May 08, 2008
Thank Blu God!
May 8, 2008
We’ve got some exciting news for this fall: our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.
Here’s what’s in the pipeline:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear
Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time.
Enjoy spring!
Posted by poland at 11:04 PM | Comments (6)
Let's Not Overdo The Tears
You know... the three things I mostly do in this work are the criticizing of films, the analysis of the industry, and the seeking of insight into the people who make up this industry.
When Picturehouse and Warner Indie shut down, a part of my job is to see what happened with clear eyes. But I also know and have worked with and have drunk with a bunch of people at both companies. I am also quite conscious that the "victims" of these kinds of shutdowns are not the people whose names everyone who reads Variety or clicks on MCN thrice daily, but the people who float through this business, trying to find their place, doing good work, putting their best feet forward.
Still, when I read the word "tragedy" used in the first sentence of indieWIRE's analysis of the day, it trips my gag reflex. And when Nikki Finke feels compelled to rewrite her blase' I-didn’t-get-the-release-first-so-I-can’t-toldja-so-I-don't-much-care comment on the shutdown after commenters blast her for being herself, after laughing, I feel a bit of empathy to her.
There were some very, very, very smart people at Picturehouse and WIP. And both companies, simply put, were clear failures in the goals set forth by their existence.
I really don't want to kick people when they are down. And as I wrote in depth when Paramount Classics was being disassembled, both company’s suffered greatly by the limitations put on them by the lack of vision shown by the corporations funding them. While Searchlight and Focus and Vantage and Miramax were busy playing in the playground of movies costing over $20 million – some in the 50s and higher – Picturehouse really never made a movie of their own and never showed a clear vision as they handled an unbalanced mixture of HBO Films releases and pick-ups, and WIP was so spread out conceptually, flying from movie star movies like Good Night, And Good Luck and The Jacket and In The Valley of Elah to tiny films like Eros and The Science of Sleep and Introducing The Dwights.
So neither company was allowed to fly… but neither ever found a focus the way Sony Classics has either. SPC reminds us that you can make a nice little business out of singles, doubles, and an annual home run or two, plus a lot of smart DVD plays. You would never see SPC with a year with a trio like March of The Penguins, Paradise Now, and Good Night, And Good Luck. That’s not in the company’s DNA. But they don’t have misses with those groupings of films either. $3 million - $5 million domestic for movies like The Counterfeiters, Persepolis, and The Band’s Visit’s are home runs for SPC. The company does exactly what they and Sony both want with their $60 million grossing years (sometimes more, sometimes less), strong DVD, and a smattering of attention-getting prestige movies.
So is it really tragic for these companies to go away?
For the individuals, it is. And I feel for them. Big time. Especially for the support teams, much more so than for anyone who has been mentioned in any of these stories, since while temporarily stung and humiliated, they will all come out fine.
More significantly, I feel far more deeply for the true indies out there that are squirming like a hyperactive 4-year-old catching a look at a anal thermometer in the hand of their shaky great-grandma’s hand to find a way to make enough money to keep their businesses going.
A big part of the pain of the indies is that the studios ate the category with all these “specialized” companies. You have Mark Frickin’ Cuban, who has his own chain of movie theaters, saying that it is nearly impossible to make theatrical distribution work for small movies. Yes, on some level it’s an abdication of his responsibilities to the industry he bought into. But that is how tense things are.
So am I genuinely sad for the good people of these two companies? Yes. Will I make some phone calls for a few of them when they write, looking for new jobs? Yes. But is losing two companies that put out less than 10 films a year and grossed less than $50 million a year total each on average, even with the financial backing – however lame – of major studios? Not a tragedy… just a reasonable business choice from businessmen who were not terribly smart or reasonable when they launched these divisions in the first place.
Posted by poland at 08:29 PM | Comments (3)
No Movie For Old Men
It's a terrible stereotype... but it is quite fascinating to me that the negative reviews of Speed Racer all seem to sound the same.
