Thompson On Hollywood

Premiere.com Lets Kenny Go: Another Critic Bites the Dust

This makes me crazy. Premiere.com is letting go of their marquee critic, Glenn Kenny, the one guy who drives some traffic. But it's a sign that even Premiere.com isn't making a go of it. They probably think that they can get cheaper younger talent to do what Kenny does so well. They'll probably pick up Real Guys to take his place. It's all about short video bites now. Lucid, knowledgeable, erudite? Who needs that shit anymore? Here's his farewell post.

UPDATE: Hachette U.S. Publishing CEO Jack Kliger has presided over the demise of many magazines and I don't think I will ever forgive him for so mishandling Premiere and its bonafide, established, globally recognized movie brand. He could have started a movie portal if he had seen the light--but Hachette was thrilled they had dodged the dot.com bullet and refused to invest real money online.

All they had to do was publish Premiere properly and keep it alive on the internet. Look at UK movie mag Empire. It's going strong, and has taken over the global space Premiere and its nine editions around the world used to have. Look at the Premiere website. It's lame. How can it compete with all the lively entertaining professional stuff out there? Real media ventures are plowing real money into their sites and seeing real returns. Look at New York Magazine, and Conde Nast Portfolio, which is sending my old Premiere colleague Fred Schruers to Cannes.

Film Blogger Exodus

Apparently film critics who blog are also abandoning their posts.

Real Guys: Why We Need Film Critics

The latest YouTube film critics, Real Guys, make Reel Geezers look like geniuses. Pugnacious ex-gossip columnist A.J. Benza, who can't be bothered to remember the name of Daniel Day Lewis's co-star in There Will Be Blood, and his slightly more literate writing partner Neal Gumpel, say they are giving us the real truth about movies. They are giving us raw opinion with no insight. If this is the future, shoot me.

Here's Real Guys on There Will be Blood:

Here's Reel Geezers on Forgetting Sarah Marshall:

You tell me, who's better?

LAT Book Fest: Reinventing Hollywood Panel

[Posted by Pat Saperstein]
Reinventing Hollywood, but how to start? Whether at film festivals or book fairs, lately every film panel seems to turn into a whinefest about the good old days of musty arthouses. This weekend's L.A. Times Fest of Books panel "Reinventing Hollywood: The 1960s and Beyond" was no exception.

Moderator Leonard Maltin’s intro quickly pointed up a gulf between those who feel Hollywood has forsaken them and those who embrace comicbook fare. “I mean, am I supposed to really be excited about ‘Iron Man’?” he asked sarcastically. Half the audience and most of the panel immediately countered “We are!”

Discussion mostly focused on why, as LAT film critic Kenneth Turan put it, “even the loyal core audience for smaller films is staying home rather than seeing the films in theaters,” and whether there is “any glimmer of hope” to get fans of films targeted towards adults back to theaters.

Author Mark Harris (“Pictures at a Revolution”) pointed out that it’s nearly impossible anyway to find good films in theaters for the first eight months of the year — “After New Year’s Day, it’s goodbye to you and your snooty friends until Labor Day.”

And while panelists were wowed by several of last year’s pics including “No Country for Old Men,” “The Savages” and “Michael Clayton,” Peter Biskind (“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”) was chagrined that “The Assassination of Jesse James” was ignored at kudos time. Biskind also worried that this year’s crop of quality fare will be sparse due to the effects of the writers’ strike.

Harris said that the shift to home viewing means films can’t have the kind of wide cultural influence they had in the 1960s, when viewers knew they would likely never be able to see “The Graduate” uncut on their TVs.

“It puts movies at the center of the conversation when you can only see them in theaters,” Harris contends.

What will panelists find to discuss when day-and-date distribution of independent and foreign films directly onto large-screen TVs finally becomes commonplace?

Iron Man: Downey and Favreau Rock

I managed to convince Paramount to show me Iron Man earlier this week, and grabbed director Jon Favreau for a phone interview from the European leg of his round-the-world press tour, from Paris to Rome to the London Premiere. Here's my Iron Man column, which even explains why Samuel Jackson and Hilary Swank aren't in the movie.

