John Woo, Kevin Smith & Wes Anderson's McCain Attack Ads

Thanks For Saying It, Rog…

Honestly, I didn’t really read much of the drama around Roger Ebert’s “review” of a small indie that ran last week. Our Ray Pride picked up some of the headlines on the front page of MCN. It was only when I saw the apology for running a review based on 8 minutes of a DVD that I was struck.
It’s really simple.
There is no excuse, ever, for reviewing any feature based on 8 minutes, 28 minutes or 48 minutes. A review of part of a movie is not a review. Period.
But more significantly in play here, there is, in my opinion, no room for panning any film at all unless you have sat there through every single second of the film until credits roll. I don’t care if it is a 30 minute soft-porn Cinemax entry or a 23 hour documentary.
Even on the MCN front page, where we do headlines, if we do not read every article we link to up to the end, we are prone to make a bad mistake in how we editorialize as we post. Just the other day, there was a blog entry online – to stay unnamed – that was about 15 paragraphs long and was dead stupid for about 13 of them… and then the author flipped and pointed out how wrongheaded the rest of the entry was. Bad writing, but our attack headline was wrong as a result and we quickly removed it.
Just yesterday, the AP story headllined as a new poll showing the presidential race dead even was completely misleading, the evidence of which was buried after about 5 graphs. Turns out that the survey was dramatically skewed to one side and while it did show a fair picture of how evangelicals feel about Obama, it was not an honest overall survey as a result.
So thanks for the backing off, Roger. You remain a mensch. And the red mark from the slap on the hand was fading by days end yesterday,

DP/9:30 – Marc Forster, Director of Quantum Of Solace

It’s not 30 minutes… and it’s in a junket room… but Mr. Forster was game and we made the best of the time we had.

The Soloist Leaves AFI Fest

Sad to say, after Paramount Vantage thought both The Soloist and Defiance would remain as opening and closing for the AFI Festival, word is about to break that The Soloist just officially fell out, nine days before opening.
Ouch.
But I have no Doubt that AFI will come up with a good solution by tomorrow…
ADD – The press release…

Trying to Figure This One Out

(Note: See addition at bottom to know why the survey is skewed)
A new Associated Press-GfK poll says that “McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.”
But as I read the piece about the poll, I was very confused.
“The poll… found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent”
But later, it said:
“Polls are snapshots of highly fluid campaigns. In this case, there is a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; that means Obama could be ahead by as many as 8 points or down by as many as 6. There are many reasons why polls differ, including methods of estimating likely voters and the wording of questions.”
So the +/- 3.5% means up to a 14 pt swing in the polling numbers?
Would that make anything less than a 15 pt lead suspect in most polls?
Another oddity is interesting…
“The AP-GfK survey included interviews with a large sample of adults including 800 deemed likely to vote. Among all 1,101 adults interviewed, the survey showed Obama ahead 47 percent to 37 percent. He was up by five points among registered voters.”
So… trying to figure out this math… 73% of those polled were deemed likely to vote. Working backwards, it seems that the entire remaining 27% were registered, but deemed unlikely to vote.
If Obama had a 10 point lead with all 1101 adults and a 1 point lead with 800 of that 1101, he would have to have a 37 point lead with the 301 “not likely” voters for the math to make sense, no?
301 unlikelies – 204 pro-Obama, 96 pro-McCain
800 likelies – 404 pro-Obama, 396 pro-McCain
Based on the numbers directly above –
Total

O'Reilly Hated This…

I just caught up with last night’s O’Reilly Factor and he and his two blonde sidekicks FREAKED OUT about this video… abusive of the kids in it… claiming that accusations were outright lies… etc.
Now… I think it would be possible for someone who agrees with the politics of the video to also agree that using younger women this way is not okay… so I put it to you all. I am really curious whether it is just people who see how powerful this piece is wanting to kill it or if they have a point that resonates with some of you.

Funny…

There is little question, the studios are a bit tighter this year with throwing around the expensive awards season ad buys.
Ironically, Peter Bart, whose Variety ad sales team has done its best to undercut everyone else selling advertising in the awards season world, is the first – and likely only – ad seller to publicly whine about what he sees as “significantly reduced support” in this season.
In his very best McCain, he spins what are surely reduced revenues at the on-the-selling-block Variety into some kind of failure on the part of the studios to support the talent involved with movies. Bzzzt! Reality Check: The belt tightening finally caught up to Variety, in spite of coming close to killing off The Hollywood Reporter and even with the advantage of studios that are being very tight with other outlets still buying at the Gray Drag Queen of Movie Journalism (it works hard to look a certain way from the outside… it is something very different if you look under its journalistic skirt).
Perhaps Mr. Bart feels particularly bend out of shape by the round rejection of his blog as a central hub of $15,000 a month Oscar insight… of course, on top of the ad prices for the rest of Variety and Variety.com.
More likely, Variety is slightly down for the season, as compared to last year, in ad sales, in spite of price hikes across the board.
There should be some relief for Pete & Co. as a few last minute players jump in the water. But this whole public moaning is very dangerous because it may well stick the whole ad buy idea in the faces of the bosses who could wonder aloud,

BYOB – Hump Day

Pitching For Granny

Superdumb

We have backed into a conversation that I don

re: Focus

I figured I should get on the record, as I have been called a Universal-basher today, that I do not agree with Patrick Goldstein’s guess about Focus Features being shut down shortly after this next awards season.
I have been saying that Rogue is dead for a long time now. Simple math. They haven

Sucker Born Every Minute: Episode 27,643

Word today in The New York Times – which means that one side of the negotiation wanted it in the NYT – that Universal may be able to sell off the failed genre arm of Focus Features, Rogue Pictures, to Relativity boggles the mind.
How stupid does Ryan Kavanaugh have to be if he is willing to pay a single penny more than the classic

Remembering Sarah Palin

“We’re asking the American people to pick the next president and vice president, and we do not expect the American people to do so