"It's too loud!"
"It's too fast!"
"It's too long!"
"Too many colors!"
I am sympathetic to complaints about the visual intensity of this film. Seeing the film in IMAX last night was a bit of sensory overload. Very intense. And exhausting. (And in many ways glorious.)
But it sounds, over and over, like "Those kids and their texting!" or "Those kids and their crazy rap music!" or "Those kids and their special effects movies!"
But I'm sure that's just me... I'm sure that the target for this movie was always people over 40 who prefer their action movies slow and plodding and looking simiilar to their idea of themselves.
Watching the original cartoon on DVD the other day, I was reminded how much imagination we, as an audience, had to bring to that cheap animation... and I wondered whether any of us could muster it again, 30+ years and many thousands of movies later. Maybe not.
Posted by poland at 05:50 PM | Comments (17)
The Last Couple (Funny) YouTube Shots At HRC
I know... piling on... but these will soon be nothing but history...
And this last one has a rather different feel about now...
Posted by poland at 01:51 PM | Comments (2)
#29 - Glenn Kenny
Another one bites the dust.
He self-obits.
Posted by poland at 11:35 AM | Comments (8)
Killing WIP & Picturehouse
Time-Warner pulled the plugs today.
It is a minor surprise, as there was a sense that there was strong support for Polly Cohen in the WB hierarchy. My guess is that T-W asked Robinov to give a financial upside to keeping WIP going... and Robinov couldn't.
There really isn't much room left for any more Dependent blood to be shed in the industry.
Searchlight is, obviously, safe... though Atomic could disappear completely in time.
Focus is safe at U, though Rogue is iffy.
Par Vantage is doing better than the main studio.
Miramax is doing great.
Sony Classics is more than solid.
The downside of 2 more Dependents going down is that these five have more leverage than ever. That could be good too. But the studios have made their "indie" arms so broadly commercial, even when doing great work, that they all want their Junos and Little Miss Sunshines every year. It's not a shock that two of last year's Oscar nominees were co-funded by two Dependents (Blood and No Country). These movies are costing more than we think of as indie prices now. In fact, Juno was the only one of the four American-made indies that qualified for Indie Spirit Awards... even with a $22 million budget top.
The hope is that two fewer Dependents mean that a few more arthouse screens will open up for true indies, as screens have been harder and harder to get against the big push of the Dependents.
But don't count on it.
The prayer is that these Dependents - other than the more acquisition-minded and conservative Sony Classics - make movies only over $20 million, leaving the under-$20m quality business some room, leading to a few big hits, leading to a better business future for true indies. But it is, in reality, a prayer.
My condolences to the WIP and Picturehouse teams. The biggest question is where Laura Kim will land next.
I'd be willing to bet on Vantage, where the movies are good, Megan Colligan is strong enough to have another respected voice on board without being intimidated, and Lesher luvs a high profile hire.
She would probably be happiest at Miramax, where the chief is a gentle one and this hire would allow him to bring more of the publicity effort in-house.
The Searchlight and Focus machines are pretty much set. And Sony Classics has a pretty settled-in structure of independent publicists on both coasts, so consistent as to feel in-house.
I would expect Bob Berney to land with an already-funded aspiring indie, as launching his own right now is not financially viable. He would be a great asset to any of them and make funders happy by dint of his name alone.
Welcome back to the bosom of WB, Ms. Cohen.
BTW (add 11:58a) - The evolution of this from a Picturehouse takeover to a shared-power arrangement to a double firing is pretty much exactly how things went with New Line.
Shaye and Lynne thought they were okay... then it was a 70% staff cut... then they were killed... then they cut another 15% of the staff.
There is a story in there somewhere. It feels as though Robinov has an idea, Horn adjusts it to something more realistic, then the T-W people look at it and go, "Are you guys kidding? Why can't you just cut the f-ing cord?"
