Embargoes Again

Panties are in a bunch in Chicago, amongst other places, over embargoes and Avatar. I will try to keep this simple.
The Studio and The Regional Publicist (in this case, Allied) are not in sync when it comes to embargoes. For better or worse (I would say “worse” in most cases), embargoes have become a bit fluid. The world is smaller than it was a decade ago. And when Avatar played in London last week, Fox put itself behind a bit of an eight-ball back here at home.
An anonymous “critic” in London broke the embargo late Wednesday night. This led to The Hollywood Reporter breaking the embargo on Thursday afternoon, which they let Fox know they were doing. The Reporter was able to break embargo before the NY and LA screenings, which were on Thursday night, only because they had blackmailed Fox, successfully, into showing them (and Variety) the movie before the first LA screening for press.

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Roy Disney

Roy E Disney was an important man who lived in the shadow of one of the most important men in the history of the entertainment industry. This could not have been easy.
The battles inside of Disney, all of which involved Roy over the last 3 decades, were legendary. Most significantly, he joined up with Team Eisner when Eisner & Katzenberg came to Disney and turned it from a sleepy, unfocused business into a massive cross-media corporation. The credit for the turnaround on the animation side was mostly given to Katzenberg, which never sat well with Roy E. As time passed, particularly after Katzenberg exited to start DreamWorks, Roy Disney would become one of Eisner’s most harsh and aggressive detractors, active in trying to push Eisner out the door.
Camps tend to be split into “Idiot Nephew” vs “The One True Living Light.” I don’t think either is the truth. Seems to me that this was a man with some real passion and talent. Neither he nor anyone else could “be” Walt. But he did his best. He seems to have have suffered some of the burdens of wealth and power, from arrogance to thin skin. But when he was on your side, it seems he was a fierce, committed ally.
As Disney moves forward, pushing away again from their core business, as they did 25 years ago when Eisner & Katzenberg came in, there is something sad about another piece of the legacy disappearing, following on the exit of Dick Cook.
Time does march on…

BYOB Wednesday

It’s been a little relentless around here…

Globezzz

As usual, our happy band of freeloading friends go along to get along, doing what they must to try to mimic Oscar and to get some extra special stars on that red carpet.
Really few surprises… except for Julia Roberts, Robert Downey, Jr, a double-dip for Meryl while leaving out Zooey Deschanel, and a script nod for District 9 over six film nominated for their picture awards.
I am pleased, while still eye-rolling in general, for Tobey Maguire, Matt Damon in The Informant!, and Woody Harrelson. They all deserve to be taken very seriously when the big show rolls into town.
But really… not a bold, brave, or breathtaking stroke in the lot. The log rolls on…

Yes Shit, Sherlock

You know… not worth too much ink.
Sherlock Holmes has moments of charms, thanks to the hiring of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. There are moments of amusing flourish by the screenplay.
But mostly, it’s a boring, repetitive smug turd of a wannabe mega-movie.
I will offer one example. There is a scene, shown in most ads, of Holmes boxing. There is a clever beat, in which he explains how he is going to disable his opponent. Then, in real time, he executes the move. Clever. Amusing. Not genius, but good. But… why is Sherlock in the ring in the first place?
I am not asking for every motivation to be spelled out for the 12-year-old whose imagination is stretched thin. I am saying that a good movie explains, simply, why this man of the mind chooses to be in the ring challenging his physicality. I can come up with an answer. You surely can too. But knowing is the difference between a scene in which we experience motivations and one that is just a scene with a clever gimmick in it.
I’m not going to spoil the story, but I have two words for you… Crystal Skull. You can fight me on the details, but if you’re fight is going to use the last 10 minutes of the movie only, the movie isn’t good, it’s making excuses.
The funny thing is that Guy Ritchie does have a real movie skill… unlike McG. He can bring together the oddest assemblages of quirky characters and make them fascinating… characters you would never expect or even want to see together. That is when his movies work. And when he thinks he is a studio-level action director, he sucks. Seriously… give the next movie to Bourne’s second unit director if that’s what you want.
Sadly, Rachal McAdams hits a career low here, playing a character with no character. Something she does not have the skill to do. I think McA is a beautiful woman, but in frills and bustiers, she is no Salma Hayek. If she had a character to play, maybe she would be fine without the T or A. But no one bothered to write one for her. Maybe she just wanted to work with Downey, but this was as bad a career call as she has made.
Look… this is not the worst movie ever made. Either was Wild Wild West. There are things to like. But it is basically an idea that missed the mark… Holmes with some acid wit and muscle… damn the anachronisms, full speed ahead! But it tries so many things at once, in its hubris, that it fails at pretty much all of them.
One or two of the things like Holmes boxing or strife between Holmes & Watson or Watson’s new love or Holmes’ old love or secret societies or police politics or the supernatural, etc, etc, etc would have served as a good B or C story to Holmes working on a case that has a beginning, middle, and end that audiences could work through with Holmes, even if they were going to end up being wrong and Holmes being right. But they made a movie of all appetizers and made their main course an afterthought. And that might be fine if I cared about any character other than Holmes or if the film had the quirkiness of Wes Anderson or Snatch.
It’s no Trannys 2. But it’s not good. Sigh…

