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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB 63011


Blogging via iPad only has been interesting… but I miss my desktop. After a week, it was ready… and then wouldn’t turn on at all. Back to the shop.

The most frustrating thing is that the new and controversial Final Cut X went onto the computer right before it went into the shop for a DVD player repair. I’m looking forward to playing with it. My needs are not those of the professional cutters who are screaming in pain. It feels like it will be a big step forward in intuitive editing for me.

Transformers 3 had a strong night last night, but nit as strong as the last time out. What does it mean? Not much. Non-holiday Tuesday night on a 6-day weekend? Let’s see how it plays out. Paramount doesn’t really need bloggers pretending the opening is already record-setting… bur what else can they do? Fact checking’s not everyone’s thing.

Transformers 2, of course, had one of two $200m+ 6-days in the history of box office. High bar. Even of Tr3 doesn’t get there, I still believe it will be easily the biggest of the trio worldwide.

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98 Responses to “BYOB 63011”

  1. Foamy Squirrel says:

    So, returning to some of the themes of “The Cove” conversations from a year or two ago…

    About a month ago, an Australian TV program showed a documentary about live cattle exports to South-East Asia. The documentary depicted cattle in extreme distress, slowly dying due to a combination of cultural factors and the sheer incompetence of the untrained minimum wage laborers.

    In response to nationwide outrage resulting from the documentary, the Australian government halted cattle exports to Indonesia about a week later.

    However, there is now an increasing backlash from farmers for whom the ban is losing them up to AU$70,000 per day. Some commentators have also warned that many of the cattle who had originally been contracted for Indonesia may end up starving to death as farmers will not have sufficient resources to keep them.

    So, while many documentary makers make the strongest argument they can in the hope their film inspires change, is there a case for more moderate filmmaking so that the wide-reaching effects of that change can be better understood?

  2. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    I saw and enjoyed Hot Coffee on HBO this week. Amazed at how much I didn’t know about poor Stella Liebeck. Very sad that she spent the last years of her life being ridiculed for representing frivolous lawsuits at their worst. I’ve never seen burns like that before. Horrifying.

    I realize T3 is kind of a big deal, but considering it stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, Larry Crowne sure seems to be quietly opening tomorrow. And not that I’m the target audience but I’ve yet to see a single TV spot for Monte Carlo.

    And best quote I’ve seen this week, in a Fox News story about faith-based movies (aren’t these a trend once a year or so?), “People think Hollywood is all these anti-Christians,” said Frederic, whose company shoots behind-the-scene footage for movies. “No, Hollywood is just pro money. It’s that simple.”

  3. JKill says:

    In terms of explictly right-wing/Christian filmmaking, there does seem to be room for profitable projects but the scale is unmistakeably smaller than it would be for apolitical/moderate, even liberal projects. It’s interesting because even though there are supposed pockets of the country enraged by a “progressive Hollywood” (that I doubt exists, as supported by the quote from PaulMD above), their numbers have to be quite small because these counter-reformation films (ATLAS SHRUGGED, for instance) barely make a blip on the radar. The pro-Palin doc will proably bottom out at a couple of million dollars, and we’ll get story after story about its success, despite it being totally niche and nowhere near a breakout and benefiting from the loads of publicity, both free and paid, that very few documentaries could ever hope to muster. (Am I the only one who thinks that thing has a chance of competely bombing? Regardless of politics, who wants to pay money to watch a propaganda documentary, the kind of thing even the converted might only watch when unable to sleep and finding it for free on Netflix Instant?)

  4. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    I just feel like this is a story every year. Every year at least a few faith-based films are released, and every year we are reminded about the breakout success of The Passion of the Christ and the existence of Christian filmgoers. Every year at least one of the movies does better than expected, and the same people complain that Hollywood hates Christians and doesn’t make enough movies for them.

    Of course the media was blamed for the failure of Atlas Shrugged to do more business. Is the Palin doc still looking for distribution? I also can’t imagine there’s much of an audience for it outside of the total diehards. When it flounders I’m sure it will be blamed on the lamestream media.

  5. JKill says:

    The pro-Palin documentary is being distributed by AMC’s new distribution label Open Road. I’m not sure about the Broomfield, anti-Palin doc.

    According to an article from Vulture, linked to on the MCN home page, the plan is to release it in bigger cities with conservative sympathties.

    http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/sarah_palin_the_undefeated_doc.html

  6. hcat says:

    So while I liked the new Mission Impossible trailer, I saw no sign of Ving Rhames which is a little disappointing. And there is no indication the wife he picked up in the last installment is returning either. While I loved the first one and enjoyed each of the sequels, this series seems to lack a common narrative thread. Cruise even seems to be playing different roles from one movie to the other. But other than that, more excited than I thought I would be to see it.

  7. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    Is it actually being distributed by Open Road, or is it just playing in AMC Theaters?

    The new Mission Impossible trailer just reeks of desperation to me. A star and a franchise kind of floundering. Doesn’t look all that interesting, and painful to hear Tom Wilkinson say shit like “it’s your mission if you choose to accept it.”

  8. JKill says:

    Upon a little further research, apparently it is only playing in AMC theaters, whereas I think Open Road releases (like the very fun looking KILLER ELITE) will play beyond that, at least also at Regal Cinemas. I think this speaks, again, to how niche this product is.

  9. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    Yeah OK I didn’t think Open Road was actually distributing the Palin doc. I’m sure it will play in select AMC theaters in Palin-friendly regions. Probably a risk worth taking.

  10. sanj says:

    how many millions can this Palin doc make ? can’t this
    be a 2 hour special on Fox ?

  11. JS Partisan says:

    Transformers 3 having an A cinemascore pretty much means cinemascore is dead. Seriously.

