Trailer – Black Swan (aka Single Black Fem-Swan or Swan-y White Female)

Poll du Jour – Is Passed Along E-Mail Really Journalism?

First Direct For Your Consideration Oscar Pitch Of The Year

Too long, but…

Oy, Patrick or Why Journalists Have To Stop Trying To Embrace The Future When They Have Forgotten The Past

I don’t dislike Patrick Goldstein. I really don’t. But he has kinda become my personal poster child for the Old Media being too enthusiastic about New Media because they choose to believe that every kind of media is the same. So, the record business got screwed up, so movies have to go the same way… and fast.
Being wrong, however, is not what gets me riled up. It’s when he makes arguments – and he is certainly not alone – that are false on their face… and he has to know it.
In this column on – again – the inevitable death of movie theaters:
“While nearly everything is different about the way we now consume much of our music, TV and news, the moviegoing experience is largely unchanged from the way our grandparents saw films 75 years ago,”
False.
Let’s skip right over the broadest argument… that we have been eating, fighting, and having sex is pretty much the same way since long before our great great great grandparents were born… and it seems to still be working.
Ahem.
If you limit your insight to “images are projected onto a screen in a big room,” okay. But the fact is, 75 years ago, theaters were massive compared to today, left over from – and often still sharing the stage with – theater. There was no TV… no computers… no home entertainment aside from 78s and radio. People went to the movies and often stayed for hours and hours, sitting through multiple films and shorts and newsreels, etc.
But just focusing on the theatrical experience; we go to one film at a time now, in relatively small theaters with relatively large screens, quality projection and sound (compared to just 20 years ago), often in the midst of malled shopping areas.
Going to the movies is not the same experience at all.
“what will happen when the studio’s scarcity model inevitably undergoes a seismic change?”
It already has, Patrick.
First, there was TV. Then VHS. Then DVD. And now digital delivery.
What Patrick fails to acknowledge – and he has to know this after covering this industry all these years – is that in the last two seismic shifts, Hollywood made the decisions that formed its future, for better or for worse,
He writes, “A few short years ago, Blockbuster was as powerful a force as any studio in the movie business.” Uh, bullshit.
Blockbuster was then, as Netflix is now, a smart business using an opportunity in partnership with the studios. Blockbuster was never a content creator. It was in the business of distributing one part of the product chain… and in one particular way.
Broad strokes here…
It started with The Industry deciding to make VHS a two-tiered business. High priced sell-thru, really to retard direct customer sales, and low-priced rentals. The businesses that were renting out VHS tapes paid the higher price (Say, $79.95), rented for, say $4 for 3 days. So the studio made money right away and the rental business made money after the 20th rental or so. Long windows,as there were for pay-TV and super-long for broadcast TV.
Next gen was with Blockbuster… the studios making even more on VHS rental. They basically colluded with the giant rental company to flood the rental market with copies of films, for which Blockbuster paid much lower rates per unit, and in turn, the studios got paid – for the most part – on the rentals as well as the sold product. Windows got shorter.
VHS sell-thru reared its head in earnest with Batman in 1989… released in June… on the market, at $15 a pop, for Thanksgiving. A five month window for a big hit was unheard of. But it was a massive success and allowed WB to get benefits in two different quarters. It also shortened Batman’s theatrical life to, basically, 2 months. That became the new standard.
Then DVD came along and The Industry decided that sell-thru was the way to maximize revenues. And they were right. At $15 a pop – who buys retail? – it was like crack. New product flew off the shelves, but so did the only libraries. DVD was a real quality step forward for the at-home experience. People wanted it. And they wanted their favorite films and shows at their fingertips. Quickly, the net revenues from DVD outdid theatrical. And the windows got shorter again because the lust for the cash was overwhelming.
However, this was the beginning of the end for Blockbuster. Rental space and sales space battled within the stores. Adding to the problem was Amazon and even the brick & mortar retailers. If you were a DVD buyer, no reason to go to Blockbuster at all. And don’t forget, Blockbuster fought hard against sell-thru. They knew exactly how deadly it would be.
While this was happening, by the way, theaters were shuttering all over America, as the oversized houses and long-standing rentals agreements were killing exhibitors. From the ashes came new theaters with very few houses over 500 seats and most theaters in the 250- 350 range in multiplexes of anywhere from 8 theaters to 24 (sometimes more).
This ushered in a whole new way of frontloading the box office, expanding the number of screening rooms in a theater running a movie to fit the size of the audience or anticipated audience. This was great for the big studio films… and a big problem for smaller films with smaller marketing budgets and for long runs. 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the last of it kind for that reason, not because of quality or anything else about the movies themselves.
Every single year, ticket sales dropped by 1.5% – 3%. Part of this was the short windows. Well liked films that audiences might have “gotten around to” were no longer in theaters by the time they reach what was probably the last 10% – 15% of the audience. Studios didn’t care. The last $10 million on a $100 million domestic grosser meant another $4 million or less coming back to the studio (the old shifting rentals system) and holding off on DVD for another month or two meant waiting on another $60m – $120m in net revenues. No patience in Corporate America.
And now that the DVD business has matured into much smaller numbers and the Next Big Thing that is digital delivery is out there, again we wait for The Industry to decide what it’s going to do. Thing is, they seem to understand that there is no Next DVD staring them in the face. So there is a lot more panic going on. “They” don’t feel in control.
But as before, every choice The Industry makes is directly and clearly connected to What Comes Next.
What Patrick and many other Chicken Littles out there seem to miss completely is that each transition has been either forced by a real financial threat or by the opportunity of increased revenue. Theatrical exhibition is not threatening the post-theatrical markets or the health of the industry. Spending habits developed in the DVD boom era is the only threat. And as far as New Opportunity… the notion that digital delivery with create revenues that match current post-theatrical, much less match both theatrical and post-theatrical… there is ZERO indication of that at this time.
Models do not just collapse randomly. HDTVs did not eliminate old tube TVs until cable and satellite and programmers were providing enough content to make them hugely attractive AND the price became commensurate with the tube TVs. A win for consumers. A win for TV sales overall. And for programming creators, a chance to sell their stuff one more time.
Alice in Wonderland did solid DVD sales with a short window… but it also did massive theatrical. Would there have been any more profit in a day-n-day home ent release with no theatrical? Unlikely. And until that answer is, “yes,” theatrical isn’t going anywhere.
And if theatrical ever does go mostly away, it will be a choice by The Industry. I’d say that’s a 95% bet. You always have to acknowledge that something freaky can happen. And it could. But theatrical will not die of its own weakness… not from bad movies.. or expensive popcorn… or even too-expensive 3D. It will die when The industry kills it. Count on it.

