Delivelution Shorty 72011

CBS adds another $100 million a year for streaming old tv shows… and still can do syndication or more deals. That’s $200m from Amazon and Netflix alone, each seeking to buy or maintain legitimacy.

Are a million people signing up to Netflix to see Star Trek and Frasier?

THR reports

Review: Captain America (1 Spoiler Section, well marked)

I kinda love the sepia-spirited movie that Joe Johnston made out of Captain America, one of my favorite Marvel characters growing up.

I kinda hate the commercial for Avengers that Marvel wrapped the film in and for me, pretty close to ruins the last 15-20 minutes of the film for me.

So where does that leave me?

The movie opens with the discovery by modern means of Cap’s shield under a load of ice. So any movie fan now knows what is inevitably coming. What scared me and excited me about the moment was that it suggested all kinds of interesting possibilities for how we would get back to the opening moment (and/or its result). But they didn’t make that movie. They made a wonderfully spirited Joe Johnston movie.

You’ve gotten all the basics in the ads. Steve Rogers is a little guy. The Benjamin Button effects, shrinking Chris Evans down to a puny guy, notably smaller than Stanley Tucci, are brilliantly executed here. If you didn’t know what was coming, they would be 100% convincing. It never felt like they were shooting to adjust for the effect or not shooting something to avoid an expensive effects shot. Great.

Tucci does what he was brought in to do perfectly. He is the conscience of the piece and he defines who Steve Rogers is without ever giving you the feeling he is telling the audience how to feel.

Evans, by the way, is excellent in this performance, s bit of a surprise. He is known for his bravado as an actor, but he really acts in this movie. Honestly, there is a point at which I kind of wish we saw him allow himself one of his killer smiles… but truth is, the screenplay didn’t let him do it. More on that to come.

Tommy Lee Jones is not really given enough to do to ever get rolling towards anything but a paycheck. He’s really the only one in the movie who felt like he was saying the lines he was given. There were a couple of moments, acting dyads where there was a glimpse of what could have been, but they don’t go that way.

Dominic Cooper, playing Robert Downey, Jr’s dad here, is terrific and perfectly cast… but I could have used a bit more of him. Dominic should be nominated for an Oscar for The Devil’s Double, but may not be because of the way the film is being released/dumped. Here and in that film, it is finally clear that he has arrived as a serious actor. He’s not just a pretty boy who can run lines and lean into his light well. But again, not quite enough of him.

The wild card here is Hayley Atwell, who is pretty much making an “And Introducing” debut in Hollywood with this performance. Marvel didn’t go its normal route of hiring a beauty whose career has slipped a little (Portman being the obvious exception) to team with The Hero. And Atwell doesn’t disappoint. She has a great entrance, she manages the very difficult job of keeping the audience from feeling like her interest in Steve Rogers is not just because he has a really big, uh, pairs of pecs now, and she has the kind of beauty that becomes more interesting as you see more of her.

But now, my second BIG complaint. I saw this movie in 3D. With shutter glasses. BLECH!!!

As regular readers know, I am not a 3D hater. I am comfortable with the glasses when there is a payoff, even in post-shoot conversions that are well done. But in the case of this movie, like X-Men: First Class, 3D is antithetical to the film that was made. I suppose you could do a period film that would be enhanced by 3D. But this was not it.

Moreover, as the movie looks into Ms Atwell’s eyes with a passion usually reserved for Douglas Sirk movies, I was squinting behind my glasses to get a good look, even though her head was in a close-up 30 feet high. And when I pulled off my glasses… WOW!… look at that girl!

If you want to go see Transformers 3 or Green Lantern or maybe even Potter (which I saw in 2D, but have heard some 3D raves for), go see the 3D if you like 3D. But for my money, if you pay to see Captain America in 3D, you are a sucker. I would love to see the movie in 2D and may go this weekend. I bet my bottom dollar that it will be a much happier experience without the freakin’ glasses or the darkness. (And about the darkness… I am convinced that some 3D formats are a bigger problem than others and that all of them can be better if the projector light is cared for. But this was a studio screening in a quality, new-ish theater… and it was too dark except in the brightest scenes.)