  12. torpid bunny says:

    I just got fucked by Apple. FCP 10, unbelievably, does not support projects from older versions. And I never bought version 7, because I have limited means, and now Apple has DISCONTINUED 7. How should I not be a little pissed off?

  13. storymark says:

    Cinemascore has always been a joke anyway.

    I’m going to just see if I can buy a ticket, watch something (anything) else for the first hour and a half, then catch the last battle. That’s all I have even the tiniest bit of interest in actually watching.

  14. Hallick says:

    “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” (did somebody kick himself and scream “Well I’ll show you!” when Bond took “Quantuum of Solace”?) looks like disappointment incarnate. This series has been a pisser again and again and again. The stunts look awesome, the casting is great, but why is Lucy holding the script like a football and telling me “Come on! The writing isn’t going to be a steaming pile of shit this time!”?

  15. JS Partisan says:

    story, that’s your most sensible post… ever!

    Hal, that trailer entertained me more than the previous 3 mission impossibles, so that alone makes me some what hopeful, but you never know with that series.

  16. Hallick says:

    As somebody who thinks the original “Cars” is one of the most rewatchable movies Pixar has made, “Cars 2” was astonishingly forgettable. The international spy story is such a bad sitcom-level “American dupe gets mistaken for a secret agent” plot that I wouldn’t be half surprised if Erkel had gone through the exact same motions on an international vacation episode of “Family Matters”.

    It was odd that they stopped using Paul Newman’s character out of respect to his passing, but then went and recast George Carlin’s character out of what then? DISRESPECT to his passing? I understand that keeping his character around was important to a certain plot twist late in the movie, but how hard would it really have been to rewrite that? I get that having two of the original cars die off is kind of disappointing, but seeing as how 95% of the movie is Mater material, it obviously wouldn’t have been that hard to keep Fillmore off screen.

  17. Hallick says:

    “Hal, that trailer entertained me more than the previous 3 mission impossibles, so that alone makes me some what hopeful, but you never know with that series.”

    That’s the thing about this series that’ll make you tear your hair. The trailer looks fantastic, but you just know in the pit of your stomach, for one example, that you’re probably going to wind up getting Jeremy Renner’s least interesting performance of all time. I can’t think of another franchise that brings together so much talent and gets almost nothing out of it.

    I’m really hoping that it’s a good movie, but I’ve been doing that for years here.

  18. sanj says:

    Opie And Anthony – Uncomfortable Starring Paris Hilton

    Paris gives boring 20 minute inteview … the radio
    hosts spend 40 minutes talking about it..and it’s
    not great …quite funny

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMmfoR-Fzo

  19. sanj says:

    Let’s All Play, ‘How Is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Hilariously Objectified in Transformers?’

    http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/which_of_these_nine_things_hap.html

  20. LexG says:

    CRUISE GOD BOW.

    Never NEVER doubt Cruise. Especially with his LONG HAIR in the even-numbered ones. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK AT HIM!!!!

    That trailer rules, it RULES, and as with TF3, I am sick of living in REVERSE WORLD on the Hot Blog. Nobody here likes ANYTHING anymore. CRUISE. It is safe to BELIEVE.

    Is there a single shot of Josh Holloway in that trailer, though? He and Cruise need to have a hair-off.

    Also I LOVE how someone upthread is all “the first movie to contain a boring Renner performance,” like ANY of you dudes were all about Renner when he was in Dahmer or Jesse James or SWAT or Senior Trip or Lords of Dogtown or whatever.

  21. Paul MD (Stella's Boy) says:

    I watched Dahmer back when it was first released because I had heard good things about Renner’s performance and was a Milwaukee resident. Been a huge Renner fan ever since.

  22. LexG says:

    CRUISE.

  23. David Poland says:

    I think they should put FCP 7 back on the market until the pro kinks in X can be worked through.

  24. christian says:

    This is why people like me who use Apple hate Apple. Greedy fucks. I’m sticking with my good ol’ FC 7.

  25. Anghus says:

    There was a “hitler learns about final cut x” youtube video that came out about 5 days after it released. The reviews are not kind. But I edit in Vegas, so im far from an expert.

    I thought the Mission Impossible trailer looked amazing. Dont know what the final film will be like, but I think it looks like a fun, empty, action thriller.

  26. sanj says:

    why can’t movie theatres charge a few bucks just to see last 30 minutes of the movie.

    yes. put the movie on pause and wait 5 minutes for dozens of people to come and sit down and watch.

    Transformers 3 / Fast Five – good examples of that. don’t care about the first hour …just last 30 minutes.

  27. LexG says:

    Yeah because it’s not annoying at all when you’ve invested an hour, hour and a half into a movie and you’re in your comfortable seat adjusted to the people around you and enjoying something in contuinity, and some asshole(s) theater hop in with 20 minutes to go and plop down behind you. That shit should be a criminal offense.

    I’ve said for years they should have someone stand guard outside the auditorium doors to keep hoppers out mid-movie; If you can sneak in at the beginning after having watched something else, more fucking power to you. But don’t shuffle in with 18 minutes to go in “Milk” and sit down next to me rattling a bag trying to piece it all together with your girlfriend.

    Theater-hopping is HUMAN GARBAGE-level scumbag behavior.

  28. yancyskancy says:

    M:I4 will be the first film Lex has liked from the director of THE INCREDIBLES and RATATOUILLE!

    Bird’s involvement gives me hope, actually. At the very least, this should be of more visual interest than the average blockbuster (in terms of coherent mise-en-scene). We’ll see.

  29. JKill says:

    When I saw BRIDESMAIDS, at roughly the one hour and twenty five minute mark, two of the theater employees, adorned in matching red vests, waltzed on down to the front of the theater with large popcorns and cups of soda, plopped down, and loudly laughed aloud at the film, then got up and left less than seven minutes later.

