The Hot Blog Archive for February, 2006

The TV Seems To Be Heating Up

After a lot of bitching and moaning about TV, there seems to be a great moment cooking here. The medical profession has been turned upside down with House of the dramatic comedic side and Grey

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On Ebert & Crash

You know, Roger may be pushing it to call a Crash win likely… and I got the vibe that the film is going to come up a little short of beating Brokeback Mountain on Sunday night… but it is far, far, far from crazy.
Crash is not a longshot to upset Brokeback. My guess – and that is all it can ever be – is that the two films will end up within single digits of one another in the voting. So I see it as a matter of a few hundred votes one way or the other. You BBM obsessives should be more than a little nervous.
The only wide open category in the Top Eight is Supporting Actor, though some people are pushing the idea of upsets in the two Actress categories.
And at the end of the night, let’s not all be shocked at the same time if Memoirs of a Geisha ends up with the second or third highest Oscar total.

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Who Wants You To Know How Much Stacey Makes?

My first rule of journalism: If someone is telling you something you aren

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The WSJ Story On The Par/DW Merger

I rarely do this, because it is, for all intents and purposes, illegal. And it will come down with the flcik of one e-mail from the Wall Street Journal. But many who don’t get the Saturday WSJ or the WSJ Online have been asking to see the content of this excellent Marr/Kelly story.
So… take a look after the junp. A couple days old, I think it is safe…

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Sunday Estimates by Klady – 2/26/05

If Madea

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MCN Trouble… Has Passed… (10:!5a)

We are, somehow, locked out of the front page of MCN. Our ISP is working on the problem… but that’s why there is no tribute The Night Stalker or any of the Sunday papers this morning…

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Special Delivery

hill1blog.jpghills2blog.jpg
Words escape me.
Close-up sfter the jump…

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Klady's Friday Estimates – 2/25/05

Well, if you want a clear, crisp answer to the press

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"I Wish I Knew How To Quiet You…"

nyer_blog.jpg

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More Duty Today

Fight amongst yourselves… please draw no blood.

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1 Week to Go

When the Academy shortened the awards season two years ago, they had the right idea.
Tthe simple idea that the season was going on way too long was dead on. And this year, with the Oscars pushed later by almost two weeks, the only real response has to be, “Can you make it much, much shorter next year?”
And the Rest…

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Getting My Attention

This SXSW short film maker, Brad Neely, assured that I would watch his short film within minutes of it arriving on my doorstep by offering up an example of his creative talent before I even opened the envelope.
The short, which appears to be a Flash animation, is a very funny rap about George Washington. Unfortunately, the quality control on the sound on the DVDs he sent out was not so good and the mix is way too hot to be able to understand a lot of the clever lyrics. I was waiting for my speakers to explode at any moment. This has been a problem with a lot of homemade DVDs, including one I received of one current Oscar nominee. So take me advice and do that quality control, filmmakers.
Still, I could see how clever it was and look forward to seeing and hearing it with the right sound. So, it worked.
sxswpromo.jpg

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KFC Goes Viral

In a display of the power of the web, KFC has joined the growing list of marketers trying to go hip and viral. The still below is from a fairly traditional ad for a new product. Like Mel Gibson’s surprise frame of his smiling face in his movie trailer, this is just one frame in an ad that, if you find it, sends you to a web site where you can give up your personal information in exchange for a coupon for a free sandwich.
Of course, this is also a traditional media play as well, because you can expect to see every outlet in the country running stories about this still frame for the next couple of days.
Interesting

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Jury Duty

Oh the joy of jury duty…
I’ll try to think clearly before the night’s out…

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And news on another Oscar nommed short doc…

DreamWorks and Parkes/MacDonald Prods. have acquired the rights to
Oscar-nominated documentary “The Life of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang
Bang Club.”The producers will use the film and tap the research of director
Dan Krauss for a feature about the Pulitzer Prize-winning photog. Carter
dodged bullets to capture images of famine and violence in the waning days
of apartheid.Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, who’ll produce, closed the
rights deal with Krauss just before his docu drew its Oscar nom. Doc had
several suitors as the role of Carter has the potential to attract a big
male star.Exec Alisa Tager brought the project to Parkes, who got the upper
hand partly because Krauss’ Berkeley film professor shot part of Parkes’ own
docu, “The California Reich.” Krauss, whose docu will air on HBO, will be
exec producer.South African-born Carter grew up loathing apartheid, and
through photography found an outlet to show its impact to the world. He
became famous when his photo of a starving Sudanese child stalked by a
vulture won the Pulitzer Prize. When he described waiting for 20 minutes for
the starving child and vulture to fit perfectly in his frame, critics called
him a vulture for not interceding. Carter committed suicide at 33.”Beyond
dramatizing a courageous life at a historic turning point, we hope to
explore why Kevin ended things the way that he did; in some ways, that photo
both made him and destroyed him,” Parkes said. “Even though his work brought
international attention to the struggles in South Africa and the Sudan, the
end of Kevin’s life was dominated by the controversy surrounding one
picture, and his decision to document rather than intercede. His story is
particularly relevant now, as we’ve become a world hooked on visual
information. As the violent reactions to the publishing of the cartoons in
Denmark last week suggest, the power of the image has never been more
evident.

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The Hot Blog

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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