Back Issue #1

Magazine: Empire

Issue: No 73 July 1995

Initial Observations

This issue of Empire came out in June and features their ultimate summer preview. Back then day and date releases were uncommon and, barring a few exceptions, the summer season followed the school holidays in the UK. Hence the summer preview appears in what today would be the half-way point of the summer season. Empire was also less about previewing forthcoming movies back in the nineties. The cover would normally feature a movie that was actually released in the month covered by that issue. The feature pages would discuss movies released that month, and the movies covered were generally reviewed in that issue. How times have changed.

What's Inside?

Apart from the usual bits and bobs we have features on: The Brady Bunch Movie; Quentin Tarantino acting in Destiny Turns On The Radio; cricket in Hollywood; Jaws 20th anniversary retrospective, Greta Scacchi profile; Bill Forsyth's Being Human and DTV releases; Tank Girl; and the ultimate summer preview.

Old News

The big news story concerns the rising budgets of Hollywood tent-pole pictures. This is the summer of Waterworld which was at the time the most expensive movie ever (unadjusted for inflation). The article mentions that the average cost of a flagship movie had risen to $50.4m the previous year. The budgets of Hollywood movies don't seem to get the same sort of press anymore, except in the case of films like John Carter that fail spectacularly. 

Also in the news, the launch of The  National Lottery is partly blamed for poor cinema attendance due to people being 'glued to their tellies on a Saturday night'. The novelty of that rubbed off pretty quickly didn't it?

Re-reviews

Tank Girl gets a three star review and shares the main review page with the Brady Bunch which gets four stars, both fair in my eyes. Elsewhere its Nicholas Cage month with Kiss of Death and Guarding Tess both released (plus he is the star How Much Is A Pint of Milk?), Michael Bay makes his debut with Bad Boys and Will Smith also features in Six Degrees of Separation. A rather fallow month for good movies with only the superb Crumb standing out.

Commercial Break

The biggest difference between then and now is the appearance of adverts for cigarettes. It comes as a shock to come across these things. 

An advert for Cinemania 95 promises an interactive movie guide with over 20,000 film reviews, 900 movie stills and theme songs from 100 movies. This is what we had before IMDB. 

The Goldstar 3DO System promises that 'you can be sure that nothing will come out in a couple of years time to render your investment obsolete'. The PlayStation is only a couple of months away from release.

Ooh Spooky! 

A feature on possible contenders too sing the theme song to GoldenEye proposes Madonna and notes that she would probably want to be in it. Which is exactly what happens with Die Another Day.

Cindy Crawford speaking about her movie debut Fair Game: "But what's the worst thing that could happen to me? That the movie could be a big flop and I could be terrible?" 

Discussing the prospects for The Usual Suspects: "word-of-mouth should generate enough interest to land it in the file marked 'cult'..."

A feature on the future of home entertainment talks about high definition TVs, video on demand, recordable CDs, HDCDs (i.e DVDs) and on-screen video guides. The future is now.

Promoballs

Producer Beau Marks on Jusge Dredd: "Blade Runner took itself very very seriously and what we have is a film that is a whole of a lot neater and more fun and doesn't take itself so dead-on serious".

Joel Schumacher on Batman Forever: "As Batman, Val is heroic and sexy, he has a tremendous amount of depth, sensitivity and mystery...all qualities tailor-made for the role." He certainly changed his tune on the Val Kilmer front two years later.

Home Re-review

The home reviews are split between films to buy and rent and also include films on tv through the month. The big film to rent is Reservoir Dogs, finally given a home video release three years on from its cinema release. A favourite cult film of mine, Freaked, is also given a prominent review: "any film prepared to sink Brooke Shields in a vat of chemical waste is definitely worth an evening's attendance". 

Quote of the month

"Booga had a ten-inch prosthetic cock. A $5,000 cock. It looked brilliant and the whole scene was very romantic. But MGM took it out. Too bestial. We were going, 'It's innocent, like seeing your mum and dad in bed together...'" - Jamie Hewlett on Tank Girl