Fandango pollsters report that their filmgoers most want to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dark Knight during the summer of 2008.
Here are the results of Fandango.com's online nationwide survey, conducted from March 13 to March 30:
Most Anticipated Summer 2008 Movie:
1. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (82%)
I was disappointed by 21, which scored a miserable 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the same time that I knew that Robert Luketic had crafted an entertaining male fantasy crowd-pleaser.
Coming off a weekend like this: Brit Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) is a rising star. He's handsome. He can act. He can carry a movie that the critics don't like. He can sing. He can woo a girl. And he can do a credible American accent. Sold. EW's Owen Gleiberman agrees. Here's Lynn Hirschberg's fall profile.
Next up: Wayne Kramer's ensemble drama about immigration, Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford and Sean Penn, and Kari Skogland's drama Fifty Dead Men Walking, in which he stars as real-life Martin McGartland, a Brit spy who infiltrates the IRA. And possibly Spider-Man on Broadway, with Julie Taymor, who discovered him, after all.
In a publishing universe beset by steep advertising declines, Adweek Media's eagerly awaited annual hot list is the one that tells all: it's about what's working.
Here are some noteworthy tidbits from the 28th edition: For the first time, global newsmag The Economist took the number one spot, jumping from number ten. Other returning titles from last year are Real Simple, More, Glamour and Martha Stewart Living. For the first time in three years, O, The Oprah Magazine, did not make the list. Condé Nast boasts a total of five publications: Vogue, Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, Cookie, and Men’s Vogue, while Rodale has three titles: Women’s Health, BestLife and Bicycling.
Editor Adam Moss's multi-million investment in revamping New York Magazine is paying off, with a spot in the top ten. New York also grabbed Design Team of the Year for its creative output.
Men’s Health editor David Zinczenko earned the Editor of the Year award, and Men’s Vogue nabbed Startup of the Year.
Despite considerable online competition from celeb sites, People.com, one of the most trafficked magazine-generated sites, grew its audience by 48% in 2007, totaling 6.3 million monthly unique users. People.com won the Magazine Web Site of the Year award.
AdweekMedia’s 2008 Hot List:
Title Circulation Advertising Revenues
1. The Economist 720,882 +24%
2. Real Simple 1,986,605 +22.8%
3. Harper’s Bazaar 729,767 +26.8%
4. More 1,265,999 +25.4%
5. Vogue 1,273,546 +10%
6. Glamour 2,353,854 +18.2%
7. Family Circle 4,011,530 +17%
8. Martha Stewart Living 2,021,934 +24%
9. Condé Nast Traveler 819,683 +22%
10. New York 429,116 +16.3%
Selection to AdweekMedia’s annual Hot List is based on several factors, including: ad page and revenue gains; performance within a magazine’s competitive category; circulation gains; interviews with media buyers and consultants, and AdweekMedia’s own editorial judgment. Magazines must have at least $50 million in advertising revenue and publish 10 issues or more annually.
AdweekMedia’s 2008 10 Under 50 List highlights the top magazines with under $50 million in annual revenue:
My favorite Richard Widmark performance ever--he's sexy as hell as a tough-guy with a heart--is in Sam Fuller's masterpiece, Pickup on South Street:
Widmark's death last week at age 93 has inspired some terrific obit/tributes from Aljean Harmetz, Richard Corliss, Glenn Kenny, Michael Sragow, and last but not least, the NYT's resident auteurist Dave Kehr--and yes, that critical approach applies to an actor who brought depth and grace to every role, no matter how big or small, mean or creepy. He was always compelling.
It's the HBO way. The fuss is all about the HBO launch--and getting an Oscar nom, natch--not building a successful theatrical release. Marina Zenovich knew this when she made her rich HBO deal for Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The movie quietly slipped into New York for an Oscar-qualifying run, reports Spout and Defamer.
UPDATE: Manohla Dargis' review is in Monday's NYT, for a movie that opened without press screenings--although it was launched to great fanfare at January's Sundance-- last Friday in one theater each in Manhattan and Pasadena. Here are the review's opening graphs.
The Judge, the Director and the Vagaries of Justice
By MANOHLA DARGIS
The sharply argued documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" isn't about the innocence or guilt of its title subject, who after pleading guilty in 1977 to having "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a minor flew from Los Angeles to London, never again to return to America. Neither is it about Mr. Polanski's likability, his tragic past, morals, short stature, brilliant and bad films, the sleaze factor or your personal feelings on whether there's anything wrong with a 43-year-old man's having sex with a 13-year-old girl. All these elements come teasingly into view here, but really this is a movie about a very different kind of perversion.
"Wanted and Desired," which opened on Friday without advance press screenings, was bought by HBO at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Its one-week theatrical run will make it eligible for Academy Award consideration, though given that organization's often pitiful record when it comes to nonfiction film, it seems unlikely that a movie this subtly intelligent would make its short list. That's especially true because the director, Marina Zenovich, refuses to wag her finger at Mr. Polanski, even when presenting the sordid and grimly pathetic details of his crime, like the Champagne and partial Quaalude he furnished the 13-year-old girl and her repeated nos.
Over the spring break, my college freshman daughter Nora watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And she wants to catch up with all the Indy Jones pics. Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981, long before she was born. So she wants to be up to speed when the highly anticipated first installment in 18 years comes out.
