Thompson On Hollywood

Indie Prods Vachon and Hope Do TV

New York indie vets Ted Hope and Christine Vachon, long-time collaborators and friends, have launched a new Plum TV show, Very Independent Producers, reports Filmmaker Magazine.

Paramount Ends Showtime Deal To Start New Pay Channel

This a strange and significant story. It was inevitable that a studio would sever its pay-TV ties and start its own movie channel with a deep library and downloads, but I didn't think it would happen this soon and in this way. It's the wave of the future, and will accelerate the pace of change. So far the studios have been talking behind closed doors about how to take charge of their own delivery windows free from the impediments of their Pay-TV deals with HBO, Starz and Showtime. But not one had been willing to walk away from millions of dollars.

Now Viacom chief Sumner Redstone has done it--but at the expense of one of his own units, CBS, which owns Showtime. When Paramount and partners MGM and Lionsgate all withdraw from Showtime, it leaves open the question of what movies the channel will show. Variety's Dade Hayes explains. Here's Reuters. And the NYT. And PaidContent. And the LAT.

Apparently Redstone and Viacom prexy and CEO Philippe Dauman realized they had an opportunity, because Paramount and Paramount Vantage's Showtime deal ended at the end of 2007, and Lionsgate and MGM's were up at the end of 2008. In effect they had a chance to get a jump on the other studios which are tied up in other deals for years to come (including Paramount sibling DreamWorks, which has a separate deal with HBO).

UPDATE: Many questions remain about how long it will take--this thing won't launch until January 2009, apparently--to set up distrib agreements with major carriers and infrastructure.

This American Life's Glass Hosts Live Event

Radio and TV host Ira Glass will broadcast This American Life live in high-def via satellite from New York's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on May 1 at 8 PM eastern, 7 PM central and 6 PM mountain time. (The show will be time-delayed in the Pacific Zone at 8 PM). Glass will present never-before-seen stories and outtakes from the second season of his TV show as well as a live Q & A, which will be shown live in select movie theatres as well.

For tickets go to Fathom Events. Attendees may submit a question for Glass (and find out which theatres are playing the event) now through April 18th at Ask This American Life.

In Los Angeles, 89.9 KCRW-Santa Monica (KCRW.com) is the local media sponsor for This American Life - Live! at the following locations:

Regal Theatres Valencia Stadium 12 in Santa Clarita

National Amusements The Bridge in Los Angeles

Cinemark Ventura Stadium 16 in Ventura

AMC Burbank 16 in Burbank

In New York, tickets for the Skirball Center performance went on sale on March 24th, and sold out in one day.

Weinstein Co. Takes on Bravo and Star Wars Fans

The latest Weinstein brawl is between Harvey Weinstein and NBC/Bravo, now that Harvey is pulling Project Runway away from a cable channel that wants to keep running it in favor of another deal--for five years--at Lifetime. It is highly unusual for a producer to switch gears like this with a hit show. Here's the news story in Variety, EW.com and UPDATE: The NYT. The jubilant Lifetime press release is on the jump.

Harvey is also still fighting the filmmakers of the Star Wars comedy Fanboys, who have launched a major counteroffensive.

The Fanboys Trailer:

3-D in your living room!

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)

Clicking away from TV

Andrew Sullivan's March 16 Sunday Times of London column "Do not adjust your set: TV is about to blow apart" and Michael Hirschorn's article "The Revolution Will Be Televised" in the March issue of the Atlantic ponder the merging of your TV set with the Internet, with all that implies. (h/t The Daily Dish)

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.

(D. Cohen)

The Digital Future: Are These the Good Old Days?

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.

Lohan Reality: Must to Avoid

News that Lindsay Lohan's manager/mom-from-hell Dina Lohan has signed up to do an eight-part E! series this summer called Living Lohan, offering a peep into the Long Island lives of her and 14-year-old daughter Ali--who has showbiz ambitions, natch--makes me crazy. What does this woman want to do, screw up her second daughter as much as her first? A reality TV show expose of their lives is hardly the recipe for a well-adjusted family life. Look how well the Osbournes, Paris Hilton, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, and Anna Nicole Smith turned out. Sometimes less really is more.

