The Hot Blog Archive for January, 2008
MacBook Air
There was no coincidence that Apple announced both the MacBook Air and a deal to start making rentals via iTunes available in addition to movie sales.
What the analysts seemed to miss is that the MacBook Air, a very cool small body laptop, also has a built-in step towards changing the entire technology… there is no DVD or CD-Rom drive on the machine. None. Why? Because the hardware is suggesting, quite clearly, how you should interact with the software. Rent or buy movies online… no need for a pesky disc.
And if you do have a disc? You can get an accessory drive (a pain in the ass) or you can wirelessly network to another computer – preferably a Mac – and treat media that uses the hardware of the other computer exactly the same as if it were loaded onto your computer.
This conceit is extremely cutting edge… but not as problematic as it might seem on the face of it. We are all used to having drives in our computers and got all excited when DVD drives came in and recently, the offer of Blu-ray or HD drives on some computers. But Apple continues to push us all to cut the wires and to access everything in a paperless, discless universe. And while the limitations of Apple’s deals with studios limits the comfort zone that everything is accessible – on DVD or CD – the push is compelling.
If, as a critic, I get DVD screeners from companies that want me to watch their films in whatever format I can – screenings being best – why not give me unlimited access to download, so long as they feel the encryption is safe? Obviously, Apple wouldn’t make money on that. But imagine a company like Magnolia or IFC First Look or even Sony Classics simply being able to give me access to the films that they are working on at any time, over an inexpensive private network on the web. Imagine, as I head to Sundance, that the 80 or so films that allow you to screen them on DVD on a TV in the press office could allow me to start the festival at home on Monday and see a dozen movies before I land in Park City… particularly ones I might not have time to see in the hustle and bustle of the festival.
And that brings us back to the WGA Strike – as all things must.
This suggests a universe in which rentals can be done on a larger basis – not free downloads and not purchased films – without a disc. I believe the guilds are currently paid, in the case of Blockbuster and Netflix, by the prices of the DVDs sold to the rental companies… one residual payment based on the gross revenue from the sale. Apparently, there is already an agreement for 1.2% for electronic rentals… currently a tiny revenue stream. WGA seeks 2.5%.
With a price point at about a third (or less) of the cost of buying a movie via iTunes, combined with ease of delivery, this could be a major hit with kids and the travelling class… depending on the boundaries of a rental.
Don’t be shocked if AMPTP “offers” WGA what it already theoretically has… the 1.2% residual on electronic rentals. There has been so much screaming about the guild getting “nothing” from the web that the 1.2% might seem like a generous offer to the unaware.
I find the announcement by Apple a bit of curious timing. The studios needed to sign off on the announcement. So one must wonder, is it part of an overall strategy? “Offer” WGA significantly better numbers on “the future” aka iTunes electronic rental at the same time a deal with DGA gets set with, perhaps, a slight DVD increase and some minor improvement on the $250 annual offer on free streaming and BOOM… does the WGA jump? And if AMPTP has DGA and WGA, how hard a fight can SAG fight after already losing a month or two of work in the WGA strike?
I don’t know… interesting…
Maybe I am a sucker, but I have this odd sense that progress is being made, even as AMPTP continues to put WGA off. One thing I do know for sure… if AMPTP is happy with whatever these moves are, then they are not good enough for any guild to feel comfortable about. It’s not about “Evil AMPTP,” it’s Negotiation 101. Both sides should hurt a little at the end of a truly reasonable negotiation.
And celebrate by buying a really cool laptop.
The Weirdest Noms Yet
The handling of docs and foreign language films continue to be an embarrassment to The Academy. With due respect to the excellent films on the foreign language short-list, released today, you have to wonder how these things come to pass.
Not on the list is the most acclaimed and qualified foreign language film of the year, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and the second most acclaimed qualified foreign language film of the year, Persepolis. I count myself as a fan of a number of these films, but really… puh-leeeeze!
The oddball process continues with 30 Academy members sitting down to watch all 9 of the short-listers next weekend… to eliminate 4.
The four of nine who have taken home Oscars before are: Denys Arcand, Nikita Mikhalkov, Giuseppe Tornatore, and Andrzej Wajda. Sergei Bodrov has been twice nominated, once for a film as writer/director and once as co-writer. None of the other four – Joseph Cedar, Srdan Golubovic, Cao Hamburger, Stefan Ruzowitzky – have gotten nominated in the past, though some have been nominated by their countries.
The great irony of all of this is that the two films left behind were “arty intense” (4 Months) and animated (Persepolis), which is pretty much what The Academy doesn’t go for in their main nominations either. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised in the least.
(Corrected for awards error – Tues, 2:03p)
Major Force
So the axe fell at CBS/Paramount today, following last week’s ABC/Disney bludgeoning. Expect the others to follow, as a deal with DGA gets closer.
