The Hot Blog Archive for November, 2005
Oy
Potterphiles, some Christians among them, see Harry, star of six books which have sold 300 million copies and three films, as a warrior in a good versus evil battle against his nemesis Lord Voldemort.
But Christian preacher Steve Wohlberg warns in a new book about “the dark spiritual forces” festering beneath Rowling’s narrative, drawing Potter into a struggle between duelling visions of secular and religious America.
“It’s really evil, versus greater evil, it is not really good versus evil,” said Wohlberg.
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The Balancing Of Blogs
The Awards Blog gets busy today…
28 Comments »This Morning's Exchange
—–Original Message—–
From:
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:10:39
To:
Subject: Brokeback Mountain
Mr. Poland,
How old are you?
Look up love, sexuality and gender before, yet another, attempted review of Brokeback Mountain.
LD
Alameda, CA
————————
From: “David Poland”
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:34:18
To:
Subject: Re: Brokeback Mountain
I’m old enough to have an opinion that doesn’t have to be yours.
Old enough to have loved and lost and loved again.
Old enough to have long relationships with many people of varied ethnic, racial, sexual, and political persuasions.
Why is it that people who want to take the position of being open minded so often do it by assuming that no one who disagrees with them can be thinking clearly, kindly, or with insight?
Best,
DP
One Of Those Crappy News Days
But do you think that writers and actors should have anything to say about the product placement in the films and TV shows they appear in?
26 Comments »Sunday Estimates – November 13
It still tastes like chicken.
I caught about 20 minutes of Chicken Little over the weekend, which was enough to make me not want to see much more. But I am not the audience for the film. And the audience for this film is turning up. It is not The Incredibles and far from Finding Nemo, but it will easily pass by first CG animation efforts from Paramount, DreamWorks and Sony. And with no true young kids movie the rest of the year (Yours, Mine & Ours is the only other major release slated with a PG or G) and the Thanksgiving 5-day, Chicken Little now looks like a lock to get to the $160 million range of Shark Tale and A Bugs Life. And there is an outside shot that the film could get to the $190 million range where the domestic grosses of Ice Age, Toy Story, and Madagascar.
Of course, I would say that the success or failure having an effect on the Disney/Pixar deal is not only a figment of journalists and
Tomorrow's NYT Corrections Today
You got my Mexican in my Columbian! You gor my actor in my director!
How many non-Americans does it take to make the NYT editors (and by extension, all American media) look like ignorant gringos? Apparently two.
“One of next year’s high-profile films is Alejandro Gonz
When Critics Are Selling Shit
I had to laugh when I read Tom Shales’ complaints that Lorne Michaels stole his co-authored book, “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” as the template for tonight’s SNL in the 80s special on NBC.
“All they did was buy it for $24.95 instead of $50,000, and use it as a blueprint.”
In other words, he wants the 50 grand that he thinks is his for recoding a lot of people’s stories.
As someone who was involved with the show for two of the ten seasons of the 80s and involved with the lives of certain staffers for another number of those years, I am both amused by the many stories he never heard or got wrong. And as a journalist, I am stunned by the arrogance of someone deciding they own any part of history, much less a TV show involving a few hundred people over the course of that decade. If the show feels familiar to Shales it’s because there is only so much interesting material.
In additon, Shales plays the ultimate whore game by attacking Jeff Zucker, but standing by “his friend,” Lorne Michaels. If there is any real issue with Michaels’ Broadway’s Video’s insight into SNL in the 80s, it is that Michaels was not there for a few of the years… and that his return was initially marred by massive overspending and not much funny work before he funny adapted the show to Groundlings-driven performance.
When they think they own something, critics quickly become the same assholes that we constantly claim others are when they sell their shit.
Besides, where is my $50,000?
Frriday Estimates By Klady
Chicken Little – BV – 11.8 – 3658 – +9%
Zathura – Sony – 6 – 3223 – New
Jarhead – Uni – 4.5 – 2448 – 58%
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ – Par – 4.5 – 2491 – New
Derailed – Wein Co – 4.2 – 2441 – New
Saw II – Lions Gate – 3.5 – 2949 – 44%
The Legend of Zorro – Sony – 2.5 – 3053 – 20%
Prime – Uni – 1.5 – 1781 – 44%
Dreamer – DW – 1.4 – 2735 – +2%
Pride and Prejudice – Par – 1 – 215 – New
Good Night, and Good Luck – WIP – 0.8 – 668 – +171%
Also Debuting –
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic – IDP – 42,000 – 7
Bee Season – Fox Search – 38,000 – 21
Ellie Parker – Strand – 3,500 – 6
Movie Oh Movie Oh
Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice
’cause they think that it’s treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.