And one final note... I fully expect New Line to be the WB bastard son for the next couple of years, as Toby rides herd over the last few projects and can't get much money from Daddy. But as things turn in this business, don't be surprised if after a couple of years of flailing around, they reinvigorate the label with whoever is running the strongest true indie at the time and earnestly take a shot at the Dimension business, which is not great right now, but will cycle around as it always does.
Posted by poland at 11:10 AM | Comments (19)
BYOB - Thursday
What ya got?
Posted by poland at 10:26 AM | Comments (78)
Campaigning For VP?
Hillary Clinton continues to push the "I have this base of people that Obama doesn't connect with" agenda, which - regardless of whether one agrees with it - seems to have only one realistic end... an argument that as VP, she would complete Obama, as seen in Jerry Maguire.
It would also seem that the legacy she is hoping to use to bring her back to respectability in Dem quarters who were disgusted by her campaign smears is to be the hero of Michigan and Florida.
These seem to be the two prongs.
Posted by poland at 10:19 AM | Comments (11)
May 07, 2008
I Gotta Say...
Add, 11p - Ouch! Through most of the day Wednesday, it seems that HillaryClinton.com went automatically to this page. Apparently things went back to normal late tonight as the media picked up on the embarrassing linkage.
I am watching CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and I am AMAZED at the unwillingness of these people to see what is so obvious in Hillary Clinton's behavior.
She is NOT attacking Obama.
She is NOT pushing heavy rhetoric.
And she IS selling the line that she is still in the race because the campaign needs money and it is clear that her camp has not determined how to exit gracefully.
But the media is still pushing her as fighting. And it's really kinda cruel.
Yes, it is a little irritating to me when she says anything but, "It's over... thanks for the fish." But she is doing the right thing right now... really. It is completely fair to expect her to have a few days to decide exactly how she moves along, because they have been so focused on scratching their way to the lead for the last two months that this is not an easy, quick call. It's complex, even if inevitable. It's not the same as a results night drop-out after Iowa.
She's doing the right thing for the first time in months... and the media is treating her like she's still in ranting & raving mode.
Enough. A little grace... please!!!
Posted by poland at 02:01 PM | Comments (18)
Speed Racer Review
Speed Racer spins some people’s heads right near off their axis. But to be unable to see the complexity of the imagery is to fail to appreciate the depth of what The Wachowskis are doing here.
The Matrix took a lot of ideas from Japanese anime’, but kept its feet on the ground, allowing for the fantastical, but keeping most of the film in the mind’s eye of real people. The first rule of Speed Racer is that we live in a world of all kinds of visceral inputs and we have learned to leap from one to another… why can’t we do that in a movie?
The actors are real, including the scene-stealing monkey, Chim-Chim. But very little else, except the pancakes, is. And while the racing scenes – which is probably most of what you’ve seen, if you haven’t yet seen the film – are exciting and brain-straining and have what, to me, is the desired movie effect… they have you shifting with the vehicles in your movie seats… it is the more intimate sequences that are at the heart of Speed Racer.
Posted by poland at 11:17 AM | Comments (24)
Declawed
There is something sad about seeing a wild animal declawed or defanged.
And as much as last night's Clinton speech felt like a lap around the stadium to acknowledge and be acknowledged, it was this morning's speech in West Virginia that marked the clear end of the Clinton campaign.
There was no mention of Obama at all. There were none of the big narrative hooks of the last two months of campaigning. And for about half the speech, there was not even any specificity about who should be implementing the ideas she was gently advocating.
But even beyond the speech was the body language. She had the emotional slump of a sports team playing out the string late in the season when the playoffs are well out of reach. Of course, she is capable of rising above the failure of her candidacy, like great athletes that play hard even when all they can do is win the one game they are playing. But she’s clearly gone into second place mode.
The key revelation of the morning is Clinton’s $6.5 million loan to her campaign… which now becomes part of the $11.5 million in debt that her campaign has to pay her back. Can she generate enough money from the position she is now in to both pay for a campaign and to cut into that debt? An even bigger question… can she generate enough money from this passive position to pay for her campaign without going further into personal debt?
