Still getting up to speed…
Is there a movie out there that can open to even half of what Avatar will make this weekend on a 45% drop ($37.4m)? Will The Book of Eli do it next weekend, beating another 45% drop to $21 million?
Of course, there has to be something more interesting than this to discuss, right?
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
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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
Anyone else really excited about the prospect of NBC getting rid of Leno at 10? I’d love to see NBC get back on their game and actually make some quality dramas again.
I’m going to see Avatar this weekend!
“We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we had one under Obama.”
Yes, Rudy Giuliani provides the final nail in the absolute GOP disconnect from reality.
Good Lord, what fools these Republicans be.
Happy Friday!
Don’t forget that Dana Perino and Mary Matalin beat Rudy to that claim. It’s a new right-wing talking point apparently.
Ayoooo….what exactly is Giuliani smoking, and where can I get some??
We had the worst domestic terrorist attack in American history under GW!
ANYWAY. On to lighter things. I am going to see Avatar for the third time tonight. So far I’ve seen it in true IMAX 3D and the fake IMAX 3D, and honestly the fake is better. The true IMAX screen here in Seattle projects in film, so Avatar needs to be converted from digital to film and in doing so it loses some brightness and clarity. I still haven’t seen it in RealD yet, I read that Poland has said that’s the way to go. The fake IMAX looked just about perfect to me.
Anyway, yea, AVATAR!
I’m checkin’ out DAYBREAKERS this weekend. If only for the cast and the fact it seems to be the first big vampire flick in a while that isn’t totally gay.
Hey, how come Uni didn’t put all the cool bonus features on their THE THING BD release?
Re: Daybreakers… Prepare for disappointment.
Dang. that trailer looked pretty nifty.
Conan should walk.
When Conan was announced as Leno’s replacement in 2004, I distinctly remember thinking ‘well, I guess we won’t have the all-out war that took place when Carson retired in 1992’. Little did I know. Ironically, it was NBC’s attempt to prevent the problems of 92 (Carson retiring without an heir apparent) that led to this current debacle.
Christian, could you direct me to the post where you discussed Napolitano telling us that “the system worked.” I must have missed that one. Or does your righteous anger have some blinders?
Conan is getting shafted. Hopefully, FOX will give him an 11:30pm slot.
Is there going to be anyone in Hollywood who doesn’t hate Leno now? He stabbed Carson and Letterman in their collective backs. He went back on air during the writers strike. He sucked up the jobs of 100’s of people in tv by eating up 5 hours of primetime. He stabs Conan in the back by going back on the air, then he twists the knife with this crap. It amazes me all the “he’s a good guy” sentiment he’s enojyed for so long. His demeanor might be that of a good guy but his actions say otherwise. What a narcissist.
You want to compare that statement to denying that the worst terrorist attack on US soil happened under George Bush? Good luck and good night.
Zach Galifianakis for The Tonight Show!
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/03b4a86265/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis
1) a former elected official making an idiotic statement on a morning show
2) a current head of a department that shapes domestic security making an idiotic statement to the press
You’re right. The two don’t really measure up. Nice dodge though.
“1) a former elected official making an idiotic statement on a morning show”
Try, former mayor of New York City who’s been using 9/11 on his “America’s Mayor” resume since 9/11 and was a recent Presidential candidate.
And how about Obama taking full responsibility as opposed to Mr. Bush, who by 2008 couldn’t think of any mistakes he’d made in office.
But yes, I will look to “Che sucks” for balanced analysis. And the fact that Guilliani is now back-pedaling a million miles an hour shows that even he knows he stepped into it.
This is pretty funny. Since we clearly need the funny today:
http://comedy.com/files/2010/01/HuffPoFinal.jpg
Zucker should be fired for orchestrating the whole mess over at NBC. I actually thought it might work, it was an innovative move in a business sense. It was killing the affiliates who started revolting that caused the experiment to finally end.
“Anyone else really excited about the prospect of NBC getting rid of Leno at 10? I’d love to see NBC get back on their game and actually make some quality dramas again.”
That won’t be happening until the regime that threw this “Leno at 10” idea into motion in the first place is out at the curb with their office piled up inside a cardboard box. And even at that point, you need to hire people interested in (and good at) getting back to quality dramas.
‘If only for the cast and the fact it seems to be the first big vampire flick in a while that isn’t totally gay.’
Check out Thirst on DVD. It came out and disappeared over the summer but I actually prefer it to LTROI. Brings both the heebies and the jeebies.
And they should have kept Leno as a summer and week after Christmas thing. But sucking up a third of your primetime hours during the season was a terrible idea. It seemed like they were trying for a TNT/FX format where you had a couple notable shows a week and the rest is cheap filler. Whomever came up with this strategy is going to end up in mailroom next the guy who pitched XFL.
If I may plug new outlets for a second…hope everyone gets a chance to check out Geekweek.com, which launched this past week. I am but one of many, MANY contributors of features and blurbs. Former New Line and Fox exec Jeff Katz is behind it.