I wanna bite the hand that feeds me.
I wanna bite that hand so badly.
I want to make them wish they’d never seen me.
Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed
You either shut up or get cut up;
they don’t wanna hear about it.
It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel.
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
tryin’ to anaesthetize the way that you feel
[Chorus]
Wonderful radio
Marvelous radio
Wonderful radio
Radio, radio…
(Note: I actually don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me… because the “hand” is the art form and not the industry that pays for it. Sometimes we all forget what the hand is and that we are all just fingers, knuckles and nails.)
What Would Get You To…
… Review a movie with a gun instead of a word?
2 Comments »Blogging 102
Okay… here we go…
Claude Brodesser – who is a smart, well-informed guy who should try about 90% less hard to be funny on his NPR radio show, The Business, since I have been unhappily forced to take it off my podcast list for the bad forced jokes alone – blogs an incomplete “exclusive” that Harvey Weinstein has a hold on the director of Derailed and it has come up as an issue regarding the director’s next picture, which is trying to be at Paramount.
(Suggested replacement joke for the radio show… Deathlok isn’t funny… Harvey hiring Mikael Hafstrom by mistake because he thought that Meryl Poster said “Lasse Hallstrom” is funnier. But only a little.)
Anne Thompson then blogs a response that accurately adds out that Harvey Weinstein pulled this “I’ll make your movie, but you have to give me your next film or two too” scam on Rob Marshall and that it got in the way of Memoirs of a Geisha for a long while. She also adds that the obligation, which Weinstein set aside in the end for Geisha (it was a bloody, bloody year long battle), is now rearing its ugly head as Marshall considers his next film. Great stuff.
However, a densely written graph on Harvey at an AFM cocktail party and Oscars and whatever distracts from the story. Split it up, Anne. There are four separate things in there… paragraphs are your friend.
And in the end, there is one key thing that was written in neither piece… Weinstein has pulled this schtick on almost every single director and many writers he has financed at Miramax in the last five years. Speaking of Lasse Hallstrom, it has taken him years to get away from Weinstein and I don’t even know if Casanova was an internal arrangement at Disney. Not every filmmaker has to be coerced to go back and some have refused the deal and still gotten their movies made. But locking down talent is standard operating procedure for Mr. W… it’s not a mystery.
Hit the note. Hit it hard. Move on.
King Kong Krazy
The first non-junket screening of King Kong is due December 5… and Universal is setting the most extreme “no electronics” rules for a screening yet…
(Editor’s Clarification: To answer early comments… the film is being delivered late in November and will be screened at the Dec 1 junket on HD tape… Dec 5 is first screening on celluloid, so you should not infer anything there.)
Kind of reminds me of seeing The Matrix Reloaded at WB. At least we won’t be marched through the streets of Hollywood like we were through the backlot.
There will be no wireless of handheld electronic devices of any kind allowed into the theater. This includes cell phones of any kind; BlackBerries, Treos, Palm units or handheld devices of any sort; iPods, pages; digital or other types of cameras; and any and all other types of electronic communication or entertainment devices. If relinquishing such a device form the course of the screening provides a hardship for you, please do not come to one of these early screenings, as you will not be allowed entrance.
Because of the heightened security measures and the expected volume of guests, please arrive at the theater at least 30 minutes before the screening begins. No one will be admitted after the screening begins.
You and your guest must each bring valid photo identification and your confirmation number for check-in.
How Badly Do You Want…
… some quiet?
Time away from the computer, the web, the iPod, the Blackberry, the cell phone, the beeper, the TVs in public places, the laptop, the Treo, the PS2, etc, etc, etc?
Worth Reading
She may suck up to the journalism power structure a bit too much for anyone who isn’t beholden, but Anne Thompson is finding a lot of interesting stuff on her new blog for The Hollywood Reporter.
5 Comments »