Return To Avatar

I was only able to stay for about 32 minutes for the IMAX Avatar screening tonight, exiting just after the first big in-avatar action sequence.
First, I preferred the Real D experience in this case.
Second, wow. I was still blown away… even with the part of the movie I saw being loaded to the brim with somewhat clunky expositional dialogue. The scale is just plain stunning. I watched these early outdoor scenes realizing that my brain was thinking about how these real locations were enhanced by CG. But they weren’t enhanced. They were built from the ground up, as I understand it. Remarkable.
But more than effects remarkable. The film is quite visually beautiful. And this first action sequence, which expands on the chase shown in early footage, is more remarkable the more times you see it… because it uses all the tools and uses them to truly trick the mind. The T-Rex in Jurassic Park was amazing at the time. The work in this sequence alone expresses the Next Gen of it all.
I was sad to leave. Can’t wait to get back to it again.

NYFCC

It’s deja vu’ all over again.
The Hurt Locker is the critics’ choice (lower case, so as not to impinge on BFCA’s awards tag) with the film and director Bigelow taking the awards on both coasts.
In The Loop wins Screenplay in NY and is runner-up in LA.
LAFCA went for the unexpected with Yolande Moreau as Best Actress for Seraphine. NY stuck with Mamma Meryl!
Waltz, Mo’Nique, DP Christian Berger, foreign language candidate Summer Hours went both ways, as did The Fantastic Mr Fox – a title critics are hoping won’t get lost by the inevitable Up win and likely BP slot.
And BFCA embarrassed itself by going to six nominees in 6 of the top 7 categories (top category #8, Best Picture, is a firm 10). Also the norm.

BYOB Monday

Morning…
New York Film Critics Circle is meeting as I type. News will be up on MCN as it breaks, around 10a.
We’re getting down to the nitty gritty. BFCA announced overnight. The Globes announce tomorrow. (Our Awards Scoreboard just went up.)
And then, it becomes Avatar Week… for real.

Who Is AFI?

“AFI” announced the organization’s Top Ten today and like so many other fake awards – this one is all about having Oscar nominees come to lunch and offer their authority to AFI for the price of a red carpet perp walk – it comes down to some nice, smart people deciding what seems to be an ORGANIZATION’S voice, over lunch.
“The selections were made through a 13-person jury process involving scholars, film artists, critics and AFI trustees. Two juries