My Toronto List Starts – The Fictional Narratives (38)

Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh
It’s Mike Leigh.
The Bang Bang Club, directed by Steven Silver
Can a feature capture the raw energy of the real war photographers. Expect it to be gripping or a 20 minute walkout, never to be spoken of again.
Barney’s Version, directed by Richard J. Lewis
Sounds like a time-leaping sequel to Duddy Kravitz. I’ll watch Giamatti as a crabby Jew any day of the week.
Beginners, directed by Mike Mills
I was not a huge Thumbsucker fan, but I love Chris Plummer and am interested in seeing anything in which he acts.
Biutiful, directed by Alejandro Gonz

Hulu IPO?

Okay… here’s why the Hulu IPO seems safer, in principle, than Netflix right now.
1. The business is owned by 3 studios.
2. The television archives are still less worn out that the film archives.
3. Assuming the three partner companies are on board, price competition should not make content costs prohibitive.
4. Hulu has established the idea of limited commercials as a viable business. I, for one, don’t think it will interfere with their pay model. And there might be an even higher monthly price point that eliminates commercials and actually increases net revenues.
What’s interesting about a $2b IPO is that this may be a move by Hulu to become the only television rerun streamer… which these days may mean being the only source of reruns, aside from DVD, period.
How much might they be willing to pay Viacom, Time-Warner, and Sony to come aboard? Would the current ownership allow the other studios to be equity partners?
This would be the unified model. Can Netflix be the unified home of feature film streaming? They seem to be trying to pay their way out of that model, not giving up chunks of equity. Another strategy.

