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September 30, 2008

Voter Registration

Whomever you support, you should vote if you are eligible to do so.

The Obama campaign sent a URL that I found very helpful. It can get you registered, but even if you have registered, it allows you to check whether you are still properly registered.

I know that every year around this time, I wonder whether my registration is properly set. And tonight, there was a news report that many people have been dumped from the voting rolls.

So, here is the link. You can use it just as well no matter who you support, even if you are hyper-aware that it is an Obama sponsored site..

Posted by dpoland at 07:41 PM | Comments (13)

Stupidest Protest Ever

Blind people protesting Blindness.

Oy.

Blindness is a metaphor in the movie... as it has been forever.

The idea that sighted people in their 20s, 30s and older suddenly becoming blind, surrounded by others who are suddenly blind, would not be disoriented and find it hard to deal with a massive new challenge is pretty absurd on its face.

To quote Marc Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind, who said to the AP, "The movie portrays blind people as monsters, and I believe it to be a lie. Blindness doesn't turn decent people into monsters.”

This just shows that he carries the bias in a much more profound way than the movie does.

The film, as the novel did, uses blindness as a way of taking power away from a group, suddenly and unexpectedly. How will people react?

Most of the people in the movie are good and well-intended. A group, mostly of men, does become angry, cruel, and dangerous. If anything, this is sexist, against men.

The description in the AP story starts, “Blind people quarantined in a mental asylum, attacking each other, soiling themselves, trading sex for food.”

That does happen, though it feels completely false in tone. People are quarantined when the government isn’t sure what’s going on. They soil themselves occasionally because they don’t know how to live blind and this all takes place early in their experience. And the “attacking each other” and “trading sex for food” has nothing to do with being blind, but rather to do with power inequity, which is what the movie is ultimately about. (Specifically, there is no trade of sex for food… there is vicious, abusive rape committed by the armed men, who assert the power of having a weapon. The scene would be no more or less horrible if everyone involved was sighted. There is also a story twist in this moment, which I will not disclose, that also speaks to power, not sight.)

Blind people have nothing to protest here. I would be less shocked if feminist groups protested, given the behavior through parts of the movie by the one person who is sighted (the ads give this away, so I don’t feel it is a spoiler).

The movie is not an easy one. And I can understand it being misunderstood… or simply disliked. But it’s a bit like Levi’s complaining about The Accused because Jodie Foster is raped wearing a jeans skirt or feminists complaining because people (some of whom are men) have noticed that Sarah Palin doesn’t know much about national or world politics.

Better to use the sections of the film in which people overcome their sudden, unprepared for handicap with kindness and generosity to remind people that being blind does not have to be a bad thing… but being blind doesn’t automatically make you a saint either.

Posted by dpoland at 05:11 PM | Comments (17)

Sigh...

(note: this e-mail was sent to me as part of a mass group, the contents are not private, and the name is only blocked because there is no reason to make this private person into a public one over my use of the e-mail to express ennui.)

Posted by dpoland at 03:47 PM | Comments (24)

Nikki Finally Passes Into Unredeemable

I'll keep it brief.

Nikki Finke, apparently exhausted by pretending to report anything, is now exposing exactly what she does and who she is. "Irresponsible, willfully ignorant, mean-spirited hack," comes to mind first.

And everyone knows it.

And no one wants to say it out loud… because it might draw the attention of the dragon.

And yes, there are even idiots who want to be just like her when they devolve into a warm, ugly pool of fear and desperation for attention.

She is what AICN was at the start (it’s changed a lot... calm down, Drew), only she is on the movie executive beat and not the geek beat. Today, it's writing about, then printing, then dancing about an e-mail that she was given by someone who was manipulating her. It's also an internal MGM e-mail about marketing Valkyrie.

None of this is reporting. It is gossip and nothing more. It will run its cycle, but only after another 18 months or so of people trying to use dumb Nikki to do their dirty work. All id, no intellect.