Meanwhile, WGA is cutting more deals with The Minors, adding a web-based production company, MRC, and major producer/funder, Spyglass. Soon to join United Artists and The Weinstein Company appear to be Overture (another company with not an inch of skin in the game) and Lionsgate, which will probably hold off signing until after next Tuesday, when Saw IV comes out on DVD.
Meanwhile, the DGA deal remains a potentially big moment in breaking the WGA deadlock, but not so much the way people seem to think. If DGA makes a bad deal overall, by WGA
PGA Awards
Same as it ever (“ever” being the last few weeks) was…
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR AWARD IN THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURES
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Miramax)
“Juno” (Fox Searchlight)
“Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)
“No Country for Old Men” (Miramax/Paramount Vantage)
“There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage/Miramax)
PGA is a pretty damned good 4 of 5 marker… like DGA… and unlike DGA, a pretty horrible 5 for 5 marker. Not once in the last decade, even when expanding to six nominees, have they hit all five Oscar nominees.
Of course, everyone will assume that Diving Bell is the one that should be nervous. But someone should. We’ll see who drinks whose milkshake in just 8 days.
Roger Avary
UPDATE – Mon, 11:55 – Don Murphy comments below…”We spoke this morning. Gretchen and he will be fine. I would be surprised if he is prosecuted. That road is a winding, unlit dirt road (yes I have been on it).”
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I know more than a few of you who hang around here – posting and not – know Roger Avary. And no doubt, none of us will be filled with anything less than sympathy for a person whose life changed forever in a car accident, in which someone was killed and his wife was thrown from the car.
None of us know the details of what happened… was he over the blood alcohol limit… had he drunk a couple of glasses of wine at dinner 30 minutes earlier… whatever. There is no excuse for taking the lives of others into your hands when inebriated.
But Roger is, by all appearances, a decent and kind man. And being responsible for the death of someone else is no small thing. Our sympathies must first go to the family and friends of Andreas Zini, the person who passed away. And then, we can hope for the best for Roger and his wife, Gretchen.
Globes…
It was a very odd evening at the Beverly Hilton , The awards were pretty unsurprising
22 Comments »Reminder
This blog does not remove or choose comments. (Very, very rarely – maybe 10 times in over 70,000 comments – I will add a spoiler warning or the like, that being the only editing of any kind ever.) No one has ever been banned or been disallowed from commenting. There is no monitoring of comments.
I consider the choice to do that counterintuitive to the idea of having an open forum. If you want to control the comments (aside from spam, for which there are filters), don’t allow them and run e-mails to your blog.
In any case, all of this is because I noticed that there was a comment that didn’t post to one of the entries today and when I looked for “unpublished comments,” I found about a dozen from over recent months. I published all of them immediately.
Please let me know if your comment seems to be caught in a spam filter. It is usually because of what the spam filter thinks is too many internal links, which it reads as potential spam. I very rarely checked for unpublished comments because they are so rare. But if you think you have had one, let me know and I will check ASAP and make sure you’re published, no matter what you have written.
LAFCA Photos
DDL and the couldn’t-be-nicer Daniel Lupi
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Team Savage: Kirk Honeycutt, Tamara Jenkins, Jim Taylor, Alexander Payne, editor Brian Kates
(photos: Ray Greene/Courtesy of LAFCA)
LAFCA Quote of the Night
Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t win for screenwriting last night – Tamara Jenkins’ script for The Savages did – but he got off the line of the night, “If another fucking film critic criticizes one of my movies for being too long, I’m going to remind them of this ceremony.”
Still, a good time, if a lot of a good time, was had by all, including the significantly slimmed down Scott Rudin, the contingent from Romania, chiefs from Vantage, Miramax, Searchlight, Sony Classics, and Strand, and a host of others.
Sunday Estimates by Klady
Not only is this Rob Reiner’s biggest opening ever, topping A Few Good Men by almost $4 million, but it’s Jack Nicholson’t fourth biggest career opening, after Anger Management, Batman, and The Departed. Critics hate it… audiences love it.
Likewise, this is Ice Cube’s biggest opening aside from the Barbershop franchise. (And nice to see a distributor not leaning on Martin Lurther King, Jr Day weekend to release an “urban” movie.)
Juno is the gift that keeps on giving, as it cracks $70 million or more than $10 million past Little Miss Sunshine‘s box office mark. It is one of those phenoms of awards season that had this movie opened in summer and done $100 million or close, it would almost surely be out of the Oscar race like all other successful/not-indie-claiming comedies, aside from Ellen Page and screenplay… and instead is likely to be the biggest grosser nominated for Oscar’s Best Picture trophy this year.