The Clintons are very wealthy, but they have now invested about 20% of their personal wealth into her campaign. That leaves them with a lot of money, but rich people don’t stay rich by siphoning off chunks of their after-tax income with no possible return. And the very real question of whether Bill Clinton will be the cash cow he has been comes into play as his role as The Most Powerful Democrat is usurped by Obama. No one is sending The Clintons back to Arkansas to live in a trailer. But they have to be feeling that pain now.
And like Hussein hiding in a hole in a farm, it is a little pathetic… and creates sympathy even from someone who has been as enraged by the behavior of this campaign in recent months.
I expect to get irritated in the days to come with the media again, as they shift from beating the drum for all things negative about Obama in the guise of “it’s what the Republicans will do in the fall” to finding out and pushing into the light every little pain of the failed Clinton campaign, as it fades. I expect one big issue to be about her fundraising to fund a debt.
Another will be how she dances with Obama. In the old days, a campaign with a lot of money, like Obama’s, would pay some of the opponent’s debt as part of the “exit settlement.” But that would come under enormous scrutiny in this every-second media age. She started to make the case for a VP slot today, citing her constituency, with whom Obama has had a hard time. If she is the VP candidate, him paying down her debt would not be as much of an issue.
One private pundit said this week, “Obama’s first Profile in Courage will be saying, ‘No’ to Hillary as VP.”
We shall see.
My favorite moments last night, aside from the great speech by Obama - which reminded me once again that he now has an advantage in that McCain can’t sell the “it’s just words” crap with the passion that Clinton did, McCain's inherent decency working against him in a bit of irony – was watching the guys on FoxNews sit there deflated and almost speechless at times.
Clinton lost last night. It's over. The media is finally beyond the willingness to rationalize that she can overtake Obama. And the choice of when to officially concede will be negotiated, not won. But the biggest loser? The Republican Party.
And wasn’t that always the point?
Posted by poland at 10:09 AM | Comments (30)
May 06, 2008
BYOB - May The 6th Be With You
Posted by poland at 03:48 PM | Comments (80)
The Personal Objection Lie Unfolds
It seems like Paramount is getting a lot of attention here this week... I guess it's the combination of a big opening, a stock drop both last Friday and yesterday, a first quarter operating loss in the movie division ($63m, down from last year's $100m), and now, the continuing move by Sumner Redstone to move away from the scam that he sold - and that the media bought, hook, line & sinker - that Tom Cruise's deal at Paramount ended for any reason other than money.
After gossip reports about Redstone meeting with Cruise, now The Public Statement.
As I wrote a while back, the main reasons this is in play are that, 1) The M:I3 franchise is a comfortable, secure place for Cruise and he must know that if he hires the right people this time out (dumping Carnahan was a mistake last time), he can build it back up, and 2) Redstone must feel that he can get much, much, much better terms from Cruise this time out, not only doing the "let's get our money out first" deal that the studio has made with both Marvel and LucasFilm/Amblin this summer, but a better deal than either of those after breakeven. Cruise doesn't need the money personally... he needs the hit... even if Valkyrie turns out to be a success.
Finding a franchise situation where Paramount has the upper hand in the negotiations has not been easy. So expect this deal to get done... and expect it to be announced as a response to the DreamWorks exit conversation starts getting louder again in the fall.
Posted by poland at 06:33 AM | Comments (40)
May 05, 2008
Hot Button - What's A Billion?
So… if these four films were to actually push Paramount distribution up over $2 billion in worldwide grosses for the summer, the studio is looking at around $150 million in net revenues.
$2 billion is an impressive number. Less than 10% profit on that number, which is about as good as it gets on a macro level, is not.
Success and failure in the film business is not being terribly well reported these days. The big story is, as it has been for a couple of years now, that the multinationals that own the studios are getting out of the business of funding movies. There is too much risk there, while distribution and marketing is profitable, even if the movie is a loser.