Run in fear, Hollywood. You have created yourself a new McCarthy... powerless and aggressively ignorant, but full of raging bluster and the threat of embarrassing exposure, whether there is any truth in the ugliness or not. Maybe it's a new Winchell. Either way, it is a blight on the community and an embarrassment to anyone remotely interested in journalistic standards.

That’s all.

I will continue to correct Nikki’s factual errors when I feel it means something. There are way too many to keep up with it every day. And really, it’s like being the maggot that turns up after the buzzard has picked at the bones. Boring and filthy. But sometimes part of the cycle of life.

Posted by dpoland at 11:31 AM | Comments (31)

September 29, 2008

A Few Blu-Ray Tidbits

The first studio to offer Blu-ray screeners to awards voters?

Not Sony, as you migh expect. WB. The only question is whether The Dark Knight will land before the real Blu-ray DVD release.

Also, WB broke more ground with the release of the Speed Racer Blu-ray, which includes the Blu-ray, a DVD game AND a free digital download of the movie.

In the Disney Blu-ray of Sleeping Beauty... a regular DVD as well (not to mention a host of BD-Live features that I haven't had a chance to play with yet).

What do people want? All of it.

ADD, Mon 10:55p - What could be more horrifying than an unrated Blu-ray of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?

Is there anyone in need of a clearer view of Jason Segel's penis? We know that Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis will not be any more naked in the unrated version than in the theatrical release. So what... naked Russell Brand? Help me, Rhonda!

Posted by dpoland at 07:17 PM | Comments (19)

Peter Venkman for Mayor

Posted by dpoland at 06:02 PM | Comments (1)

Is ANYONE Buying This?

We all know the leanings I share with the majority of commenters on this blog.

But is ANYONE actually buying the spin that the Republicans voted down the bailout becaause Nancy Pelosi blamed Bush for the state we are in when she gave a pre-vote speech today?

Is ANYONE buying John McCain trying to blame Obama for the Republicans not voting for the bailout?

I mean... really?

Posted by dpoland at 03:43 PM | Comments (46)

BYOB - Crash: Episode 3

Posted by dpoland at 03:07 PM | Comments (15)

Hot Button - Scottgar Rudgen & Nikkie McFinkey

I don't know if it's 42 West or Rudin's office itself that is publishing its list of grievances in the guise of Nikki “reporting” the story (aka “opening her e-mail”), but when Nikki is “in possession of plaintive emails from Daldry, and angry letters from entertainment law pitbulls,” you know that she is passing along something that someone else is selling.

==============

Take a look at Nikki’s thing.

I’ll offer a couple of notes here…

1) “The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's delivery date of November 7th” doesn’t exist. Movies are screened for the HFPA well after November 7 every year. I think she is referring to the joke known as The NBR.

2) Nikki parroting the dismissal that “Hollywood trades were also suckered by Weinstein's other spin that Rudin… didn't want his actors or his pictures competing against themselves. But that's a ridiculous argument,” is, in fact, ridiculous.

This is spin from the Rudin camp, which would like people to believe that they are not concerned that The Reader will pull focus from Revolutionary Road. However, it is 100% true that they are ALL worried that The Reader will pull focus from Rev Road. That has been the story for months now. It does not mean that Rudin or anyone else thinks that The Reader itself is a behemoth that will crush Rev Road’s chances. But it muddies the water… and not just the public view of it.

First, let’s just look at the calendar. Scott Rudin seems to have at least 2 “Oscar movies” every year. But he doesn’t let his BP candidates release on top of one another. Last year, it was No Country For Old Men in early November and There Will Be Blood at Christmas. Second tier chasers The Darjeeling Limited and Margot at the Wedding were, respectively, launched in September and dumped (never more than 80 screens) in November. The year before, it was The Queen vs Notes on a Scandal… September and December.