Brit State of Play Mini-Series on DVD

The 2003 BBC mini-series State of Play made riveting watching, and it was no surprise when director David Yates was put on the Harry Potter movies, nor when Working Title scooped it up for a movie remake directed by Kevin Macdonald, which was originally to star Brad Pitt, but thanks to the Writers Strike, now stars Russell Crowe. The original is now out on DVD, reports Stephen Schaefer:

Is “State of the Play” the greatest miniseries ever made? The BBC’s six-hour “State of Play” is only now being released on DVD in the US, five years after its 2003 debut and many months before the Hollywood Americanized version starring Russell Crowe enters Oscar’s end of the year sweepstakes.

Smartly topical and smart about journalism and the power plays that govern our lives, “State of Play” is a perfectly pitched conspiracy thriller that begins with two deaths: The stalking and assassination of a black youth on the streets of today’s London and the apparent suicide of a beautiful, blonde research assistant to up-and-coming politico Stephen Collins (David Morrissey in a career-defining portrait).

When Collins breaks down giving a statement to the press about his assistant Sonia Baker, the tabloids smell blood and go to town. “State of Play” centers on the nicely, appropriately named Herald newspaper as these deaths are linked by its intrepid team of reporters led by Cal McCaffrey (John Simm), his colleagues Della Smith (Kelly Macdonald, so unforgettable as Josh Brolin’s Texas wife in “No Country for Old Men”), Helen Preger (Amelia Bullmore) and Pete Cheng (Benedict Wong), their boss, the elegant Cameron Foster (Bill Nighy).

As a story unfolds that gradually spins ever upward, we discover that Cal is Collins’ former campaign manager, that he has a yen for Collins’ estranged wife (Polly Walker, as good here as she was in HBO’s “Rome” though hardly as evil) and that Sonia’s ex Dominic Foy (an unforgettable turn by a new face, Marc Warren) may have the information and the truth about why she died.

There are a couple of cops whose lives are in very real danger and a charming freelancer (James McAvoy, beginning his road to international stardom) who joins the Herald team. Think of “All the President’s Men” and today’s oil cartels and, yes, how the BBC “Traffic” was turned into an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie.

Kimmel is Doing Ben Affleck

When it works, do it again! So Jimmy Kimmel's next comedy video--and inevitable YouTube hit--in response to Sarah Silverman's hugely popular viral hit I'm F***ing Matt Damon--involves Kimmel f***ing Ben Affleck and, apparently, many others. So why would the movie star likes of Damon, Affleck and Harrison Ford stoop to these profane lengths? They're smart enough to know hip young-audience-builders when they see them. Look for a rash of not-so-funny imitators.

Golden Globes: Extras and Fey Win

Best TV comedy series: the Globes love Extras, and Brit comedian Ricky Gervais. Again, it's the Hollywood foreign press.

Best actress in a TV comedy: Tina Fey for 30 Rock. "Tina is one of the great writers," says Bush.

"She wears so many hats for 30 Rock, she probably never thought she'd win an award for actress," adds Karger. "The Globes love the new up-and-coming actors."

The Wire: Real Thugs Comment

This NYT posting on what real thugs think of The Wire is choice.

The Wire Tackles Journalism; So does The Simpsons

It usually makes me cringe when movies or TV try to show journalists on the job. So I was slightly nervous about The Wire creator David Simon delving into the inner workings of a metropolitan daily this season. I needn't have worried. The guy worked thirteen years as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun; it rings true.

But plenty of folks from the paper beg to differ. Here are features on The Wire:

NPR
The LAT
The New Yorker
The A.P.

Simon responds to criticism on Romenesko.

The Simpsons even takes a swipe at print journalism.

