The Hot Blog Archive for February, 2007

Coppola Redux

Just two notes on the Coppola screening story that broke here on the blog last week.
1. Spielberg was not in attendence.
2. Coppola’s camp insists that the cut shown to the group is a final cut.
Personally, I have no idea why it would be a final, given that the film has not been shown to distributors yet and a room filled with some of the most talented directors in the world might have an insight or two about how to make it better… but that’s what they insist and so I report it to you.
There is also coverage of the event in the SF Chronicle right here.

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How Long?

I really like Dave Germain and I never know whether stories like this were forced assignments or a spin on answering a specific issue in a generic way, but today

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Zodiac

I wish I could be more positive about Zodiac. I am a big Fincher fan and I think he is capable of real greatness. He is also capable of tying himself up in knots of nothingness with his clever brain. Zodiac is such a twist.
No question, Act One is the best. Here is where Fincher is able to do what he does best and to do it with some new turns. Even the odd beats – which, with a perfectionist like Fincher, had to be intentional – like a woman driving a car and losing any pretense of watching the road, basically works, since Fincher is so busy channeling Hitchcock and a ton of specific movie references along the way.

The rest…

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The Dominant Festival

In the entry about Johnny Depp, a few discussions have started up that I see as bait for new entries. So, sorry to be talking awards at all right now, but I think these general issues are worth discussion.
One was the question of my description of the race’s markers. I wrote (in a comment):
The end of Cannes marks the end of the first eighth mile. Toronto gets us to the quarter mile. First week of November is the half mile. December 12 or so will be the three-quarter mile marker. Nomination morning is the mile. And the finish line is just a quarter mile from there.
A reader responded that, “The number of Cannes winners to get even a nomination at the Academy Awards in any category was so negligible that I had to also search Toronto and Venice to see how Foreign Language films fared just to make the time I wasted looking at Cannes worth some of the effort.”
This is accurate factually. No film that’s won Sundance has ever even been nominated for Best Picture either. Brokeback Mountain is the first film since Atlantic City to win Venice and get nominated (none has ever won). Berlin has a few more nominated winners, but they also

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Just One Guess

I really don’t want to get into next year’s awards yet. (This has not stopped me from talking to some reporters about it.) At some point, one has to stop complaining and just hold back.
Also, next year is no clear read. Movies like Che’ (Episode One) could arrive… or not. Movies like Sweeney Todd could deliver… or not. Strong foreign directors like Suzanne Bier could become strong US-studio film directors… or not. And veterans like Mike Nichols could be unstoppable… or not.
So…
Just this.
I believe now that Johnny Depp is a 95% bet to be nominated for Best Actor as the title character in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in a very, very crowded field of 2007 male movie performances

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Gold Tarnished By Bad Production Choices?

This list will be spelled out in detail in The Hot Button today (and when it posts, I will link it here). Nut here is a sneak peek…
Here are my ten most problematic elements (in no particular order)

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Congrats To Jackie Costigan

unclejackie.jpg
gkingoscar.jpg

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Back In Biz… And Relieved That It's Over

I’m getting down to work now on some writing about the show…
A couple of quickies.
1. I thought it was the worst produced Oscar show in memory. I’ll give you a rundown and a Boittom Ten in The hot Button in the morning.
2. I couldn’t be more happy for the winners… except for An Inconvenient Truth. It isn’t a good movie. It’s a lovely political statement however. For me, King, Scorsese, Arkin, Arndt, Monahan, Miller, Schoonmaker, and the Guillermo group are all people I admire, adore, or both.And I think it was right for Hudson, the great Milena Canonero, The LIves of Others, Santaolalla (whose scores are all on my iPod), and the Sound, Sound Editing, and Efx all deserved to to win without question. Sure, there may have been other preferences, but there are almost no cases in which you can make an argument that The Academy made a serious mistake of judgment.
3. The only real surprises on the night were Marie Antoinette for Costume (thought it made perfect sense) and The Danish Poet overcoming three studio’s shorts. Others, like Arkin, The Etheridge song, Pan’s nods, were all building to a point of reasonable expectation over the last few weeks.
I kind of wish I didn’t have to work tonight. I feel like sitting in a ski chalet hot tub or something, embracing the final freedom of certain muscle groups. But that will wait for tomorrow.
Sorry it too so long to get back in the comment business. Glad you’re all back.

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Quite Frustrating

It’s funny how this blog being comment unavailable for a few days takes away my personal sense of what a blog is supposed to achieve. Just yapping from my side into cyberspace with no hope of a response is not terribly interesting to me. Even when some of you irritate the excrement out of me, this remains a place to which I am inviting a world of opinion.
We hope to have commenting working again soon. No news yet from our server company, where the fault seems to be.
Onward…

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TypePad Problems

We don’t really know what the problem is… hopefully it will be resolved soon…
If you feel a great need to comment in a hurry, the e-mail is poland@movieicitynews.com

Friday Estimates by Klady

Title | Distributor | Gross * | Theaters | % Change | Cume
Ghost Rider | Sony | 6 | 3620 | -61% | 65
The Number 23 | New Line | 5.8 | 2759 | New | 5.8
Reno 911!: Miami | Fox | 4.1 | 2702 | New | 4.1
Bridge to Terabithia | BV | 3.5 | 3139 | -44% | 36.2
Norbit | Par | 2.9 | 3145 | -35% | 67.8
Music and Lyrics | WB | 2.6 | 2955 | -37% | 26.7
Breach | Uni | 1.9 | 1493 | -36% | 16.2
Amazing Grace | IDP | 1.4 | 791 | New | 1.4
Daddy’s Little Girls | Lions Gate | 1.4 | 2111 | -53% | 21.7
The Astronaut Farmer | WB | 1.3 | 2155 | New | 1.3
Also Debuting
The Abandoned | Lions Gate | 0.23 | 1000
Starter for 10 | Picturehouse | 13,000 | 20
Gray Matters | FreeStyle | 8,900 | 15

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A Quiet "Oscar" Pre-Event

On Thursday night in Napa, Francis Ford Coppola unveiled his first film in a decade, Youth Without Youth, to a crowd of collaborators, friends, and in a unique turn, major directors, including most recent Oscar winners.
Spielberg, Lucas, and Scorsese were all there, as were other directors who received the elaborate invitation and were able to get up there.
This is the first step of “test screening” for Coppola, who has always used test screenings (not NRG comment cards) to reshape his films. Word is that the film is “good, but very difficult.”
Works for me.

Rob Lowe, Snow White & The Worst Oscar Number Ever


(found by Oscarwatch)

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Lunch With… Jesus Camp Directors Ewing & Grady

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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