No one wants to fight themselves head on, at the box office or in awards season. Had the plan been to release The Reader in December, Rudin would have surely pushed to have Sam Mendes - who is only still adjusting Rev Road because he started shooting This Must Be The Place in April, a date by which he had expected to be finished on Rev Road – to have Rev Road ready for an October release. It’s not exactly brain surgery. The only self-competing experience that comes close to this for Rudin was The Royal Tenenbaums and Iris, opening on the same day in 2001… but Royal went wider quickly and Iris was really a qualifying run, not cracking 40 screens until March of 2002.

The other Rev Road/Reader release problem is that it represents, from the day Rudin & Weinstein teamed, a combination of behind the scenes marketing and publicity talent that is conflicted, both in terms of the immediate issue of release, as well as the long relationships in town. Rudin’s point people are at 42 West, a company driven greatly by people who used to work for Harvey… and who carry the scars of that history. They did a lot of great things together. But the end was bitter. Moreover, Harvey’s ongoing team is spread around town, as he didn’t have a lot to push this season, so they have other obligations, some exclusively. On top of that is the Kate Winslet problem.

Doubt really is on a different track altogether. Miramax’s relationship and enormous awards success working with 42 West is every bit as well established as the relationship with Rudin, who also produced this movie. There is a built-in conflict there. But unlike the Paramount Vantage situation, there is a lot less cross-over between the film’s teams.

The Rest...

Posted by dpoland at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

September 28, 2008

Found On The Web...

(this is not an endorsement of this website... unless there is a check coming.)

Posted by dpoland at 07:51 PM | Comments (9)

The Reader... Coming To Theaters Near You (if you live in NY or LA) On Dec 12

A joint Weinstein/Daldry press release has been issued.

As explained before, no surprise. (Even less so after the Project Runway ruling.)

JOINT STATEMENT FROM SCOTT RUDIN AND HARVEY WEINSTEIN:
"We are issuing this statement together to emphasize the fact that we are in complete agreement on the date we have chosen to release "The Reader." Working together, we developed a plan to extend the post-production schedule in order to give Stephen Daldry the additional time he needs to successfully complete the film in time to release it on December 12, 2008."

STATEMENT FROM DIRECTOR STEPHEN DALDRY:
"On their own, Scott and Harvey spent this weekend working together to find a way to accommodate my needs so that I may fulfill my obligation to the studio without compromising my vision for the film. I am thrilled and relieved that we have all found a way forward to work together to bring 'The Reader' to theaters this year."

PS 6:29p - Why kind of con artist spin is the absurd notion that this is a win-win for Weinstein and Rudin? As I keep writing, this was never about the war of the wills. It is about money. Period. Everyone associated with Rev Road, from top to bottom, wanted The Reader to go away until next year. Period.

The only con better than "they are conceding post-production dollars and a move to NY" (when there was no other choice but to rip the film from the director, as he is putting the stage version of Billy Elliot up in NY right now) is "the movie isn't ready." Making adjustments to get a film done is normal. And the movie is ready 90% of the time that things have moved along enough for someone serious to be asking, even if it is not in the ultimate final form.

Posted by dpoland at 01:08 PM | Comments (7)

Self-Loathing Dems; Part II

I was struck by Nora Ephron's "McCain Won The Debate Because Obama Didn't Slap Him Hard Enough" piece on Huffington Post. She was hardly alone. But what a bunch of whinny, self-destructive babies we on the left have become. We are so used to being under the thumb of conservative aggression that we'd rather get in our punches than win an election... or rather, we don't really believe we can win, so we need our young, black, frontrunning presidental candidate to express our rage rather than to be the ideal we profess to see as so superior.

It's the old "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" thing. And I hate it.

The one thing that wrongheaded conservatives have is that they believe... even when, as now, they would be embarrassed to win with such a terrible team running.