  30. LexG says:

    Correction, it’ll be the first film I’ve SEEN by that guy. All I know is, CAN’T BELIEVE all these movie bloggers are stoked for BRAD BIRD!, whoever that is, when TOM CRUISE should’ve been your ABSOLUTE IDOL for the last 30 years and whom you should follow and support at every turn and constantly get your hair cut to look like whatever CRUISE looks like at the moment. CRUISE.

  31. amblinman says:

    Couldn’t disagree with DP’s review of TF3 more. Not to go all Harry at analcoolnews and explain my “mindset” heading into the film, but bear with me.

    I was looking forward to the movie. Honest, I was. I’m not someone who bashes Bay just to prove I’m a film dork in good standing. I liked the first movie, had a really good time watching it and I’m completely unapologetic about that. The second one was atrocious. This one though, I wanted to like. I thought the trailers looked great and decided I’d actually pay for 3D.

    It was the same awful, atrocious piece of shit at the second. But at least it was longer.

    I’m tired of people praising Bay for how good thigns look. Things don’t look good in the movie. The robots are still a fucking design mess. I could not tell who was an Autobot and who was a Decepticon. I could not tell who was hitting who. I could not tell who had won a fight until one of the robot figures was holding the other robot figure’s severed skull in his hand. All the fights looked like different versions of fights on the old Healthcliff the cat cartoons, a cloud punctuated by moving fists and fur flying.

    What the HELL is the point of any of the human characters in the movie? Did Bay or Murphy or anyone who might have read that script not notice that not a single human protagonist played any kind of consequential role in the outcome of the film? Why set up the entire wingsuit sequence when there wasn’t a single fuckin payoff to it?

    And someone needs to tell Shia to calm the fuck down. He’s like a midget Ryan Reynolds constantly overselling every line of dialogue in the hope that every last human being on the planet finds him cute.

    These aren’t nitpicks, either. This is the whole fucking movie. First you’re bombarded with the most inane, bizarre attempts at comedy for the first hour or so. Stuff so strange and awkward you almost check to see if you’re in the right theater. (I mean, what exactly is Jeuong’s character doing? Why would any human being, even one in a giant fuckin robot movie, act that way?) Then we get to a series of action set pieces that have no connection to each other, so it’s impossible to find any of the proceedings exciting.

    What a disaster of a movie. I can’t believe anyone is hailing Bay for that last hour. I know, it *sounds* cool. An hour of robot war in Chicago. But it’s war waged by a really incompetent alien race and some of the dumbest humans on the planet.

    P.S. 3D still adds nothing. Yes, there are some nice shots early on but one of the funniest ironies to me with guys like Cameron insisting this is the way films should be shot is that as your eyes adjust to the effect you no longer even notice it.

  32. LexG says:

    JKill, ha! Saw that happen once– at that Biel-Sam Jackson war movie. Two theater employees came into this downer drama with snacks and watched a random half-hour of it, in the middle, on their lunch break. And fucking talked the whole time.

    Last weekend at Bad Teacher, some middle-aged woman slipped in during the “epilogue,” watched the last three minutes, then zipped out when the credits came up. I never get what the fuck people are thinking when they do this… it’s so distracting just b/c my cinemaniac brain CANNOT wrap itself around why someone would slip into an in-progress movie like the multiplex is the fucking Whitman’s Sampler.

  33. JKill says:

    I can’t fathom the reasons someone would do that. I won’t even sit through a movie if I miss the opening twenty seconds, let alone 98 percent of it. I missed the opening titles on my way to see FAIR GAME, and I was borderline distraught and thought of driving all the way back home and seeing it again.

    Although, maybe even stranger to me, is when someone will sit through almost an entire movie and immediately once the conflict starts to be resolved, they dip out, five or ten minutes before the movie is actually over. It’s like they think know when the movie is over better than the filmmakers. I recently saw THE BEAVER (which was wonderful), and the second things started to wind down, the ending obviously near but not quite, I heard whoever was behind me dart up and pull open the doors to exit. The movie has a really great little coda/beat at its end that recalls the beginning, and I couldn’t even imagine what compelled this person to not be able to stomache the extra two minutes it would’ve taken to see the movie to its completion.

    Also, HOME OF THE BRAVE is an hilarious/very annoying movie for those two ushers to sneak into. The question is: Do they watch the movies piecemeal over the course of a week or two, or do they literally never see the movie in its entirety?

  34. Joe Straatmann says:

    There’s a well-known actor giving a “Your assignment should you choose to accept it” speech and no sign of a 7-11 or a suburban neighborhood, so that’s already better than M:I 3. Seriously, aside from the starting at the climax and flashing back, I could shoot the first 15 minutes of a Mission: Impossible movie in my apartment in Lincoln and then walk four blocks to the convenience store for the scene Tom Cruise gets his assignment from…… Who the fuck is this guy?! It’s like Whitehouse Press Secretary Jay Carney. They let Jimmy the Intern run the spy agency for a day.

  35. jesse says:

    JKill, Times Square audiences do this like CRAZY. I first noticed it in horror movies, where audiences seemed to want to get out of there as SOON as the killer is dispatched (as if the reason you watch a horror movie is to suss out how the fucking plot gets resolved!), even given the genre staple of the extra bonus scare/tag at the very end. But I’ve seen it across genres now. It’s like they’re trying to beat people to the parking lot or something, except it’s in the city and no one actually drove there. Maybe they’re trying to beat the bathroom line? Drives me crazy, even when the movie sucks: you’re so disinterested in watching so many movies that you just habitually get out as soon as you know if the main guy dies or not or something?

