The Hot Blog Archive for July, 2010
Trailer: St Elmo's Website (aka The Social Network)
Chevron v Berlinger
This case continues to spin my head.
The first response is to proclaim that Berlinger and his footage is protected by the First Amendment and he should have zero threat of it being subpoenaed by the court and counsel for Chevron.
Then, I start thinking… Joe is after The Truth. Chevron wants to obfuscate the truth and make the case about something other than the actions of the company they now own.
However, if the hands of the side that Joe has advocated for are clean… how can the footage hurt them. In fact, if Chevron scours the footage and nothing comes of it, doesn’t it bolster the film and the case against Chevron?
Combine the issues and one has to take into consideration that Chevron may or may not legitimately think there is someone of weight in the case in that video… but what they will surely try to find and get introduced is footage that infers there are some sort of procedural issues with the case… not unlike Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11. Berlinger didn’t start shooting until many years We would be expected to trust the court to keep out footage that might bias the case but has no evidentiary value. Not everyone agrees that this is a good idea.
As Berlinger told Horn, “My fear is that the motivation here is not to find evidence. It’s to use my footage as part of [Chevron’s] massive public relations campaign to discredit the plaintiffs and the case and me.”
Thing is, the courts have been quite clear that if there is some specific evidence, filmmakers like Berlinger are not protected. And indeed, traditional journalists can be held in contempt of court.
So, in spite of the many proclamations, this is not really a FIRST AMENDMENT, DUE OR DIE case. It’s about the right of Chevron to go on a fishing expedition through Berlinger’s footage. In other words, it’s an issue of degree… at least, in terms of the law.
I’m glad Horn included the film and filmmaker of Bananas! in his piece, though he doesn’t point out that the LA Film Festival took Bananas! out of competition at last year’s festival after Dole claimed that the lawsuit against them was a fraud. Dole, which filed an amicus brief in this Chevron/Berlinger case, was using much the same tactic that Chevron wants to use here. Only Fredrik Gertten was not a well-known American documentarian with relationships here.
I hope that the court will find that Berlinger will only be forced to hand over outtakes from sections which Chevron claims – and can get past a judge – has potential as evidence in a specific way.
I don’t know that the law provides him any more protection than that. And I do think that the idea of demanding ALL footage is both onerous, unfair, and loaded with potential for mischief.
Trailer – Due Date aka Todd Phillips' Planes, Trains & Automobiles?
Today in Inception
The fact that we’re still talking about it is good news for Warner Bros, right?
Hell… Simon Dumenco is obsessing on its Twitter trending. Maybe Rotten Twittmatoes can replace film criticism once and for all.
Armond White came out with a pretty concisely measured review. He will still be mocked for it. It doesn’t really go beyond anything we know about what Armond likes… and dislikes. Yes, it insults a lot of people who love Chris Nolan, coining (I think), the phrase “Nolanoid.” But if you read him and can’t come away with a very clear idea of why he doesn’t like this movie or these kinds of movies, I don’t think you’re paying attention.
Rex “Sexy Rexy” Reed, however, just wants all the noise to stop. Has Rex ever liked anything with CG (that he noticed) in it? It’s a very, very specific kind of taste that is becoming about as extinct as the dino-citizens of Jurassic Park, leaving him a small slice of American chick flicks and some of the more commercial Euro-fare. Here’s to the ladies that lunch!
And I am not the only one who thinks the takedown of David Edelstein was wrong-headed. Dennis Cozzalio’s piece.
The Scarlet "C" – David Edelstein's Shaming Should Shame Us All
This takes a little more space than a tweet… but seriously… putting last weeks drama here aside… a dozen or so reviews of Inception go up and now David Edelstein’s opinion is pilloried? Not just by anonymous, anything-Nolan-does-is-my-touchstone commenters, but by Patrick Goldstein?
Goldstein on 7/6 – “The critics are so over the top about the film that I thought it would be fun to start keeping track of the most wildly overblown, hilariously highbrow claims for the film.”
Goldstein on 7/13 – “Apparently, there is no greater sin than for a filmmaker to make a movie that some people just like too much.”
What happened, Patrick? And do you really expect to be able to pat yourself on the back for “seeing it coming” when you seemed to agree with it?