The movie rocks, in case you were wondering. It's light-on-its-feet, nimbly blending comedy, action, and VFX. Robert Downey, Jr. as a 60s-style playboy weapons mogul and anti-superhero and Gwenyth Paltrow as his updated Miss Moneypenny have real chemistry. And yes, Marvel and the Iron Man team have got themselves a franchise. Fantasy Moguls Steve Mason has upped his prediction of how the movie will open on May 2 from $60 million to $100 million, the kind of b.o. forecasting that is giving Paramount execs heartburn.

Here's the first of Variety.com's ongoing look at summer blockbusters. And here are Todd McCarthy's Iron Man reviews for Variety and Reelz:

Ebert Blogs, But Not From Ebertfest

Roger Ebert was on the road to recovery from an unsuccessful operation to restore his speech when he tripped and fell at his rehab facility and fractured his hip. Poor man. He's unhappy that he can't attend his annual Ebertfest in Urbana, Illinois, which opened last night. Here's his entry on his new blog.

88 Minutes Inspires Critics

One of the upsides of a bomb like 88 Minutes is that it inspires critics to pan it with pleasure, zest, and outright glee. Six per cent on the Tomatometer is about as low as you can go. (UPDATE: Patrick Goldstein examines the plight of the older actor trying to meet his asking price in Hollywood.)

On Ebert & Roeper, Michael Phillips and Richard Roeper actually agreed that this was not only the worst movie of the year so far and Al Pacino's worst movie ever but probably one of the worst movies of all time, period.

Todd McCarthy in Variety writes:

"88 Minutes" can't even live up to its title. With 19 -- count 'em, 19 -- producers, including director Jon Avnet, ensuring that every aspect of the film, from the script to the star's haircut, is ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst. Available on DVD in some territories as early as February 2007 and rolled out theatrically in France and elsewhere beginning in May of last year, this gape-inducing fiasco is getting a token domestic release that at least saves its star the indignity of a dump straight to homevid.

In a similar vein, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane writes:

The best thing about “88 Minutes” is the title. Jon Avnet’s movie bumble along for twenty minutes, at which point Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) is informed by a gravelly phone call that he has eighty-eight minutes to live. We then switch into real time, and the countdown begins, allowing us to calibrate precisely how much more of the film we have to suffer through. Avnet is setting a noble example here: if all movies were named after their running times Hollywood would instantly become a brisker place. Would Peter Jackson have dared to put us through a Tolkien trilogy called “Nine and a Quarter Hours of Elves”? I don’t think so.

Gramm is a forensic psychiatrist, who majors in serial killers. A nutcase (Neal McDonough) is in jail, awaiting execution, yet crimes identical to his are being perpetrated on the outside, and Gramm, who testified against him, is being simultaneously framed and hunted down. What follows makes absolutely no sense—a buzzing, fidgety mess of bad cinema, with people barking inquiries over their cell phones instead of enjoying what used to be called conversation. There is no basis for the criminal motives, no excuse for the slavering closeups of sadism wielded against women, and no reason that Pacino should have paused before feeding the script into his shredder. I sense a weariness in his features—an insomnia of the soul, as it were—that has nothing to do with his character and everything, I suspect, to do with his feelings for an industry that can pay him good money to prop up junk. Compare “88 Minutes” with “Sea of Love,” another murder mystery that Pacino made, in 1989, and you find him sporting the same loud ties, but everything else has leached away: suspense, credibility, wit, and the lost art of flirtation. As a result, nothing would give me keener pleasure than to reveal the identity of the killer, but a day after seeing the film I have genuinely forgotten. It was either a man or a woman, but beyond that everything is a blur. “It’s my job to be convincing,” Dr. Gramm explains. Sorry, Doc. You’re fired.

Film Critics: New York and New Wave

In the latest issue of New York celebrating its 40th anniversary, David Edelstein lists his fave the movies that most define New York, including Annie Hall (pictured).

The New Yorker is keeping its profile of the French New Wave's Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard behind its firewall, damn them. (I have a sub, but I can't link to the full profile.) Here's a slide show and audio interview with the writer Richard Brody.

I got a huge kick out of showing Godard's Alphaville to my USC film criticism class. Godard's reviews are fun to read, especially on Hitchcock. It's heady to see his pieces move from an enthusiastic embrace, appreciation and analysis of American movies to full-blown treatises on cinema, as Godard works out his ideas and starts to put them on film.