Getting back to the movie itself… old fashioned fun. Really, it was a WWII action movie with comic book elements, perfect for this comic. Even the lazer guns were basic looking old guns with a little glowing blue light strip on the bottom. Perfect!

The first big action sequence for Cap… conceptually brilliant… not weighed down with explanations… funny… relatively realistic… great ending… so good.

I could quibble with this or that throughout the film, but really, most of the time that something I would consider a minor misstep occurred, the movie just kept moving forward and got past it quickly. Few films are perfect, but the ones that can keep you in even at moments they threaten to pull you out are almost as rare.

The uber-villain is Hugo Weaving, who must be getting tired of doing these roles. But he’s awfully good at them and entertaining himself as he does them. In this case, he seems to be Doing The Depp by channeling Werner Herzog’s voice for his German baddie. It’s not a Werner imitation, flying off into parody, but the cadences are right there and Weaving hits certain syllables just the way Werner does.

Again, as with the Li’l Steve Rogers, the Red Skull effect is pretty much perfect. It never feels like latex or CG or something other than someone’s head.

The film spins on the Nazi thing by making Red Skull a Nazi who doesn’t much care for Nazi’s either. His troops are masked, like Lucas’ Stormtroopers. So the violence feels comic bookish. A punch is more exciting than an array of men being gunned down.

The movie charges forward. Our hero is super. Fun fun fun.

And then, the big final showdown and the end and the coda, which is usually at the end, after the credits (don’t bother staying… nothing there this time), but is now in the movie.

DAMN!

Some have argued to me that this ending is sophisticated. But, “Bollocks” I say. It’s a 90% turn for only one reason… to sell the next movie.

Marvel has made, by my count, 5 movies in-house in this era. 2 Iron Man, a Hulk, A Thor, and now this.

Captain America is the first time they have hired a really good film director to make one of their movies. It’s the first time they didn’t try to shove a box office star into the mix to support the opening. It’s their first period movie (because you could have unfrozen Cap at the top and put him in modern America).

These were all really good decisions and make this the most accomplished of the 5 films produced in-house so far.

SPOILER

But then, instead of going with that and bringing all the Captain America pieces together at the end for a classic movie climax, they strip the movie of the elements that were so enjoyable until then and close with a take-away, which unlike, say, Casablanca, is not connected to the theme of the film or a natural outgrowth of the characters.

Everything is fine until Cap gets into the flying fortress. Then he is alone, no longer connected to his team, his girl, or the war… there is really nothing specific to being in flight, aside from one autopilot gag… Red Skull is dispatched with little real drama… and then, “I’m going to kill myself in order to save NY.”

Don’t even get me started on the issue that killing Hydra off only helps Hitler, who was one of Red Skull’s targets… so the war isn’t over and Captain America is already being shelved.

You can practically feel like you are sitting in the meeting, listening to everyone trying to rationalize why the ending isn’t The Dance with The Girl before Cap heads off to the help with “The Japs” in the sequel that should have been. “See… we need to get him to 2010 so we don’t need to spend time explaining it in Avengers. And we still want him to be a virgin, cause maybe we can make that funny. What a great laugh when he gets his first blowjob from Scarlett! Do you think we can make it work in an elevator in the Chateau Marmont?!?!”

Thing is, one part of this film that is a little off-putting is that Cap, honorable as he is, is kind of a boring guy. He really needs a good woman to help him understand the rest of his powers.  He has one in this film… but instead of the climax movies like this have, literally and figuratively, because audiences love them and have since Valentino, we get the loss from a distance gambit.  I can embrace loss as an ending in a film in which it fits.  Here… no way, Jose.  If they don’t dance, the Red Skull wins!

