So, who's going to see Wrath of the Titans when it opens?

Eh, the fact that he's doing a sequel i'm really excited about seeing(Taken 2) makes up for him doing a sequel that I couldn't care less about.

Hey, the part was good enough for Laurence Olivier.

Also the main reason he was in Titans wasn't for money, it was because his son thought it would be really cool for him to play that role.

I was going to pull up the exact quote about Olivier saying he did Clash for the money....then I realized you were talking about Neeson weren't you?

"Money, dear boy."

Olivier wasn't talking specifically about Clash of the Titans... but that title is one of many on the TV Tropes page named after his famous quote.

Yeah I was refering to Neeson.

Um I will watch anything that Liam Neeson is in. Few people can heighten mediocre films like he can.

I did some surfing on that site you linked and came across this:

Japanese Spider-Man

Seriously, what the #%#$ is this, I don't even.....?!

Once you've started clicking around on TV Tropes, you are through the looking glass.

Neeson is a talented actor but the author of this topic is right in what he implies - Neeson's standards are sometimes lacking.
I don't know whether this is financially motivated (although I doubt he's on the breadline) or whether he's just a workaholic.

I remember Anthony Hopkins in an interview a few years ago saying that he started out with the intention of never being in a shit film but it just sort of happens eventually. He then stated that he'd been in some "fucking bad films". If I'm not mistaken he refered to the film "Bad Company" he did with Chris Rock in this interview.

Sorry I'm off topic: in fact I did click around TV Tropes. Funny how it all comes together (and raises more questions at the same time - what's new....). I recently finished a book in german about typical human errors in thinking, you know stuff like: confirmation bias, action bias, halo effect, hindsight bias..... They all come into play when we deal with tv/movie cliches - and real life cliches. A lot of the things Roger Ebert makes fun of (and it IS in fact great fun) actually make sense. If they were done "right" it would be wrong (of course the man knows that). There are still enough cliches and "right would be wrong" decisions in the movies these days which I could do without.

Anyway, here is the Wikipedia entry for cognitive biases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Looks like this is far from being the most recommendable source, but it should provide a fairly good idea of what needs to be considered when making a movie or tv show. I gather from the above mentioned book (german title: Die Kunst des klaren Denkens = The Art of thinking clearly - referring to the english terms regardign cognitive errors) that these errors are extremely hard to overcome, even for people who are fully aware of these.

Sorry for my long winded post. Didn't mean to be preachy or boring....

I've read a few books on the subject myself. It's worth mentioning that cognitive biases (just like storytelling tropes) are not necessarily a bad thing. They give us a sort of mental shorthand for processing the world. But it certainly helps to be aware of them in cases where they're not appropriate and give us the wrong idea.