This ongoing debate about film criticism may be missing a crucial point. When the cinema was still a young medium--and the critics were figuring out their role in relation to it--everyone was making discoveries. The auteur theory was created so that critics addressing a backlog of movies accumulated over decades could codify and index them.

Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were battling over different ways to read movies. Sarris was the more learned and academic; he was really an historian. Kael was a popularizer and passionate advocate, and wrote far more entertaining prose.

We haven't seen their like since for several reasons. The explosion of movies in the 60s and 70s has subsided. Critics became more established, and they stopped arguing about their modes of discourse. In the end, Kael won the battle. Learned auteurist Dave Kehr is not a film critic at the NYT, although many point out that reviewing DVDs is a far better job. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane is the quintessential reviewer as entertainer, where it's less about what he has to say than how he says it.

Weekend Boxoffice: Leatherheads vs. Nim's Island

At the weekend boxoffice, George Clooney's period screwball comedy Leatherleads (54% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes) dukes it out with family film Nim's Island, starring Jodie Foster (46 %). Here's Variety's boxoffice forecast.

The one to see, especially if you appreciate Martin Scorsese's mise-en-scene and the Rolling Stones in performance, is Shine a Light, which earned 86% fresh on the Tomatometer. (Here's Stephen Schaefer's report of the Stones' NYC press conference.) I will be catching up with Stop-Loss (62%) while it is still in theaters.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Nim’s Island “Go” 15%

Leatherheads “Go” 12%

Shine a Light “Go” 12%

21 “Go” 7%

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! “Go” 7%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

George Clooney's Leatherheads opens this week. Of the movies below, which one is your favorite Clooney flick?

Ocean's Eleven 43%

O Brother, Where Art Thou? 31%

Michael Clayton 10%

Three Kings 7%

Out of Sight 6%

Syriana 3%

Critics: The March of Time

There's been a huge outcry on the web about the current critics' crisis. (When did people start calling them crickets?) Here's a sampling:

My column and last critics blog entry with links. And responses from Spout and FirstShowing.

Sean Means is keeping a list of departed critics.

A spoof on the situation.

Is the Internet killing the film critic?

UPDATE: FilmSchool Rejects responds. And last but not least, Patrick Goldstein.

Rotten Tomatoes Showcases USA Today's Puig

Rotten Tomatoes has started interviewing prominent film critics on their site, and asked USA Today critic Claudia Puig--arguably one of the country's most powerful--a few pointed questions about the state of things today:

What effect does the ongoing consolidation of the print medium have on film critics in general?

CP: Film criticism is at a critical (ok, pun intended) juncture, for several reasons. Print journalism is undergoing a massive change, with the emphasis at most papers on the internet versions of our newspapers. Film criticism has been substantially democratized with the inclusion of so many bloggers and internet sites that feature critics. I think it's at an interesting point, but it also means that no one critic (or two or 10) has much sway. It's all about critical mass.

While the print media continue to be consolidated, there are probably fewer newspaper critics out there, but internet critics have rushed in to fill the gap. It's actually quite fascinating to speculate on where film criticism will be in 5, or 10 years. In general, I think older audiences rely more heavily on the recommendations of individual critics (usually those in their local papers) and younger audiences don't pay as much attention to critics overall, since they're not in the habit of reading newspapers as much as older people. If they do pay attention to critical assessments, they go to sites like Rotten Tomatoes to get an overview of what critics think, rather than relying on individual "favorite" critics.

How's the atmosphere at USA Today in light of what's happened recently at Newsweek (David Ansen being bought out), the Village Voice (where Nathan Lee was laid off), and Newsday (which is losing critics Gene Seymour and Jan Stuart)?

CP: This is, unfortunately I think, indicative of the future. We had our very first buyout, and our paper's been around for 25 years, and has been pretty immune...when I was at the LA Times there were all kinds of buyouts, and a lot of newspapers have gone through some pretty bad stuff, but Gannett has always been a pretty strong chain. But I just think that the atmosphere is a little scary everywhere.

Some people argue that critics are out of touch with the movie tastes of the public...

CP: I think that's a viable complaint. With more and more blogging, with more internet sites, certainly things have become more democratized. As a woman of color, I can certainly vouch that critics have been white male dominated, over a certain age, there's a certain groupthink that has happened. So I think that's a fair criticism -- at times. And some people would just rather get their movie suggestions from friends and word of mouth. There are times when critics' choices and mass audience choices come together -- Juno, which turned out to be a big movie, and critics generally liked it -- but that's always been the case. I don't think this is anything new. Critics have always championed certain kinds of movies, certain kinds of books, certain kinds of art, and the masses have not always gone along with their particular choices.