And I wonder what Avengers will do with him. He’s not a right winger or spouting Bible verse. He is kind of a goody-two-shoes, but it’s not really an established character thing, like Superman’s “aw shucks.”  So like Thor, he’s a man out of his element. I don’t see that being the schtick for two characters, so… I guess we’ll see.

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END SPOILER

I guess where I am is that I really enjoyed most of Captain America and i was profoundly frustrated by the last 15 minutes or so. A great ending can save a mediocre movie and a bad ending can sink a pretty good movie. For me, this was a bit more than a pretty good movie and if it had ended as it seemed to be intended to, it might have been on par with the better Hellboy, Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman movies, creating a universe of its own, bigger than the details you walked into the theater anticipating.

For me, that misstep is more frustrating than outright mediocrity.

At the same time, I will be happy to sit through a 2D screening of this movie again… soon.

If you’re a movie lover, you pretty much need to go see this film. And you might pray, as I do, that a version without the Avengers product placement (or with it after credits, where it belongs) turns up on Blu-ray someday.

Trailer: The Amazing Spider-Man

Kinda love it.

DP/30: Buck

The documentary is now out in theaters and getting a lot of love. Along with Tabloid, Project Nim, and in a few weeks, Life In A Day, it’s a great time for doc lovers, along with all the summer bang bang.

Here is the focus of the doc, Buck Brannaman, and its director, Cindy Meehl, as we chatted just after the film’s Sundance premiere.

DP/30: Leon Vitali on Kubrick

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of A Clockwork Orange and the release of a magnificent 9-film Blu-ray box from Warners Home Entertainment, Leon Vitali, whose relationship with Kubrick started on Barry Lyndon, talks about the master filmmaker.

Also of note, Criterion Collection releases the last two films of Kubrick’s not yet on Blu, Killer’s Kiss and The Killing, this August. The only feature Kubrick made not available on DVD or a high-quality Blu-ray version is Fear & Desire, which Kubrick owns and doesn’t want anyone to see. (A Spanish-subtitled version is viewable, illegally, on YouTube.)

YouTube won’t allow an embed of my Kubrick tribute from Ebert Presents this weekend, but here is the link to it on YouTube itself. (Apparently, the current thinking on YouTube is that if they flag content and the owner isn’t complaining, they leave it up, but don’t allow embeds. As this is, in part, promo for WB Home Ent, and well within Fair Use, I assume there will be no complaining from the studio.) An edited-down version of the piece is available on the Ebert Presents site.

“You Brought A Pie To A Knife Fight!”

Updated: 10:15a pdt – The only video produced by the NYT so far on the Murdoch hearing is now online…

Kid CONAN Clip (NSFW unless you work in an abattoir)

DP/30: Legend of the Fist, director Andrew Lau

MSN FilmFan Potters & Poohs

*This is a sponsored content article that is a part of the MSN FilmFan blogger program.

You can find FilmFan on MSN itself here – http://on-msn.com/ochadM

I Don’t Like Mobs

I write about all this too much.

I care about all this stuff too much.

Every day, dozens of issues flit by on the computer, in print, on TV… and people start measuring. They measure in all kinds of ways. From personal experience to faith to Twitter to the “facts” thrown at them on talkshows to what family and friends think and on and on.

Most often, it floats under the bridge and down the aqueduct to the ocean of forgotten crap.

But sometimes, you see the frenzy. Frenzies have shorter and shorter life spans these days, belying the notion that they were really all that important to us in the first place. But the ferocity of those short bursts grows in intensity as well.

There is no frenzy that goes wilder than The Media writing about The Media.

Sometimes, it is muted. As ABC has become brazen about being a pay-cash-for-access news source, Traditional Media is too desperate to mark that evolution with more than a knowing nod. There are too few authoritative outlets left keeping the heathens in their place to burn one down. And after all, your boss might be the next to decide that this is okay as policy.