“Hey, how come Uni didn’t put all the cool bonus features on their THE THING BD release?”
I think that the British Blu-Ray release of The Thing contains all the documentary material absent on the American release. Only
Bush was blindsided by a terrorist of attack historic proportions that could have never been predicted and was abetted by a Clinton administration governed by naivete and political correctness.
Obama, should have know better. Instead, he has went back to the pre-911, there is no war on terror mentality.
Big difference between the two.
People minds can usually only be changed through sharp human experience. I hope this is the wake of call the basically decent but politically naive ideologue Barack Obama needs. And he does need it.
Nicol: “Bush was blindsided by a terrorist of attack historic proportions that could have never been predicted…”
Memo from presidential daily briefing on August 6, 2001: “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.”
Christian, thanks for steering this thread into a political wasteland.
Stella,
And from the vantage point of Aug 6 2001 that had about as much impact in the world as me saying; Nicol D determined to be billionaire and bed Britney Spears.
Context is everything.
That said, I have to contribute this: I agree with Nicol that 9/11 couldn’t have been stopped (‘Bin Laden determined to strike in US’ no shit, I could have told you that on August 6 too) AND I don’t think that the underwear bomber was such a naive mistake (his dad called the CIA to say he was worried about his son, I’m guessing that happens about a hundred times a day around the world).
And Nicol, if you really think Obama is a ‘politicaly naive ideologue’ you just aren’t paying attention. He’s a full-on pragmatist, which is why the left wing here in the US is pissed at him.
Good luck with that Nicol, but I think you can do better than Britney Spears.
And while it may be true that nothing could have stopped 9/11, the way Republicans play politics with it now, I can only imagine how they’d behave if a Democrat had been president on that day. They’d never accept “nothing could have prevented it.”
Well, we’re pretty much seeing how they’d react right now. Dick Cheney has been alluding to such a talking point for years on end, which is likely why it simply isn’t working now.
That HuffPo parody is dangerously dead the hell on, by the way. Election year? Not so bad. Now? A total tabloid circus.
BYOB Jeff. BYOB.
Finally saw FANTASTIC MR. FOX, shame on me, for it’s utterly wonderful and one of my favorite films of the year.
i’ll second that, ‘fantastic mr. fox’ is downright charming, deliciously weird, highly amusing and beautifully designed
I wonder what it would be like if Obama actually went to war against the terrorists. This phony war stuff is just too easy on them. What are those drones for, if not blowing up terrorists? So use ’em!
Anyway, some of the Republicanism criticism is bollocks, but some of it has a point, however dull. Saying the Detroit guy was an “isolated extremist” was almost as stupid as Napolitano’s comments. And he really ought to use the word “terrorism” more often, if just to shut these idiots up. You’d think he would have learned from the whole flag pin BS that, alas, such symbolic BS matters. It shouldn’t, but them’s the rules.
I really was unimpressed with THIRST. Honestly, if it wasn’t made in Korean, I don’t think anyone would be making much noise about it. It’s a B or C movie at best.
I don’t think Thirst is Chan-Wook Park’s best, and the screenplay had some lumps, but since this year felt (to me) fairly weak I’d call it one of the year’s better movie.
Oh, and Christian, yes, it’s a BYOBlog, but what are you really expecting to get out of a political discussion around these parts? Balanced and informed conversation, or a bunch of yelling and soap-box posturing? I think you knew what you wanted, and you got it.
NFL playoffs start on Saturday … cold weather all over the country, especially Texas and the South, even Florida … people are worried that their pipes will burst … looking at a 50-60% drop for “Avatar”?
@christian: It’s Rudolph Giuliani — he doesn’t like that name because it rhymes with Adolf.
@Justin: Hope you’re holding down a high-paying job. Anybody who has to see “Avatar” again and again is an a$$hole who doesn’t want to mind his money.
@jeffmcm: Obama is no pragmatist — he has taken the USA into more wars abroad and a bigger police state at home. If any of you fly on an airline any time soon you’re gonna realize the USA is becoming more and more of a Communist country.
Anyone else amused that the new Droid phone ads have a Lucasfilm copyright for the use of the name?
Jeff, I wasn’t complaining — you were. But give me your list of Jeffmcm-approved BYOB topics and I’ll try to keep on track.
“Anyone else amused that the new Droid phone ads have a Lucasfilm copyright for the use of the name?”
All the ads have, since Lucasfilm has a trademark for “droid.”
“Honestly, if it wasn’t made in Korean, I don’t think anyone would be making much noise about it.”
I tend to think this argument can be applied to at least 80% of Asian films that get some crossover “geek” appeal here. There are scores of perfectly mundane, sort of dorky HK or Korean action flicks that fanboys will talk up to the rafters, where if the EXACT SAME MOVIE came out here it would probably star DMX, Tom Arnold and Morris Chesttnut and go Direct to Video; See also, “extreme” horror movies that would debut on Showtime at 4am if they were American instead of having that “cool” cache of being Asian.
