A Good Quote About The Traditional Vs New Media

I finally got around to watching the last 8 hours of The Wire this weekend, an excellent, if still wildly overrated drama. One of the key sytorylines of the show was The Baltimore Sun and a journalist who made things up as a way to self-aggrandize and a management that looked the other way in the lust for a Pulitzer.
Anyway, as soon as I finished it, I went to Salon to read some of the – again – excessive coverage of the show. And I read Heather Havrilesky’s interview with David Simon, Wire showrunner and former Sun reporter. There was plenty of interesting stuff and, like myself, Simon gives no pass to the majors based on what has often been a glorious past. But this is what jumped out at me to offer to you…
“The impact of the Internet is that it’s pulling the froth of commentary and debate off the top of first-generation news gathering, leaving newspapers with only a first-generation role for themselves, which is not enough for them to sustain readers, and so they’re losing young readers. By and large, excusing the fact that there are some first-generation journalists going out and acquiring new information directly for the Web, the vast majority of the Internet is reaction and debate and commentary — some of it brilliant. But I don’t run into a lot of Internet reporters at council meetings and in courthouses.”
Pretty fair analysis, no?
ADD, Sun 7:50p – I just read David Simon’s post-Wire-finale self-analysis on The Huffington Post and all I can say is, “Nice to meet you, friend.” I am thrilled to have someone with all the experience that Simon has making many of the same arguments that I have been attacked for expressing in The Hot Button and here on the blog, year after year.
Yes, my opinions are in the frivilous arena of film industry coverage. But given that this is my business, I take it seriously, just as a city beat reporter takes the local politics or drug culture.
It has always been too easy to accuse me of grandstanding or jealousy or whatever. This does not mean that I am not open to those of you who actually disagree with the details of the issues I take with some Traditional Media outlets in some thoughtful way. I honor that. In fact, I crave it, as it helps to sharpen or dull my sense of things, most often to the better.
Another pull quote from Simon…
“We will all soon enough live in cities and towns where politicians and bureaucrats gambol freely without worry, where it is never a risk to shine shit and call it gold. A good newspaper covers its city and acquires not just the quantitative account of a day’s events, but the qualitative truth and meaning behind those events. A great newspaper does this routinely on a multitude of issues, across its entire region.

Weekend Estimates by Klady

BYOB Weekend

I know… it’s been a rather slow blog week for me… and Bermuda is just a week away…
Here is some space for y’all to put up when I shut up…

American Idle

I thought this was passingly of interest…
American Idol cleverly has converted the weekly show into a showcase for each performer’s audience, making rehersal performances of the song done on the air available in full on Apple’s iTunes, along with the video of the on-air performance. And they have been promoting this on air at least once every half hour… promotion worth millions each show.
Surprisingly to me, not a single song from this offering has cracked the iTunes Top 100 singles… at least not on the chart as I looked at it today.
Perspective. The most popular show on television still can’t get a single to crack to Top 100 on iTunes.
The future is coming… but don’t get caught up in the hype.
ADD, 7:52p Sat – A commenter wrote: “For the first week, Apple disclosed sales popularity among those Idol videos and songs they were releasing. When users were using it to gauge the popularity of the contestants and thus attempt to predict who would be booted off that week, Apple removed such information from iTunes at the request of Idol producers.”
I have no independent verification of this and I’m not sure I believe it 100% – the excuse, not the person offering it in Comments – but this is significant as regards the post and should surely be taken into account.

Hillary Is The New Harvey

I know that I have been relentless about pushing Obama since I was “born again” about 6 weeks ago. I am a believer. But the main reason it continues to be an item in this blog is the relentless and reckless attack on Obama by the Clinton campaign, showing a willingness to scorch the Democratic earth rather than to consider waiting until Ms Clinton is 64, 68, or 72 (if an Obama VP ran after 8 years of Obama, it would be hard for her to race against the person until she was McCain’s age) to run again.
Hillary Clinton, this season, is the Harvey Weinstein of politics. People are scared to death of giving up on her because she has returned from the dead so many times that getting bit in the neck is an eternal threat. The same was true for years with Harvey and the Oscars