Relative Unknown (Oh, Those Siblings!) Grabs Hot "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" Role

Sony’s love affair with all things Social Network continues, with Rooney Mara, the 2 years younger sister of Kate Mara, grabbing the lead of the The Girl With… series, which is expected to be The Next Big Thing.
The second photo, from Dare, might look a little more apropos of the role. I am told she is meant to be 4′ 11″… which she is not. Based on group red carpet photos, she seems to be at least 5′ 5″. But height would be a silly reason to cast anyone but an elf.

My Toronto List Starts – The Docs (18)

L’ Amour fou, directed by Pierre Thoretton
The second recent doc on Yves St Laurent… this time, it includes his lover… which is what made the Valentino doc so big.
Armadillo, directed by Janus Metz
Winner of Cannes Critics Week… reason enough to see it and to fear it.
Boxing Gym, directed by Frederick Wiseman
Wiseman. Must see.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, directed by Werner Herzog
Herzog Goes 3D… and glows in the dark.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, directed by Alex Gibney
And we in the media won’t even have to pay!
Cool It, directed by Ondi Timoner
Ondi goes global warming.
Erotic Man/Det erotiske menneske, directed by J

Endangered Chocolate

In my gift bag for doing a panel for The Feel Good Film Festival last night in Hollywood, there was a heavy box. On the outside, it said “chocolate.” This morning, my wife and I opened it and… wow…

At first, I thought it was a mounted chocolate rat head… but yes, it is a koala…

“Vanishing Creatures Chocolates was started through a passion for art, animals, and an awareness of the planet’s disappearing habitats. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the conservation of these vanishing creatures.”
And after you’ve eaten your chocolate, the box turns into a floating candle. Crunchy.

More Anything Anywhere

I was reading Sam Schechner’s Wall Street Journal piece, Cable Firms Eye Tablet Space, pointed there by the MCN front page, which was linking to the LA Times Company Town blog – ah, magic of the interwebs – and I thought, “Here is a smart guy who has done the reporting and he’s burying the lead.”
It doesn’t bloody matter whether the cable companies are “eyeing” tablets or any other non-TV-set delivery. The battle over all of this is, and will be for the next few years, about who owns the rights to deliver what content via what delivery systems.
It’s not that negotiations for rights are slow… it’s that they cost a lot more than any cable provider has, so far, shown themselves to be willing to spend. This will surely change, in principle, when Comcast owns NBC/Universal. But the math of it… things may be slower in changing for the consumer when you have have companies scrambling to stay in business/evolve into the new model, like Netflix, paying huge premiums for streaming content.
Disney is a perfect example of this. They are very committed to the future of digital delivery, but their deal with Starz, if Starz re-ups with Netflix, is so fat, not doing the deal would just be obstinate. According to Iger, in the quarterly conference call, they explored a direct relationship with Netflix and found that the Starz deal was “better” for them.
It’s not that this piece doesn’t get to the conclusion that rights are the real issues. It just blurs the basic issue enough for people to be confused about what is really happening.
The one thing that made me start thinking hard was:
“Some distributors are trying to get around the issue by offering services where they say they have existing rights. Dish Network is integrating video-watching ability into its existing TV-remote app by tapping into a technology called Slingbox that it already offers in a pricier set-top box. Slingbox, owned by sister company EchoStar Corp., currently gives users access to shows and recordings on their home set-top boxes from computer Web browsers and mobile phones.”
Slingbox.
Hmmmm…
SLINGBOX!
This is the giant loophole in the machinery. Looking on the web, I can’t find a single significant lawsuit against Slingbox for “site shifting” content. But those rights have not been seen as very valuable until lately. One of the most progressive businesses in site shifting in Major League Baseball and apparently, they made a stink about Slingbox in 2007… but never sued or got their material blocked from Slingbox.
So if I buy Slingbox, do I need to pay $50 a season for the NFL streaming package, which won’t allow me to watch the first weekend of games from Canada while I am at the Toronto Film Festival? Obviously, I am in a very, very narrow group with this issue. But I exist. And as site shifting becomes more mainstreamed, my niche will expand significantly.
More significantly, how do rights owners keep the cable nets from site shifting by way of their own web tools if they are allowing Slingbox to continue to operate unchallenged?
Hulu has already figured out that it needs to be more than a place for recent reruns if it is to remain an entity of value. It is now the depth of content, which cannot be replaced by a Slingbox and your DVR, that is their signature. But the value of “first rerun” is real. A $300 Slingbox means never having to pay $2 (or whatever amount) to watch a show at the gym again. (Note, however, that Slingbox is still not on iPad… which is kinda shocking, really. Seems like an obvious step.)
Is streaming something being broadcast actually rebroadcasting it? Does it matter if you aren’t charging a fee for the service, but just an equipment fee?
I think it’s pretty clear that using your cable/satellite box as the receiver and the web – via Slingbox or any other tool – to make that available to others who are not in your household, is against the law. But Slingbox, used as prescribed, is probably covered by personal use rules. And a cable/satellite company could claim that each subscriber is only getting personal use out of web delivery to other devices, so…
In some ways, it’s so simple. In some ways, not. We still live in a world where I can’t download music from Europe via iTunes because the rights haven’t been worked out.
And Comcast may be the central figure in all of this, as they become fully invested in being both a distributor and a content provider. Time -Warner is already there, but differently, as they aren’t invested in a Big 4 broadcast network. And they have, with HBO, both tried different kinds of post-first-run delivery for their shows and avoided others that you might expect them to exploit.
I still think the next big move is to a more distinctive use of much narrower rights, followed by some very specific kinds of advertising models directed to specific kinds of audiences who pay different amounts for different kinds of access.
The challenge seems to be, for now, maintaining value in each of the areas of exploitation against a tide of technological change. When will the lawsuits start? Well, that is always when the tipping point in these things gets defined, no? As soon as corporations think enough money is coming out of their pockets to make it worthy of their attention.