Left, Right & Center Awards

LAFCA sports about 11 full-time employed critics… NYFCC about double that. Meanwhile BFCA’s membership has grown about 25% this year.
Bad times for critics.
MCN’s Ray Pride is keeping up with all the tweeting… see, critics are still relevant… they have Twitter accounts…
I don’t have the stomach.
The whole thing is now so inside baseball that I am a little queasy pretending to be a piece of twine or rubber or whatever the balls are made out of nowadays.
It took all of one profoundly stupid – and yes, I know the author will be insulted, but he deserves it on this one and should take comfort in the fact that less than 10% of hot blog readers will know that he wrote this unless he outs himself – responses to an award – “black and white doesn’t equal award-worthy cinematography. Come on guys.” Which is true. B+W does not deserve awards for being B+W. But this is utterly irrelevant when it comes to the masterful work in The White Ribbon.
But that is where we live now. Everyone is a fucking expert in cinematography when very few people I know understand what makes quality cinematography… and sometimes, that even includes me…. but not always. Okay for the author to prefer another choice… but to suggest this work is unworthy is not only ignorant, but… well, mostly it’s ignorant… but also petulant. If you had the skills that Christian Berger has, you wouldn’t be spending your Sunday twittering over his award.
Nor should I.
The only thing close to a surprise so far is picking District 9 for Production Design over Avatar, meaning that they are happy to award a heavily CGed design… but are out of their minds picking a beautifully done version of the form over one that creates an entire world from scratch just as beautifully, if not more so. Crazy and political. Would have been fine with them picking a “real world” designed movie, but if Avatar is on your table and you are taking it seriously for design, you really kinda have to go there.
See. I got sucked in.
I am picking things to be irritated by… which makes me a bore… but there really isn’t anything else to do when nothing interesting is happening. Obviously, they have the right to like what everyone else likes and to give out awards accordingly. In fact, that’s 100% fine. But it’s still boring.
i will check in again later this afternoon and be, most likely, equally non-plussed. Some angry guy in NY will accuse me of being too angry because I’m not jumping up and down and shouting from the rooftops.
I am really enjoying this season. Lots of new people. Lots of very talented people. And many of them will not win much, even though they did great work. I guess that as I roll along, I am more about honoring the work of the horses than worrying about who will win the races. Parts of the handicapping game are still fun, but I guess I just care less and less about the race that was run 2 months earlier in Saratoga… and I know too much about how that race was fixed. Ignorance was bliss.
And for the record, BFCA, with a wider group of less experienced and involved members, is becoming less and less relevant as well. But more on that some other time.
Later…

Women Looking For "Action!"