Friday Estimates by Klady

Horton Hears A Who is almost exactly in line with Ice Age‘s box office run, which ended up at $176 million domestic. Actually, it will be a bit ahead after the second weekend… but that will probably be made up for by the more front-loaded box office as years pass. I expect Horton to top $150m domestic and not quite to get to $175m.
The $200m mark is still elusive to anyone but Disney/Pixar and DreamWorks Animation… but Fox is by far the strongest third player in the field, pretty much completely on the shoulders and visions of one man, Chris Wedge. The money Rushmore in modern animation, so far, is Lassetter, Katzenberg, Wedge, and Miyazaki (the most undervalued with the stunning financial success of his work everywhere but America).
I’m sure that no one at Lionsgate could talk, even off the record, about how frustrating it is to be stuck selling “a Madea movie” without using Tyler Perry’s best marketing tool… Madea. But Perry is desperate to “cross over” and he continues to make big profits with his films, so it is hard for the studio – as it would be for any studio – to push back. Still, you have to give Perry this… this will be his best “non-Madea” opening yet… even though Medea is in the movie. And that will be the discussion on Monday morning. Did the promise of Madea in some of the publicity draw that bigger audience or did the film make it without her?
Fox dumped Shutter, as they often do with little movies that just don’t have “it.”
Drillbit Taylor‘s marketing campaign was an uninspired as Owen Wilson’s unwillingness to do press. And really, as hard as it is to open a movie without your star promoting it, there is no excuse. Movies open WITHOUT any stars who open movies all the time. Gerry Rich has done a pretty damned good job for Paramount overall. But his love of the “big head” one-sheet was replaced by the “big foot/big crotch” one-sheet here… and Owen Wilson is not a big enough star to sell a movie that way. Sorry. At the last minute, they switched up the campaign to try to go after the Superbad audience (a movie that was opened without stars… and even with Apatow’s name, we found out with Walk Hard how irrelevant that really is… you gotta sell the movie!), but the impression was already made… the bad impression.
The sad story of the moment remains The Bank Job, which people love the way they loved The Italian Job, but could not take advantage. Expecting $100 million with Jason Statham in the lead was not appropriate. But barely cracking $20 milllion? That sucks. Lionsgate is a strong marketer in the genres in which they excel, but bottom line, they sold the movie like it was the direct-to-dvd of an I-Job sequel and never got close to the adults they needed to triple their gross. A shame.

I Am… Amazed

I didn’t write much about I Am Legend when it was released in December. I was underwhelmed, but I had this very strong sense that seeing the film in IMAX was a mistake. I love IMAX, but as I learned tonight, this was a small, intimate film that happened to have some big effects, not the other way around… which is how they sold it and what IMAX suggested.
But what is extraordinary about the I Am Legend DVD is not only the beauty of Blu-ray… but the alternate ending… an ending that was so right that it is almost unfathomable why they dumped it for such a conventional choice. I can imagine the original ending confusing test audiences and leaving them longing for the more defined, heroic ending that was on the theatrical release. But… ugh.
SPOILERS IF YOU CARE
The “alternate” ending is a realization by the Will Smith character that he is trying to cure something that does not see itself as an illness. In one remarkable 3 minute segment, his character’s years of personal sacrifice are reduced, on an emotional level, to the ugliness that societies have been prone to, thinking that we are “right” and that we are going to reach out to “fix” other cultures. He is, to not put too fine a point on it, a Dr Mengele character to these creatures… who show more kindness to him when they don’t have to than he’s ever shown to them.
Part of what is actually brilliant about it is that director Francis Lawrence and the writers don’t try to overexplain it. They leave it universal and open to personal interpretation. But the core idea is unmistakable. It is all too easy to lose perspective and see others as animals who have “no higher brain function,” whether they are Iraqis or Republicans or anyone with whom we simply disagree.
END SPOILERS
I don’t know the story of how this movie got cut the way it did. And in a really unusual turn, there is no director’s commentary on either version of the film. So, no help there.
But this movie, on the big screen in the living room, in living Blu, hit home in a way that the first experience of it didn’t come within miles of. I’m at least a couple viewings away from throwing around the “m” word, but I am beginning to think that Smith, who thought this was an awards movies, might have been right… with this “alternate” ending. It’s not a movie about the Empty NY effects. Really. The difference in the two endings makesevery bit as much difference as the transformative difference between Almost Famous and Cameron Crowe’s director’s cut, Untitled. Wow.

Chris Rocks

“Bush has fucked up so bad,” he will posit to any and all congregants in braying loops of oratory, “that he’s made it hard for a white man to run for president. ‘Gimme anything but another white man, please! Black man, white woman, giraffe, anything!’ A white man’s had that job for hundreds of years

Munchausen Blu Syndrome

What an intense pleasure it was today to watch Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which is not only a minor masterpiece, but which – amazingly – defines its own life as a film in the story of the ultimate storyteller.
Munchausen was the movie that killed Terry Gilliam’s reputation… and the last time I recall a movie being demanded by distributors when the studio refused to expand its release. Dawn Steel had just taken over at Columbia for David Puttnam, who greenlit the film, and in the great tradition of execs killing thier predecessor’s darlings, she did all she could to kill Munchasen… which already had been through hell as its budget of $25 million had ballooned to double that.
Still… a truly magnificent story of a storyteller coming to the end of his legend in the face of the Age Of Reason. The magic of it and the themes still resonate today as we discuss the importance – or lack of importance – of Hope as a central issue in the presidential campaign. Jonathan Pryce is the embodiment of “reason,” so fearful of the extraordinary that he executes a heroic soldier – played in one of his first film roles by Sting – for making all the other soldiers feel bad for not being as heroic.
Munchausen is also way out ahead of the grrl power movie movement, as the center of the movie is Sally (played by a pre-adolescent Sarah Polley), who not only pushes things forward with her faith, but even has to drag Munchausen, the great adventurer, along at times, when he starts to doubt himself.
It’s such a joy to see the film in this closest-to-celluloid form of Blu-ray… even the flaws… maybe especially the flaws. Gilliam did the movie with a lot of models, puppets, in-camera effects and basic old school layering of effects (like Robin Williams’ head flying around). But it’s the moments of small genius that really dazzle, whether a city of moving buildings like the inside of a jewelry box or a waltz in mid-air with Venus (Uma Thurman) and two cherubs that is interrupted by Vulcan (Oliver Reed) or the giant Winston Dennis wanted to be petite or the teamwork of Munchasen’s sidekicks or the life inside the theater in the “real” town… millions of tint, little, absolutely brilliant details. And they were all waiting, it seemed, for Blu-ray, so you can see every one.
I hate lists from media outlets. But The Top 100 Films For Blu-ray would be interesting. Really, it is the films that have that visual power that makes seeing every inch of that screen in magnificent detail a treat. The Kubrick films are that. No Country For Old Men is that. I can’t wait for Bonnie & Clyde.
And today, Munchasen. Heaven.

Hey, Anglophiles Who Dig 1532 Sex & Intrigue!!!

Can’t wait another 11 days to see the first episode of The Tudors, Season 2 on Showtime? Want to get into the soup?

Actually, this is the first episode of the series I’ve watched from start to finish. Pretty good. Not as much about sex as the ads suggest.
Go to this website and use the not-so-secret secret code “Royal” to get access.

Buying In Bulk

Word today (via Financial Times… see MCN front page) that Apple is negotiating flat rate access to all of iTunes is yet another major step towards the inevitable future of digital delivery… and an unspoken reassursion of the power and importance of the theatrical releases of movies.
Essentially, digital access in all media demands an open market. The theatrical experience is not open. It is only possible in a brick & mortar storefront. And because of qualities of that experience and the cost of delivering it, the will continue to be a strong lead market for film. But once you get to home experience, the game is completely different.
As with all things in this business, it will take time for the movie execs to see what is happening. But I will guess that less than a year after Apple starts a subscription model option for iTunes, we will see the first subscription model for movies and TV on iTunes. The big conflict for the TV model is who gets paid for what… and I don’t mean the unions. How do you slice the proceeds of a NBC show, produced by WB, when the public is paying $50 a year to download all NBC shows? Then you can worry about the unions are paid on a rental that had no disc or tape to count.
As I keep screaming, The Internet is not a medium… It is simply a delivery system. The pay TV concept is the future of home entertainment. Choice and Speed of Delivery and Day-n-Date are not the new foundation, but premium options. How many people are aware that you can watch what they are watching in Beijing or Rio or Belgrad right now, simply by paying DirecTV a few more bucks a month? The world is already smaller than we realize… and only niches care.
By 2015, Flat Rate will be king. And sales of premiums will be where the big added money is. For another $1000 a year, you will have access to the vast majority of what’s made and what’s been made. If 20 million people buy into that, the industry will have $20 billion more to split up… or DVD again. Theatrical will be about the same… about $25b worldwide by then. Other ancillaries (including the vast majority still not paying $200 a month for cable/satellite) add another $40b. And that’s just movies. And it is stable, the way corporations like it.
The thing about where you watch what you watch is not the story here… never was. It’s the revenues and predictability, stupid.
(via iPhone)

BYOB – Wed

Hours away… the helm is yours…

Got 35 Minutes?

No set of sound bites pulled out of this speech can represent the power and insight of the whole.

More Politics…

The game on the Clinton campaign made itself apparent when at Hillary Clinton’s news conference today, she “had not had a chance” to see Obama’s speech… and went on to speak to substantive issues about Iraq.
This is all part of the game… get him talking about something damaging, pretty much irrelevant, and re-launched just a Clinton needed help… a year after it was discussed and dismissed as an issue by the media a year ago…. and then turn the whole thing into, “He’s not talking about important topics” yet again.
This whole cycle, driven by the Clinton Campaign, is as bad as what Bush did to McCain in North Carolina 8 years ago and what Johnson – who was going to win anyway – did to Goldwater in 64 and, indeed, what the right did to Kerry with the Swift Boat ads.
We can only hope that the man under attack – the only one in this group who actually is winning the race when the all-out guerilla attack ran – will be able to recover in the month before the Pennsylvania election.
Today, my gut instinct is that the Clinton campaign dropped the bomb too early and that a month is a loooooong time for the wounds not only to heal, but to become a strength. And in that regard, the scummy tactics that tear down the party without thought to anything but a personal win after falling behind against all odds in the primaries, may become a blessing in disguise.
Only time will tell.

More Critics…

Sean Means offers that Media News Group, which publishes, by their count “57 daily newspapers in 12 states” now have 6 film critics working for the chain fulltime with the San Jose Mercury News critic Bruce Newman and Contra Costa Times critic Mary F. Pols heading out the door.
The 6 critics are:
Chris Hewitt | St. Paul Pioneer Press
Lisa Kennedy | Denver Post
Tom Long | Detroit News
Sean Means | Salt Lake Tribune
Bob Strauss | L.A. Daily News
Glenn Whipp | L.A. Daily News