Posted by poland at 10:36 PM | Comments (18)
The Devolution Of Journalism
It is a theme that I harp on regularly... what is happening to the standards of journalism? What are the rules now? What is a scoop? What is "news" itself?
The NY Observer takes a shot at it, with some quotes from The Bagger, who spends most of his time paying attention to actual news, while opining with the best of them.
Posted by poland at 07:50 PM | Comments (0)
Lunch With... Richard Jenkins
The star of The Visitor (and Six Feet Under & The Farrelly Bros movies & The Coen Bros movies...), Richard Jenkins sits down for "Lunch."
Posted by poland at 07:24 PM | Comments (2)
Trailers
Swing Vote... a potential sleeper coming late this summer
Posted by poland at 07:03 PM | Comments (23)
Hollywood, Ink by Matson - May 5, 2008
Posted by poland at 07:01 PM | Comments (3)
The Empire Strikes Barrack
I don't know why it took so long for me to find this... and it surely is pro-Obama... but even if you are a Clinton supporter, the creativity here is a pleasure in and of itself.
Posted by poland at 01:01 AM | Comments (29)
May 04, 2008
2500 & The Hot Button Redux
Just noticed that we've hit 2500 entries on this blog.
Actually, it's 2800 with the original Hot Blog, which was on a TypePad page.
And on your side of it, you recently cracked 80,000 comments.
The first entry was "Do I Need A Blog?" on September 5, 2004.
The first Hot Button column was on August 22, 1997. There were no blogs back then. The word did not exist. And in the print world, only Army Archerd did a daily column in this industry. Heck, there weren't even any real archives at that time. Roughcut.com was an on-line one-sheet. That was the norm.
Seven years later, I was late to the blog party, though it was still, we know now, just beginning to find its legs.
I believe deeply that there is a distinction between a column and a blog entry. The former starts with a mindset of exploring a single issue in some depth and demands extended focus. The latter can have depth, but as has become clear, the tendency is for blogs to become more a form of electronic water cooler and less a place for contemplation.
But now, after limping through this eleventh year of the column, it's time to evolve. The simple reality of technology alone demands it. How I - and other journalists - can do our work changes profoundly the work we do.
Welcome to The Hot Button Blog.
We will keep thousands of Hot Button columns intact, as columns, on the Hot Button website. But we are in the process of converting the entire collection of columns into a blog format.
The are two big advantages of the new delivery system. First, it will allow proper searches of the decade of columns for the first time. Google does okay, but this should be a vast improvement. Any word, any name, any film... everything I have written will come pouring out.
Second, The Hot Button will now become the home of all of my new long-form writing (that's not specifically for MCN). The cut-off should be about 750 words and given my Hot Blog experience, I would expect at least one piece a day. So if you want to read deeper, more-elaborate pieces, The Hot Button will once again be a daily destination. I keep wanting to find a proper word to coin for it... "Blogumn" is about the best I have come up with so far. (Maybe we should have a contest!)
And for more of the blog-style stuff, from links, to quick comments on the stories of the day, to video... all on The Hot Blog.
I am excited about the next step in how I interact with you all. We appreciate your patience as we fill the archives of the blog. If you want to know what I was saying about Spider-Man's May opening in 2002, it will be much easier soon. (I just posted that particular Hot Button, which also includes a first-look at The Bourne Identity.)
Posted by poland at 06:17 PM | Comments (2)
Hanks Endorses
Posted by poland at 03:46 PM | Comments (3)
The Horror Show
America, as usual, seems to get the government it deserves.
When pressed by George Stephanopoulos to name a single economist that agrees that the summer federal gas tax break is a good idea, Hillary Clinton sounded just like... well, you tell me...
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."
Besides being an outright lie, given that she would be hiring a large number of economists if she were to win the presidency, who does this kind of "don't confuse me with the facts" mindset sound like?