Paramount is well aware. They sent to press around the country a mailer full of posters of all the Indiana Jones movies. They also sent out leather whips. Boomers saw these movies as they came out. They are fond of them, and will take their kids to the new one. Folks all over the world will be ordering the three-pic Indiana Jones DVD set before the May 22 opening --many of them from Lucasfilm's handy-dandy Indy Jones store on the Indiana Jones site, which offers the Young Indiana Jones series on DVD as well.
Paramount has posted the latest Indy 4 TV spot at the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull website.
The deadline for 146 staffers to accept or reject a handsome buyout offer from Newsweek was March 25. The offer was too good--including a sweetened pension, health coverage until age 65, and two years salary-- for 30-year Newsweek veteran film critic David Ansen to refuse. "It was a good deal," he said. "They didn't want me to leave, which put me in a nice bargaining position. They may have been shocked at how many people took the offer."
While many of the 111 Newsweek employees who did accept it will leave May 30, the 62-year-old Ansen negotiated to continue reviewing for the magazine until year's end, at which point he starts a year-long contract as contributing editor delivering reviews and longer features.
As Newsweek prepares to move its Manhattan offices downtown near Ground Zero, "obviously the climate at newsmagazines is not great," said Ansen. "More cost-cutting, more trimming." Ansen looks forward to writing books, teaching, and "not going out to screenings every night," he said. "I want to watch DVDs of movies I might actually like and read a book or two. Face it, a lot of movies are not that interesting to write about these days."
The current harsh publishing climate has been hard on film critics. Gone from newspaper staff reviewer ranks are The Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum, Newsday's John Anderson, The Village Voice's Nathan Lee, The New York Daily News' Jami Bernard and Jack Mathews, The Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington and The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Eleanor Ringel Gillespie. Some have retired and some have been pushed out. "It is scary; they're letting a lot of good people go these days," said Ansen. "It's like a return to the hard old days when I was growing up when anybody could be a movie critic, and they'd take somebody off the sports desk."
[Newsweek critic David Ansen, right, with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment's Bingham Ray, at this year's Indie Spirit Awards.]
I snuck out of work this afternoon for a peek at the Petersen Automotive Museum's new Pixar exhibit, which opens here in Los Angeles tomorrow (March 29). To be honest, I'm not that hot on cars (in general) or Cars (the 2006 Pixar film), but this show really is a perfect marriage: The museum cleared out most of its upstairs Hollywood Room (where the Batmobile, Herbie and the Mach 5 are normally parked) to display the paintings, sketches and maquettes created for the movie Cars.
It's a rare treat for animation fans. Apart from the Museum of Modern Art's big 20th anniversary tribute to the studio (this was back in 2006), much of this art hasn't been displayed off-campus. And as Elyse Klaidman, dean of art and film for Pixar U., explained, those "Art of ..." promo books Pixar releases for each film are compiled and printed too early to include the full spectrum of great work that goes into all these designs.
Elyse further explained that preparation breaks down into three stages — story, characters and environments — and the Petersen arranges them accordingly (it would be fair to add "marketing," the stage that explains the attractions most likely to interest the kids: "life-size" fiberglass replicas of Lightning McQueen and Mater).
Seeing the work divided up this way explains a lot about my reaction to the film: The story felt rather uninspired (a Doc Hollywood redux), the character designs leave the most fun to minor characters, but those Route 66 landscapes, with their hood-ornament-shaped outcroppings and retro Americana flair, totally steal the show.
Watching Cars, you can't help but be distracted by all that gorgeous, high-concept scenery, and an installation like this allows you to take all the time you want exploring the world John Lasseter and company created (maybe a "24-Hour Cars" screening, like the Hirshhorn Psycho exhibit). But there's a tremendous amount of thought that goes into every stage, as we uncovered when Variety first speculated about moving the eyes from the headlights (a la Herbie) to the windshield.
For the MoMA show, Lasseter and Ed Catmull wrote:
Many people don't realize that we have almost as many artists at Pixar working in traditional media — hand drawing, painting, pastels, sculpture — as we do in digital media. Most of their work takes place during the development of a project, when we're working out the story and look of the film. The wealth of beautiful art created for each movie is rarely seen outside the studio, but the finished film we send around the world would never be possible without it.
And now Angelenos have a chance to see some of that great work firsthand.
I don't remember this scene from Stop-Loss, but don't tell that to Paramount and MTV Films, who'd like you think that the topical Iraq War film is an Abercrombie-style free-for-all. "Stop-Loss is barely registering among potential moviegoers despite generally positive notices," Variety predicts.
Like the marketing campaign (which is selling Stop-Loss like so much canned testosterone but also wants you to take the subject seriously), the movie tries to have it both ways, with patriotism (its characters enlisted to fight terrorism after Afghanistan) and disillusion (when they're ordered back to Iraq after serving their time) literally wrestling over tough questions.
It doesn't star Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum, but Sony's 21 looks well positioned to clean up the teen audiences Stop-Loss covets. I haven't seen the film but, like The New Republic's Christopher Orr, I have seen the trailer (he offers a review based on nothing more). I also read Ben Mezrich's book (Bringing Down the House), and the trailer assures me that there's nothing that Vegas, MIT and card counting are the only things the two have in common (what should be an Asian cast is nearly all white, the suggestions of casino debauchery and violence now take center stage, and who the hell know what Kevin Spacey is doing? Wherever there's scenery, the man gets hungry).