And now Edelstein’s an asshole for really disliking the movie?
Even the rage that happened around my tweet was a (misguidedly) personal response. Those guys seemed to think I was insulting them.
I still think my impulsive tweet, 8 days ago, saying that the intensity of the reviews made me nervous, was 100% fair. And I think that those who, like Patrick, decided that there might be a backlash… fair.
But Edelstein’s entire opinion is being attacked… with notes about his reference to what I still agree have been insane comparisons by people who are using comparisons that seemed beyond their rhetorical grasp.
I liked the movie a lot more than David. But good GOD… is Patrick Goldstein, aka a journalist, actually embracing the idea that a studio can set the stage – even if there were no assurances about how positive the reviews would be – with a dozen reviews… and if they are all positive, from that point on, anyone who doesn’t like the film is a reactionary hack?
Ironically, one of the big points from one of the guys who felt I was insulting him was that his positive review was not the unqualified rave that others had produced. Maybe he just deserves a slap on the hand.
Now… I will say… Patrick got 50 comments last week on his soft-ball rip-off of what I had been going through for 2 days already. (Oh yeah… I get to throw some vanity around on this one too.) That is a rarity on his blog. So going back to the Inception well made perfect sense. But throwing Edelstein down the well? Not cool. And to use anonymous commenters to do it… contemptible.
There are people who have taste very different than my own. There are movies that become part of a groupthink, in my opinion, for the positive or negative… and it doesn’t require a conspiracy or even a conversation. There are moments when a writer seems to be milking the idea of being the outsider opinion of a movie.
But this whole “if you disagree with the crowd, you are just being a contrarian” routine is really ugly stuff. It’s like the mob trying to control someone who had their own opinion.
Even Armond White… whatever his intellectual process is… seems to be pretty consistent about being what he is. While he was being attacked for his Toy Story 3 review, how many people noted the simple fact that he hates all of Pixar’s output.
It’s like there is a rage about anyone stepping out of line because, “hey, we’re all in line, what are you trying to do, use us to stand out?”
But isn’t the presumption that someone with a minority opinion is just reacting to the majority – even when it is a tiny majority, as in this case, before his review posted – every bit as bad as assuming that the group who loved the film and wrote about it first was filled with studio shills?
And isn’t it rather cowardly to go after David Edelstein’s opinion without even confronting David Edelstein’s opinion.. just a lazy look at the Rotten Tomatoes number?
The internet has become a place where the discussion always seems to digress into being more about the messenger than the message. In some cases, the messenger IS the message. True enough. But the tyranny of the internet mob… scary for all we will give up to it.
BYOB: Tuesday Seems So Far From Sunday This Week
Question Of The Day: Embargoes
In recent years, the Hollywood “trades” have become failing business models with an aggressive desire to compete for consumer eyeballs on the internet. Reviews are promoted as “breaking news,” The Hollywood Reporter is on the Reuters newswire, etc.
The trades have two significant strategic advantages over the web sites with which it competes daily, including this one. 1. They print paper that is perceived as a daily industry flier that ends up in offices of the industry, even though little of the news is consumed in that matter anymore. 2. A few studios still buy into the long-trashed notion that these outlets have a right to an early review date, based on the first NYT/LAT pre-release ads.
Year after year, I have (as others have) made the case against the early review date. And about half the studios have gotten it and now understand that just as a writer like me can trigger the trades to review – them claiming that the seal has been broken so they have The Right – it is only fair and reasonable that the trade review date triggers many other outlets.
I have always been respectful of embargo, both for myself and as a concept. It is the studio’s property and how they choose to screen it and allow it to be reviewed is their business.
But when I was invited to a screening on Thursday this week, with the movie due out next Friday, and an embargo date of next Wednesday and a warning that the trades would be reviewing over the weekend (probably Friday, actually), I couldn’t quite find an excuse for indulging the studio with my participation in the farce.
It also seemed a good place to draw a line in the sand because the stakes are so small. This particular movie has already junketed. I’ve been looking forward to the film and think it could be one of the summer’s biggest hits. But I won’t go to the Thursday screening, read (or avoid) trade reviews over the weekend, then review on Wednesday. The 4 or 5 day spread is, simply, irrational and stupid. The movie is critic-proof anyway. And I don’t feel compelled to waste hours of my working life trying to manipulate the studio into letting ME review earlier or to break the ground for me and then the dozen people who will be angered if I get that advantage. It’s the least important issue here.