Maybe this kind of crap working on at least some percentage of voters in these primaries is no tragedy because it is so typical already.
I have to admit, I am exhausted by the relentlessness of the lies and spin. It seems Obama is too. And that is what the goal of the strategy is.
Of course, the media continues to let other lies pass - like The Clintons blaming all the losses of jobs in Indiana and elsewhere on Bush when so much of it happened under Clinton and continues via companies for which Bill Clinton is a highly-paid adviser - while anytime Obama calls Clinton out, he is positioned as uppity. Can I take another moment of listening to $100 million Hillary talking about how great Bush was for the elite... which she clearly is not.
And more and more, I seriously think that the need for escapism is going to pay off for at least a few of the summer movies. Remember, the vast majority of the country has already voted in the primaries and the need to seriously consider the next decision will not come back again until at least a month from now.
I keep gorging on this stuff... but being at SFIFF was a relief, in that CNN was not nearby all day.
Hollywood, take me away.
Posted by poland at 02:47 PM | Comments (12)
Reliving The DVD Romance
The Wall Street Journal finally found out why The Industry is so happy to be in business with Apple in the movie downloading business.
Not only is Apple willing to sell movies at a loss of approximately a buck a film… not only does a price paid by Apple of $16 per downloaded film represent more than The Industry gets per DVD from the major retailers, like Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Blockbuster… but the cost of “production” for these downloads is virtually nothing with the only significant fixed cost for the studios being residuals and payments to residuals and gross and net profit participants.
Simply put, a brand new DVD sold at Wal-Mart might represent $4 in net returns to the studio. An Apple download represents about three time that revenue.
Of course, the wet dream that execs live on is that THIS is the future. Downloading will take them back in time, to the height of the DVD business, but even more, it will do that and expand the market.
But what they all look away from is the horror of The Long Tail, a conceit that generally does not work well when discussing the film business, but in this case speaks to the problem of too many choices available to consumers. The reason long tail thinking is tough in film is that this industry is a closed one, constantly manipulating the value of both new and library product. As that control is lost to wider availability, the only reasonable expectation is that prices will drop precipitously… as they already have in the maturing DVD business.
So today’s cash cow – and make no mistake, $16 a title for digital download without the ability to personally convert to DVD quality DVDs is pants-droppingly thrilling for studios – may well be a Trojan Horse that is the beginning of some very dangerous policy that will actually devalue the studios even further in the next decade.
Posted by poland at 01:48 PM | Comments (5)
No Excuses
You know, this happens every year.
A movie opens. I like it more than some. I dislike it more than some.
And people who post - often cowardly waiting to be "proven right" before coming out of the woodwork - want to turn it all into some big personal clusterfuck... as though I (or you) have some personal stake in the success or failure or minor increments of either.
For my part, I guess I am asking for it by offering opinions in a public forum that is given some weight by some size group inside and outside of the industry. Still, I can't help but to be irritated by the endless need of so many - a majority, it often seems - that wants to mix every idea with another, fighting to prove some position that can never be proven in any truly scientific way.
As the focus of that energy, it's exhausting.
I guess I should be complimented that anyone cares to parse what I write - in no limited depth - into what they think I am really saying. But it's hard to maintain that kind of perspective while its happening.
This weekend, Iron Man was the hot button issue.
I don't think it's a good movie. A longer column will land one of these days... here is a peek...
Between Downey’s fey masculinity (including, subtly, his height) and the unapologetic nature of Tony Stark’s evolution from being an uncaring killer to a caring killer, this really might be the manboy’s Prada. After all, he has the coolest toys, gets the girl (who demands nothing from him at all), and is a hero for being an arrogant fool one click less evil than his bald counterpart.
And I guess that this will insult many of the film's biggest fans... a fandom that generally requires not thinking about it too much, lest losing the "fun" of the film's 1940's mindset. I am completely comfortable with what I have written about this film and that in time, as I have learned by seeing so many "revolutionary" geek films fade in the distance, I will find plenty of agreement (and have already, including from a number of the same critics whose raves are already being rethought).