Stop-Loss: In Defense

Philly's Carrie Rickey defends Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, which I'll catch up with this weekend.

Ebert to Return to Print Reviewing; Phillips Takes TV Seat for Now

I'm sad to report that Roger Ebert's last surgery did not go as planned. He had hoped to restore his speech. But he's recovering and cancer free and will return to reviewing after his next film festival in April, he writes.

Meanwhile Disney's Ebert & Roeper weekly review show soldiers on without Ebert or his thumbs. Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips, who was alternating with the NYT's Tony Scott in recent months, is filling Ebert's spot on the balcony, at least for now, confirms one of the show's producers. This returns the show to two rivals from Chicago's two daily newspapers, each of whom believes that he's smarter and better informed than the other. It worked for the original Ebert and Siskel. And it's fun to watch Roeper and Phillips tearing each other apart now. As much as I enjoy Scott, Roeper gushed over him too much. And thank God they got rid of the testosteroned Robert Wilonsky.

Film Critics: State of Play

As the film critic species looks more and more endangered--with the recent departures, for various reasons, of Gene Seymour and Jan Stuart of Newsday, Jack Mathews of The New York Daily News, Nathan Lee of The Village Voice, and David Ansen of Newsweek--folks are weighing in.

David Poland.

David Carr.

Shawn Levy.

Daryl Chin.

Defamer.

I'm collecting string on this topic, so let me know what you think. Do we need film critics? What is their purpose? Is it being served by something else? As aging film critics retire and move on, who will replace them? Are there some younger leading lights? What will replace print film criticism? Should every print critic with a job build a blog following ASAP? If the younger generation doesn't read newspapers and doesn't seek out that one person who reflects their taste online, where will they get their information on what to see? What is the impact on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic on film criticism? Positive or negative?

And sadly, at age 60, brainy film critic Paul Arthur has died. Manohla Dargis wrote his NYT obit. And here's what may be his last piece in print, for Art Forum, on Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure.

21 Tops Weekend: A Star is Born

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.

21 opened surprisingly well, because it looks like fun. (The NYT's Manohla Dargis was not pleased.)

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.

[NYT photo by Alisdair McClellan]

Ansen to Leave Newsweek After 30 Years

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."

Radar initially reported the Newsweek buyout.

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.]

And Then There Were None: Critics on Death Watch

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.

(Peter Debruge)

Weekend Boxoffice: Horton Holds, Perry Performs, Drillbit Dies

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.

Time's Richard Corliss profiles Perry while Richard Schickel divebombs Drillbit Taylor.

[Photo courtesy Time Magazine]

SXSW Gets Started with Luketic's 21

I had heard that Robert Luketic's 21 was a crowd-pleaser. Sure enough, the SXSW fest opener earned a rave from Variety, which is calling it a surefire spring hit. 21 is based on a true story of math whizzes from M.I.T. who counted cards in Las Vegas and made millions. Kevin Spacey is their leader, and casino enforcer Laurence Fishburne figures out what they're doing. Kate Bosworth and Across the Universe's Jim Sturgess (with an American accent) co-star as ace card sharks.

The SXSW fest opened Friday, and Variety's fest central is tracking it on several fronts: music, film and food. Here's Cinematical's review of SXSW's Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay. UPDATE: And Variety's.

Here's Variety's 21 photo gallery and the trailer:

UPDATE: Here's a bonus: Jim Sturgess performing the Beatles All My Loving on Oprah.

And the movie version from Across the Universe. I've grown fond of this soundtrack, especially the songs Sturgess sings.

Weekend Boxoffice, 10,000 B.C. Reviews

A movie like 10,000 B.C. gives critics a chance to go to town and have a grand old time. UPDATE: Here's a Guardian interview with director Roland Emmerich.

Here's the NYT, the LAT and Rotten Tomatoes, where the movie ranked 15% (ouch).