Obama is not an attack dog. If he pretends to he one, he will lose. Yes, we could all write quips to throw at raging granny McCain. But it's about winning, not the rush of a beatdown. And whether you were watching the meter on CNN or reading post-game polls, the key voters, the Independents, are turned off by the negative crap. And we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that it's because we are right and the other side is wrong.

You could see it on SNL last night when they tried to be more than even-handed by making Obama the butt of the nastiest crap thrown at him... a few laughs... but McCain's stuff got bigger laughs because people get that and figured it out on their own, much as with Palin.

So calm down... stop obsessing... change isn't easy... but it's on the way. Don't, as Grandpa would say, snatch a loss from the jaws of victory. Obama is smarter than the elders of our party. He'll take his 6 point win and never have to bloody an opponent who is so good at bloodying himself.

Posted by dpoland at 10:12 AM | Comments (80)

September 27, 2008

I Can't Let You Blog That, Dave

Keir Dullea as Dr Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Anthony Mackie as Major William Bowman in Eagle Eye

What do they have in common?

Hint: It's not the skill set of the director or screenwriters.

Another hint that is angering some as a spoiler, so it now after the jump...

(Edited, Sunday 6:37p)

Posted by dpoland at 08:11 PM | Comments (24)

The New Palin Trend: Sympathy.. For The Sexist Treatment... By McCain

Liberal Judith Warner - "On Tuesday afternoon when I went to The Times Web site and saw the photo of Sarah Palin with Henry Kissinger, a funny thing happened. A wave of self-recognition and sympathy washed over me."

Right Winger Rod Dreher (thankfully a former film critic) - "I remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready. Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test. I sat down in Dr. Sarkar's class and resolved to wing it. Of course I failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was talking about. I wasn't a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just badly unprepared, and in way over my head. Seeing the Palin interview on CBS, I thought of myself in Dr. Sarkar's exam. But see, I was a college undergraduate who had the chance to take the class again, which I did, and passed (barely). I wasn't running for vice president of the United States."

Ta-Nehisi Coates takes the Dreher and runs with it - "Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they'd quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a mement. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that? I don't meant to rob Palin of agency, certainly she is also a victim of her own calculations and ambitions. But where I am from, the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big."

==============

And just for the record, the FactCheck.org take on the debate

==============

And from Politico...

McCain at campaign HQ, making calls

After a late night flying back to Washington, McCain is at his campaign HQ making calls to push a deal on the financial bailout, according to a top aide.

He won't be headed to Capitol Hill today.

As for why not, Mark Salter told the campaign pool reporter: "Because he can effectively do
what he needs to do by phone."

Posted by dpoland at 08:01 PM | Comments (2)

Paul Newman, 1/26/25 - 9/26/08

I'm not quite ready to write on this. Unlike so many of my colleagues, I didn't start the sad assignment of writing this weeks ago. (And don't take that as a slap at any of them... just the nature of rumors and editors and deadlines.)

Newman = movie star.

He is a major part of the foundation of the love of movies for anyone over 40 in the world.

I will write more later. But here is some space for you...

Posted by dpoland at 12:59 PM | Comments (22)

Foul Mouthed Silverman Says "Get Bubbe To Vote Black And We'll Never Go Back"

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Posted by dpoland at 12:57 PM | Comments (5)

Friday Estimates by Klady

The Shia-Getting-In-Trouble franchise continues to grow, from a $22 million opening for Disturbia to what looks like a somewhere-near $30 million opening for Eagle Eye, an inferior retread with some excellent ads.

Lane & Gere are doing about what they do. The last time out was Unfaithful (the movie that convinced college girls to have stairwell sex for a few months), which opened to $14.1 million.

Another boring week at the box office...

Posted by dpoland at 12:50 PM | Comments (29)

September 26, 2008

Why Does This Bother Me?

It's NY Post by way of Defamer, so we are starting with a pleasure in gossip, but...

Why does it make me very, very uncomfortable when major newspapers find themselves in the business of streaming public figures' private phone conversations for nothing but their own amusement and the amusement of their audiences?