    I’ve seen movies where I was dying for them to end, but I still didn’t get up until the credits began to roll. You’ve already spent the time; why not see it through?

    Lex, I have to say, I movie-hop pretty consistently. But I do it to see a bunch of movies without paying quite so much money (I feel like I give AMC/Regal/etc. plenty of my cash as-is), and I would never pop in for just a section — if I’m theater-hopping, I want a full-on double feature, not, as you say, a Whitman’s Sampler. I have seen people come in randomly and I’m always like, wait, are they just thinking this is the 2PM show and not the 1PM show that started an hour ago?

    I wish there was some kind of mirror-image of the Hot Blog, because we’re all pretty serious about movies here, and sometimes I just want to ask regular assholes about why the hell they behave the way they do in theaters. Like, seriously, please explain to me why you think it’s OK to answer your phone during a movie. What is the actual thought process? I wish there was a blog where we could talk to some of those people because asking them in person is going to end poorly.

    Maybe that’s what IMDB is? Even there, though, I feel like you’re not hearing from the real regular jerks.

    I don’t like to just assume anyone who does any of that stuff is a psychopath… but I don’t know. I was at a 9PM showing of Hanna, in which a little kid kills and is threatened with being killed, and someone had a baby there, and the baby was crying, and the parent wouldn’t even take the baby out. I finally lost it and yelled “TAKE YOUR FUCKING BABY OUTSIDE”… which I admit was dumb. But as crazy as I might’ve sounded, that’s nothing compared to the actual dude there with the baby, who shouted back into the darkness that I should SUCK HIS DICK and to STAND UP AND SAY IT TO HIS FACE and he’d fuck me up and all of that.

    Awesome dad. That’ll show me to want to watch a PG-13 action movie without babies!

  36. NickF says:

    So did 3D kill Trans 3 or was the crappy firat sequel to blame?

  37. Madam Pince says:

    People step in to catch snatches of movies, because the movie they came for hasn’t started yet. Rather than sit and watch ads for local dentists or whatever, they choose to catch a bit of some other film. When the start time for their film comes, they leave. Usually the movie they step in on, is one they are only marginally interested in, so don’t care if it is spoiled. If they like what they see enough, they’ll come back some other time to see the whole thing.

  38. Jason says:

    JKill/Lex, this is funny. If I even miss the PREVIEWS I will wait till the next show when ordering tickets. I can’t even stand to miss a single preview.

  39. Madam Pince says:

    Think of it as channel surfing on your TV. An ad break comes on your show, do you sit and watch the ads? No. You channel surf to catch bits of other shows, until you come back to your show. This doesn’t ruin other shows for you, because you had no intention of watching those other shows.

  40. LexG says:

    Madam Pince, your laissez-faire attitude about this is making my blood start to boil… If YOU were sitting there watching some movie you were really enjoying, you WOULDN’T be distracted by some hopping yokel plopping down alongside you for a random 20 minutes? It is TOTALLY DISTRACTING and ruins the movie for the other people who PAID FOR THEIR SEAT. And as a rule– and trust me or JKill or jesse as constant paying moviegoers– anyone brazen enough to sneak in and out of theaters is DEFINITELY someone who’s going to be ill-behaved, be it texting, food, talking; They have no respect for others, or for the movie, so of course they’re going to be DESPICABLE HUMAN GARBAGE.

    But I think you’re talking about a relatively small percentage that does it because they’re “waiting for their movie to begin.” Bullshit. Most people would worry they’d get caught and tossed out before their show even started. And most people are standing in line for snacks, and always run late anyway. Not that many people get to the cinema an HOUR ahead of time, buy the ticket, then go upstairs and shuffle around. 90% of them are people who paid to see one movie, and when it’s over feel like getting more for their buck, which to most stupid people just means having more images in front of their faces, whether they have the faintest what’s going on or not.

    If you condone this, you must not be very in awe of the moviegoing experience.

  41. Madam Pince says:

    You asked why people do it, you didn’t ask why people get mad at it. Or nope, that was JK. Do most people you go to movies with really buy snacks? Most people I see don’t. It’s two hours, they’re not going to starve to death. And I have never seen anybody kicked out of a theater ever. Nobody is worried about being kicked out, especially if they have a valid ticket stub for a show yet to play. The spotty teenagers in charge really don’t care what movie you see. I have never, ever, ever seen anybody kicked out for any reason… ever.

  42. Keil Shults says:

    Ratatouille > The Incredibles > Chlamydia > LexG

  43. leahnz says:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo2Aypi0R2c

    best song ever

    (did you know that the proper name for the monopoly guy is ‘milburn pennybags’? how does one go thru life not knowing that, as in me. or that scooby doo’s proper name is ‘scoobert doo’, which i had heard before but still might be the funniest thing ever)

  44. LexG says:

    Keil Shults, what’s that all about? Why are you always whinging about me saying this or that? I’ve never said an ill word about you, don’t know or care who you are, yet you’re always here or on Tapley’s griping about why anyone listens to me. How about you just ignore it then? Geez….

  45. LexG says:

    When are we going to get a trailer for the newly rechristened Scorsese’s HUGO?

    MORETZY! CUTE! CUTE!

  46. nikki whisperer says:

    TRUE STORY: When I was in college, I worked as an usher at a movie theatre in New York City. The opening nights of horror films would always bring out the most unruly crowds and we were told to be on extra guard for people smoking weed. One Friday night, I think it was the opening of one of the ELM STREET sequels, a Puerto Rican usher named Raymond and I were given patrol duty and were told to periodically walk up and down the aisle with flashlights and eject patrons if we saw any shenanigans. There was lots of yelling back at the screen (“Don’t open the mothefucking door, stupid bitch!”) and the scent of cheap marijuana in the auditorium was overwhelming. Raymond walked over to the source of a huge marijuana cloud emanating from the center of the auditorium, shined his flashlight in the patron’s face and, before the busted stoner could react, cracked a grin and asked, in all seriousness, “Hey man… can I have a hit of that?” He then proceeded to take a huge drag off the joint, thanked the patron, turned off his flashlight and made his way back to the lobby.