That leaves Superhero Movie and Run Fat Boy Run to clean up the remains, although if you're lucky enough to live in New York, do yourself a favor and see Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra instead (it opens in Los Angeles on April 11).
I went to the "Filming in 3-D Stereo: What You Really Need to Know" panel Wednesday evening at the Clarity Theater, presented by the Visual Effects Society and the PGA New Media Council. 3ality CEO Steve Schklair offered the gathering of producers and technologists a takeaway that took me by surprise: 3-D enabled TV sets are already on the market, though manufacturers aren't promoting the feature yet, and 3-D on Blu-Ray is coming soon.
"Every DLP set Samsung sells is 3-D enabled," he said. "You’re going to start seeing fairly decent releases before the year is over for that set. Mitsubishi is doing the same thing." You'll still need glasses to see the 3-D but "autostereo" monitors -- that is, 3-D without glasses -- already exist.
"The fact is, we’re just about there, the home market is coming. Everybody in this room is going to end up working in stereo."
Me, not so much, at least until Apple rolls out that holographic display they patented a little while back. But now there's yet another high-tech toy to inspire techno-lust. Like I needed that. (D. Cohen)
I'm late to weigh in on the news that the Village Voice had axed film critic Nathan Lee earlier this week (which was neither as juicy nor as surprising as the in-fighting that followed on The Reeler). Word has it that revenues are way, way down at the chain and at least one of our friends at the LA Weekly will likely be pounding the pavements before the week is out.
Grim news -- and this on the heels of the housecleaning 18 months earlier that resulted in Village Voice Media axing a number of its best critics and consolidating them into fewer posts. I must confess, Lee's flip style and breathless rant-rave reviews (riffs, really) turned me off from Day One, as he immediately began to supply the paper with the polar opposite of Dennis Lim's erudite and eloquent analyses.
But the chain didn't let Lee go because he offended the sensibilities of those like me, and the fact that there could me more casualties to come signals the ongoing implosion of our shared profession, at least as far as print is concerned. Over at the The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz predicts, "I think we're fast approaching the point where criticism will become, for the most part, a devotion rather than a job."
For the record, Variety's 30-or-younger critics (that would be Justin Chang and yours truly) concur that the Weekly's Scott Foundas is fast emerging the most important critic of our generation, and the alt-weekly format seems to be the perfect platform for him to champion at considerable length (I hope you caught his excellent Michael Haneke profile) the merits of movies that guys like us are too junior to cover for Variety.
There was a time when every young actor would've wanted to be the next Tom Cruise, and Miles Fisher may have figured out just the way to turn that notion back into a compliment. Check out this irresistible bit of viral marketing for Superhero Movie:
This isn't the first time director Craig Mazin (who's only other helming credit was the not-so-super-hero spoof The Specials) has taken on Tom Cruise. Some of you may remember how the writer worked a couch-jumping, Oprah-punching incident into Scary Movie 4:
Given the track record for some of these "Movie Movies," it's conceivable that more people will discover Fisher online than see its leading man, Drake Bell, in theaters. In trying to break out of the Nickelodeon box, Bell has certainly taken a different route from his "Drake & Josh" co-star: Josh Peck sells pot, loses his virginity and bares his derrière in the Sundance hit The Wackness.
P.S. Don't miss Gawker's roundup of the best Tom Cruise Scientology spoof videos to date.
Saw "Shine a Light," the Martin Scorsese Rolling Stones concert film last night. Anne has already written about it so I'll keep this short.
Me, I loved it. However, I saw it in Imax and I found myself thinking that I really don't want to know that much about Mick Jagger's dental work. In fact, I really didn't want to see the inside of his mouth at all -- not at that size, anway. Too much information. It actually took me out of the movie.
Which is, in fact, an ongoing issue with the whole Imax format. Every pore, every blemish, every crow's-foot suddenly looks enormous. It's a great thing if you're in the digital cosmetic enhancement business (and it's already a bigger business than most people realize). HDTV is raising the same issues for TV stars.
That said, I found "Shine A Light" thrilling. I've seen the Stones in concert at the Rose Bowl and Mick Jagger's heat-lightning energy is evident even at from the far end zone. But seeing Keith Richards this intimately is a revelation. If ever a man loved doing what he does, it's Richards. And no one ever looked happier doing it. (D. Cohen)
Today's lead story in Daily Variety on the Anthony Pellicano trial includes this nugget:
In another recording, Pellicano tells his client, director John McTiernan, that he was in the middle of wiretapping producer Charles Roven's phone calls and requests more money for having to sit through hours of "boring" phone calls.
"This guy takes up to 10 minutes deciding if he's miffed or not," Pellicano says. "I'm about to scream listening to this dialogue."
Tony babe, as a onetime assistant to a TV exec, I feel your pain. But if you could get a raise for sitting through your boss's boring calls every assistant in town would be driving a Maybach. (D. Cohen)
The folks at Lucasfilm run a pretty tight ship when it comes to the media. But every so often Mr. Lucas himself gets loose in front of a microphone. This about "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull":
"It's just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up."