Manohla takes on the forever topic of why there aren’t more women directing studio films.
Interesting.
But I think she suffers the trouble that most writers seem to run into with this discussion. She looks at the end result and not the starting point. To look at directors like Amy Heckerling, Penny Marshall, Susan Seidelman, and Martha Coolidge and to bemoan their careers not being bigger is really to miss the point. Their careers have gone rather well by the standards of both men and women in their positions. They all suffered from multiple failures following great success, just like the men when they get put in “movie jail.” And they are all now over 55 in an industry in which age is the ultimate negative bias.
And to use Michael Mann as the example of a guy who is “getting away with it” (my phrase, not hers) also misses the point. The reason Mann continues to work and work big is that he understands how the system works and makes projects that address what drives studios to greenlight expensive film.
Mann did his time in “movie jail” after Thief & The Keep didn’t deliver at the box office (even if Thief remains a movie landmark). He rebuilt in television with Miami Vice and then Crime Story. In that period, he also did Manhunter, another classic that didn’t do much business. Six years later, he got to make another movie, The Last of The Mohicans. A hit. Heat. Iconic and a minor hit. Now every actor wanted to work with him. He was allowed The Insider , which was a box office disappointment, but a awards-winning point of pride for Disney. And then, Will Smith… Tom Cruise… franchise potential TV conversion… Johnny Depp AND Christian Bale.
Any director, male, female or alien species could get their movies greenlit with the support of those mega-names. It has nothing to do with Mann being a great director or cutting edge or anything at all about any judgment other than studios wanting movie stars to make movies.
If Tom Hanks were to set up a movie with Penny Marshall, she would get a movie made. If John Travolta was asking Amy Heckerling to let him in her next project, she’d be getting studio money. If Susan Seidelman can entice Meryl Streep to sign on, the money will be there. And Martha Coolidge, who keeps the busiest in this group behind the camera, albeit in television, has only one star of continuing studio value on her resume, Valley Girl’s Nic Cage.
And the truth is, Manohla paints a rosier picture than is real, as the Sony Pictures Classics titles are all pick-ups. On the other hand, Anne Fontaine, as an example, is quite comfortable that she can fund whatever project interests her, as her budgets are Euro-reasonable and she has a strong audience base outside of Hollywood. Meanwhile, Francois Ozon fights for money for each of his low-budget films.
Thing is, the old boys club is real, even if it doesn’t need to be limited to boys. Anne Fletcher has been pushed along by Adam Shankman, whose was hired for his first job as a director by Ruth Vitale for a film that was eventually made by Amy Pascal. Anne’s career went from dance, directing the wildly successful Step Up, but still in the “dance person” ghetto, to straight rom-com with 27 Dresses… a movie that was scheduled to be directed by a man, Michael Mayer, until they hired Katherine Heigl and her hiatus conflicted with his live theater committments.
Kathryn Bigelow, who I think will be the only serious competition to Jim Cameron for the Best Director Oscar this year, indeed had the support of a bigger name in Jim Cameron, who was married to her and has continue to be an enthusiastic supported of her career.
Some may think that pointing out these relationships somehow diminishes the careers of these talented women. But that’s a load. Virtually every filmmaker has a support system of other filmmakers that have helped them up the ladder. And to my eye, it is sexist to suggest that the gender of either the supporter or the supported is the central issue. Cameron did not make Bigelow a great director. You could see her talent from the beginning. But he certainly has helped her get through the doors and not to be boxed in by either being a woman or being a beautiful woman.
Anyway…
Looking to the festival stars who have never emerged is also a bit off the mark, in my view, as so very many of those filmmakers, male or female, never get out of the small indie ghetto. And when they do, they generally have one shot to have a hit movie before they are sent back to the minors in a hurry.
The reasons why there are not more female directors making studio movies in Hollywood are…
1) Their opportunities are narrowed from the get-go because the only female director who reads “action skilled” is Bigelow, so the biggest profit center for studios is not even in play. (On what planet does a studio exec not get fired by hiring Rob Marshall instead of Kathryn BIgelow for Pirates 4? Seriously. I am still waiting for someone to tell me that it’s just a bad joke. Nothing in his career suggests that he can do action or deal with space in anything approaching a skillful way. Oy.)
2) There has been a dearth of female stars who are considered box office. And the ones who are out there either don’t have to power to select their directors or they are not insistent about having female directors. In a case like Sandra Bullock, for instance, she was no doubt pleased to have Anne Fletcher for The Proposal, which she produced. She didn’t produce The Blind Side, which was set up with John Lee Hancock before she came on board.
Two of Meryl Streep’s latest, biggest hits – Mamma Mia! and Julie & Julia – as well as the upcoming It’s Complicated have been directed by women. Two were both written and directed by the two of the writer/directors with the strongest commercial careers in the last 15 years… of any sex. (And note: Ephron got her movie made in spite of commercial failures in her last two films, Lucky Numbers and Bewitched.) This is her first time working with either woman. And Mamma Mia! was directed by its female stage director, so that was a no brainer (ahem). One has to wonder whether in the cases of Ephron and Meyers whether Streep’s recent box office heat inspired the scripts they wrote, since there really is no studio-level actress of her age who could have gotten those films greenlit without a box office-strong male lead.
3. The Old Boys Club – Yes. It is there. Many of the “old boys” are gay men or women, as well as straight white men with cigars. But as I explained before, I don’t see it as “let’s keep them broads out!”
In the film business, imitation is the sincerest form of trying to keep your high-paying executive job that you just know they are waiting to take away from you. There are plenty of exceptions… like the aforementioned brain fart of even considering Rob Marshall for a franchise film when he has had only one success in his career and it had nothing to do with big film elements. But most often, you can follow the trend line and/or relationships that lead studios to hire the directors they hire.
So… women are allowed to direct romantic comedies with strong female leads. But as seems reasonable, one cannot expect EVERY rom-com to be directed by a woman. I don’t know how Ken Kwapis got He’s Just Not That Into You, but Robert Luketic is one of the top rom-commers and makes sense for The Ugly Truth, and Marc Webb was a logically quirky choice for the structurally odd (500) Days Of Summer. After that, this year, you have a lot of women carrying the load with The Proposal, It’s Complicated, Julie & Juila (if you count it as a rom-com), and I Hate Valentines Day, one of two shots Nia Vardalos had and failed with (the other directed by a guy).
4. People screw up.
Why is a guy directing Twilight sequels? Because as brilliant as Catherine Hardwicke can be, the road to the completion of the first film was uncomfortable for the studio and with two sequels going back-to-back with the intent of releasing 2 and 3 within 8 months of each other, they had to hire at least one new director (or Clint Eastwood), it gave them an escape hatch.
Karyn Kusama made an under-$1 million movie in Girlfight, which was deservedly acclaimed at Sundance, but then disappointed at the box office. Instead of making her next $3 million indie film with strong performances and growing as a filmmaker, she waited four years before making her second film, the $100 million Aeon Flux… which did less than $55 million worldwide. And she got another job… Jennifer’s Body. And in spite of huge heat around the film’s writer, producer, and stars, it deservedly grossed less than $30 million worldwide, as it was an unwatchable, unskillfully directed mess. No question that Kusama has talent… but she acted as though she had arrived when her journey was just beginning.
5. Choice
Manohla brings up Kelly Reichardt. Well, let’s consider her. Terrific young artist. But compare her current career arc to Lynn Shelton or, on the male side, Mark Duplass. Lynn is being wined and dined all over Hollywood, as they look to push her into the studio world. Duplass has directed one film for Searchlight, with an 8-figure budget, and one with his brother, likely with a 6-figure budget… all this year.
Reichardt is making another micro-budget art piece with Kelly Williams. And God bless her for that. But we can’t blame Hollywood for not offering her Spider-Man 4 for her mighty skills as a artist.
In conclusion… the problem is hard to overcome. There is no legitimate affirmative action in the movie business. Nor do women need that. But it’s not some conspiracy of idiocy. It’s a system that doesn’t like to try new things until it is forced to do so. And when you start with a small group trying to integrate into a big one, there are usually more extraneous reasons for that group to be made smaller than resistance from the system itself.
This is a “Go and do likewise, gents… go and do likewise,” business. There are more female directors and studio execs at the top of the food chain than you would expect and fewer in the middle class of execs and filmmakers. If The Hurt Locker made $70 million, it would be the start of a trend. Instead, it will be mostly well-deserved awards for Ms Bigelow. And if amongst her next films is a $100 million budget movie that grosses $500 million, then it will turn heads in a real industry way. Jut don’t take The Avengers or Wonder Woman, KB. It’s a trap.