TV Watch: The Wire

As of tomorrow, my Sunday nights are going to be devoted to the best TV series out there: The Wire. (Here's Brian Lowry's review.) Time Magazine lays out the series' many virtues. Nora is still catching up with Season 3 on DVD, while David and I have kept current. Obviously, the WGA strike is going to boost The Wire. There's not a whole lot else to watch!

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.

Return of Talk

The Talk Shows came back Wednesday night. Here's Huckabee on Leno:

And Hillary Clinton taped the intro to Letterman:

[Hat Tip: Hollywood Elsewhere]

Strike Watch: WGA Turns Down Waivers for Golden Globes and Oscars

The WGA is playing hard ball with the Hollywood Foreign Press's Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, denying them waivers for their respective televised awards shows, reports Variety. This means celebrities may not want to cross picket lines, and it means a relatively simple litany of ad-libbed acceptance speeches for those who do. Here's Film Experience on what to expect.

Depp Leads TiVo Movie Star Wishlists

Each month TiVo tracks its customers' wishlisted actors. Viewers can select the stars whose movies they always want to see. This month Johnny Depp took over as the service's top wishlisted movie star, replacing Clint Eastwood.

Here’s TiVo's top ten wish-listed actors:

1 DEPP, JOHNNY

2 EASTWOOD, CLINT

3 GRANT, CARY

4 ROBERTS, JULIA

5 WAYNE, JOHN

6 HANKS, TOM

7 FORD, HARRISON

8 PACINO, AL

9 PITT, BRAD

10 CRUISE, TOM

I'm glad to see that one of my fave raves, John Wayne, still has fans. Angelina Jolie comes in at 13, Humphrey Bogart at 23, Arnold Schwarzenegger at 40 and Elvis Presley at 43.

Ten Signs of Fall TV Depression

Here are ten signs of fall TV depression:

1. I am sad because AMC's Mad Men is over.
2. I am happy that the Red Sox won the World Series, but miserable that there's no more baseball.
3. I have not adopted one new fall show.
4. HBO's Brit import Five Days is almost done.
5. I was going to check out Viva Vegas Laughlin because I loved Viva Blackpool, but was warned off by bad reviews.
6. I am catching up on all the John from Cincinnati episodes I missed.
7. I am watching old Entourage and Sex in the City reruns--which may be a good sign for the upcoming SITC movie--or means I'm really gloomy.
8. I am watching more talk/news shows, from 60 Minutes to Oprah, Charlie Rose, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I am even considering TiVoing Ellen and The View. UPDATE: And The Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts.
9. I am delirous that Project Runway is coming back November 14.
10. But I have to wait until February for the return of Lost.

Mad Men Hamms It Up

When I'm not at nighttime screenings and settle down for a bit of television, the number one show on my TiVo menu is AMC's Mad Men, starring Jon Hamm and January Jones (right, in NYT photos). Here's Margy Rochlin's story. UPDATE: Here's an LAT piece.

I suspect part of my fascination with this show is that on some level it's about my parents, who were young, smart, attractive and on the rise in Manhattan during the late 50s, early 60s. While they did not live in the suburbs, their marriage, too, was doomed.

I did not know that Hamm stars in girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt's Ira & Abby. I may have to check it out.

Ebert Leads Forbes List of Entertainment Pundits

Roger Ebert, sidelined without a voice for the past year as he battles cancer, nonetheless tops Forbes' list of top entertainment pundits. Clearly, being a well-known and trusted TV brand-name is the key here.

Simpsons Movie: Groening and Brooks Do Rose

This weekend I caught up with Charlie Rose's conversation with Matt Groening and Jim Brooks, both of whom are among the smartest and funniest people I have gotten to know in Hollywood. Brooks insists upon high standards. He's a guy who observes, analyzes, improves. What The Simpsons has done, as the longest running TV show and now a movie, is pretty amazing. (Like many Angelinos, I TiVo Charlie Rose and watch the shows that appeal to me.)