  47. Hallick says:

    I saw four teenage girls get kicked out of a theater I was in when I saw “Avatar”; but then apparently they were only kicked out of the theater and not the building, because they came back with their boyfriends from god knows which other theater a half hour before the movie ended.

    My favorite theater hopper experience was when a couple of girls jogged (yeah, jogged) in at the 25 minute mark of Takeshi Kitano’s “Kikujiro”, because the one girl got pissed off at the other girl for having caused her to sit through 4 minutes of a foreign film with subtitles. Those poor babies.

  48. Pete B says:

    Not sure if someone else linked to this, but its worth a look. (sorry if its a repeat)

    http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6552528/every-michael-bay-movie-in-under-a-minute

  49. Popcorn slayer says:

    I once saw a whole row of young black kids get kicked out of some horror movie – I think it might have been THE STRANGERS – when a grandfatherly black dude saw they were unaccompanied and took umbrage.

    As for assholes walking in and disturbing the vibe, when I saw TAXI DRIVER during its re-release years ago, a pizza-faced young ticket-taker loped in, sat down, and proceeded to noisily chow down on some popcorn DURING THE MASSACRE AT THE WHOREHOUSE. After the last bit of brain matter hit the wall, he got up and left.

  50. Foamy Squirrel says:

    So I’m travelling again at the moment, and managed to leave my razor behind at the last stop. I pick up some disposables from the corner store, and the label is all in Cyrillic eastern european shit which wasn’t a good sign.

    Sure enough, the damn things turned out to be KGB instruments of torture left over from the Cold War. I spent 30 minutes of sheer agony with what felt like scraping off the first three layers of skin with a bread knife. Then to top it all off, I find the shower has no rim and the entire damn bathroom was flooded.

    Motherfucker, I love travelling but I HATE travelling.

  51. Martin S says:

    Paul/Jkill – re: Christian/right-wing filmmaking noise. It’s about financing. There’s a huge reserve of money on the right that will not directly invest in entertainment proposals because of the risk. They’ll do it through a hedge because than you’re talking about investing in a studio, the “experts” and how to eliminate as much risk as possible.

    I’ve had to play the cooler to both sides on this. An investor tells me about what they were pitched, and I’ve blown it up. Or I’ve had creatives go through the jacket of possible investors and I get to tell them why the majority won’t buy it. Some have had solid ideas but they don’t know how to sell niche audience marketing or can’t/won’t pare down costs accordingly. That’s why Atlas was such a disaster – underfunded and overambitious.

    For the independent scene, whatever political persuasion, it fuckin sucks these people won’t invest. It would justify a lot of the state tax credits where the claim is always about building a “local film industry”. But it never happens after the studio projects leave.

    As for Palin docu – Only her cult thinks it’s not agitprop. She could have had a number of serious filmmakers work on a docu, instead she chose some guy who’s either tone-deaf or can’t afford Pro Tools.

  52. SamLowry says:

    Harlan Ellison relates a story in one of the “Glass Teat” books about watching a movie from the balcony in a Times Square theater. When an argument broke out, the instigator–who was all talk and no action–was picked up by the target of his insults and thrown over the balcony. Ellison and his buddy scrunched down in their seats and for the rest of the movie they could hear moans of agony from way down below.

    Too bad we can’t do the same to texters and phone-answerers.

    Movie patrons are becoming more obnoxious with every passing year, and if they actually feel they have the right to wander from theater to theater unhindered then don’t be surprised when movie buffs give up on theaters entirely and just wait for the disc.

  53. sanj says:

    weird video that kinda features James Franco .

    3 minutes of wasted time ?

    “Rising” Kalup Linzy featuring James Franco

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uv9VVpgxpo

  54. SamLowry says:

    “To fans of Pixar, a mediocre, predictable, risk-free sequel ‘seems almost like a betrayal,’ as Dana Stevens wrote in Slate.”

    “‘This looks like the worst-case scenario,’ Doug Creutz, an analyst at the Cowen Group, told me this week after absorbing the reviews. ‘A movie created solely to drive merchandise. It feels cynical. Parents may feel they’re watching a two-hour commercial.'”

    Double ouchie, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/business/02stewart.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

    The story also describes the differing visions of Disney CFO Rasulo, who likes to use the words “exploit” and “franchise”, and Lasseter, who is quoted as disdaining “guaranteed success” while emphasizing “risk-taking”.

    Give each of these guys a knife and I’m putting my money on Lasseter.

  55. sanj says:

    some girls meet AMANDA SEYFRIED ..

    http://dailybooth.com/jewelsy/16089194

  56. sanj says:

    hey DP – any new DP/30 coming up ? where are the big name actors ?

  57. Tuck Pendelton says:

    DP – Any Larry Crowne review coming? I saw it yesterday. I, unfortunately, am with the critics. It’s a movie with a good spirit, but it runs out of gas. the last 20 mins I was just waiting for it to end.

  58. SamLowry says:

    Not sure if this belongs here or “Critics Gone Wild”, but “HBO, you’re busted” was unintentionally hilarious. McNamara is so offended by the sight of all those boobies on HBO that she seems incapable of conscious thought.

    Yes, the boobies reflect the power structure–men in all the time periods depicted had the money and the power, and when they weren’t killing and ruling they were paying for sex (What else is there to do?). If more women and/or gay men had money and power then you would be seeing an equal number of nude rent boys but that was rarely the case. Throw in the fact that women generally don’t have to pay to get laid and you create a greater disparity in the number of swinging dicks in the background.

    (From http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-hbo-breasts-20110703,0,6762922.story#tugs_story_display )

    On the other hand, the tagline at the end of Mad TV’s parody “Sluts in the City” was “It’s not TV, it’s porn.”

  59. christian says:

    So that begets the question as to why their shows are so dependent on deifying that power structure. For tits n’ blood.

  60. SamLowry says:

    Who would sign up for HBO if it was nothing but vibrators and committee meetings?

  61. christian says:

    I didn’t realize that was the only options…

  62. torpid bunny says:

    Maybe I was hallucinating but I think trojan advertised a vibrator on my tvs last night.

  63. SamLowry says:

    Carmageddon in LA? ( http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/30/137525890/fearing-carmageddon-los-angeles-police-ask-celebs-to-tweet )

    So the communications networks in LA are so lousy that the police need celebs to tell people to avoid Mulholland?

  64. David Poland says:

    Kutcher won’t participate because freeways have been used to transport sex slaves.

  65. SamLowry says:

    You should tweet that. It’s a keeper.

  66. christian says:

    I think Kutcher is doing a cool thing and the fact the Village Voice would mock him is revealing. It’s okay to go after Corporations, Republicans, Christians, etc for their complicity but NIMB…

  67. David Poland says:

    Christian… what if Kutcher’s info is false and hysteria producing, as many experts will argue?

    I agree that his intentions are good. But…

  68. christian says:

    Seattle’s mayor and police chief said a classified website run by Village Voice Media, which operates Seattle Weekly, is being used to exploit children. They joined actor Ashton Kutcher in speaking out against the company.

    Seattle police called backpage.com an “accelerant” of underage sex trafficking, both in print and online. The site has been associated with a Seattle prostitution string earlier this year, a case that this month led to a 19-year-old Seattle woman being charged with child prostitution, a pimping case of an Auburn teen and others.

    Seattle Weekly’s Editor-In-Chief, Mike Seely, said he’s pleased Mayor Mike McGinn is concerned about sex trafficking and underage prostitution, but noted Village Voice Media has been working to combat it longer than Kutcher has.

    “We’ve received a growing number of reports that Backpage.com is being used to exploit children,” McGinn said Friday afternoon. “It’s just wrong. We’re asking them and other sites to meet with us to find ways to protect children from exploitation and help keep our communities safe.”

    Seely said the “majority of Backpage.com’s employees are charged with making sure inappropriate or illegal adult or personal content either doesn’t make it onto the site or is reported to the proper authorities or advocacy organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”

    A 2008 report from the Seattle Human Services Department reported estimated between 300 and 500 minors were exploited for commercial sex in King County, according to McGinn.

    At McGinn’s press briefing Friday, police Lt. Eric Sano said this year there have been four documented cases of child prostitution openly advertised on backpage.com.

    Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-mayor-police-target-Village-voice-1449770.php#ixzz1QzVXIbVf

  69. anghus says:

    and see, this is what’s wrong with this country.

    we attack the person, not the issue.

    maybe the village voice posters are right, maybe actors do make shitty activists because it’s easy for people to make jokes and make light of very serious situations.

    I love that the prevailing wisdom is “fuck the clown who is trying to bring light to a very serious subject”.

    The statistics reported are widely accepted, though you’re right when you say people argue that number. But let’s be real, real honest here. On a subject like sex slavery and sex trafficing, do you think the ‘reported’ numbers are a realistic assesment of an estimation based on Police data of cases. Data on this subject is not easy to come by, and like a lot of sex crimes it is vasty underreported.

    I don’t know what the intentions of the Village Voice are. I’m not sure how taking shots at the data helps the cause at all. The Village Voice took a weird stand on this.

    First it was “fuck the clown”, then it was “hey Ashton, why not do something to bring real help to the victims.”

    What the fuck do they think he was trying to do?

    Last time i checked, he was doing more than the Village Voice.

    Strange, strange times were living in. The fourth estate is too busy trying to take celebrities to task and generate outrage than write anything that would contribute to solving a problem.

    Newsweek ran a piece about what Princess Diana would be like at 50 complete with theoretical Facebook postings. Journalism it seriously in the fucking toilet right now. Tweet wars with Ashton Kuthcer is not helping anyone’s credibility.

    Dave, is your position that inflated numbers could cause hysteria and bring too much attention to the subject of child exploitation and sex trafficing?

    Weird position to take man.

  70. leahnz says:

    bowing to christian and anghus, awesome

  71. christian says:

    If Kutcher unfairly targeted VV, okay but it’s clear there’s been child prostitution conducted in the backpages. And the editor’s response to jab Kutcher’s film work, lackluster tho it be, makes the paper look childish and cavalier:

    “However, the way in which he’s going about raising awareness is careless and counterproductive,” Seely said, “two adjectives which could also be used to describe his entire body of work as an actor.”

    To put it another way, the one thing the corporate media does best is protect itself.

  72. anghus says:

    christian, it’s a great position.

    “Sure, we’ve been running escort ads for decades in our publications but fuck the guy from THAT 70’S SHOW because we don’t like how he’s trying to bring attention to an issue”

    Weird, weird times.

  73. SamLowry says:

    Think of this as “Temple of Doom”: Kutcher is Indy, who wants to rescue those kids, while the VV would rather do nothing, fearful that the mining company might sue them.

  74. David Poland says:

    I find it fascinating that decades on the cutting edge of journalism… and sex… is suddenly reduced to perv ads that have paid for alt weeklies forever and no interest in whether the story was accurate.