I can hear the groans from the Presidio all the way down here on Wilshire.
Given his comments to Entertainment Weekly last week...
... we didn't make it bigger and better, we made it exactly the same. So if you loved the other ones, you'll love this one. But if you expect to have F-14s flying under freeways — that isn't there. It's just another period adventure movie with this wacky archaeologist.
... I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be better than "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." But hey, our intern Libby lists that as one of her three films that mean a lot to her. Kids these days. (D. Cohen)
Because one Eddie Murphy character per film is never enough, the actor tackles yet another multiple-personality comedy in Meet Dave, only this time, he's spared the hours of prosthetics application time demanded by Norbit and The Nutty Professor. Turns out Dave is a human-sized vessel for a bunch of tiny aliens who haven't yet mastered controls of their ship, a concept that reduces to a rather inspired bit of trailer copywriting: "Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy." See for yourself:
My two cents: 1) If U.S. telcos can ever figure out how to make IPTV anything more than a faster, cooler cable TV system, the merger of TV and the World Wide Web could look a lot more like "television" than it does now. But so far, they haven't.
David Cohen here, while Anne Thompson is away for the week. Had lunch recently with tech legend Ray Feeney to talk about what's going on with visual effects, digital production and 3-D. Ray has been saying for a while now that the industry is undergoing it's biggest transformation since the advent of sound. Bigger than color, certainly.
But the question is, what is the industry being transformed into? Ray's argument is that an all-digital pipeline -- everything from cameras to post to digital projectors to mobile video -- isn't just a different way of making movies, it's a new medium. But when every new medium is introduced, people start by doing what they already know how to do. In early movies, they tried filming stage plays. ("The Cocoanuts," anyone?) In early television, they did soaps (borrowed from radio), long-form dramas (like the movies) and variety shows (like vaudeville) until "I Love Lucy" pointed the way to the mega-hit sitcom. That's where we are now with digital moviemaking: using the new tools to make the same kind of thing. We're still waiting for the "I Love Lucy" of the digital age.
Ray says:
I joke with the people on our group who are working with this stuff that when I started in the industry in the ’70s, it was a time when Technicolor was shutting down three-strip stuff and there was a lot of nostalgic looking back on that era, like, 'Wow, as a technologist it must have been really incredible to be around when they were just getting the color in motion pictures and all that.' So when we came along, we were the young puppies and those were the good-old days we would talk to the old guard about.
I tell the people working on our projects that these are the good old days. This (digital) stuff, nobody knows how this should be done. There are no standards and people are trying anything.
Whatever's coming, though, I think one thing's almost certain: It'll be disorienting to Baby Boomers like me whose tastes were formed in the analog age. Videogames are going to have more influence on storytelling and film grammar. Visual effects will be used in more stylized ways, as in "Sin City" and "300."
Personally, I'm looking forward to it. I think. Even if the only thing that would get me to buy a PS3 is the Blu-Ray player.
Anita Busch, who had been a fearless and forthright star newshound reporter at Variety and editor of The Hollywood Reporter, was under contract at the LAT six years ago when she ran afoul of somebody who left a dead fish on her car and tapped her phones and made her frightened and paranoid and took away her livelihood as a journalist. She has always suspected Mike Ovitz of hiring private investigator Anthony Pellicano to intimidate her into shutting up.
When I last talked to Busch several years ago, she was writing an historic novel and trying to make a living not as an entertainment journalist, something she was born to be. Busch on the trail of breaking news was something to behold.
Hollywood has historically been recession-proof. According to Time, summer popcorn movies like Indy 4 and Speed Racer will be just what America needs as it slides into recession. So why am I, the most ardent moviegoer, making more dates with friends to watch DVDs at various well-appointed home viewing rooms? It's partly because the kid I used to go to weekend movies with is in college. It is also the time of year. I have already seen most of the well-reviewed movies in release. I will be as hungry as everyone else for the big summer pics when they finally arrive, and will see them in theaters.
In his latest email, Michael Moore calls on the Democrats to do something about the war in Iraq, please.
So? ... A Note from Michael Moore
Monday, March 24th, 2008
Friends,
It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?
4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.
And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, "two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting." Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: "So?"
"So?" As in, "So what?" As in, "F*** you. I could care less."
I would like every American to see Cheney flip the virtual bird at the them, the American people. Click here and pass it around. Then ask yourself why we haven't risen up and thrown him and his puppet out of the White House.
CinemaTech blogger and Variety contributor Scott Kirsner moderates a cool and informative SXSW panel: Digital Cinema for Indies. Here's the podcast. The visuals are not visible, frustratingly.
There are other podcasts posted now, including The Porn Police: Know the Rules, Animation and Digital Effects on a Budget, Quit Your Day Job and Vlog, and the controversial Mark Zuckerberg Keynote.
Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! landed atop the boxoffice charts again, while Tyler Perry's latest opened well and Judd Apatow's badly-reviewed Owen Wilson comedy Drillbit Taylor did not. That's two Apatow-produced disappointments now, after Walk Hard. But the next three---Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express and Step Brothers-- look strong.