I am not shocked by anything on these tapes. But is it really a fair moral choice - forget about journalistic choices - to embarrass any of these people because the opportunity to do so, over an 11 year old movie?

I admit it... I am as curious as anyone to see Marilyn Monroe fellate a Kennedy on grainy Super 8, but I think I would be disgusted if a major paper got a copy of the film (if it really exists) and ran the frame-by frame like Zapruder.

Even the Alec Baldwin thing with his daughter… just unnecessary. And we in the journalistic community seem to forget to ask ourselves, “Whose motives are we serving?”

Don’t even get me started on ignoramuses who built their rep 100% on cronyism and peeks at other the reporting of others only to accuse others of the same with nothing constructive to add to the conversation while embarrassing others via private communications that should have remained private.

Occasionally, exposure of audio or video has value to the good of the community. But it is very rare. Much more often, it is about gossip. And I don’t need to know about DeNiro’s wish to get paid for a movie, spun into a childish ego fit, anymore than I need to know what body part Lindsay Lohan is resting her tongue on. Enough already.

Posted by dpoland at 11:54 AM | Comments (9)

A Thought...

It's funny...

I am perfectly happy for studios to do whatever they want with their movies. Screen 'em. Don't screen 'em. Whatever.

But I must admit that, really simply, if they send something to Austin, whether for Fantastic Fest or Butt-Numb-A-Thon, my honest reaction is, "Check!"

Of course, many good movies have gone down there. A lot of great talent has gone down there. Huzzah.

But if studios decide that they are going to lead with that as their focus, in simple terms, I am clearly not their market and my relationship to that movie just doesn't matter much.

I know that a certain contingent will take this as me bellyaching about something they have decided is an issue for me... but I am being honest here (and not naming names on any side of it). There are plenty of people who could care less what I think, how I feel, or whether I care about their movie. This is not a surprise to me. This does not keep me up at night.

The only time I have ever put myself into in a position to force studios to choose me over someone else with the first dibs on a movie was when MCN was doing screenings for the award season... and when the whole thing became something everyone wanted to get into (slammed by the LA Times with a lie, as we made no money on the screenings... and now, even they are trying to do a screening series), we got out of it. Unlike, say, Variety, I don't feel compelled to prop up my business by trying to muscle studios into giving MCN... well, anything, really.

And this isn't an issue of seeing something early or first.

People in that community are part of our MCN community. We are happy to have them read and participate. But we don't serve that community, primarily.

You know, I didn't rush to see Kung-Fu Panda either. In that community, I was "wrong" about Eli Roth. That was where Mel Gibson decided was safe for The Passion, right after evangelicals and right wingers.

FF/BNAT is where you go for The Boys. And God bless ‘em, I am an old man now, if not in comparative age, in my thinking. Not every movie is for me. And that’s okay.

Even more, that’s a good thing. If a movie is meant for everyone, 98% of the time, it is watered down crap. (Have I mentioned Eagle Eye before?)

Going to FF or BNAT is just another marketing ploy to hide the salami from anyone who might distract from The Base (you know The Base… they’re the ones who love Sarah Palin)… same as going to Venice and not to Toronto… same as showing a movie to “long lead” writers and then touting their reactions (Really?!?! Peter Travers loved it? How could you hear him with his nose shoved so far up the entire industry’s ass?)… same as letting a movie screen for a local “cinema preview class” and then hiding it like it isn’t done or premiering in 2 weeks in another country… same as showing up at a major festival and not doing major press… same as (and this is a biggie… and popular) lying outright about the status of the film and your screening plans…

There are just so many ways to hide a movie… and so often, for no good reason.

In the end, the movie is the movie is the movie. And that, in the end, is all I care about. But the question that moviegoers ask, I get to ask myself earlier… is this thing worth caring about? And certain choices signal, “Nope…not really.”

