The Hot Blog Archive for September, 2008

Friday Estimates by Klady

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The Shia-Getting-In-Trouble franchise continues to grow, from a $22 million opening for Disturbia to what looks like a somewhere-near $30 million opening for Eagle Eye, an inferior retread with some excellent ads.
Lane & Gere are doing about what they do. The last time out was Unfaithful (the movie that convinced college girls to have stairwell sex for a few months), which opened to $14.1 million.
Another boring week at the box office…

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Why Does This Bother Me?

It’s NY Post by way of Defamer, so we are starting with a pleasure in gossip, but…
Why does it make me very, very uncomfortable when major newspapers find themselves in the business of streaming public figures’ private phone conversations for nothing but their own amusement and the amusement of their audiences?
I am not shocked by anything on these tapes. But is it really a fair moral choice – forget about journalistic choices – to embarrass any of these people because the opportunity to do so, over an 11 year old movie?
I admit it… I am as curious as anyone to see Marilyn Monroe fellate a Kennedy on grainy Super 8, but I think I would be disgusted if a major paper got a copy of the film (if it really exists) and ran the frame-by frame like Zapruder.
Even the Alec Baldwin thing with his daughter

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A Thought…

It’s funny…
I am perfectly happy for studios to do whatever they want with their movies. Screen ’em. Don’t screen ’em. Whatever.
But I must admit that, really simply, if they send something to Austin, whether for Fantastic Fest or Butt-Numb-A-Thon, my honest reaction is, “Check!”
Of course, many good movies have gone down there. A lot of great talent has gone down there. Huzzah.
But if studios decide that they are going to lead with that as their focus, in simple terms, I am clearly not their market and my relationship to that movie just doesn’t matter much.
I know that a certain contingent will take this as me bellyaching about something they have decided is an issue for me… but I am being honest here (and not naming names on any side of it). There are plenty of people who could care less what I think, how I feel, or whether I care about their movie. This is not a surprise to me. This does not keep me up at night.
The only time I have ever put myself into in a position to force studios to choose me over someone else with the first dibs on a movie was when MCN was doing screenings for the award season… and when the whole thing became something everyone wanted to get into (slammed by the LA Times with a lie, as we made no money on the screenings… and now, even they are trying to do a screening series), we got out of it. Unlike, say, Variety, I don’t feel compelled to prop up my business by trying to muscle studios into giving MCN… well, anything, really.
And this isn’t an issue of seeing something early or first.
People in that community are part of our MCN community. We are happy to have them read and participate. But we don’t serve that community, primarily.
You know, I didn’t rush to see Kung-Fu Panda either. In that community, I was “wrong” about Eli Roth. That was where Mel Gibson decided was safe for The Passion, right after evangelicals and right wingers.
FF/BNAT is where you go for The Boys. And God bless

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22 Weeks – Corrections, We Have Corrections…

As usual, the first round of 20 weeks charts have plenty of flaws and oversights… though some of the “oversights” are intentional.
Here are some:
I noticed on your prediction charts that you have THE DUCHESS spelled incorrectly (DUTCHESS)
One minor correction on the “22 weeks to Oscar” page – the release date for “Australia” is November 26, not November 14 (it was changed about a month ago).
where is Elsa Zylberstein?
ILYSL is gaining serious traction

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BYOB – 092509

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22 Weeks To Oscar

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The charts…
I am absolutely looking forward to the films at the top of the leader board. But the W.s and the Australias and the Seven Pounds and, of course, the Slumdog Millionaire, is where the fun seems to be this season. Winning

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Searchlight Jumps Into The Fray

I don’t know whether Rupert will approve, but this ad ran on Huffington Post today…
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Sleeping Blu-ray

The magic of Blu-ray and the trend to CG animation, watching Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray is a revelation

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Matt Damon's Dream Comes True

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The Scariest Non-Answer Yet?

Seriously… really… can anyone decipher this?
Does the odd non-answer, one step above “I can see Russia from my porch,” but is there any real answer in here?

The transcript after the jump…

Read the full article »

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What

Oy… give the hungry monkeys a tiny bit of meat and they go nuts!
Yesterday, Larry Mark and Bill Condon were handed the reins of The Oscars, as the Academy gets more and more fearful that their the cash cow of all cash cows is fading and fading fast.
But this hire is not like adding a “$100 Million Movie Award” or “Best Kiss” to the show.
This is hiring theater guys who are also vested movie guys to come up with a better show… a show that the Academy Board hopes will set a new standard moving forward.
Like so many things, The Academy has to come to an acceptance of being the biggest dog on a block that is, simply, getting smaller. And to that end, a few real changes to a show that has been boilerplate for a long time is a step in a right direction… EVEN IF THIS YEAR’S RATINGS ARE DOWN AGAIN.
This is a critical point. One of the reasons that The Oscars haven’t changed much is that every time they try something, it gets slammed by traditionalists (sometimes rightly) and the ratings don’t improve – expecting them to, from show content changed in the same year makes no sense – so they retreat.
I

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Morning Poli-Roundup

The McCain TimelineObservers, critics, even fellow Republicans, were left wondering: where did this sense of urgency come from? After all, it was this past Sunday that McCain hinted on 60 Minutes that he would support the bailout — “we have to stop the bleeding” — only to express deep criticisms on Monday and then admit he hadn’t even read the three-page proposal on Tuesday.
“I have not had a chance to see it in writing,” said the Senator. “I have to examine it.”

Horrifying.
Counting Every Question That Sarah Palin Answers Sarah Palin fielded four questions from a small group of reporters Thursday That makes a total of 6 questions asked by working press in the 27 days since she was nominated by John McCain. There have been three sitdown interviews, one by Fox.
Disenfranchised – It struck me yesterday that the idea of disenfranchisement, a word thrown around often these days, is actually a lot less relevant when talking about women as a group or races or ethnic groups than about The Clintons and those who followed them slavishly. Why? Because they were actually enfranchised. And it is absolutely true that an Obama win will disenfranchise them. And they are ANGRY. And I understand. And I still think they are shit for being so selfish and abandoning what they so ferociously claimed to believe.
Speaking of which

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The McCain Delay

I have been out all day, so I am still catching up with things. I don’t want to rush to judgment.
But a couple of items stuck out to me…
In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Miss., currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.
And…

McCain’s behavior to date leaves me extremely suspicious. And I find it hard to look past the political motive of keeping Sarah Palin from being heard by the public in an open forum as a major motivator for him.

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Disney Event '08

Nobody does these events better

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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