The Hot Blog Archive for August, 2010
Battleship: Movie Without Stars Being Questioned
I was reading the overreported, underconsidered, overly complicated story in The Hollywood Reporter about Battleship, Universal’s most expensive greenlight since the “new” regime took over and it struck me how simple this really is.
It’s not the board game. It’s not the stars. It’s the trailer… and then, the movie.
Battleship, the game, will not sell a single ticket… even less so than GI Joe, which lost money with a $302m ww gross, but is now being sequelized. Transformers would have made some money because of love for the tv show and toys… but could never have grossed what it grossed without people seeing pieces of what Bay made and saying, “cooool.” And with due respect, if you really believe that Shia LaBeouf or Megan Fox sold the tickets to that movie, you need your head examined.
But if the trailer delivers the first great sea battles we have seen in modern/CG movie history, as Pirates of the Caribbean broke the pirate movie curse and made non-box office Johnny Depp a major box office star, so can it be with Battleship.
Let’s not dwell on the rote repetition of the false notion that Waterworld lost money. It didn’t. It was a big hit overseas… one of the first big budget movies to be saved by the rest of the world. But it is fair to wonder in print whether Universal, which was the slowest studio in getting its budgets in line with the post-DVD-boom economy of Hollywood, is putting itself in harm’s way again here.
One thing the story doesn’t quite have the balls to say is… it may not really matter either way. But more on that in a moment.
A $200 million movie really needs to do about $400 million worldwide before it starts closing in on black ink. I am a fan of Peter Berg, but he’s only even come close once… with the biggest star in the world working with him.
Of course, the obvious, as someone pointed out last night, is that the actors are not the stars of these movies. So Berg and Adam Fogelson, marketer-turned-studio head need to KNOW they can deliver something that can at least promise Cameron/Spielberg/Bay/Emmerich-level visual excitement. If they do not, it will bomb and Comcast will fire everyone. And if they do, it will be a big hit… and Comcast will (probably) fire everyone.
And on we go.
Truly Idiotic Trend Story Of The Week: One Is A Trend
Shouldn’t someone as smart as Michael Cieply be embarrassed to crap this out onto the unsuspecting public. With all due respect, if Robert J. Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University knew the first thing about Hollywood, he wouldn’t be stuck in the snow in bloody Syracuse.
I see this piece of trend-desperate masturbation as a story not remotely about Hollywood, but about how hungry media is to made noise… even the frickin’ New York Times.
17 years ago, the story of the summer was that Steven Spielberg took a big risk on an expensive movie with a cheap cast called Jurassic Park. 3 years later, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin did likewise with Independence Day.
Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sir Richard Attenborough starred. Miami Vice’s Martin Ferrero and Wayne Knight were well known from TV. Samuel L Jackson was in a small role, but by the time the movie came out, his first studio film as a lead, Amos & Andrew, had been released.
But compared to the excellent, but not well known cast of Scott Pilgrim… ha… hugely famous group. And again… Jurassic was understood as being unique because it was an ensemble not made up of ANY box office stars.
Independence Day was the same… but the cast list was even more impressive. Goldblum again, but a budding Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell, Judd HIrsch, Robert Loggia, Randy Quaid, Vivica A. Fox, and Data… for starters.
But all non-openers at the time.
And as we cruised through the 80s and 90s, bringing in international names to fill smaller roles to get funding became all the rage.
With all consideration given that many great actors who show up in Red, the movie is four stars deep… and the only one who can actually open a movie is Bruce Willis.
It’s great that Stallone got his buddies to cameo in his action version of Ocean’s 11 meets The Dirty Dozen, but it’s about as much of a trend as putting unshaven Scots in romantic comedies opposite blondes or Ed Asner adventure movies made for kids and kids of all ages.
The only real ensemble smashes of the last two years were He’s Just Not That Into You and Valentine’s Day, aka Love American Style: The Motion Picture. But it was WB’s skill at pushing the gush button for women that made those terrible movies go… not the endless ensembles… both of which included much more high profile stars than any of the other examples in this article, aside from The Expendables.
No trend here… just the most important newspaper in the world shooting itself in the foot for no reason… you can all move along.
Review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Scott Pilgrim vs The World is just about perfect. Someone else could make it different, but I
43 Comments »Once More Into The Idiocy
Remember when journalists could be counted on to act like adults in print?
Sorry… you asked for it… you got it… over.
The quickly fading Nikki Finke has revved her gossip machine in these slow news weeks of August, contributing an irrelevant in-house memo from DreamWorks Animation for no purpose other than to pretend she has the power to slap Jeffrey Katzenberg and today, it’s a load of politically correct bullshit about Mark Gordon.
Of course, Blazing Saddles would be harder to get made today than an intimate drama with a $100 million budget, because people are more interested in not offending anyone than they are at laughing at racism. The best of Richard Pryor would be pathetically marginalized.
