Canberra Times published an article on October 10, 2015,
with the headline ‘Hugh Jackman film Pan panned by film critics everywhere.’
What does ‘panned’ mean?
Australian actor, Hugh
Jackman, is in a new movie, called Pan – showing since September 2015. It is
about the character Peter Pan immortalized in a children’s book by Scottish
author Sir J.M. Barrie. It is actually the prequel to the movie Peter Pan. So
the new movie is about the events that happened before the story of Peter Pan
(and since the events weren’t in the book, the director has re-imagined them
for the movie). In the new movie orphan Peter goes to London during World War
II where he meets the pirate Blackbeard (portrayed by Hugh Jackman). Blackbeard
is digging for pixie dust. So does ‘panned’ have anything to do with gold dust
mining?
The Oxford Dictionary
defines ‘panned’ in the follwing ways: ‘to criticize severely’ or ‘washed
gravel in a pan to separate particles to yield valuable minerals by this
process’ – like gold panning in the times of the Gold Rush. The valuable
minerals are usually gold dust or gold pieces, but could also be pixie dust –
since presumably this is valuable in the film. There is a big difference
between the two meanings – one meaning is to say that something is terrible and
the other meaning is to say that there could be valuable, precious pieces amongst
the dust when digging or mining – in this case, in the pixie dust in the film
Pan.
So what does the
article say?
The article says that
the newspaper New York Post gave the
movie a rating of zero stars, and that movie critics said it was a dismal
failure, with reviews such as ‘Pan panned’ and ‘Pan should walk the plank.’ To
‘walk the plank’ is a pirate’s way of getting rid of one of the crew members on
the ship – the person walks the plank over the side of the ship, falls into the
water, and drowns – no longer seen. One Australian critic was a little kinder,
writing ‘Pan is … its own thing: a visually disgusting, audibly loud and
obnoxious, narratively incoherent attempt at a Hollywood adventure blockbuster.
And it is glorious.’ Overall, the meaning of ‘panned’ in this article is
‘criticized severely.’
Scorecard for the Canberra Times headline is 100%. The
headline plays on the movie title, Pan, with the critics’ review of it – it was
panned. There were no, or nearly no bits of worthy entertainment for the
critics to rate the movie highly, with several stars. The critics panned it
(tried to separate the good bits from the not-so-good bits) and did not find much
gold dust or even pixie dust in the movie – therefore it was panned
(criticized).
Comments
Post a Comment