Fandango Five Ticket Sales (as of 3/07/08 9:00 a.m. PT):

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

10,000 B.C. Go 44%

College Road Trip Go 8%

The Other Boleyn Girl Go 6%

Semi-Pro So-So 5%

Vantage Point Go 5%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 3/07/08 9:00 a.m. PT) :

The adventure film 10,000 B.C. opens this week. Of the action/adventure movies below, which is your favorite?

Star Wars 23%

The Lord of the Rings 22%

Raiders of the Lost Ark 16%

The Matrix 14%

Jurassic Park 13%

Independence Day 12%

Movie Fans and Critics Make Oscar Picks

This is the week when every self-respecting film critic understands that Oscars are what readers are interested in--it's Hollywood's big night at the movies. So naturally lots of other folks want to capitalize on media interest in the Oscars too. Thus, people-search engine Spock.com asked the question of how public opinion matches up with the film critics.

None of these stats mean a damn thing. Neither movie fans nor critics are accurate forecasters of who will win the Oscar race. The winners on February 24 are determined by a specific group--5829 Academy voters--who may be influenced a tad by boxoffice success or by critics' prizes, but actually vote their own taste, which is neither monolithic nor entirely predictable. Those of us who read the tea leaves carefully, year after year, can come close, but there are always surprises.

Spock.com compiled a list of nominees gauged by their online searchs. Out of the nominated actors for best actress, Ellen Page generated more Internet searches than Cate Blanchett (nearly 87% vs. 3%). Here are some Spock comparisons of most popular people searches vs. critics' picks:

PEOPLE’S CHOICE

Best Actor: Johnny Depp

Best Supporting Actor: Tom Wilkinson

Best Actress: Ellen Page

Best Supporting Actress: Ruby Dee

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

ROGER EBERT’S CHOICE

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem

Best Actress: Ellen Page

Best Supporting Actress: Ruby Dee

Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

PETER TRAVERS’ CHOICE

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem

Best Actress: Julie Christie

Best Supporting Actress: Ruby Dee

KENT JONES’ CHOICE

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook

Best Actress: Julie Christie

Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett

Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Richard Fleischer: Hack or Genius?

Directors are often harshly judged by their output at the end of their long careers. I have always considered Richard Fleischer to be a studio hack, partly because when I was growing up I actually saw 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Vikings, Barabbas, Fantastic Voyage (see trailer), Dr. Dolittle, Soylent Green, Mandingo, and The Boston Strangler. (He liked Tony Curtis.) I was never impressed. Nor was Andrew Sarris, who put him in the "strained seriousness" category in his classic The American Cinema, writing that Fleischer's career had "sputtered at less than 50 % efficiency" after The Narrow Margin. I will always prefer the output of Fleischer's father, Betty Boop and Popeye animator Max Fleischer, whose 1933 Snow White features the memorable St. James Infirmary Blues.

And yet esteemed NYT critic Dave Kehr defends Richard Fleischer in the NYT this week. I respect Kehr--he's watched a lot more Fleischer films than I have, especially his B-pics for RKO. I guess I must have seen the wrong ones.

Ebert Feeling Good After Reconstructive Surgery

Roger Ebert is "reportedly doing very well indeed," writes RogerEbert.com webmaster Jim Emerson, who spoke to Ebert's wife Chaz: "He came out of surgery smiling. He's cancer-free, so this last one was some kind of reconstructive work with the goal of restoring his voice at last!"

Daily News Critic Jack Mathews Is Packing Up

We hung out at many film fests and ShoWest confabs in Vegas. He's one of the good ones who spent time in L.A. as a beat reporter before becoming a critic, so he gets it. His book about Terry Gilliam, The Battle of Brazil, proves that. So I look forward to his next. Have fun writing books, Jack.

Critic Kehr's Year-End Wrap

I know, we're well into 2008 here, but during this season of Academy craziness, I got a kick out of reading NYT DVD critic Dave Kehr's year-end wrap story.

Sundance Wrap: Todd McCarthy Sees Drugs

Variety's Todd McCarthy saw a lot of films at Sundance about people using drugs.

Critic Hammond Leaves Maxim

Critic Pete Hammond is leaving Maxim, reports Hollywood Wiretap.

Critics Watch: Quote Whores of 2007

These efilmcritic folks are mean! But I have to say I laughed while reading this. I know, some of these people (like Maxim's Pete Hammond) are very nice. But sometimes, when you're a critic, that can be a problem. Here are efilmcritic's Quote Whores of 2007.