For years my husband treasured a gorgeous black-and-white nude photo of Jamie Lee Curtis (taken by a friend). And now she's posing, on the eve of her 50th birthday, with no top for AARP Magazine. (She's under water.) I've always admired Curtis's honest approach to the vagaries of stardom, from the way she was raised, posing for PR shots as the child of working actors, to how folks deal with weight and aging here.
In 2002 she generated huge reaction for a photo spread she did for More Magazine, which was her idea, showing what she really looked like before and after 13 people made her up for a glamour shoot.
I sign up for things online all the time because I want to understand them. I get LinkedIn and MySpace and adore Facebook. But I don't get Twitter. Maybe I'm already so time-challenged that twittering puts me over the top in some way. Something's missing for me. (It's not showing up on my mobile, for one thing.)
Long revered as a writer of graphic novels (V for Vendetta, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), British writer Alan Moore is going to continue to get more attention as the Warner Bros. movie Watchmen heads for the big screen.
While it's ingeniously improvised by likable actors at a real poker tournament, The Grand is not as funny as the last mock doc by writer-director Zak Penn, The Incident at Loch Ness. The wily Werner Herzog is the funniest thing in both movies.
My recent Judd Apatow poll shows Pineapple Express leading in want-to-see over his three other comedies, including this weekend's well-advertised opener, Drillbit Taylor. Pineapple Express's director, the usually darkly dramatic David Gordon Green, has in release Snow Angels, which played at Sundance 2007. It's well worth seeing before it disappears. So is Gus Van Sant's brilliant, stark Cannes entry Paranoid Park.
The moody period noir thriller Married Life is marred by miscasting: the estimable Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan are both in love with the 20-something femme fatale Rachel McAdams. Excellent actors all. But yucky. I preferred AMC's similar but more stylish Mad Men.
Among the Oscar-season holdovers, Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters and animation nominee Persepolis are hanging in with great WOM. I caught The Band's Visit last weekend, a small gem which was ineligible as Israel's Oscar entry because its Egyptians and Israelis communicate in English.
And of course, the delightful The Bank Job is showing legs.
[Photos: Snow Angels, Paranoid Park, The Counterfeiters, Persepolis]
While In Treatment's half-hour sessions have been messing up HBO's numbers, the series is compelling to watch because of compassionate and sexy shrink Gabriel Byrne, profiled in today's LAT. His patients mess him up so much (especially seductive Melissa George) that he runs to his own shrink, Dianne Wiest.
This Wired story is worth reading just for the inspired art of Harvey Weinstein as Darth Vader, right. Reportedly, he's been up to his old scissor-happy tricks with the Star Wars doc comedy Fanboys.
I talked to Martin Scorsese's editor David Tedeschi (The Blues, Bob Dylan: No Man Home) about the upcoming Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light. (Here's the story.) It's a must-see for any cinephile, aside from the concert itself, for the sheer quality of the 35 mm photography shot by some of the greatest cinematographers in the world, including Robert Richardson, Robert Elswit, John Toll, Declan Quinn, Ellen Kuras, Stuart Dryburgh and more. Each shooter had a back-up for when the film roll had to be replaced, so they wouldn't miss anything. For Tedeschi, it was a cutter's fantasy.
So this weekend I will be catching up with new openers The Grand (on screener DVD) and Drillbit Taylor (at a screening).
Otherwise, I will be watching my cache of DVDs and saved TiVo stuff, including HBO's John Adams. (I love it, the marriage especially; it's too dark, but it feels real to me.)
If I were going to a theater I would also see Horton Hears a Who! which actually scored good reviews. Here's the Variety weekend forecast. Tyler Perry anyone? Well, I have yet to check him out, something I hate to admit. It's about time I did.
The staid old Metropolitan Opera has gone high-tech.
The Met will air a live HD transmission on March 22 of Wagner's romantic opera Tristan und Isolde via satellite to movie theaters worldwide. The opera will deploy live editing techniques to bring viewers into the onstage action. Conducted by music director James Levine, the Met will use multiple-frame effects so that global audiences will see as many as six frames on the screen at once. Thus they will see simultaneous close-ups, wide angles, and reaction shots—all cued to the music.
The transmission is Saturday, March 22 at 12:30pm/ET, 9:30am/PT. This presentation will be re-edited for later broadcast on public television.
Tristan und Isolde is the sixth of eight performances to be transmitted live from the Met in New York via satellite to more than 500 movie theaters around the world. Here's more info.
Russell Crowe narrates the tantalizingly-titled Bra Boys, a hit surfing doc Down Under set on the big wave beaches of Australia. Imagine producer Brian Grazer is planning a feature version starring Crowe, who would make his directorial debut.
The story is based on the Abberton brothers Sunny, Koby, and Jai (pro surfer Koby, right, has captured the media's attention by dating Tara Reid and Paris Hilton). Directed by Sunny, the rough-and-tumble sports pic explores big wave surfing as the brothers' escape from their drug-addict parents, among other things. The doc will open April 11 in New York, L.A. and Oahu.
For magazine editors, the ASME awards are their Oscars. Every self-respecting editor-in-chief, from Los Angeles Magazine's Kit Rachlis to Adam Moss of New York Magazine, wants to land as many noms as possible. The happiest editor in the world today is New Yorker's David Remnick, who gorged out with twelve.