DP/30: State of The Union Classic – Barker & Bernard Talk SPC

Sunday Estimates by Klady, Klady, Klady, Klady… Also Starring…

For some reason, The Expendables opening reminds me of S.W.A.T. Completely different marketing roads, on the surface, but also retro, also early August, also opening in the 30s. Strong. The real fireworks, however, may be overseas, where almost every one of these actors is worth big money and where those values linger for years after the slow to a crawl here at home.
Eat Pray Love opened fine. It is not a phenom, a la Sex & The City or half of The Da Vinci Code, but it seems rather silly to mourn a $23 million opening – Roberts’ best big-head opener in a decade in which she took a lot of time off for family – just because another film serving a completely separate demographic opened on the same weekend. This is the price we pay for too many people with too little real interest in box office covering this aspect of the industry.
The ComicCon Curse hit Scott Pilgrim vs The World. And before the pitchforks come out, let me be clear about what I mean by this. ComicCon is a wonderful event… but extremely niche. What was, for me, The Geek 8, has become The Geek 12. This refers to what this niche can bring to an opening, with rare exceptions. Marketers have started going to ComicCon and thinking that this secures The Geek 12… and really, most of them thing it spreads more widely than that because of media coverage. But they are wrong.
Scott Pilgrim was one of the superstars of ComicCon ’10… and didn’t even get The Geek 12. Brutal. I felt Universal did a very good job marketing to the niche, probably getting hurt by date this weekend, with The Expendables leaping to First Choice for some who would have otherwise gone to Pilgrim. What is clear, however, is that they mined very little outside of the niche.
You can blame it on the material. Unlike Kick-Ass, which had the element of being a superhero satire on some level and the violent, foul-mouthed pre-teen as a big comedy element (drawing rage from those who didn’t find it funny), Pilgrim is well-defined by its lead actor, Michael Cera, his humor being about slow pacing, off-rhythms, and surprises coming from his gentle demeanor. Marketers cannot sell that.
So in a case like this, it’s either find a way in that misleads about the film or sell what you have and suffer the consequences. Universal seems to have chosen the latter. And that’s what many civilians and nearly all the media claim they prefer… until a movie’s opening seems soft (this number is, for this material, pretty decent), when we forget that the studio behaved honorably towards the public and the film and just pile on to the number. Yes, some do both. But it takes twice as many column inches.
Inception passed Shrek Forever After this weekend.
Toy Story 3 passed $400m domestic and cracked the all-time Top Ten for worldwide box office with over $940 million. It’s looking possible that Disney, with the help of 3D pricing, could be the first studio in history to have two billion dollar movies in the same year. (It’s worth noting also that both films were from the previous regime of Dick Cook and Oren Aviv.)
This is probably a good moment to quickly mention that the worldwide gross of Shrek 2, the previous animated champ, plus 25% for the 3D bump, would be $1.15b box office, which TS3 probably will not hit. Acknowledged. But I don’t think it is fair to tarnish the achievement of TS3 in any way because of it. We don’t know what would have happened without 3D. Perhaps some people would have gone back more times because it was cheaper. All conjecture. We might as well get into “Well, what if TS3 was released mid-May, like Shrek 2.” It’s a bit of a wank. Still, it is a tiny part of the perspective and worth noting.
The Kids Are All Right, the summer’s Dependent/Independent/Arty leader, is on the now-traditional platform downslope , heading to just over $20 million. (Searchlight’s “urban” comedy Just Wright will probably be the top Dependent grosser this summer.) After these two, Babies and Cyrus are in the $7m range, and over $4m but under $5m are The Girl Who Played With Fire, Winter’s Bone, Solitary Man, and I Am Love.
That market’s result this summer are shaped a bit differently than last year, but seems to be about the same size, in terms of audiences. And of course, there will be disagreements about which films to include in the grouping. Does Ponyo, released by Disney, go into the arthouse category? Are Summit and Lionsgate movies relevant to this group if they are chasing teens? Anyway, this summer looks reasonably similar for people out looking for smart, adult non-major kinds of films.

Friday Estimates By Inexpendible Pray-dy Klady

My take on The Expendables was… Alien vs Predator. Old franchises made over and sold as new. Freddy vs Jason. And that is about the range where Stallone’s biggest rivival film at Lionsgate will land. Opening between $33m and $37m and totaling out domestically in the 70s or 80s. The real big question on this one is what the international ends up being worth. Liosngate won’t participate in it, except for in the UK. But for the movie… for Stallone… and for all the others… will this film do double what it does here overseas or will it, as would be more typical, do just slightly better over there than over here? That’s the story that will be most interesting here.
Eat, Pray, Love will do slightly better opening than Julie & Julia. Seems to fit. I’m sure that a lot of people expected bigger and better. It is, of course, idiotic to somehow make this about Julia Roberts’ star power, given that this will be her 4th best career opener as a lead… and two of the three bigger ones had then-box-office co-stars. (And one of those, btw, was seen as being soft when it happened too… The Expectations Game.)
I actually think this film is suffering a little from the critics. Older women, the primary audience, are one of the groups that actually listens to the critical buzz unless they are completely clear on what’s coming (Sex & The City). In the case of Julie & Julia, $20m became $94m domestically. Sony will eat and pray on that.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World will double Edgar Wright’s previous best openings here in America, thought to be fair to Focus, the ad buys were not nearly as big. Still, it’s a Snakes on a Plane ($13.8m) kinda opening. Obviously, I like this movie better than I liked Snakes, which I enjoyed. But films open on marketing, not the movie. And it is hard to convince anyone that this film is more than the niche product it appears to be. So the budget on the film can be legitimately questioned.
On the other hand, where was Nikki Whisperer Ron Meyer, crediting Despicable Me to Mark Shmuger as he has chosen to place blame on Shmuger – AGAIN – here? With due respect to Donna Langley and Adam Fogelson, they didn’t turn up at Universal from some other planet. And either did Ron Meyer. I am aware that everyone is concerned about being unemployed when Comcast finally takes over. But isn’t a nasty piece of work to keep playing this blame game… especially on a movie that the studio seems genuinely proud of and which has gotten some real raves? Is it really appropriate for the boss to throw Edgar Wright under the bis while covering his backside? Couldn’t we wait until the movie is done, much less released, before trying to blame Paul Weitz for the third Fockers film being a wreck?
Entourage got it right this week. If you have dirt to air and don’t want anyone ot question it, you have a place that’s more than happy to do it for you… though I fully expect “Ari Gold” to do as his namesake does and to bury it will the offer of more dirt down the road.
But I digress…
Even as it has fallen out of the US Top Ten, Toy Story 3 has become the #1 worldwide grossing animated film of all time this week. Yes, 3D bump… yadda yadda. And according to Bob Iger on their quarterly conference call, the merchandising has been equally impressive… and thus, even more valuable to the company. Big win.
Inception continues to chug along. The #5 film of the year continues on that pace, as it really has from the beginning. It will/has crack(ed) $500 million worldwide this weekend, passing Clash of the Titans on the year’s worldwide chart. WB should just about break even, noting their distribution fee, in worldwide theatrical, while their financing partners will have to wait a few months for the DVD release to do so. Still, a real success story… but very, very hard to duplicate.

What can journalists do better?

“Preparation. Having some journalistic and quality standards. I can’t remember the last time I had a(n) interview where I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of questioning and knowledge of the interviewer. When something has to be written/taped quickly about the day’s/week’s events, media has no choice but to talk out of their [rear ends] because having an uninformed opinion and winging it is always better than choosing not to participate. Being left out means you probably lose your job. Worse still, media lives off the brands they built for themselves in the pre-blog/Twitter/Facebook era. If you were a good reporter in 2002, fans probably think you still are, and treat your opinions as facts.”
Mark Cuban… with 3 minor edits to remove the specific references to sports reporting.
He made the comment in response to the title question, put to him by Dan LeBatard, sportswriter at the Miami Herald.
The piece LeBatard wrote is getting a lot of play in sportswriting circles. But we in entertainment media should be looking at it too.
He’s getting flack because of the first half of the story, in which he kinda throws sportswriters overboard a bit too callously. Then again, he’s not wrong. “Talent” has to answer a lot of stupid questions and there is absolutely a tendency in today’s media to blow stuff up into an ISSUE at the drop of a minor epithet. He is right that smart players end up not saying what they think… and we all lose when that happens. We only hear from the flacks and the big mouths who just want to heat themselves talk.
At the end, LeBatard also does a riff about fear amongst sports reporters… fairly high end guys toiling on national television…
Stephen A. Smith, ESPN’s Chris Broussard and I all reported early that LeBron James was coming to Miami.
As the moment arrived, all of us were terrified. Smith says he never wants to cover a story like that again. Broussard looked haunted on national TV.
And I, allegedly a grown man, wanted to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere. Just out of fear of being wrong and ridiculed.
This wasn’t in the action, mind you.
This wasn’t taking a big shot in Game 7. We were on the periphery of the arena, near the doer of deeds.
And we’re the same guys who accuse athletes of being soft in big moments.
Maybe I’m offering this because speaking out loud about these issues seems to bore or irritate some people. But I hear it, privately, all the time. And I find it an unpleasant atmosphere in which to do my work, which I am fortunate to be able to continue doing in spite of the current wave of unfortunate ideas about the profession.

BYOB Friday The 13th