Meanwhile… Inception opens this week and WB tried their own hybrid process to the embargo situation. First, they junketed. And the studios have done a lot better with limiting the hum coming out of junkets. But in this case, Peter Travers, who was quoting for the studio, screwed the embargo all on his own. Still, the studio took the heat and set a screening when they were comfortable with reviews starting… which was still 10 days before opening. Then, confident with the film and still under fire, they moved the screening for an early review date up by 5 days. About a dozen outlets, including the trades and some non-critics, saw the film and agreed to wait 3 days, to a specific date and time of day, to review. Two days later, every other “major” in NY and LA was able to see the film and the embargo was pretty much busted. The first “backlash,” which was not backlash at all, but an opinion of the film that felt compelled to point out – as my review did – some of the silly overreaching in the first wave of post-Travers reviews. Meanwhile, other reviews have been slowly leaking out.
I think WB had good intentions on this one. They were trying to offer some parity, still keep the junket system of features and quote whoring intact, and to help their movie. But I’m not sure this approach worked either. I was not the only one who was a bit put off by the intensity of and the metaphors used by the positive wave from the first group of reviews… but I got hit by the brunt of some very real anger by a few of those writers, who took the questioning of the wave quite personally. And the silliest takes – comparing it to Kubrick, which is wrong in concept, more than as a question of Nolan’s skills vs the legend – will be slapped away in many of the reviews still to come this week, no doubt.
In any case, I am not sure I have The Answer. it has been fairly pointed out that I have been the beneficiary of “special rules” through much of my online career and haven’t always complained in the midst of being allowed to write when others were not. But things change. For a long time, it was just about getting access as a web-based writer. Then there was a comfort hammock… and that comfort is still offered much of the time. But I am much more concerned now with the playing field being fair, overall, and with the idea of studios making active choices instead of just reacting to anger or frustration when one of these situations goes awry.
The confusion between The Work and the Release Date Of The Work has become a horrifying cacophony… or, if you will, caca phony. This is not just in criticism, but in all entertainment coverage. The freaky sense of entitlement runs in every direction. Studios allowing only the people they control who will deliver only the coverage they want – a junket – is actually reasonable to me. But quotes from junkets should signal the end of any embargo. There are enough people who will LOVE any movie that it is abusive to the notion of criticism for each studio to keep a passel of shills in their back pockets to be used at their own (in)discretion while silencing thsoe who aren’t aren’t eating free food, traveling, or feeling overly generous after spending time with talent that keeps them in their jobs. (I am NOT saying that all junketeers are whores or anything less than thoughtful. But some are. And the system is manipulative by design.)
And once the curtain goes up for reviews that the studios does not, in some way, control, all bets should be off. There is so much ego involved, but in the end, it’s not an ego issue… it is a business issue. And every time Columbia or whomever decides that “the trades can go days early,” they are directly damaging my business because they are giving the trades an unearned competitive advantage. Does it make or break my business or anyone else’s? No. But covering releases is a cooperative venture and if one side is getting all the benefits and controls it on whims, it’s not much of a relationship.
it’s a hard problem… because we all really want to be first. But the deep bowing over “first,” as embodied dramatically in the Miramax crapfest the last few days, is bad news and leads to horrible journalism.
Poll follows… not including “don’t care” because I know many of you think this is all masturbation… got it.
Awwwww…. Mannnnn… Pekar Dies.
He was human. He had battled cancer. He was 70.
I’m not sure why it never seemed like he would… die.
I have a deep and abiding love for people who seem both to have a screw loose and a remarkable clarity of vision. Pekar was one of those people. A great character of the world who never gave in to the idea of being a character.
Amazingly, the directors of American Splendor have a film coming out in a week or two… and with all due respect to The Extra Man and Kevin Kline’s performance, every press op will be a chance to talk about Harvey the rest of the way.
Sad.
So… A Child Anal Rapist Walks Out From Behind Bars….