Guilty Pleasures: Defending National Treasure

I admit I missed boxoffice juggernaut National Treasure: Book of Secrets. (It scored 41 % on Rotten Tomatoes.) But it has its champions, including intellectual cinephile David Bordwell.

Oscar Watch: National Society Picks There Will Be Blood

We knew the various critics groups would go for No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, as the National Society of Film Critics did Saturday. This means each film gets a boost during this all important ballot-filling season. What fascinates me is whether the Academy goes the same way as the critics. (Tom O'Neill goes underground with the NSFC voting.)

Remember, each segment of the Academy has different sensibilities. The directors and writers are more likely to go the way the critics do. The actors tend to be more mainstream, more inclined toward sentiment and emotion. (I listened to some actors tear apart No Country, intelligently.) But No Country is in good shape. So is Juno. And Michael Clayton. These are movies that everyone--including the more mainstream Academy groups, like the actors, execs, producers and publicists--can get behind. (Time's Richard Corliss thinks the Academy voters aren't mainstream enough.)

This year there are many, many movies actually vying for slots. Which means there will be votes all over the place, and the Top Five Best Picture slots will be hotly contested. The margin of difference between slots five, six and seven will be very slim.

The Academy's biggest branch, the actors, love George Clooney, Sean Penn, and Denzel Washington. That could push Into the Wild or The Great Debaters into best picture, my fellow Oscar-watcher Pete Hammond insists. But I think that neither movie movie will get enough votes from writers, editors, directors, and craftspeople. Penn has played rough on movie sets with various crews over the years, which could come back to bite him. There is a popularity contest aspect to the Oscar race. (Check out Edward Copeland's Oscar Best/Worst Actor Survey; it's fascinating to see how many great actors won career prizes for movies that that they aren't necessarily remembered by. I had forgotten that Richard Dreyfuss won for The Goodbye Girl.)

I suspect Into the Wild will land a nom for Hal Holbrook, who has factored in many Emmy races over the years, but not the Oscars.

Charlie Wilson's War is playing well with the Academy; it should get noms for supporting actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, maybe writer Aaron Sorkin.

There Will be Blood gets Daniel Day Lewis and directing, at least, if not much more.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly gets writing and maybe, veteran Max Von Sydow. The directors should go for Julian Schnabel but he hasn't endeared himself to anyone as he makes his PA rounds. He's a NY outsider who is not a member of the club. But the movie is much admired.

There are often splits between picture and director. So we may see Diving Bell in picture but not director, American Gangster not in picture but Ridley Scott in director, Atonement in picture but not Joe Wright, Juno in picture but not Jason Reitman, PTA in director but TWBB not in picture, etc. (My votes are tallied every week at MCN's Gurus 'O Gold and the LAT's The Buzzmeter.)

Tamara Jenkins is doing well enough with The Savages to make me wonder if Laura Linney, who has been sadly overlooked so far, might not creep into best actress over Angelina Jolie or Keira Knightley, who aren't necessarily sure things.

The critics groups aren't paying much heed to Atonement, Sweeney Todd or American Gangster, but they played well for many Academy voters. Atonement gets a big boost from its 17 entries on the long list of the BAFTAs, the British Academy Awards. It needs a lift: while it's doing well at the boxoffice, I sense some Academy resistance.

The full National Society voting is on the jump:

Reel 13 Launches with Hosts Pena, Gabler and Turner

For those cinephiles who get New York's Channel Thirteen, critic and author Neal Gabler, New York Film Festival director Richard Pena and filmmaker Christine Turner will host Reel 13, WNET's new weekly Saturday night interactive cinema showcase. According to a press release, the show's weekly lineup of classic, short and indie pics is aimed at "anyone interested in watching, making, or discussing all genres of movies."

Gabler, Pena and Turner will each host one segment of the weekly broadcast. Gabler will introduce a classic film. Turner, whose films have screened at festivals and on TV, will provide background on shorts that will be submitted to Reel 13 and selected by viewers’ online votes. And Peña, who is Film Society of Lincoln Center program director as well as professor of film studies at Columbia University, will host the late-night indie features.

Reel 13 launches Saturday, January 5 at 9 p.m. on Thirteen.

