The Hot Blog Archive for August, 2006

Embargoing Too Far?

In the course of his regular schtick of calling out quote whores, UGO’s Erik Childress does a much more interesting piece on the status of The Embargo in Hollywood these days.
His perspective, from Chicago, causes him to make a few missteps in his opinion sifting. And that

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DOAP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESIDENT BUSH ASSASSINATION FILM MAKES ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE 2006 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
New York, NY (August 31, 2006) – The Toronto International Film Festival released new details today regarding a film in their line-up. Previously referred to as D.O.A.P., the film’s actual title is DEATH OF A PRESIDENT. This fictional drama, which mixes archival footage with narrative elements, focuses on the assassination of President George W. Bush in the style of a retrospective documentary. DEATH OF A PRESIDENT makes its world premiere in the festival’s Visions section on September 10th at 8:30 p.m. at the Paramount 3 Theatre in Toronto.
“We

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Filler? I Hardly Know Her!

I’m sure there is something worth discussing here on the blog today…. but damned if I know what it is!

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Monday Monday…

I don’t know when I will be back at at he computer today… so here is a free-for-all page… have at it…
Here’s Monday’s Hot Button to chew on…

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Another Case Of Idiotic Non-News Hype

The opening of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night was a 5-minute sketch that ran across six different Emmy winning shows at a cost of no less than half a million dollars.
And there was a tragic plane accident in Kentucky that killed 49 people after the plane failed to take off at 6am this morning.
The first show that was part of the Emmy package was Lost, which started its run with a mid-air plane crash.
And now, a Kentucky TV station general manager, Matt Drudge and others seem to think that the sketch, which involves the air mishap joke for all of 22 seconds, is a national embarrassment. (You can see the 22 seconds and not the whole 5 minute segment, which also makes light of Tom Cruise’s sexuality and the child molester-catching episodes of Dateline here.) Ultimately, the joke of the Lost bit was that it was invited to the Emmys last year and not this year.
Are we really that sensitive that a joke about a TV show gets couched into some sort of condemnable insensitivity to a real life tragedy? And will we in the media ever see anything with clear eyes instead of as a self-promotional opportunity again?

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More Toronto Trailers

La Tourneuse de pages
The Wind That Shakes The Barley
Quelques jours en Septembre
Shortbus
One To Another (via Twitch)
Severance (via Twitch)
And last week’s list, with links that do work if you click through.
PLUS – A non-fest trailer for a sexy Spanish female hitwoman flick owned by Sony International

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Weekend Estimates by Klady – 8/27/06

Another weekend without much worth discussing.
The Devil Wears Prada finally cracked $120 million.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 8/26/06

A fairly ugly weekend heating up

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Box Office Hell – 8/25/06

bohell825.jpg

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And What Did You Think?

And so, with the summer at an end, what were your favorite moments, worst moments, and most memorable moments… on or off screen…

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Lunch With David VII – Cruise Control

“Have you picked a side yet?”
Here it is…

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20 Weeks Of Summer Are Over

We started with Tom Cruise and we end with Tom Cruise

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Flies On Shit

Been out all day… just back in time to be disgusted by the ongoing pile-on of Traditional and Online Media over the decidedly minor Tom Cruise story.
We have crossed over into tabloid hell.
At least Mel Gibson actually drove drunk, he was actually arrested, and he actually said anti-semetic things.
Yes, I was a monkey in the monkey tree yesterday. But this story has overstayed its welcome. And like Gibson, will be a non-story in all of two weeks.
And really, shouldn’t we all be embarrassed to be trying to capture attention by leveraging Tom Cruise’s business relationship?

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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