And really, I encourage those who want what they get from these kinds of exposures to go for it. I promise you… you don’t need me. It’s really not that big a deal.

It’s taken me many years in this game to realize that when “you” decide that you don’t want “me” to see your movie (and it really is a group, not just me personally), I don’t need to push harder to see it, because 94 out of 100 times, the movie isn’t very good. And 4 times out of those 100 times, you have no idea that you have a really good movie in your care that you should trust to speak for itself and you are fumbling the football. And 2 times out of those 100 times, the movie is magnificent and you just don’t have to concern yourself about anyone’s concern because the movie shall set you free.

Yeah… those odds seem about right… fantastic!

Posted by dpoland at 11:07 AM | Comments (7)

22 Weeks - Corrections, We Have Corrections...

As usual, the first round of 20 weeks charts have plenty of flaws and oversights... though some of the "oversights" are intentional.

Here are some:

I noticed on your prediction charts that you have THE DUCHESS spelled incorrectly (DUTCHESS)

One minor correction on the "22 weeks to Oscar" page - the release date for "Australia" is November 26, not November 14 (it was changed about a month ago).

where is Elsa Zylberstein?
ILYSL is gaining serious traction – did you see Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian rave?

slumdog is an adapted screenplay from a book called Q and A

"Wall E will get into orig screenplay category"

"Penelope Cruz has a chance at all for Elegy in lead? Also, Elegy in adapted screenplay?"

"It's weird that you left Vicky Cristina Barcelona off the contenders for Original Screenplay."

More?

Posted by dpoland at 10:16 AM | Comments (4)

September 25, 2008

BYOB - 092509

Posted by dpoland at 11:55 PM | Comments (10)

22 Weeks To Oscar

The charts...

I am absolutely looking forward to the films at the top of the leader board. But the W.s and the Australias and the Seven Pounds and, of course, the Slumdog Millionaire, is where the fun seems to be this season. Winning… strong… well acted and directed… all great. But discovery is the great narcotic.

I want to walk out of the theater after seeing Ben Button and say, “That movie HAS to be nominated or I will declare jihad!” I really do want to. Really, I want to feel that way about any movie… not just “that was really quite excellent,” but LOVE.

The rest...

Posted by dpoland at 11:52 PM | Comments (8)

Searchlight Jumps Into The Fray

I don't know whether Rupert will approve, but this ad ran on Huffington Post today...

Posted by dpoland at 07:16 PM | Comments (22)

Sleeping Blu-ray

The magic of Blu-ray and the trend to CG animation, watching Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray is a revelation… as is the preview of Pinocchio’s Blu-ray premiere in the spring.

It is a whole different form of art… as it should be understood to be.

It’s a weird thing how people decide that one form of cinema is all that they should be asked to consume at one time. If it’s CG animation, if it’s not that, it’s junk. If movies are being quick cut, classics are too slow. If Bruckheimer’s smoke machine is making money, everyone has to make their action movies look like there is a smog alert, even inside.

There is simply something amazing about watching the unique depth of field and visual lushness of the backgrounds and colors that have a pop that is analog to the digital Crayola set of CG animation. It’s a little like experiencing claymation these days. It’s very different. But it can be oh so beautiful

And this Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray is just breathtakingly beautiful… so much so that it’s almost impossible to believe it was just restored. Gorgeous.

And you remember… all the toys are fun… but good story well told… it’s everything.

Posted by dpoland at 05:48 PM | Comments (1)

Matt Damon's Dream Comes True

Posted by dpoland at 05:19 PM | Comments (5)

The Scariest Non-Answer Yet?

Seriously... really... can anyone decipher this?

Does the odd non-answer, one step above "I can see Russia from my porch," but is there any real answer in here?

The transcript after the jump...

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

Posted by dpoland at 02:57 PM | Comments (17)

What’s With All The Oscar Whining?

Oy... give the hungry monkeys a tiny bit of meat and they go nuts!