I finally saw Live Free or Die Hard, which was pretty good until the preposterous effects went over the top toward the end. It's part of the formula for a summer movie. (Whoever bought the crazy assertion that there were no digital effects in the movie is bonkers; the movie combines live action with digital, which makes the effects look less pixilated and more real. That's the smart way to go.)

Die Hard is losing screens (to The Simpsons among other things) while still doing business. The single screen at the AMC sold out the 8 PM show so I bought a ticket to The Simpsons and snuck into Die Hard, feeling vaguely guilty that I would cost someone their seat, but there were a few left down in front.

The reason for Die Hard's surprising longevity after all these years?

The script was smart, crisply directed and well played by Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q and Timothy Olyphant. The audience was frightened by the premise that the country's vital processes are vulnerable to attack by cyber hackers. They were rapt as the hacker villains brought D.C. to a halt. As is true in many films these days, the government was ineffectual, clueless, incompetent. The audience--which was largely over 25-- ate up McClane as the Luddite who uses old-fashioned physical violence to protect and serve. After all these years, while the world has changed, McClane is reassuringly the same.

Comic-Con: Bionic Woman 2.0

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[Posted by Erin Maxwell] Faster then a pursuing helicopter, more powerful then a soccer mom's SUV, able to knock down no-good-niks in alleyways with a single punch. It's a supermodel; it's a soap opera; it's NBC's "The Bionic Woman."

The new hour-long drama got its preem at Comic-Con on Saturday as part of the Peacock's push for its upcoming full schedule. Auds were treated to a 30-minute version of the new Jamie Sommers, a 24-year-old bartender, who between taking care of her deaf sister and finding fun time with her hottie doctor boyfriend, has to deal with an unexpected upgrade of new appendages.

Exec producers/scribes David Eick, Jason Smilovic and Glen Morgan were there to answer questions, as well as star Michelle Ryan. "I felt that strong female roles often go to older actresses," said former "EastEnder" Ryan.

"There is a real gap in the market for a strong female lead character. I'm privileged to have the role. "It's a journey of self discovery. It's a woman who finds out who she is as a hero while she discovers who she is as a woman," commented Smilovic.

"It's a story of a woman who is not cut out for this at all. She's learning as she goes along. King of like a female Peter Parker," said Eick.

In a time when many studios are rehashing old hits from the boob tube for the silver screen, the question came up why "The Bionic Woman" didn't go the way of "Dukes of Hazzard." "There is a lot more to explore and it requires the wide angle lens of television," said Smilovic. "There is so much more here than for a two-hour movie."

Considering the fanbase of the original series, there was talk on the panel about O.G. “Bionic Woman” Lindsay Wagner and a possible cameo for the new series. "It's a possibility," said Smilovic. "We are open to all options. But for other characters from the series to return, like Sasquash or those diplomat wives who were brainwashed with their shampoo, probably not."

Simpsons Movie: Variety Review

Variety's Brian Lowry reviews The Simpsons Movie. I'm bummed because I was supposed to see it this morning and was chained to my desk, which seems to be my lot these days, as I cancel lunch dates right and left and forget what my friends look like. Sigh.

Emmys Announced: HBO Scores

Here's Brian Lowry on this morning's Emmy noms. Today's a good a day to check out Cynthia Littleton on the Air for pithy analysis. Her new TV blog is taking off!

Sicko Update: CNN Admits Mistakes, Hilton Sees Movie

In Michael Moore's latest email to his massive subscriber list, he lets us know that yes, CNN did admit some mistakes on last week's show on Sicko. But more important: Paris Hilton went to see his movie!

July 17th, 2007
Friends,

The mighty CNN, in a lengthy and sad online defense of their woe-begotten 'Sicko' story of last Monday, has admitted that they did indeed fudge at least two of the facts in their coverage of my film and have apologized for it:

1. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN: "To be clear, I got a number wrong in my original report, substituting the number 25, instead of 251." -- My Conversation with Michael Moore, July 11th, 2007; and

2. CNN: "Moore is correct. Paul Keckley left Vanderbilt in late 2006." -- CNN's Response to Michael Moore, July 15th, 2007.

