MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 - 3 Comments »
Be Sociable, Share!

Critics Get Punched In The Is

There is a Sunday Variety story… “Local arties buoyed after Israel nixes crix… Journos asked to hold reviews until a week after pic’s opening,” that shows that distributors not screening for critics is not just for America anymore.
“As if Israeli film journos didn’t have enough problems with the escalating political crisis in the country, they now have another obstacle to overcome: film distributors have barred them from preview screenings.
The decision to block film critics came after months of negotiations with Israel’s leading association of film distributors broke down. The distribs had been calling on the film journos to hold their reviews of upcoming pics until after the opening weekend, a demand which many critics found unacceptable.
“We didn’t want to accept these terms. I don’t think the big American studios even know about this,” commented Goel Pinto, film critic for Israeli daily Haaretz.
While online sites have been largely unaffected by the boycott — journos attend opening screenings on Thursday and file the same day — print journalists have been forced to wait to the following Monday to see their reviews published given that Saturday is a public holiday in accordance with the Sabbath.
One unlikely benefactor is the country’s art house distributors. Many have refused to observe the preview ban and are happy to see reviews of their pics in the papers unopposed by their bigger budget rivals.”
More specifically and more disturbingly, a critic in Israel writes me, “The two major film distributors in Israel have decided not to invite film critics to press screenings. The reason: they feel bad reviews hurt the film’s financial potential. “Cars” and “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″‘ for example were not shown to critics. Needless to say, most critics have rejected the distributors’ offer to be re-invited to screenings if we only push back the publication date of our reviews, and give their movie, their massive-mega-million-dollar blockbuster, “one weekend of grace”.
The companies are: G.G, releasing UIP (Universal. Paramount. Dreamworks) and WB. And Forum Film, representing Disney, Miramax, New Line and Sony. It’s been speculated here that this reactionary move was done without the permission of the Hollywood management and that upon running that item in Variety, the shit – it seems – has hit the fan.
“One weekend of grace…” Interesting.
Meanwhile, there is this free link from India to the story, “Film criticism in media today governed by commercial interests.”
Amongst the comments: “Most of the space in the mainstream newspapers is filled by gossip about the lives of the film stars. There is no proper attempt to provide information to the public about films,”film writer and editor of the Asian Age Kaushik Mitter said.”

Be Sociable, Share!

3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Critics Get Punched In The Is”

  1. EDouglas says:
    July 20, 2006 at 8:09 am

    I Emailed you about my own problems/issues…but after all that, I actually liked the movie.

  2. Haggai says:
    July 20, 2006 at 11:44 am

    print journalists have been forced to wait to the following Monday to see their reviews published given that Saturday is a public holiday in accordance with the Sabbath.
    I assume that’s a minor mistake, in that Monday should be replaced with Sunday–the work/school week in Israel is six days long, Sunday through Friday. Sunday is not part of the weekend.
    I also doubt that the studios would want anything to do with that harsh a policy being unilaterally decided on by their representatives in a country that small. The weekend newspapers run movie listings for the ENTIRE NATION, since the population of the whole country is less than that of New York City.

  3. Eric says:
    July 21, 2006 at 1:10 pm

    If you think Israeli critics have it rough, try finding a screening of Devil Wears Prada right now in Lebanon. Oy!

The Hot Blog

Comments Most Recent Archives

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon