The Hot Blog Archive for July, 2005

Sunday B.O.

Strong word of mouth is still driving Wedding Crashers to an excellent hold. It will probably end up being off more like 25%, but still

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Early Weekend Analysis

The only thing not crashing is Crashers, Wedding Crashers.
Okay

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Is Skinny Overrated?

“Lindsay Lohan is an attractive girl, but she’s not one of the world’s great beauties. But when she bounces down the hall in Mean Girls, she is magnetic. And it is way to simple to say, “Men like breasts.” Men do like breasts. But the bounce and the unaware way with which Ms. Lohan walked

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Friday Frivolity

Okay… silly one…
Who is the hottest woman in the movies today?
Who is the hottest man?
Who is the hot name most likely to be utterly forgotten by 2007?

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Does Cheese Go With Those Fries?

What is your standard for the great summer movie experience?
Do you need to be daxzzled (or bedazzled) or do you just wanna have fun?
Read. React.

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How Are Things Going At DreamWorks?

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THB. React.
LATE ADDITION: An excellent piece on DW by Kate Kelly and Merissa Marr at the WSJ brought up a key element that has escaped me… a major piece of the value of DreamWorks live action is that they have distribution rights to all the DreamWorks Animation films. That alone could add $50 million to $100 million a year in net revenue to DreamWorks SKG. Interesting….

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Oscar Geeks?

Guess it’s time to start the wrestling…
Read… react.
The Top Seven Early Contenders
Munich
The Producers
Memoirs of a Geisha
The New World
Walk The Line
All The King’s Men
Jarhead

205 Comments »

Imitation The Dirtiest Job?

There was a terrific little film at Sundance a couple of years ago that I still tell people about called Dirty Work. The film by David Sampliner and Tim Nackashi follows three men who deal with our unpleasant business — Darrell, a septic tank pumper, Russ, a bull semen collector, and Bernard, an embalmer.
So I get a promotional e-mail about a show called Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel and was kind of happy for the filmmakers… they obviously converted their doc into a series, a la Morgan Spurlock.
Nope.
The TV show is kind of Spurlockian, but the doc filmmakers are not associated. More money for someone else. They know a good idea when they steal one. Sigh.
The Discovery Channel series is on Wednesday nights. And perhaps by coincidence, the doc, Dirty Work, is on Sundance Channel at 12:30a on Friday night… set those Tivos.

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With Due Respect…

What kind of idiot would hold March Of The Penquins, which could do maybe $30 million, as the “surprise smash of the summer?”
Chris Connelly, on a lame late piece on The Slump on Nightline, compared to it to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Huh?!?!?! There is no $100 million-plus surprise this year. There were two last year.
Isn’t it odd how being nice to the Penguins is a way of being dismissive of the theatrical business?
Of course, the most galling thing is that after it taking 16 years for the video window to get down to four months, all of a sudden it’s about piracy or marketing costs. It has never been about either. It has always been about big corporations and quarterly revenues. And the shortened window is a direct result of the long move towards the opening weekend obsession, so the theatrical window is almost never more than 8 weeks of significance, regardless of the DVD release date. If the theatrical window is only 8 weeks, the shortened window for DVD seems, from a distance, to make sense… but it doesn’t.
To have Walter Parkes on, happy to blame a very serious problem for DreamWorks on The Island on The Slump… oy. There is good reason for people at DreamWorks to be more nervous than he has ever seen them.
The industry has worked itself into this “window situation” since Batman in 1989. And it has succeeded in sucking more money out of the world’s pockets than ever before. The danger isn’t where we are. The danger is that some people don’t think it’s enough.

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Is It An Issue?

Veterans (and Matt Drudge) are up in arms about the mock notion of using a Purple Heart as a tool to remove the panties from a bridesmaid.
Is this even worth commenting on?

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Upcoming Weekend

So, here it comes… Stealth, Must Love Dogs, and Sky High…
Anyone planning on going to the movies?

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Michael Fleming Delivers The Mel Details

From Variety
Posted: Sun., Jul. 24, 2005, 10:00pm PT
Mel tongue-ties studios
‘Apocalypto’ to be filmed in obscure Mayan dialect
By MICHAEL FLEMING
When production chiefs from selected studios trooped to Icon Prods. headquarters after an invite to read the film Mel Gibson planned for summer 2006, they were surprised at the very first page of the script.
“The dialogue you are about to read will not be spoken in English.”
Gibson, who last made the most successful Aramaic-language film ever, is at it again.
“Apocalypto” hardly fits the traditional definition of a summer film. Set 500 years ago, pic will be filmed in an obscure Mayan dialect, presumably with the same kind of subtitles Gibson reluctantly added to “The Passion of the Christ.” It will star a neophyte cast indigenous to the region of Mexico where Gibson will shoot in October. And it likely will carry an R rating, unless Gibson tempers the onscreen depiction of violent scenes he wrote in his script.
Since Gibson’s bankrolling his pic and will sell foreign himself, studios were offered only a rent-a-system deal, such as George Lucas had with 20th Century Fox for his last three “Star Wars” films. And because “Apocalypto” is not a religious pic, there’s no guarantee of an encore turnout of the church groups and hardcore Catholics who made “The Passion of the Christ” a nearly $1 billion box office/DVD bonanza.
‘Passion’ prediction
At least three studios passed on the project before Disney bought it. Nevertheless, the fact that more than one studio bid for the project shows Gibson’s viability and makes laughable last year’s prediction by the New York Times that Gibson would be blackballed by Jewish executives after the “Passion” controversy.
That charge never really had much traction, said sources within Gibson’s agency, ICM. There was a post-“Passion” pile of scripts with $20 million-plus offers for Gibson’s acting services. While that paper piled up on ICM co-prexy Ed Limato’s desk, Gibson was accumulating pages of his own, scribbling “Apocalypto” in his office and becoming so passionate about it that he changed his plans to star in the Icon-produced drama “Under and Alone” for Warner Bros.
Even though studios including Paramount and Universal walked away from “Apocalypto” either for creative reasons or because Gibson’s asking price of a high P&A commitment was too high, Disney’s agreement to step up shows how much things have changed for Gibson since he struggled to get backing for “Braveheart.” Gibson felt he was too old to play William Wallace, preferring to cast Jason Patric, but he was hard-pressed to raise coin even when he agreed to star.
Paramount wouldn’t make “Braveheart” without a partner, and before Fox (which passed on “Passion”) stepped up, Gibson had a demoralizing meeting with his longtime haunt Warner Bros., which wanted another “Lethal Weapon” as a condition of the deal. Gibson made “Braveheart” on a shoestring, won picture and director Oscars and made money for both Paramount and Fox.
Happy with Disney
Now content to bankroll his vision and armed with his own overseas distribution and sales company, Gibson no longer goes hat in hand. Sources said at least two studios wanted the pic, but Gibson liked Disney, where he has a good relationship with Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. For its part, Disney agreed to Gibson’s tough deal terms.
Already, there is talk that Disney will program “Apocalypto” against the Warner Bros. film “Lady in the Water,” which just happens to be the first M. Night Shyamalan-directed film Disney hasn’t financed since the filmmaker’s breakthrough, “The Sixth Sense.”
For his part, Cook said he was confident “Apocalypto” fits the summer bill.
“We couldn’t be more excited about working again with Mel and his team,” said Cook. “This is one of the most original and unique scripts we’ve had the opportunity to read recently, and we plan for this to be an anchor of our summer schedule.”

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Box Office Sunday Estimates Analysis

The Slump Is Back!!!
Just kidding.
Actually, this weekend is a very good example of why Slump Chat is silly.
While Charlie & The Chocolate Factory held okay (read: not embarrassing) for a large opener and Wedding Crashers held exceptionally well, The Island smashed into the wall. It is the failure of The Island that makes this a down weekend. So

115 Comments »

Page Six vs Paramount

I am hardly the guy to be defending anyone at Paramount. But I found a Page Six item to be so unpleasantly inaccurate and inherently unkind that I feel I have to respond

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A Comprehensive Guide To The Artistry Of Miss Jessica Alba

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And if you want to see the QT version of these selected (read: remotely worth watching) moments from the new Into The Blue trailer… it’s here.

17 Comments »

The Hot Blog

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