As CNN stinks things up with wall-to-wall coverage of tabloid trials and tabloid deaths and Nancy Grace, Traditional Media is too desperate to mark that evolution with more than a knowing nod. There are too few authoritative outlets left keeping the heathens in their place to burn one down. . And after all, your boss might be the next to decide that this is okay as policy.

As FoxNews claims to be “fair and balanced” when nothing could be further from reality, but the ratings are so good that others keep emulating the formula. Traditional Media is too desperate to mark that evolution with more than a knowing nod. There are too few authoritative outlets left keeping the heathens in their place to burn one down. And after all, your boss might be the next to decide that this is okay as policy.

But hey, kids, this is Rupert Fucking Murdoch! Time for a massacre!

There are a lot of really interesting, complex, and important questions that should be discussed in the light of the public acknowledgement of what a lot of people knew was going on at News of the World and a lot of other tabloids across the globe.

And a few people are trying to have that conversation.

But most of the media, high and low… spitballs. Acid-coated spitballs.

I find this tweet typical of much of what’s being written out there: “Now with Rebekah Brooks arrest Newscorp looks like Enron, Lehman, Arthur Anderson. Collapse imminent?”

Okay… now aside from the general idea that there’s been some terrible and probably illegal behavior, how is this anything like Enron, Lehman, or Arthur Anderson? Who has News Corp stolen from? Yes, the murdered girl whose parents thought that she might still be alive because NotW assholes erased messages from her answering machine… horrible. But News of the World didn’t murder her or make it more likely that she’d be murdered, did it?

My problem is not that News Corp may be punished for all and any wrongs done under its watch at NotW. My problem is that the media is now happy to prosecute the company for assumed wrongs. “We don’t like you, Rupert!” How dare he buy The Wall Street Journal! And then he targets the NYT in NY? Ass! He’s arrogant. He’s biased. And worst of all… he’s successful! And this is not just tweeting fools… serious journalists, rubbing their hands together like children anticipating Christmas morning or trick-r-treating.

Worse, the culture we currently live in immediately defines the boundaries of what is allowable discourse on an issue, Murdoch like all others. I was already told, “You’re the great apologist of our times,” by one smart guy who turns into a smug, childish asshole anytime I dare to question the lazy, easy answers that have been agreed upon by the mob. Sorry, but questioning perspective in the midst of a gleeful riot is not being an apologist. It’s being a perspectivist… whether one is successful in achieving perspective or not.

So just suggesting – as an ill-advised WSJ editorial/advertorial already did – that competing journalists are piling on like Murdoch was a guard in The Longest Yard is a sin. You don’t have to advance a single inch towards the notion that he isn’t guilty of many sins, some legal and some not. If you’re not buying lighter fluid and rope, you’re an apologist.

Sorry… I know this will piss some people off… but that is the thinking of racists, sexists, and haters of all kinds. Simplify everything down to the strongest emotional essence… and then indulge it relentlessly without ever considering the facts again. It’s just as real a problem on the left as the right. This is the thinking that allows someone to think that Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are being persecuted for being female or that Bill Clinton has a right to lie under oath because “the bad guys were after him.” Bullshit.

I find nothing wrong with arguing that Bachmann and Palin are smarter than those errors. I’d disagree, but that’s a real argument. Likewise, tell me that the rabid right was looking for any way to smear Clinton and I couldn’t argue that there was not a case to be made. The notion that truth is culturally accepted as scalable to our personal likes and dislikes is a horror show to me.

Dismantling News Corp because we don’t like FoxNews and The NY Post and there is now an opening to stick a shiv in Murdoch’s armor is not honorable. If you are a civilian, I appreciate that you have an opinion… but I don’t really care one way or the other. You are, as you are with your movie tastes, 100% right to feel whatever you feel about an issue (short of oppressing the rights of others to have opinions). But the NY Times, not so much. Journalists in general, not so much. We are – for the most part – the most biased about an issue like this, because one way or another, News Corp has touched all of our professional lives. And that’s when we have to act the most like journalists and the least like guys down at the pub, throwing back a beer and talking shit.