I have nothing against Asian cinema whatsoever, beyond my time-tested and brilliant theory that AMERICANS MAKE BETTER MOVIES THAN ANYONE ELSE… And there are plenty of smart, knowledgable critics who know a lot about World Cinema and see stuff from all over the globe…
But “geeks” tend to myopically fetishize Asian cinema at the expense of the rest of the globe. As a result, a lot of straight-up bullshit gets a pass… Video store/comic geeks who’ve complained about EVERY American action spectacle since “Die Hard” will sit there pretending to be enraptured over some 10-cent goofy comedy-action bullshit shot in a Chinese back alley just because “legends” Tony Jaa and Donny Yen are in it.
I have no stats beyond pure generalization and anecdotal experience to back this up, but most fanboys, raised on Bruce Lee and Asia Carrera, just sort of fetishize Asians in general: Bad-ass karate dudes and delicate flower hot chicks who like to bang! Cool!
You never hear some goateed geeks on AICN talking up some new Aussie, South African, Russian, what-have-you flick… some of them are evenly openly hostile to African-American films made here in the USA… But kung-fu? FUCK YEAH! And Asian chicks are HOT! They can even FLY!
Anyone else happy about a new Cinematic Titanic? Anyone?
Oh yeah, Avatar, that level of money this weekend would be ridiculous. Seriously, this movie is so devisive, that it’s at least given the internet a new whipping boy. George, Linda, and Andy should all send Cameron an Itunes gift card for taking the heat off of them.
“I really was unimpressed with THIRST. Honestly, if it wasn’t made in Korean, I don’t think anyone would be making much noise about it. It’s a B or C movie at best.”
I say that about a lot of foreign movies, actually. The Host specifically. If the American remake (if they ever make one) was the EXACT same screenplay and the exact same camera angles and everything the same except in English language and with white actors then it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the praise that the original got. NONE. I don’t think that’s just a theory, but a fact.
Gah! I didn’t read any other replies so I apologise for my last reply being the exact same as Lex.
IO, I genuinely think the numbers of Avatar haters to Avatar defenders is not a good ratio. You must be so biased by living in the hood that you can’t realise there are people out there loving it and seeing it two, three, four times. And considering it’s been making three times the amount of the #2 film during the week I think another big gross is more than possible. And considering it is a 160min movie (when you include getting to the cinema, lining up, getting popcorn, watching ads and trailers it’s over 3.5hrs and putting that into a 9-5 schedule is incredibly tough so a lot will have chosen to just wait until the weekend.
Or you could be right about it could fall steeply.
If the American remake (if they ever make one) was the EXACT same screenplay and the exact same camera angles and everything the same except in English language and with white actors then it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the praise that the original got.
The Host is such a specifically Korean movie remaking it with the exact same script in the U.S. would make no sense, it’s kinda amazing the movie traveled as well as it did
One last thing on Fight Club: it is a question now, can men plausibly claim to have a right to adjust their junk in public? Can we grope, tuck, un-tuck, spread our thighs as need be?
My feelings is a gentleman does have a right to discreetly adjust himself if the situation requires and admits it. But none of this Kid-Rock style nut-clutching. Unless you are Kid Rock, then I guess maybe in a concert setting.
Christian, it’s not about me approving or disapproving of your conversation subjects, it’s me calling you out for being a political troll. I KNOW that you aren’t actually interested in having a conversation on political subjects, it’s about you satisfying yourself through pointless posturing.
Chucky, you’re just an idiot.
Wow, quite shocked at all the Thirst disdain. Just want to clarify that I am not some asian film fetish geek, just found the film to be an interesting take on vampire lore by using a catholic priest who is used to supressing his human urges and making him a vampire who supresses his inhuman urges. It contrasts that with a waif who becomes thrilled with what her new power brings and I thought it was an interesiting contrast.
It does speak to a larger point about foreign films. I remember watching Volver (SPOILER) and thinking how strange it was that I could except that the mother was a ghost but had trouble accepting that everyone was just persuaded into thinking she was a ghost(end SPOILER). I gave it a pass because the movie was so wonderful but remember thinking if an american tried the same thing I would not have accempted it.
If the previous paragraph contained too many spelling errors please send complaints to the Seagrams company.
No, it’s an open forum Jeff. And since your replies often consist of challenging other’s pov, grammar or etc, you shouldn’t j’accuse trolling. Caveat emptor.
And Jeff, your glib comment about slapping Ebert if he had a face left was so ugly and mean-spirited, you shouldn’t act as if you’re the voice of reason.
Re repeat viewings: some pest once asked me how I possibly could have seen so many films, especially old ones. I replied, “While you were watching STAR WARS 50 times, I was watching 50 movies once.”
Christian: Fine, that Ebert comment crossed a line. I apologize for it.
That said, I still strongly disagree with his putting Knowing on his best-list for the year.
But at least that’s an honest disagreement. You, meanwhile, are incapable of honest disagreements on this blog. Stop pretending to be having conversations when all you want to do is impose your personal brand of political correctness on everyone else.
Best of was crazy, but Knowing was good. Well, not “good,” but I liked it!