Mark Gordon, for whatever reasons, decided to “recreate” the scene in the film in which Cleavon Little takes himself hostage after a hostile reception by the citizens of Rock Ridge. It’s a fantastically funny scene. I don’t know if Gordon did it justice.
Of course, anyone who likes the movie knows that the word “nigger” is not the most insensitive thing in that bit. It’s when Little takes on the character of the hostage – “Oh, lordy, lord, he’s desp’rate! Do what he say, do what he say!” – in full period ebonics, pure Stephen Fetchit material.
And it’s funny.
I don’t know if the bit was written by Richard Pryor, who won the WGA Award that year with the five other writers of the film, but it is funny as hell… and whip smart.
In my life, I have been known to often recreate Blazing Saddles scenes – “Hedley… HEDley!” and “How did he do those stunts with such tiny feet?” are amongst the regulars – including the most politically incorrect ones, like – from the same scene – “The Sheriff is a…” bit, “Up yours, nigger” from the little old lady, “Bitte baby. I am NOT from Havana,” and the “old nigger work song” bit. Oh.. and the person in my life who shares this fetish with me more than any other? My best friend, Ed… or as he is often known by publicists asking about my former camera man, “the black guy.”
I know there are people who have very strong feelings that the word “nigger” must never be uttered again. I say, fear of language makes language much stronger than it needs to be.
So fuck Nikki for taking this minor episode and trying to tar and feather Mark Gordon, who seems to be as well regarded, as a human, as any producer in this business. Maybe he should have been sensitive to the oversensitivity to language. But this doesn’t even sound like he was doing what some people do when they feel they have a free pass to behave badly because, say, they helped create the opportunity for a female writer to become a mega-millionaire behind the scenes as a showrunner on a show about a rich white girl. It sounds like he was making a fairly accurate reference to one of the funniest movies in film history.
This is a piece of shit move by a piece of shit person who uses this kind of bottom feeding to make a reputation as a “truth teller.”
Utter bullshit.
DP/30 – Peepli Live, producer Aamir Khan
What happens when one of the biggest stars on the planet – yeah, Bollywood superstars are seen by more people than stars here at home – decides to do something more ambitious than being a star? He produces films like Peepli Live, which may be as familiar as Sturges and Capra to Americans, but are considered cutting edge for Indian cinema. Our chat follows…
mp3 of the conversation
Blu Balls – Get On Your 1985… Just In Time For Thanksgiving
I believe the only previous Blu release of this cult classic was in Europe.
Review – Eat Pray Love
“God’s not interested in watching a performance of how a “spiritual person” looks and behaves. The Quiet Girl who glides silently though the place with a gentle, ethereal smile — who is that person? It’s Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St Mary’s. Not me.”
This line, from the second act of Eat Pray Love pretty much stands as the best possible review of the film. You can smell the deep sincerity of the book while watching the film, which utterly fails – until one scene near the end – to deliver a deeply honest moment.
The pieces of the puzzle all feel pretty much right on. Casting was fine. They had a great cinematographer. It’s an interesting story.
But while this is a big step from his first feature… while I love his TV shows… Ryan Murphy is still unable to deliver honest emotion on the big screen. The movie ends up being exactly what it’s origins wanted not to be… a travelogue with a whinny, seemingly wealthy, white woman who spends all of her time complaining when all she needs to do it to appreciate everything the audience is watching her have.
I can read one page of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book and get her edge and the intimacy she brought to the page. I just kept waiting for it in the movie. Speeches about allowing oneself to live are pure Sex & The City. Weak.
The movie really lost me when it finally started hitting pay dirt and still failed us. Richard Jenkins is glorious to watch. And he delivers a second act speech that should have brought the house down. But Murphy simply has no idea how to shoot it to get his emotions on camera. There is a chill, as we seem to watch him melt down while the director was mostly concerned with making sure Julia was present in the scene. Argh!
Thing is, Billy Crudup is excellent. Jenkins is excellent. Hadi Subiyanto is terrific as Medicine Man Katut. Bardem is brilliant (even if miscast as a father of teens). And except for the one scene with Bardem where she really brings it, Julia Roberts is left hanging by a director that didn’t demand more of her.
It did occur to me while watching that Soderbergh would have slaughtered this material. It might have been a masterpiece. Strip it down. Make it real.
By the time that a real estate agent does his movie rationalization that Julia can live in paradise and it doesn’t cost that much because there had been a bombing or something… ARGH!!!
A thought that occurred to me a couple of times during the movie was the sound and image of Oprah yelling enthusiastically about this or that in that two octave foghorn way that has been imitated so much in the last couple of years. tommmm CRUUUUUSE!
But there must have been when it started, complete sincerity in her excitement. But then, it became schtick. That is how I felt about this movie.