    I guess I am a victim of having lived through the history, rendering me less willing to dismiss it over a tweet.

    I guess I am also supposed to pretend that AK didn’t produce and star in Spread, in which he played a man who happily sold his sexual services until he met a prostitute who was younger and hotter than his meal ticket, played by Anne Heche, whose naked body was the most exploited thing in the film. Maybe he shouldn’t have made the movie about the comfy life selling it. Or maybe the moral code of a married guy who make camera commercials about flirting with every hot woman, regardless of relationship status, must be taken seriously as a moral authority on sex.

    And yes, Anghus, overinflated real-life dramas that distract from more real issues are damaging. Opportunity costs are the most underestimated thing in all of this.

    All that said, publicly claiming VVM is pro-sex trafficking because you didn’t like that they mocked you is inexcusable. If it’s true, why didn’t this important issue come up until this week?

    And calling for an ad boycott in a fit of spite us not okay.

    And assuming that this pig in NY is a victim because some facts that make a conviction in a very high profile rape case much harder is being way to quick to take the side of a guy now accused of repeated sexual misconduct … Never brought to trial because, in part, of society’s comfort with turning on women who accuse men of assault.

  75. nikki whisperer says:

    Re: AK. I know he’s trying to differentiate himself from Charlie Sheen, but this is ridiculous. Is he going to be the square straight-man to Jon Cryer’s womanizer on TWO AND A HALF MEN now?

    Re: Strauss-Kahn. The NY POST went even further in the hall of shame follies, claiming (via one unnamed source) that the victim is a prostitute AND (and only a Murdoch paper could be this brazen) insinuating that her UNION LOCAL pimped her out:

    “The woman was allegedly purposely assigned to the Midtown hotel by her union because it knew she would bring in big bucks. When you’re a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don’t start at the Sofitel,” the source said. “There’s a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner.”

    Only Fox would be shameless enough to mix “blame-the-victim” misogyny AND union busting propaganda in one tidy package. Disgusting.

  76. SamLowry says:

    Which brings to mind the quote from JFK:

    “I always wonder why it is in court if a woman’s a prostitute she has to have bad eyesight.”

  77. anghus says:

    i would say that sex trafficking and child exploitation is not a subject that is going to suffer from bad press. Mainly because no one talks about it and so many perceive it as a “victimless” crime.

    i agree that sensationalizing things can have an adverse impact on the cause.

    AK making Spread does not omit him from discussing the issue. Is Robert Redford now not allowed to discuss the subject, or Julia Roberts? Silly argument sir.

    And you’re playing right into the sickness that infects the media. Say it with me.

    It’s about the issue, not the person stating it.

    If every issue like this boils down to a personal attack and vetting of the person making a statement, then there’s no hope for any of us.

    Jon Stewart said it the other night. Reality used to shape our politics, now politics shape our reality.

    You’re asking about what AK said with the Village Voice, and AK’s filmmography, which has nada to do with the issue. You’re going to say “i don’t know if what he said is true” on an intellectually true statement:

    Escort ads in magazines enable sex trafficking and child exploitation.

    Now, there are grays there, sure. If we’re going to break this down into separate arguments, fine, but are you going to sit there and say that escort ads in alt weeklies and the sex trade are not directly connected?

    of course i want to know if the story is accurate, but at the end of the day, why pick this fight?

    Who wins in a fight like this? Credibility? Integrity?

    Fuck man, you could make an argument that the village voice going after AK in the first place did more to diminish the issue than AK’s accusations.

    You’re a journo, so naturally you’re going to side with the publication. But this is useless journalism and turning a non story into a tabloid mess.

  78. anghus says:

    and no credible publication would post this

    ““However, the way in which he’s going about raising awareness is careless and counterproductive,” Seely said, “two adjectives which could also be used to describe his entire body of work as an actor.”

  79. sanj says:

    Sex doesn’t sell for new Eye Weekly (Toronto Paper)

    “Turnbull said that while he has no moral objection to people paying for or receiving money from sex, he does have a problem with the institution of prostitution. “Because inevitably, people are treated badly, taken advantage of, and subjected to living and working conditions that are just really inhumane,” he said. “What really drove it home for us was being contacted a few times by the police, asking for our help because they found out that a 14, 15 or 16-year-old girl was abducted and they suspect that she had been inducted into some prostitution ring. That’s the part of it I find really unacceptable.”

    “Alt-weeklies have long been criticized for reaping ad revenue from the sex trade. Over the last decade, as classifieds of all stripes have migrated online, some papers have distanced themselves from the controversial ads, while others have hung on in order to maintain whatever print ad revenue they can.”

    http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/media-news/sex-doesnt-sell-for-new-eye-weekly-27011

    Ashton should tell people to watch Taken .. it might help out the issue a little bit .

  80. christian says:

    “All that said, publicly claiming VVM is pro-sex trafficking because you didn’t like that they mocked you is inexcusable. If it’s true, why didn’t this important issue come up until this week?

    And calling for an ad boycott in a fit of spite us not okay.”

    How do you respond to the story that I posted above proving that their escort services advertised did indeed engage in child prostitution? Why are the Seattle Police involved?

    Because Kutcher said so? And what does his films have to do with any of this?

  81. yancyskancy says:

    Would it be okay for Harvey Keitel to come out against police harassment at traffic stops?

  82. sanj says:

    why doesn’t Ashton hook up with CNN or BBC about this issue ?

    Craigslist Adult Services Takedown on CNN

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-5t1IV6EE

  83. leahnz says:

    actually, i just happened to catch ‘spread’ late the other night on cable, expecting the worst from the premise and kutcher — but after seeing it, while i don’t think it’s a great movie by any stretch, trying to use ‘spread’ to discredit kutcher in his attempt to drag the hush-hush world of under-age CHILD sex trafficking out of the shadows and into the glare is really bizarre.