If Murdoch loses every paper he has, sorry about the thousands of jobs lost, but good riddance. But let’s not put Al Capone in jail for tax evasion here. If we do, we’re no better than Murdoch, as he is seen by many.

Alamo Drafthouse Alternate Captain America Posters

Yes, they are selling this stuff… but it’s cool. I have no upside to pushing these and I’m not suggesting you need to buy anything… but if you want to, here is some info….

Olly Moss — two WWII propaganda posters (one for US, one for Hydra)
Two 18″ x 24″ Screenprints, Editions of 375 (each), $85 per set.

Eric Tan — two WWII propaganda posters (one for US, one for Hyrda)
Two 18″ x 24″ Screenprints, Editions of 220 (each), $80 per set.

Tyler Stout — film poster & variant
Regular: 24″ x 36″ Screenprint, Edition of 650, $50
Variant: 24″ x 36″ Screenprint, Edition of 220, $100

Follow @MondoNews for more info

Official Teaser Trailer for The Dark Knight Rises… & Apparent Hoax Full Trailer

The real Dark Knight Rises teaser, as seen on the official site of the film

And this rather brilliant fake – guess Robin Williams is the giveaway – full trailer… also featuring Danny Huston’s voice and no shot of any of the characters we know are in the movie together.

Weekend Estimates by Aldus Klady

Working on the analysis… but curious whether this chart works better or worse for readers. I am pretty sure it’s a lighter load for the computer… but do you need the grid to keep it all clear?

The only time, amongst the big openers, that I can find that mirrors the Potter 7a weekend is for the film with the second biggest Friday on record, Twilight: New Moon… but even that isn’t close to this. New Moon opened to $72.7m on Friday and had a $142.8m weekend, putting it just short of doubling opening day over the full weekend. Every other case of a movie with an opening Friday over $40m (P7a is the 12th), has the opening day at least doubled by the 3-day weekend for the film. Even Pirates 3, which opened with late Thursday screenings, did 3x the combination of those screenings AND the full Friday.

Be clear… there is nothing bad about a $169 million domestic opening weekend. But on 3D bump numbers alone, it isn’t an audience increase over The Dark Knight. And since there is only a 3 summer space between the two films, I think in this case, we are closer to oranges and 3D oranges. Potter is the biggest opening of all-time, but as I wrote yesterday, the meaning of openings is an ongoing focus of interest.

What are we seeing this summer? Already, we have more $80m-plus openings (4) than any summer in movie history, including the 2007 summer of the three mega-triquels. And we’re still waiting on Smurfs and Change Up! But seriously folks, we are still waiting on Cowboys & Aliens and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But even if neither has an $80m+ mega-opening, we have still had a mighty summer of openings.

But we are also seeing some nice, longer legs on the mid-range hits. Bridesmaids is the outstanding one. The other R-rated comedies are playing out really nicely, though Hang2 was more frontloaded. There’s not a single major studio release with less than $20m in the coffers domestically and with the exception of Priest (which did $50m overseas) and Monte Carlo (which was cheap enough to be a good bet to see black ink before it’s done), it looks like $35m will be the low end for studio movies in domestic this summer. Last summer there were 13 major studio releases (not counting re-releases, stunts, or Dependents) to gross under $35m domestic. Universal had 4 out of its 7 summer releases…. this year, with Larry Crowne heading over $35m, they have none… and the biggest surprise hit of the summer.