I truly can’t figure out which position by the Swiss government is less morally sound…. refusing to extradite Roman Polanski, who has never denied the charges against him, has never been sentenced, and undeniably broke US law by fleeing the country OR holding a man in custody for 7 months only to let him walk without a single significant change in the material evidence against him over those 7 months.
In some ways, I think that holding him only to let hm go is worse. And then I think, well, the decision must be corrupt, to take this long. He was just another piece of art hidden in a Swiss bank for a while until the tariff could be settled.
This was, essentially, Polanski’s longest incarceration for this crime. True, it was less severe than being on I’m A Ceelebrity Get Me Out Of Here, but it was constraint. And sadly, it seems to have been criminal compared to what the California government would have done to him.
I am not thrilled about child anal rape being embraced as a victimless crime, which is something Polanski supporters refuse to come to terms with. But it’s not like the man has been able to spend the last 30+ years plying his high-profile, high-paying trade in the lap of luxury without paying any price greater than not coming to Los Angeles or New York to visit…. oh… right…
Twitter Flame Wars
I have been trying to use Twitter more aggressively in recent weeks. And for the most part, I have enjoyed it.
It seems to me that 140 characters is reductive by nature, but that the snappiness of it has its own charms… and weaknesses.
One thing I have not really understood is answering questions when people ask them. Twitter seems to be built for one answer at a time, but it seems quite deficient when it comes to back and forth.
In the last week, I have gotten into two flame wars. And I am embarrassed.
The take away? Flame wars are flame wars, via e-mail, IM, Twitter, bulletin board, blog comment space… wherever.
Anyway… I am curious about how others think things should be handled. I’m not saying that I will follow whatever advice the polling offers. But I would appreciate your insights, as denizens of the web.
Crossing The Line: Avengers Style
I gave Shia LeBouff and Megan Fox shite on this blog for crossing the line regarding what I think is appropriate to share with the media when it comes to the work process.
Today, it seems that Marvel’s Kevin Feige has gone all Fox-y, telling HitFix, in an EXCLUSIVE, that they are no longer interested in signing Edward Norton for The Avengers because of, “the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members.”
In another EXCLUSIVE at HitFix, Norton’s WME agent, Brian Swardstrom, responds passionately, basically claiming that there was no acrimony, they were close to a deal, and that this kiss-off was an unhappy surprise to them.
I don’t much care about The Avengers film and won’t until I see something from Marvel that really works other than the first Iron Man… which I had issues with, but can rationally see why it was beloved by many others. It has nothing to do with who broke the story, even if some people are incapable of seeing past their own ego in this regard.
Also, Edward Norton… or at least, his people… see me as a Norton basher because I have written about the phenomenon of him re-writing, re-cutting, taking over movies and then telling the world about it, showing some disrespect to the directors and writers he was working with… pretty much the kind of behavior that Feige was inferring.
And of course, Nikki Finke’s monthly threat to sue me is over… who else?… a tweet referring to WME.
Still, I think Feige crossed the line. When a producer or the head of a production studio or whatever his official role is right now, disses an actor publicly and infers they are too difficult to work with, it is a serious thing… much more serious than a role as one of 5 or 6 superheroes in a comic book movie.
When Morgan Creek’s Jim Robinson took down Lindsay Lohan and the letter “leaked”, that was the end of Lohan’s studio career, pending her cleaning up big time.
Obviously, nothing Feige is inferring about Norton is as serious or a huge surprise to the industry. But even if his agent, Swardstrom, is spinning like a mo-fo… even if the was contention (and I have no reason to believe that)… even if there was some reason to think that Norton was going to end up being unreasonable (and I have no reason to believe that either), Feige taking it public is extremely uncool.
It’s even worse that some of the bad-mouthing that has come Norton’s way after productions wrapped. (And let me point out now… I took Norton’s side after reporting the American History X drama and have had a number of direct conversations with directors and others who have LOVED working with him and find him to be as loyal as any actor could be.) Because snarking about perceived bad behavior that can be seen as insulting to others who worked on a project is not the same as saying, in essence, “We couldn’t even hire this guy.”
No one wins litigation in this town… it’s lose/lose. But I think this is actionable, even if it will never turn into an action.