Furthermore, CNN confirmed that all of our statistics in "Sicko" are the correct numbers from the sources we cited. Although CNN still prefers to use older World Health Organization statistics, we will stick to using this year's Bush administration stats and more recent U.N. data. (In "Sicko," we consistently use only U.N. Human Development Statistics unless it's for studies they don't do or have recent numbers for.) CNN did apologize for these two factual errors, but no apology seems to be coming for the rest of their errors. These days, to get the mainstream media to admit they were wrong is rare; to get them to admit it twice, as they have with "Sicko," I guess should be considered a whopping victory. Will they eventually apologize for the rest, or for their reporting on the war? Will the Cubs win the World Series this year?

So the truce has been signed, the peace pipe has been smoked. And the public is left with a much more cautious and wary eye when it comes to CNN. To be fair, this is what happens when you have to grind out "news" 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a staff you have shrunk through layoffs over the years (like all the broadcast networks have done). You end up rushed and having interns do your research. You have robots replace live camera operators. And, if you're CNN, you are constantly dodging the accusation that you are "too liberal." So when you do a piece on someone like me, you have to make sure you add superfluous and standard ad hominems attacking me simply to prove that you are NOT too liberal. I get it.

Until the last month or so, I have not appeared on a single national TV show for nearly 2 and 1/2 years. After the attacks I had to endure three years ago, from a media intent on questioning my patriotism because I dared to speak out against the war when none in the media would, I decided I had had enough and would simply concentrate on making my next film. I had no desire to participate in networks that were complicit in the war because of their refusal the challenge the commander in chief.

I have to admit, though, I do feel kinda bad taking it all out on Wolf Blitzer. It's not like he's the official representative of the mainstream media. I mean, he's from Buffalo, for crying out loud! He said to me at the end of the show last week to please come back on "anytime you want." I will take him up on that offer and appear again with him tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm not expecting a dozen roses or make-up sex -- I only want a promise that there will be no more distorted distractions so we can have a decent discussion about the REAL issues like why 18,000 Americans die every year because they don't have a health insurance card. More than 300 of them died this week. As Ehrlichman said to Nixon in "Sicko": "The less care they give 'em, the more money they (the insurance companies) make."

Trailer: Get Smart TV Remake Stars Carell

I was quite fond of Get Smart as a kid. Which means it's just another Pink Panther or Johnny English to the younger generation. That's why Steve Carell is smart casting.

On the Lot Adjusts Sked

On the Lot, Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg's new reality TV show for short filmmakers, debuted while I was in Cannes and has not started off well in the ratings.

I just got around to Tivoing it, finally, so I can see what's going on. Already ABC Fox is moving to one show a week. EW tries to explain what went wrong--and wonders what happened to judge Brett Ratner? Here's Cynthia Littleton's blog entry on week one. And here's the official site, which has mucho information on the show's 18 contestants, three of whom have already been voted off. One of six women is now gone; only one person over 40 made the cut: New York's Shira-Lee Shalit.

[Zach Lipovsky, age 23, Vancouver, Canada]

Botox Backlash

I thought I was the only one. I see the likes of Meg Ryan, Courtney Love, Goldie Hawn, Melanie Griffith, Elizabeth Taylor and Cher and feel like I'm looking at the results of a science experiment. Partly it's because I know what they're supposed to look like. I hail the women who are willing to look their age, from Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and Vanessa Redgrave to Julie Christie. Here's a fascinating WSJ story on botox and TV casting. Also, the web has countless sites, from TMZ.com's "Fake or Real" series to awfulplasticsurgery.com that are obsessed with how celebs mash their faces and bods. Who's fooling who? As every F/X master knows, the human eye can detect the slightest deviation from reality instantly.

Part of the WSJ story is posted on the jump: