The First Modern Era Oscars

The Boo Birds are out on the Oscar show last night.
And really

Quickly… Nikki Finke Is Gossip… And A Liar

I am making this a single entry as I start to write about the weekend, mostly because I don’t want the infection that is La Finke to turn anything else I might write sour.
But I still feel compelled to point this out…
Nikki’s coverage of the gossip around The Oscars was based around the two things that have made her what she is today… one source that had an agenda and didn’t care what effect his spreading of information had on the show and those in charge of it and secondly, the ability to leverage most of the information she did have – which went unpublished – into future favors.
Every year, she screams about not caring about it… and every year, she tries to make her reputation by running more gossip more quickly than anyone else. This year, the result was otherwise intelligent reporters at The New York Times embarrassing themselves by running gossip about changes in the production and even linking to a rundown of the show that most other papers decided to pass on promoting further. This is the influence of the gossip columnist and nasty piece of work known as Nikki Finke.
The notion that Roger Ebert or anyone else should be expected to parse her statements as she later claims she intended them when it is her regular method of operating to overwrite stories when she gets them wrong, trying to disappear her mistakes rather than admit them, is absurd on its face. This is what Roger got out of the UK Independent pick-up of her gossip. And this is what Nikki intended.
I guess that one should be kind to the simple-minded, but Nikki

Best. Oscar. Show. Ever?

More way later…

DP/30 – The Garden

A chat with documentatian Scott Hamilton Kennedy, who made one of this year’s doc nominees, The Garden.

BYOB – Oscar Sunday

You are pretty much going to be on your own today… be nice to each other… have a good time… I’ll see you on the other side…

Weekend Estimates by Klady

Madea sells tickets and Tyler Perry is going to have to live with that. Now, he must love this character he created, but he does seem to chafe from it at times. But the trajectory on Madea is clearly his strongest play in a pretty strong Tyler Perry franchise, $22m for Diary of a Mad Black Woman to $30m for Madea’s Family Reunionn to $41 million this weekend.
Perry also dropped the news – maybe reported elsewhere before? – that the Sundance film, Push, is being renamed Precious, which is the title that made sense in the first place (for all too many reasons). Director Lee Daniels was running Mariah Carey around the Indie Spirits tent on Saturday… prepping for next year’s hopefulness.
The rest of the Top 5 is a show of strong holds, even 40% and 56% for two of the films… $8 million for weekend 4 of HJNIY is still quite a big number for a not well regarded film. And Taken‘s run is amazing… especially considering the film. That said, Peter Bart’s proclamation of Pierre Morel as The Hot Director of The Moment is okay with me. Maybe he will get better at story, but as an action director, he has mad skillz. I was still disappointed by Taken.
I am sick of all the box office Oscar whining at the moment… it’s not that there is not a story there… but the one that is being told is bullshit. We go through this every few years. Studios will still chase Oscar. But they will return to “commercial first” as a principle for a while… as they should. All this crap that “The Academy does this” and “The Academy does that” is for fools who think there is a monolith called “The Academy” “snubbing” The Dark Knight or whatever. For The New York Times and down the line… arguing that some idiot at a studio (and we know who you are, even if you are unnamed and unexplained as an unnamed source) is claiming that “If The Academy did this, then the ratings would be better” is irresponsible hackery.
Yes, the season should be shorted. Oscar should land, as I have been arguing for a while now, the Sunday before the Super Bowl… certainly no later than the Sunday before the Super Bowl. (And if that killed parties, that would, logically, increase ratings, because more boxes would be working.) But this notion that they need to make their choices more populist is embarrassing. The ratings, however low this year, will more than double The People’s Choice Awards.
There is some smarts in saying that the Oscars needs to be marketed like a movie opening… but a good movie marketer doesn

Hugh Know He Wants It To Work

BYOB – Friday The Pre-Oscarteenth

Miri & Zack… A Blu Movie

I have been persona non grata with Kevin Smith for a long while now. But I keep on hoping that he will become as good a filmmaker as he is a raconteur.
Someone sent me blu-ray of Zack & Miri Make A Porno, I had no idea what to expect. But in I jumped.
And you know what

Watchmen Is Covered

20 Weeks… 4 Days To Go…

I don