Congrats to EW's Stephen King, nommed for his essay on J.K. Rowling. And to film critics Tom Carson (GQ) and David Edelstein (New York). And to my former Premiere Magazine editor Jim Meigs for his three noms for Popular Mechanics, including excellence in the 1-2 million circ category. That's a major turnaround for the once old-fashioned title, now replete with slick features and a hip online presence.
We all know producer Judd Apatow has four movies coming up in 2008. But which ones will work at the boxoffice? By my guess, all of them. It's just a case of how high is high.
I forecast correctly that the musical biopic parody Walk Hard would fail. It was a smart comedy satire of narrow interest to a wide audience, and asked folks to spend entirely too much screen time with John C. Reilly, who is the original definition of a great actor who has to be cast in the right (co-starring) role.
Sight unseen, based on marketing materials and ShoWest reaction, I'm predicting the following:
BOFFO HOME RUN
Step Brothers R (dumb male comedy starring Will Ferrell and Reilly; trailer (below) is hilarious)
SMASH Drillbit Taylor PG-13 (Owen Wilson star power, may have family appeal)UPDATE: Boy was I wrong! Maybe Apatow and Wilson work best in the R-rated universe; also this was a familiar old plot. Bad reviews and poor opening.
Pineapple Express R (stoner comedy)
DOUBLE
Forgetting Sarah Marshall R (relationship comedy, may have femme appeal)
EW has exclusive pics of Benicio Del Toro as Wolfman. Who would we rather see exploring his out-of-control id, Edward Norton as The Hulk, or Benicio del Toro as The Wolfman? Hmmm.
Who's your fave Wolf Man? Michael J. Fox? Michael Landon? Or Lon Chaney (pictured)?
The LAT broke the story today (handed to them on a platter) that Warners has named--as expected--New Line production chief Toby Emmerich as the scaled-back label's new prexy and COO. Other key execs, such as international chief Rolf Mittweg and distributioon head David Tuckerman, will likely exit soon. Here's Variety.
Playwright/filmmaker David Mamet, whose upcoming jujitsu pic Redbelt I missed at ShoWest, writes about turning away from his Liberalism in The Village Voice.
What's that old canard about becoming more conservative as you age?
Even I am no longer as tolerant of knee-jerks as I once was. A woman in my poker group hates Hillary Clinton as much as she loves Barack Obama. I love neither candidate: I admire their strengths and weigh their weaknesses. Both are human politicians and thus, imperfect. I believe in clear-headed intelligent thinking: not irrational fantasies that will only crash to the ground. We throw our hopes and desires into potential saviours instead of objectively weighing what makes sense.
I don't agree with Mamet though. He seems to be painting a black/white view of the world, where big government is either corrupt or benign. I will always be skeptical of the interests of corporate America, which has entirely too much power. Republicans are not fighting for the working man and never will. And I will always embrace the humanism that goes with being a Democrat.
In other words, I'm still a Liberal. But I like to think I am no longer a bleeding heart, leftie knee-jerk idealist. That's what goes away with age.
Anthony Minghella died of an unexpected cerebral hemorrhage on Tuesday after the removal of a growth in his neck last week. He was 54. Minghella had been finishing up the BBC/HBO series "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," which he co-wrote and co-produced with Richard Curtis, before its debut March 23. Minghella was always putting in long days on numerous projects. Here's the Variety obit. UPDATE: And the NYT.
I got to know Minghella, who was always accessible and charming, on the Oscar campaign circuit for The English Patient (which I somehow intuited was going to win best picture), and then again with Oscar contenders The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain.
I had fallen in love with his first film as a writer-director, the intense tale of ghostly love, Truly Madly Deeply, starring the incomparable Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. Minghella's films are literate, beautiful, often a tad British and remote (which sometimes hurt their boxoffice performance). But I've always been a hopeless smart-house Anglophile.
In September 2006, I conducted video interviews with Minghella and his long-time producing partner at Mirage, director Sydney Pollack, as part of an "Anthony Minghella Night" fundraiser at Long Beach's University Art Museum. (It is available for VOD download on Charter On-Demand.) Minghella talked about technology and culture in modern cinema: "films haven't changed, they've just gotten faster," Minghella said, predicting that "the current leaps in technology, the digital age, will have a radical and convulsive impact on cinema as we know it, not the least in making it available to anybody and everybody, giving cinema the opportunity to grow, change, and perhaps dwindle as a commercial enterprise, while flourishing as an art form."
No slouch himself, Pollack said Minghella was a brilliant, articulate, generous, and hard-working collaborator, who he leaned on for advice and feedback. For his part, Minghella took nothing for granted and cared deeply about making intelligent movies. In that regard, Pollack, English Patient producer Saul Zaentz and Harvey Weinstein were his great champions.
Minghella had more great work in him. "He seemed like someone who'd do art for another 40 years," said producer Albert Berger, who with his partner Ron Yerxa worked with Minghella on Cold Mountain, which shot for over 100 days in wintry Romania.
Berger and Yerxa found Minghella unusually collaborative. "He didn't want to be the only voice in the room. He liked being challenged," Berger said. On Bee Season, which marked the acting debut of Minghella's son Max, Minghella came in as a friend of the court and opened doors at Mirage so that filmmakers David Siegel and Scott McGehee could work with his editor there, and gave the directors guidance when needed.