Weekend Box Office by Klady – P-Froggy

The estimates for the weekend all seem to have that holiday feeling, every one, from the top frog to #10 more than tripling their Friday estimates.
I don’t know that there is anything much more to speak to that’s new since yesterday…

14 Weeks To Oscar

The column
And new charts…
This column was available a day early via the MCN Newsletter.

Avatar – The New Thread

When we get to more than 150 comments, trying to keep up with the conversation can become a bit unwieldy… so perhaps we should continue the conversation here…
Some more wood for the fire… Roger Ebert’s 4 star review…

Friday Estimates by Klady

The opening for The Princess & The Frog has to be a little disappointing for Disney. It’s roughly the Bolt number, which led to over $300 million worldwide, but still, the return to the musical, a theoretical bump from the black and hispanic audience, and a very appealing movie offered what seemed to be a bigger opportunity. Releasing the film the way they did was probably the key mistake, but trying not to get in their own way with A Christmas Carol was probably the inspiration. The hop(e) now is for LEGS… waaa waaa waaa waaaaaaaaaa!
The Blind Side is WB’s second mega-gross lower-budget release this year. By this time next weekend, it will take down 2012‘s domestic total to become November’s second highest grosser, behind only Twilight: New Moon. It will crack the year’s Top 15 this weekend. It is also WB’s highest domestic gross for a non-Potter, non-animated November release in its history. So much for drama being dead.
This is the first time WB has tried a wide release for a December/Awards Eastwood movie. Unforgiven was a summer movie… and Flags of Our Fathers was an October release. Perhaps this is the lesson of Gran Torino, which they treated like an awards movie, but was mostly a commercial film. In a year with 10 nominees, it would have been a likely nominee in spite of that… which is likely true of Invictus, though it is in danger of being an empty nod if it does Flags numbers. Flags, which I also thing would have been nominated in a year with 10 nominees, opened to $10 million and got just past $33m. Not good momentum for award season. Like the film itself, this opening is…. okay.
Twilight: New Moon is looking to end up around $285m domestic, somewhere between The Hangover and Up. Great number… about 50% over the first film… even better worldwide, which will end up with about a 70% increase, making it the likely #7 film worldwide for the year. Hysterics might suggest that I am undervaluing this franchise by writing that it will “only” be #7, behind movies like 2012. But the success of one movie doesn’t diminish or define the success of another. T:NM will probably be the second or third most profitable film of 2009… and that enormous profitability is the goal, first and last.
A Christmas Carol is still running a little ahead of The Polar Express. If you look at the history of Christmas movies, there can be a pretty big jump in the two weeks to come. But not always. Could be $140m domestic… could be $170m. Avatar and the loss of 3D screens is a problem. We’ll see.
$35k a screen on 3 for The Lovely Bones has to be a bit of a disappointment in a year when Precious opened to over $100k per on 18 screens.