also a broader problem: special effects artists were forced to do too much with too few resources, and were constantly on the verge of burnout.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Credits: Jay Maidment/Marvel
“For Ant-Man, there were a lot of editorial changes that happened in the last third and quarter of the project that were too late. There’s a point of no return,” one insider told Vulture. «Why some things were changed, why some notes took longer to nitpick than they should have, that's about Marvel.»
But the worst was The Flash. The effects were so terrible that director Andy Muschietti had to defend them, saying they were intentionally terrible. «The idea, of course, is that we're in the perspective of 'The Flash,'» Muschietti said. “Everything is distorted in terms of light and textures. We go into this «water world,» which is essentially from [The Flash's] point of view. It was part of the design, so if it seems a little strange to you, it was intended.”
Omid Scobie
The whole world is tired of the battle between Harry and Meghan against the Windsors. That didn't stop previously little-known gossip writer Scobie from dishing out even more dirt. He did so with the widely panned film Endgame, whose Dutch edition incorrectly included the names of members of the royal family who allegedly asked questions about the skin color of Harry and Meghan's unborn child. As for the Netherlands, in the US, where Scobie is based, Endgame flopped, selling less than 10,000 copies in its week of release.
View this post on Instagram
Post posted by Omid Scobie (@scobiesnaps)
Sam Levinson
Levinson already had critics following the success of the writer-producer's forthcoming teen drama Euphoria. The show was accused of fetishizing teenage sexuality (featuring actors who appeared to be in their 30s). But Levinson, the son of Hollywood director Barry, went even further with the horrifying and creepy Idol, a collaboration with The Weeknd poster that portrayed neither in a positive light.
The idol lost its luster in April when it was the original. showrunner Amy Seimetz left due to alleged creative differences with The Weeknd — and despite the fact that 80 percent of the series had already been filmed.
Seimetz's miscalculation appears to have been bringing too much of a female perspective to the story of a Britney Spears-style pop star (Lily-Rose Depp) who falls under the spell of a «charismatic» cult leader (The Weeknd). Levinson intervened and, according to a Rolling Stone exposé, turned “Idol” into a “humiliating love story” with elements of “sexual torture porn” and “rape fantasies.” Reviews were negative and the show was quickly cancelled. The stain on the reputations of everyone involved may take some time to clear.
Matty Healy
The Swifties were shocked when their icon broke up with her steady/boring longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn and apparently dated the curly-haired 1975 man. pop villain Matty Healy. Even before the rumors of Swift's affair, Healy was doing a good job of getting on everyone's nerves with a 1975 tour where he annoyingly «deconstructed» the idea of the tour by watching himself on TV and kissing raw meat.
Matty Healy Photo: AP
He caused an international incident when he kissed a male bandmate on stage in Malaysia, prompting authorities to shut down the festival. There was also criticism of his appearance on the teen podcast The Adam Friedland Show, where he appeared to laugh when the hosts made fun of rapper Ice Spice's ethnicity. The world rejoiced when Swift moved on to yet another boring B-lister, American footballer Travis Kelce.
Jimmy Fallon
At the dawn of 2023, Fallon was already battling James Corden for the title of the most annoying American talk show host of all time — quite an achievement, as anyone who has suffered from an American talk show will attest.
It takes a lot to be more annoying than Corden. But Fallon oozed slyness the way the sun cast deadly rays in Danny Boyle's «Sunshine» and sported the phoniest TV grin this side of Zippy in «Rainbow.» That plastic smile was apparently exposed as a sham when Rolling Stone magazine said Fallon's «erratic behavior» on the set of his «The Tonight Show» contributed to a toxic work environment. Fallon apologized to his employees, who dropped their tools during the writers' strike at the time.
Jimmy Fallon Photo: Getty
«It's embarrassing and I feel so bad,» Fallon said, ensuring that his feelings took precedence over those of his employees. “I'm sorry if I embarrassed you, your family and friends… I feel so bad I can't even tell you.”
Russell Brand
Brand's Hollywood career had long since faded, and by 2023 he was appearing less and less on the British comedy networks that had once been his staple. Instead, he reinvented himself as a social media conspiracy guru. In September, a Channel 4 documentary made serious allegations about his personal life, which Brand denied and claimed were an attempt to silence him. But he still hasn't shut up: when riots broke out in Dublin in November, he took to YouTube to make a characteristically vague claim that the violence was a response to «globalism.»
Russell Brand, September 16, 2023 Photo: P.A. Shakira
Her hips may not lie, but what about her tax returns? In November, the Colombian singer agreed to pay a fine of 7.3 million hours before she was due to stand trial for tax evasion in Barcelona, where a judge sentenced her to another three years of probation. She was accused of evading taxes amounting to 14.5 million euros between 2012 and 2014. Shakira indicated her official place of residence as the Bahamas.
Shakira leaves court in Barcelona Photo: Getty
However, under Spanish law, anyone who stays in the country for more than six months is considered a resident for tax purposes. Before she entered into the agreement, the prosecution had to call 117 witnesses, including her driver, doctors and beauticians, to testify that she was allegedly living in Spain all along.
Jason Aldean
Radio -Country music deserves to be shunned at the best of times, but Nashville's Aldean went even beyond mere sonic trash talk with the controversial hit Try That In A Small Town. The song, celebrating rural communities, self-sufficiency and gun ownership, became a love letter to the heart of America and its values. But many saw a dark side — and Aldean was criticized for an accompanying video of him speaking in front of the same Tennessee courthouse where a black teenager was lynched in 1928.
«The most despicable country song of the decade, [and] the video is worse,» declared Variety magazine, adding that it is «close to being the most cynical song ever- or written.» about the implicit moral superiority of a limited number of neighbors.»
Свежие комментарии