Dimension Films’ secretive Apollo 18, which arrives in theaters this weekend as something of an under-hyped mystery, is another of those mockumentaries that employs the found-footage formula introduced by The Blair Witch Project and incorporated to popular effect in the Paranormal Activity franchise. The notion of said footage revealing a secret, disastrous moon mission is a promising one, full of potential. Unfortunately, director Gonzalo López-Gallego bungles that intriguing concept in astonishing form, turning it into a muddled, mind-numbing mess.

We pretty much all saw the found footage trailer for Apollo 18 that crash landed last week. It taught us to fear space ghosts that knock over our flags and invade our space suits. Now we might have reason to fear for Bob Weinstein’s sanity. According to his quick quote to EW, he really, really, really wants audiences to think this movie is actual found footage from a real-life secret moon mission that ended tragically. The money quote: “People intrinsically know there are secrets being held from us. Look at WikiLeaks: There are secrets that are really true to the world. It’s not bogus. We didn’t shoot anything,” Weinstein claims. “We found it. Found baby!” The question here is whether this sort of tactic will backfire and hurt the film.

A few months back, a fight for free expression was exercised by the Weinstein Company for the Sundance-indie favorite Blue Valentine to be theatrically released with an R-rating instead of the dreaded NC-17. Many things about this pseudo-fight are nothing special: there’s hardly anything surprising about fights with the MPAA or about the Weinsteins making a fuss – it’s how they’ve succeeded in the business for decades. But this fuss, and the anti-MPAA lobbying contained within it, seemed significantly more justified because it was exercised in the name of potentially getting an exceptional indie into more theaters across the country (and while the film does star two recognizable names, it is, economically speaking, very much a truly modest indie of the classic Sundance variety). In the end, the Weinsteins got their way, and justifiably so. The NC-17 rating has become an economic form of censorship: nothing associated with the label, or the institution that bestows that label, has the power to actively stop distribution of NC-17 films, but because of the rating’s associations with sexually-explicit content, and because of the liability and extra measures required of theaters in preventing young people from sneaking their way into such films, many theaters (and some entire theater chains) will not exhibit films with such a rating. This would have relegated Blue Valentine, at best, to arthouse theaters in big cities. Such theaters are no doubt where Blue Valentine will play best regardless, but the key word here is opportunity – an R-rating provides

I just read a little post over at Variety, and I feel like I need a shower. And not in the good way. This post is not for the faint of heart or loin.

At least, he’s not closed to the idea. But should they even be making more Scream movies?

There was a time when Harvey and Bob Weinstein were the heroes of American cinema. Now, we are seeing that these guys are just big douchebags, like so many other people in the business.