    SPOILERS: for one, in a movie with a fair bit of objectification, by FAR the most objectified human form in the movie is kutcher’s (not heche’s); second, he falls in love with a young woman who is his own age – yes younger than heche and also clearly an ADULT, how this is relevant at all to the subject of child sex trafficking is a mystery; and most importantly, the movie is CLEARLY about a prostitute coming to terms with how ultimately empty, limiting, fake and futile selling yourself for material gain/pleasure is; how easy the path of least resistance is and how ultimately high the cost; how screwing over those who actually care about you can bite you in the ass at the end of the day, leaving one with nothing and nobody real in your life; and how choosing self-respect can be difficult, leading to the unglamourous option of having to actually work your ass off to realise a dream.

    how exactly making this movie invalidates kutcher from speaking out against child sex trafficking is baffling.

  84. sanj says:

    The many moods of Emma Watson vs. Kristen Stewart

    http://i.imgur.com/NkG4D.jpg

  85. SamLowry says:

    Isn’t the purpose of acting to be a blank canvas upon which the viewer projects their own feelings?

    Oh, wait, I’m thinking of fanfic. Never mind.

  86. LexG says:

    I don’t trust sanj’s links, or I know what I’d be “enjoying” later tonight.

  87. SamLowry says:

    Well, I’m using Firefox with NoScript running along with two malware detectors in the background, but I suppose that still won’t protect me from herpes.

  88. JS Partisan says:

    Sam, Lexy has an OCD thing with links and that link right there is fucking hilarious.

  89. anghus says:

    yeah, the more i think about this, the less i feel there’s any credibility to ‘the other side’ of this issue.

    picking fights with celebrities is a way to boost readership, but the village voice has done nothing more than turn a very serious subject into a pissing contest.

    and Dave’s defense of the escort ads is bullshit, because it falls back into the “they’ve been doing it this way for years” mentality. Is that what were going with? Just because so many publications have made their ad sales targets with cum money doesn’t mean it’s fine.

    The whole reason this was brought up in the first place was to help bring attention to a very unsavory subject which isn’t talked about nearly enough. We’re a very puritanical society and sex is still a very off limits subject for a large part of our country. And those who do like to talk about sex usually hit on the more enjoyable aspects. Sex trafficking and child exploitation is not something that has an open dialogue. The village voice had a chance to start one, but instead they want to use their influence to take potshots at a celebrity.

    Reprehensible, repugnant, disgusting. Bottom barrel tabloid crap.

    Serious dialogue requires serious people. I would be reluctant to endorse Ashton Kutcher as a serious person, but at least he’s using his celebrity to try and get people talking. And all the Village Voice wants to do is get people talking about Ashton Kutcher.

    America has become a stupid, stupid country. Maybe we were never that smart, but the level of decay in our society right now is maddening. You can’t even talk about an issue with any degree of seriousness because it devolves into this kind of idiotic back and forth.

    And then the people on the sidelines start picking sides. TEAM ASHTON or TEAM VILLAGE VOICE. Meanwhile the entire point of bringing attention to the awful, heinous plight of child exploitation devolves into a joke.

    David Poland says:
    July 2, 2011 at 1:29 pm
    Kutcher won’t participate because freeways have been used to transport sex slaves.

    I’m not going to fault Dave for cracking a joke. But man, this is not what the world needs right now. It doesn’t need another snarky guy making a snarky comment. Not on subjects that matter.

    You want to crack a joke about Finke, or Tom Hanks, or take a couple of potshots at Michael Bay…. go for it man.

    But on serious subjects, you are part of the problem or you are part of the solution. AK was at least trying to be part of the solution. What was the Village Voice doing?

  90. christian says:

    What anghus said. There’s a casual cruelty in today’s media reportage I find disturbing. The Village Voice doesn’t come out looking good — they could have given a measured response instead of a Gawker style cover story with taunts that scream “infantile.”

  91. SamLowry says:

    What did you expect when news organizations were bought by conglomerates who saw no difference between reporting and entertainment? It’s all “content”; jokes and putdowns grab more eyeballs than news and investigation.

    It’s cheaper, too. Saving the world opens you up to lawsuits (because the bad guys always win).

  92. Joe Leydon says:

    Every time a celebrity tries to do something socially conscious and/or philanthropic, they’e gonna get flak. Hell, a while back, in this very blog, David was razzing Bill Gates for his charity work.

    http://moviecitynews.com/2005/12/what-a-shame/

    The criticism always says more about the critics than the criticized.

  93. christian says:

    And hack Mark Halperin showed his true red colors (obvious to anyone paying attention) with his Obama “dick” diss. To get paid that much media money and be consistently wrong…

  94. Joe Leydon says:

    Funnily enough, Halperin may have cut his own throat. Doubt that he’ll get as much access to Obama if and when he wants to write Game Change II.

  95. sanj says:

    another lawyer show

    Suits .. its smarter than most lawyer shows
    if it gets too smart it gets confusing and goes
    downhill

    maybe one of the actors will get a DP/30 in the future

    http://www.usanetwork.com/series/suits/

  96. sanj says:

    are the gurus of gold critics going to give the director of tree of life a best director oscar ? you film critics will
    put him on your year end lists. he’s old . he needs one.
    the old people at the awards will stand up and clap and that makes for good tv.

    its fun to talk about who the gurus of gold will pick for oscar before they do…based on picks for the previous years picks.

    Steven Spielberg will get 8 oscar noms for warhorse.
    why ? cause its his one big film this year.
    worked for Boyle last year for 127 hours.

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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