It looks like the Worldwide opening will be $80m+ better than the previous record-holder, Potter 6… which didn’t get to a billion, in spite of a $394 million start. HP6 did their number over a 5-day launch. So the heat is significantly greater here and $1 billion still feels like a reasonable expectation. But, you know, you never know. Could the push towards bigger and bigger openings lead somewhere that the studios didn’t really want to go? HP6’s previous record opening led to a worldwide total 2.4x the open. That result would mean $1.14 billion for 7b. That would make it #3 all-time, just passing Rings 3.

Once again… great opening. I am not diminishing that. But when you see the Twilights and Transformers and yes, Harry Potters not quite getting over that hump, even with broken records all over the place, you have to wonder whether, in this regard, in a market with increasing reliance on theatrical revenues for profitability, speed kills.

And though it’s a bit boring already, look at Nikki Finke, who gets her ideas of box office directly from the studios that tell her what to write. For the second significant time this summer, you could see raised expectations get lowered in big chunks in her hyperbole as the weekend progressed. How is it possible for the biggest opening in history to feel anything other than super? Well, start with expectation. Then watch as late night numbers and first day numbers are so huge that fairies are floating $200m domestic and $550m worldwide opening weekend dust in your eyes. Then see it fall back to $180m/$500m. Then see it become, realistically (and estimately) a still-record-breaking $169m/$475m. And suddenly, the potential to get to or close to $1.5b worldwide is fading and you start wondering if $1b is a lock (which it probably is).

The big challenge on Winnie The Pooh was making it clear that this was not a reissue of the decades old classic. But even with virtually nothing in the marketplace for under-8s, it didn’t take. This opening was lower than The Tigger Movie in 2000. Does it work out financially for Disney anyway? Well, Pooh is a mega-merchandising franchise, so you could argue that this keeps it fresh or you could argue that whatever licensing that’s done was going to be done without it anyway. I didn’t get to see the movie, but I enjoyed the soundtrack a lot.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon hits $300m at home and is now likely over the $800m mark worldwide (which would require holding just 50% of last weekend’s international gross).

In Indiewood, the per-screen heroes (writ small) were Undefeated, Tabloid, and Beats, Rhymes & Life, each between an estimated $6350 per sceeen and $6570. Beats was easily the most impressive of the trio, doing that per-screen across 22 screens. Tabloid, on 4 more screens than Undefeated (14), with a 27% higher gross, though Undefeated seems to have won the per-screen battle.

There was a bit of a fuss in here yesterday, as I noted that the Undefeated number was a bit underwhelming. And its supporters were correct in this regard… as a polemic that preaches to the converted, which liberals have made plenty of, the number is decent. Robert Greenwald, the lefty documentarian, hasn’t had a theatrical release in a while. But his anti-Murdoch doc, Outfoxed, did $77,982 on 5 screens for a $15,596 avg on opening weekend… and his last release, Uncovered: The War on Iraq opened to $31,481 on 7 screens, a $4,497 per screen. Undefeated is right in between. So you tell me.

Trailer – The Iron Lady

Funny… but I’m not in love with this snippet of her. My guess is she’ll win me over with a full performance. But an accent and some extended uppers isn’t making me shine an Oscar up for The Great One quite yet.

What A Difference A Year Makes…

Last summer, Crazy Nikki screeched, “poor Joe Carnahan, who’s now officially unhireable as a director,” after Joe took her down in an interview with me. (Nikki being Nikki, she refused to name the source. One of her ongoing scams with me is that screams about how she never prints my name in her blog. And she doesn’t. She only attacks me in private to as many studio execs that will listen to her rant on – usually spreading lies -about me.)

A year later, Deadline, via Michael Fleming, is touting Joe’s latest film EXCLUSIVELY!

“And it’s shaping up to be a whopper of a deal. The numbers I’m hearing are in the $8 million minimum guarantee range, with a $25 million P&A commitment and a gross corridor built in… I’d heard that Warner Bros, Open Road, Summit, Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company and FilmDistrict were all in the mix.”

So who’s shoes would you rather be walking in (or shuffling around your tomb in), Nikki’s or Joe’s?