But this has nothing to do with the box office... not the actuality of it or my personal projections about the film's commercial potential.
I have no significant personal stake in Iron Man being a bigger hit than I projected or not. There are plenty of movies that I don't like and have projected to succeed... and plenty of movies that I like quite a lot that I know will fail at the box office.
Speed Racer is a terrific family film... but I could see, even before the tracking, that the marketing had some serious problems. I would love for a film I like to find an audience that will enjoy it before DVD. But I am not in charge. And I do not pretend everything is okay when it clearly is not.
Do I particularly want to see Prince Caspian? Well, I hope to like it better than I liked the first Narnia movie. But that doesn't keep me from guessing that it will be the second highest grossing film of the season. I don't know where people who want to suggest that the film will lose a significant percentage of the first film's audience are coming from. History isn't everything, but there just isn't much recent history of movies doing those kinds of numbers having the bottom drop out in the second film of a series.
Anyway...
If box office is something that you take personally, enjoy yourself. It is not personal for me. Reviews are.
People like to tell me what I think there too. They want to tell me what my mindset is when I sit down in that theater. But I am the one sitting there. And I can tell you, week after week, year after year, I am pretty consistent. I want every single film to not only be good, but so good that I will be embarrassed about how much I am gushing about it.
That included Iron Man, it included Transformers (which I didn't expect to be brain food, but which I hoped would have some real basic visceral pleasure for me), and it will include every movie I sit down to see this summer.
Where Iron Man started losing me was when it was so heavy-handed in the desert and didn't offer any weight pressing against the Stark character. And the constant improvs by Downey, which have their charms, but which were almost all non-sequiters in this film... for me, a yawn. I was irritated by watching Terrence Howard do nothing. And while I love Bridges, his speeches were just horrible.
I you disagree, so be it. I don't care. I don't need a show of hands. There is no "right," even if so many are wrong. (smirk)
But being wrong about a box office projection is not a personal issue for me. I don't need to make excuses. I need to look at what happened as rationally as I can.
And if you think you "got me" on Iron Man or Transformers or whatever... whoop dee doo for you. As far as I'm concerned, it's just another frickin' movie, even when this blog becomes a war zone. And the next movie will be just another movie too. Maybe I will like it. Maybe I will hate it. What I write about the box office will not be any different either way, whether you choose to believe it or not.
In the end, I really like having my ideas challenged. Works for me. But the effort to put me in a box, convenient only to this person or that person's personal agenda? It's crap.
But it will continue.
Onward.
Posted by poland at 01:46 PM | Comments (29)
Hot Button - Message, Misogyny Or Misunderstanding?
It seems like we all need a reminder of some of the basic rules of Hollywood… again. I will proceed down that track at another time, but the thought hitting my brain pan today is this one…
Hollywood is neither monolithic nor terribly interested in the content of what they sell.
The brilliant – and that is a straight forward compliment – Manohla Dargis makes this miscalculation extravagantly in her “Where are the women at?” piece in the Summer Preview at The New York Times this weekend.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out that there is, as there has been for year after year, a dearth of movies with female leads in the summer season. Never mind the ironic truth that this summer has more women in lead roles than has been the norm, as Hollywood chases – 2 summers later – the The Devil Wears Prada dollars that they didn’t believe were there in nine figures until it happened.
But the urge of Manohla, as it is for most critics, I find, is to ascribe some sort of intent on the part of "The Industry." This, I disagree with… no matter how vacuous, silly, vain, arrogant, misogynistic, and foolish execs can be.
"Hollywood" is driven, before anything, by trends. It is one of the troubles of Hollywood, as there is this 18 month to 3 year lag in bringing studio films to market and trend chasing can be absolutely deadly. But still, they do it over and over and over again.
(Note: The return of The Hot Button is coming... sorry for the delay.)
Posted by poland at 12:28 PM | Comments (11)