Note P.S. I Love You‘s quiet $50 million… and Charlie Wilson’s War‘s quiet $60 million, which will become Mike Nichols’ second highest grossing film in his career.
Hot Blog Mystery Pop Quiz!
Okay, kids… it’s that time again!
I’m never going to waste the time to review this magical marketing scam because it isn’t even worthy of the blog-umn inches. Besides, I will be in Sundance when this one drops… into the toilet bowl of movie history. That said, it will open to over $40 million, breaking the record for January openings.
But here’s a little quiz and I’ll leave it at that…
What movie:
A) Has a credit sequence that runs more than 15% of the overall length of the film?
B) Has no character development deeper than a D cup?
C) Uses Mumblecore conceits to do nothing but scam the audience? (Welcome to Mumble-Hor.)
D) Makes Poseidon look accomplished with many of the same gags
E) Has a monster that could have been bought at a Star Trek TV auction.
F) Doesn’t have a single moment as compelling as the girl crying into the lens in Blair Witch.
G) Is desperate to be The Host, but forgets to establish any characters that you care about.
H) Has the greatest scoring of the credits sequence in history
I) Is so completely vacuous that a few smart people will mistake it for meaningful.
J) All Of The Above
Good luck to you all! Winner gets to not see the film!
Friday Estimates by Klady – 1/12
So… after a lot of people wrote off The Bucket List, it looks to be Rob Reiner’s biggest opening ever, challenging A Few Good Men‘s $15.5 million start. For Nicholson, it is one par with his “smaller film” openers, like Something’s Gotta Give ($16m), As Good As It Gets ($12.6m), and About Schmidt (which opened in limited, but did $8.5 million on 852 screens going wider). And with an older crowd, you can expect more than 3x Friday as the weekend number… and long legs, unless they really hate it.
I have to say, I have been surprised by the extreme dislike by some older critics for this film. I don’t have an answer for it, except to say that while I see it as a pure programmer with a heart, and completely see the ugliness of blue-screening the Taj Mahal and all other world venues… I really did enjoy the film much more than I could have imagined I might. ( I wouldn’t have “Lunch With David”ed with Reiner if I had nothing nice to say about the movie.)
First Sunday is right in line with Ice Cube‘s “urban” movie openings.
Dusty Cohl: In Memory
Dusty Cohl: In Memory
By Roger Ebert
Nobody ever seemed to know what Dusty Cohl did for a living. He was a lawyer, and it was said he was “in real estate,” but in over 30 years I never heard him say one word about business. His full-time occupation was being a friend, and he was one of the best I’ve ever made.
Yes, he was “co-founder of the Toronto Film Festival.” That’s how he was always identified in the Toronto newspapers. And he founded and ran the Floating Film Festival, one of the great boondoggles, on which Dusty and 250 friends cruised for 10 days while premiering films and paying tributes to actors and directors. There was no reason for the floater except that if you were Dusty’s friend, you floated.
The rest…
And from Jim Emerson…
A Great Guy Has Passed
Most of you won’t know the name Dusty Cohl.
But he was my friend and someone who was unendingly generous of spirit and effort towards me.
He started the Toronto Film Festival with a few partners 33 years ago and was instrumental to building it, especially with his friends in the media who supported the fest earlier and more enthusiastically than it might otherwise have been supported. Amongst the closest in the circle are The Eberts & The Corlisses.
Toronto started with the idea of being a “festival of festivals,” inspired by trips to Cannes and the awareness, back in 1975 that Toronto would not get the chance to see many of the films showing to great acclaim across the globe. Dusty stepped away from TIFF years ago and hasn’t been to Cannes in even longer. But if you were his friend, he would come to anyplace where you needed him. We first spent time together at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, along with his amazing wife, Joan, out in the middle of nowhere (due respect), aka Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He was there for Roger and he hosted us all like the family we would become for those few days each April.
Dusty was brusque and funny and not slow to anger. A couple of Crown Royals and a cigar were never far off when you spent time with him. He’d offer his thoughts, always starting with a, “Kid…,” and he was, pretty much, always right. But sometimes it took time for the recipient to understand that.
Dusty almost always wore his cowboy hat and in time, started handing out small cowboy hat pins to people whom he wanted to include in his extended family. The rule was, you have to wear the pin at any film festival. If he caught you without it, hell was raised. But at festival after festival, people would ask, “What’s with the cowboy hat?,”and the story was told.
He could be an ornery old cuss… but his heart was as big as any. A truly gentle soul covered in charming sharp edges.
Right after The Oscars this year, The 10th Floating Film Festival will depart from Long Beach. It will be my second. The last time I spoke to Dusty, he said, “I just hope to see you on The Floater.” Now it will have to be from a distance, as we celebrate this man over a lot of Crown Royals.
I will miss him dearly.
Film Critic Makes Times With Carmen Electra
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