YouTube's Reel Geezers Talk

The LAT's Patrick Goldstein interviews popular Hollywood vet film critics Marcia Nasatir and Lorenzo Semple, Jr., AKA Reel Geezers. I posted some of their YouTube review clips a while back.

[Photo courtesy LAT]

Holiday Round-Up

The year-end results are in, from ten best lists to holiday openings (here's Pam McClintock's b.o. wrap). So what does it all mean?

Well, we still have marquee movie stars. Will Smith proved yet again that he's invincible at the box-office; I Am Legend has already grossed over $200 million in North America alone.

The robust success of the National Treasure sequel means that the often weird Nic Cage is still a star. It also means that Disney marketing chief-turned-production prexy Orin Aviv (who came up with the original idea for National Treasure) can rest on his laurels for a while. Disney's family-brand strategy is paying off big-time. Enchanted passed the $100-million mark over the holidays; it's at $113 million. And the third-ranked studio in market share (Paramount/DreamWorks was number one) also earned membership in the studios' $1-billion club for 2007.

Twentieth Century Fox won holiday bragging rights for making an ancient high-concept--Alvin and the singing helium-squeaked chipmunks--relevant again for all audience quadrants. While Fox marketed the family pic effectively, Alvin and the Chipmunks obviously played well, too. (Family fare, it seems, is good.)

Judd Apatow's amazing golden year (Knocked Up, Superbad) ended with the disappointing Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which has earned just $12 million after ten days. Luckily, Apatow has a rash of 2008 movies, from Drill-Bit Taylor, starring Owen Wilson, to Seth Rogen's Pineapple Express, to restart his winning streak. And John C. Reilly can make up some lost ground in the Apatow-produced Step Brothers in July, co-starring Will Ferrell. While a smart satire of the musical biopic genre was never going to boast mass-market appeal, Sony's ad campaign featuring a bare-chested Reilly didn't help. It grabbed your attention, but it was a turn-off.

On the Oscar-contender field, Denzel Washington's late-breaking The Debaters earned a respectable $16 million in eight days. And Mike Nichols' genial Charlie Wilson's War built support from both critics and adult audiences; it has earned $43 million. But is it in the Oscar race? Buzz is building for both supporting actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and writer Aaron Sorkin.

Tim Burton's macabre Johnny Depp musical Sweeney Todd has managed a respectable $30 million since its December 21 opening--on just 1200 screens. (It goes wide January 11.) While the movie boasts equally ardent admirers and attackers, it will factor in the Oscar race, in many categories. Best Picture? It's possible. Remarkably, critics' fave No Country for Old Men, which leads national critics' ten-best lists, passed the $40-million mark. And based on their holiday stats, Atonement, Juno and There Will Be Blood are steady as they go. In other words, they also have forward momentum: a very good thing, where Oscar is concerned.

(Here's my annual look at the Oscar race for Premiere.)

Sweeney Todd Opens in 5th Place

Sweeney Todd opened to excellent reviews (87% fresh on Rottentomatoes.com) and strong initial numbers on Friday, but the movie dropped an estimated 28 % (actually 25%) between Friday and Saturday. (Here's Sunday's Variety weekend boxoffice report.) This indicates that many viewers were lured by Paramount's mainstream horror-driven ad campaign, which did not sell the film as a Stephen Sondheim musical, and walked away disappointed. (The company also seeded the internet with clips showing the musical numbers.) Selling a unique movie like this, where there is no tried-and-true pattern to follow, is admittedly tricky. So Paramount made the call to go wide with 1200 runs--and not build the movie from fewer runs in sophisticated urban markets. It now looks like Dreamworks' initial strategy might have been the right way to go. That way early adopters would spread good word and build an audience slowly over time, rather than folks being lured into seeing a movie that they wind up not liking--and spreading bad word.

Sweeney Todd is a great movie. But it is the kind of unusual and arty film that requires delicate, special handling. OK, so what if it isn't a movie with mass-market appeal? Will the Academy come through for a great film that is tainted in the marketplace? And what happened with the Screen Actors Guild bypassing Sweeney? It's quite possible that many of the SAG committee members did not see the late-breaking Sweeney; the DVD finally went out Saturday.

UPDATE: According to DreamWorks, the plan was to start at 800 screens; based on tracking and reaction to the movie they expanded to l200. The two studios agreed to the plan. There were several different spots for the movie, some with music, some not.