By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Miramax and the rush to flush: a Scots view
The Scotsman’s Siobhan Synnot offers a UK perspective on the last-minute Miramax rush to flush, reviewing the fates of Proof and The Libertine, among other pics: “The whole situation has reopened one of the pet arguments in the film industry: whether Miramax is really responsible for revitalising independent film or for murdering it… Miramax can… be high-handed with its films and some of the artists the company claims to have nurtured. Besides delaying and shelving movies that the Weinsteins feel would be hard to sell, there is also Harvey’s habit of re-editing films to his own satisfaction…” The biggest loser, Siobhan surmises, is Danny Boyle’s Alien Love Triangle, “a project that appears to be not so much released as allowed to wander off into the undergrowth. Made between A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach, this was a truly small film and has never been shown publicly. Miramax… commissioned it as part of a trilogy of science-fiction shorts, then decided to turn the other segments into full-length features (Impostor and Mimic), leaving Boyle’s section effectively orphaned. Boyle himself wasn’t sure what fate awaited the picture recently. A 28-minute fable about sexual stereotypes, it’s a light-hearted [bit] in which Kenneth Branagh’s scientist discovers that his wife (Courteney Cox) is really a male alien, just as Cox’s own green, bald wife (Heather Graham) comes calling. Boyle called it charming but says that the film couldn’t be expanded… because “there’s a limit on charm”. “I don’t know if it’s coming out on DVD or not. I hope it is, perhaps as an extra feature, but I can’t see how you could watch it as a new release in the cinema. And I made it when Branagh and Courtney and Heather were rising young stars…And they’re not that any more.”