Minghella lost weight, stopped drinking and trained like a prizefighter to get into shape for the long marathon in severe conditions on Cold Mountain. "I couldn't believe how much work he got done in one day," said Yerxa. "He had no assistant, people walked in and out of his trailer. He had no filter. He answered everyone's email within hours with a thoughtful reply. He was writing every night. He must not have slept." Minghella's work ethic infected the cast and crew, including Law and Nicole Kidman, who were willing to put in the same long hours with short turnarounds.
At the film's end Minghella and his associate producer stayed up all night signing personalized photo tintypes as gifts for the crew.
Here's Minghella's appearance on Charlie Rose for The Talented Mr. Ripley:
And now comes the announcement that 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke has died. (Rendezvous with Rama is another fave.) My college friends never let me live down calling my boyfriend Peter (who played Buster Keaton in my first short) "a movie moron" because he had not seen 2001.
From CNN:
Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, died Wednesday at age 90, an associate confirmed.
Clarke died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
"He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit," Chase said.
Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick shared an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay for "2001."
The film grew out of Clarke's 1951 short story, "The Sentinel," about an alien artifact left on the moon.
I have long enjoyed reading Mark Cuban's insights on new media, technology and the internet, mostly, on his blog. But he makes a strange argument about blogs here. He seems to be saying that blogs are tarred and tainted by all the regular folks (like him?) who blog, while any self-respecting big media outlet with journalistic cred would be foolish to sign onto the blog trend--unless they call their "blogs" something else.
Is he embarrassed to be a member of the club he belongs to?
Is he saying good blogging and good journalism cannot coexist?
It appears that he is twisting himself into a pretzel over his decision to ban bloggers from the Dallas Mavericks locker room. Hmmm.
Blogging is a technology, a fast and simple self-publishing platform. As you can see from the fascinating range of responses to Cuban's post, there are plenty of examples of decent journalistically-sound big media bloggers, at the NYT and elsewhere. If anything, they are helping to give blogging a good name. Anyone can use the platform, at home, or at work, as an amateur or a professional. And we all get to pick the blogs we want to read regularly. Some of the ones I read are by at-home bloggers who do better work than the media professionals. And there are also pros--with unusual access to the beats they cover-- who post stuff that non-pros can't.
For old media, blogs are an online marketing tool, a road to the future. They spread media content to a wider not-necessarily local readership. And they are interactive community-builders.
Director Bryan Singer is back working on the screenplay for a Superman Returns sequel with Transformers writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, he tells Empire. Returns writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris opted out of penning Superman: Man of Steel, and the strike arrived just as other scribes were to pitch ideas. Internally, Warners has moved the release date from 2009 to 2010.
Tackling a biopic about a well-known figure is always tricky--Ray, Hurricane, 8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, and Schindler's List come to mind. Thus Notorious, George Tillman's movie about gangsta rapper Christopher G. Wallace (or Notorious B.I.G.), gunned down in his prime at age 24 in 1997, is rife with issues, reports the NYT's Michael Cieply. Journalist Cheo Hodari Coker worked on a screenplay for years, followed by Reggie Rock Bythewood. Now the film starts shooting for Fox Searchlight in Brooklyn next week. How close to all the details of B.I.G.'s life the movie will be, remains unclear.
[Photo of Jamal Woolard as Notorious B.I.G.]
UPDATE: P. Diddy is fighting mad at the LAT over its assertion he was linked to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.
"This story is a lie. It is beyond ridiculous and is completely false. Neither Biggie (Wallace) nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during or after it happened."
Here's an email informant on the latest Dark Knight viral marketing efforts, this time focused on Gotham district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart):
By the way, I forgot to tell you guys that yesterday I saw these guys pull up on a corner, in a van right in the middle of downtown with big signs and bullhorns shouting to people to vote for Harvey Dent as D.A. The van was covered with Harvey Dent posters with Aaron Eckhart's picture. Of course people had NO idea what they were talking about. They probably thought it was a real campaign.
Below is a picture of a similar van I found on-line.
The PR hype for The Dark Knight has BEGUN!
Variety blogger Anne Thompson is your trusted source for film industry news. She tracks Hollywood, Indiewood, awards season and film festivals for this daily blog.
Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star in Baz Lurhmann's highly-anticpated drama, 'Australia.' ; Nicole Kidman; trailer; Baz Lurhman; australia; movie; Drama; Hugh Jackman; variety; Death Race Movie Trailer; Michael Cera and Kat Dennings star in the teen comedy, 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.' ; video trailers; Michael Cera; Kat Dennings; Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist trailer; College Movie Trailer; Daniel Radcliffe stars in Warner Bros. and author J.K. Rowling's final chapter of the 'Harry Potter' franchise. ; 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' trailer; new; trailers; video; variety; Josh Brolin stars as George W. 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This time, however, the jedi's are animated. ; Film; jedi; trailer; lucasfilm; Star Wars: Clone Wars; animated movie; George Lucas; variety; Heath Ledger stars as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's highly-anticipated sequel to 'Batman Begins.'; Kiefer Sutherland stars as an ex-cop who begins to investigate the evil force that has penetrated his home. ; Kiefer Sutherland; Mirrors; trailers; 'Mirrors' trailer; horror; video; variety; Real-life teens star in one of the most talked about documentaries of the year. ; documentary; trailer; American Teen; variety; sundance; Fox's intergalactic comedy highlights the antics of astronaut chimps with all the “wrong stuff.”; ' Fox; 'Space Chimps; trailer; animation; video; variety; Jack Black and Ben Stiller topline this jungle comedy about a group of Hollywood actors getting caught in the action.; Matthew McConaughey; comedy; Robert Downey Jr.; Ben Stiller; Tom Cruise; movie; Tropic Thunder; Jack Black; Meg Ryan and Annette Bening star in the remake of George Cukor's 1939 film.; Bette Midler; eva mendes; 'The Women' trailer; Meg Ryan; video; variety; Diane Keaton; Marvel Comics returns to the bigscreen with the second installment of the action/fantasy thriller. ; The Golden Army; Marvel Comics; Hellboy 2; movie; sequel; Selma Blair; Three women are stalked by a killer with a grudge that extends back to the girls' childhoods.; Sony Picturehouse; trailer; Thriller; amusement; horror; variety; Pixar's latest entry tells the story of a loveable yet mischievous robot named 'Wall-E'; Will Smith plays a superhero with some not-so-super habits in Sony's big-budget 'Hancock.'; Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy star in this action-apprentice tale of justice. ; Morgan Freeman; Thriller; James McAvoy; angelina jolie; action; movie; wanted; Twilight - Movie Trailer; Physicist Bruce Banner takes flight in order to understand -- and hopefully cure -- the condition that turns him into a monster.; Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep star in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit musical. ; Will Smith plays a superhero with some not-so-super habits in Sony's big-budget 'Hancock.'; Will Ferrell and John C. 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In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.; The attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives.; A genetic anomaly allows a David Rice (
Hayden Christensen) to teleport himself anywhere.; Once moving into the Spiderwick Estate Jared and Simon Grace find themselves in an alternate world.; A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.; Amir (Khalid Abdalla) has spent years in California and returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan.; Back home in Texas after fighting in Iraq, a soldier refuses to return to battle despite the government mandate requiring him to do so.; An attorney known as the "fixer" in his law firm, comes across the biggest case of his career that could produce disastrous results for those involved; George Clooney; sydney pollack; Michael Clayton; John Rambo (Stallone) assembles a group of mercenaries and leads them up the Salween River to a Burmese village where a group of Christian aid workers allegedly went missing.; Trailer to Iron Man Video Game; Trailer from video game; "Margot at the Wedding" is a circus of family neuroses and bad behavior that perhaps a therapist could make sense of better than Noah Baumbach can. ; Nicole Kidman; Margot at the wedding; jennifer jason leigh; vareity review; movie review; variety; review; A young man from the South Bronx dreams of making it as a rapper, until a run-in with local thugs forces him to hide in Puerto Rico with the father he never knew.; You have to believe it to see it.; The last man on earth is not alone.; The rebellion begins. ; Variety presents a special screening of "The Darjeeling Limited" with Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola and Adrien Brody.; A CIA analyst questions his assignment after witnessing an unorthodox interrogation at a secret detention facility outside the US.; A freak storm unleashes a species of blood-thirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole-up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.; A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, "No Country for Old Men" reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent.; Tommy Lee Jones; movie review; variety; Variety review; No Country for Old Men; Directors: Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Tilly Mandelbrot...; Trailer from video game; Robert Ford, who's idolized Jesse James since childhood, tries hard to join the reforming gang of the Missouri outlaw, but gradually becomes resentful of the bandit leader. ; Brad Pitt; Casey Affleck; the Assassination of Jesse James; Variety Screening Q&A with director Sidney Lumet.; Before the Devil Knows You're Dead; Sidney Lumet; Philip Seymour Hoffman; movies; The search for true love begins outside the box. A delusional young guy strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the Internet.; ryan gosling; trailer; Patricia Clarkson; movies; Craig Gillepsie; Lars and the Real Girl; Survivors of the Raccoon City catastrophe travel across the Nevada desert, hoping to make it to Alaska. Alice (Jovovich) joins the caravan and their fight against the evil Umbrella Corp.; Director: Sean Penn
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, Vince Vaughn; THERE WILL BE BLOOD chronicles one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a silver miner into a self-made oil tycoon. ; There Will Be Blood; Here's an exclusive look at Joel and Ethan Coen's trailer for their Cannes hit "No Country for Old Men," starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and uber villain Javier Bardem.
; trailer; movies; No Country for Old Men; Tomy Lee Jones; Ethan Coen; Josh Brolin; Javier Bardem; Joel Coen; Directors: Nadia Conners & Leila Conners Petersen
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sylvia Earle Ph.D., Mikhail Gorbachev...;
Fandango pollsters report that their filmgoers most want to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dark Knight during the summer of 2008.
Elyse further explained that preparation breaks down into three stages — story, characters and environments — and the Petersen arranges them accordingly (it would be fair to add "marketing," the stage that explains the attractions most likely to interest the kids: "life-size" fiberglass replicas of Lightning McQueen and Mater). 
you want exploring the world John Lasseter and company created (maybe a "24-Hour Cars" screening, like the 
I'm late to weigh in on the news that the Village Voice had axed film critic Nathan Lee earlier this week (which was neither as juicy nor as surprising as the in-fighting that followed on 
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