I don’t want to piss on the joy of others. And like any beloved book with a pretty film version, there will be fans of this film, in spite of its flaws. And bless them. I hope they enjoy he hell out of it.
I was, mostly, frustrated.
Need Your Help
MCN G2 will be launching in a couple of weeks and one of the new elements will be a lot more room for more voices. In particular, I am looking for indie voices and critics who you think are indispensable.
Not all your suggestions are assured of being included. Not every suggestion will be used in the same way… there are different tools for different kinds of info.
So, if you want to help, please offer up links here or by e-mail. And if you can, please include the RSS feed info for the sites you offer up. It’s been one of the real surprises of this process… finding out how poorly RSSed the world is. MCN is certainly one such example. But not for much longer.
Thanks,
D
A Bit More More NetFlix Detail
Looking through the Netflix quarterlies, I noticed that the line, “Acquisition of streaming content library” didn’t even exist until this quarter.
The line, $66m and change, is more than 6x what is now being reported under the category from the same quarter a year ago.
As reported elsewhere, in this last quarter, this is 1.7x the amount they spent on acquiring DVDs. But even more interesting, this is a 44% drop in the cost of acquiring DVDs for their library, quarter to quarter, which sets off some alarms. Even looking longer term – 6 months of 2010 vs 6 months of 2009 – there is a 32% drop.
Now, throw in the Relativity and Epix deals and the streaming number more than doubles again (most likely by next quarter… there may be steps and quarterly variations to both deals) to over $135m a quarter… over half-a-billion a year. And this becomes less than 20% of the NetFlix business model.
The company netted $115m on almost $1.7 billion in revenues last year. And now, they are looking at a 30% increase in their operating cost… which may eventually force a shift completely out of the DVD side of the business… if the returns on sending DVDs in the mail get further marginalized by shipping costs and lagging interest.
So again… giant brass balls. Full steam ahead.
Edited. 5p – But keeping Starz is the next big challenge. NetFlix just raised the stakes big time with Starz, which is currently delivering two major studios content… more premium content than the Relativity deal and the Epix deal combined and being paid a bit more than the Relativity deal. Can NetFlix spend another $400 million a year to keep Starz and to give Starz enough revenue to entice Disney into sticking with the program for another chunk of years? Magic Eight Ball says, “No.”
In there Quarterly conference call, Disney suggested that they considered a deal directly with NetFlix before renewing with Starz a few months ago. But they decided that Starz was the better deal overall. Every indication is that Sony is happy with Starz as well.
Even more interesting was the comment, not elaborated on, that if Disney is streaming at NetFlix, they will make more money if NetFlix continues to thrive, taking the next big growth step. Interesting.
And if NetFlix jettisons Starz, what do they have? Paramount, Lionsgate, and what they have of MGM, which will not lnclude either Hobbit or Bond when push comes to shove,
I am just fascinated by the chess game here, because NetFlix is the first serious streaming player and could well be killed by its choice to be innovative. Or maybe it becomes a whole different level of rock star. What it is unlikely to be, given these moves, is to be a middle-of-the road company. It will not be Blockbuster, fighting for its piece of a dying light. It going to go big or go home.
Fun to watch.
MGM/Spyglass
Nothing much new to report on this.
According to the Wall Street Journal, MGM will be revalued at around $1.9 billion… which makes the value of the studio less than half of the nearly $5 billion valuation that Kerkorian sold for in 2004. But we all kinda knew that. Big writedowns coming for the creditors.
Spyglass brings what they own of their library into the MGM fold and gets stock worth, by the $1.9b valuation, $76 million for their trouble.
Spyglass could increase its stake if it successfully re-builds the studio’s production side.
And there is still the possibility that MGM could bring in Summit, Lionsgate or someone else for a merger. At the $1.9 billion price, the library and the active assets (Hobbit/Bond) seem more reasonable to consider. But it seems very unlikely that Spyglass is going down this road just to be pushed out by someone else in the fall. Even more so, it is unlikely that the creditors who are eating $2 billion-plus this fall are going to be anxious to sell the reduced asset off in a hurry. If they wanted a fire sale, they would have had one by now.
My guess is that they will commit their $76m in paper and at least $100m in cash to start the $500m production fund they need to get the first 3 key projects going (remember, they are co-funding Hobbit) and a bit left over for a small slate.Or they may go deeper into the well, using the big projects as leverage to secure $500m in cash and a $500m credit line, so they can start looking at a 2-year slate.
Of course, Lionsgate was never going to happen and unless Spyglass can’t get money – which would be a surprise – they don’t need Summit.
Look for Sony to be distributing the next Bond, Hobbit to move forward in late fall (probably directed by PJ) and to be distributed by WB, and for Spyglass/MGM to make an overall distribution deal at either Disney or Sony by Thanksgiving.