Yesterday, Larry Mark and Bill Condon were handed the reins of The Oscars, as the Academy gets more and more fearful that their the cash cow of all cash cows is fading and fading fast.

But this hire is not like adding a "$100 Million Movie Award" or "Best Kiss" to the show.

This is hiring theater guys who are also vested movie guys to come up with a better show... a show that the Academy Board hopes will set a new standard moving forward.

Like so many things, The Academy has to come to an acceptance of being the biggest dog on a block that is, simply, getting smaller. And to that end, a few real changes to a show that has been boilerplate for a long time is a step in a right direction... EVEN IF THIS YEAR'S RATINGS ARE DOWN AGAIN.

This is a critical point. One of the reasons that The Oscars haven't changed much is that every time they try something, it gets slammed by traditionalists (sometimes rightly) and the ratings don't improve - expecting them to, from show content changed in the same year makes no sense - so they retreat.

I’m not going to play a public gotcha game with the Academy or the new team, laying out my personal suggestions in public and then either saying, “Toldja” or “Ya Shoulda Listened!” after the fact.

It is all too easy for all of us to forget that putting on a show – whether a movie or a TV show or a play or an awards show – is not a game for those doing the actual work. We, in the media and commenting on blogs, do not belong wandering through the process of any of these media. I know we all want to feel like part of the conversation. But we continue to tear at the fabric of art in process out of sheer personal arrogance.

Anyway…

Larry Mark is a consummate insider. Bill Condon is a consummate artist. I imagine that Larry will let Bill do the conceptual work and clearly add his sense of the world to the conversation. But when push comes to shove, look for the duo to work like traditional producer/artists combos… the artist does the art and the producer helps shape it and then goes out and makes the impossible happen.

One thing I do know for sure… there is no filmmaker in this business with a more passionate interest and love for The Oscars than Bill Condon. It has always been my impression that he enjoys award season even more when his neck is not on the line as a potential nominee than when it is.

As for what they may do or what they should do, the job is simple… create a show that feels more like a must-see than it has in recent years.

This is not an easy thing. Everyone talks about how much more fun other shows are, but it is often forgotten than none of those shows – The Globes, MTV Movie Awards, SAG, People’s Choice – have anything close to the ratings that Oscar has, even in a down year.

Last year, with no Globes running, The Academy got the shock-treatment of a 24% drop in the ratings with adults 18-49, with a 10.7 rating and 32 million viewers overall.

The year before, 2007, the Golden Globes touted a big uptick in their ratings after a couple of down years… with a 6.5 in the same group and 20 million viewers overall.

The MTV Movie Awards high of a 3.8 rating is great for them… but suicide watch for The Academy… and that is with multiple plays over multiple cable networks.

But then again, The Academy nets about $30 million a year from The Oscars and the HFPA is thrilled to be netting about $8 million annually from The Golden Globes. The Academy needs the big numbers to come back. And that may not ever happen.

The illusion out there is that mega-movies raise interest significantly and that a few bigger films are the way out of the ratings doldrums. But if you look at the ratings and the box office numbers, there are some positive bumps for phenomenal movies like Titanic and the Lord of the Rings that won. (Note that the two years that Rings was nominated and didn’t win were down, just like usual… and you can’t tune in knowing the outcome.)

39 million – 47 million viewers is the range for the show, the ratings between a 23 and a 29. Last year was the first time the Oscars saw a ratings dip below 20 and below 38 million viewers (aside from, in the overall number of people, the Chicago-winning year, which competed with the start of the Iraq war for America’s focus.)

But need I remind you that the ratings for the Oscar show the year of The English Patient, one year before the massive Oscars hit of Titanic, with Jerry Maguire, Shine, Fargo, and Secrets & Lies also nominated (domestic grosses for the winner, $78.7m, Jerry Maguire doing $154m, and followed in order by grosses of $36m, $25m, and $13m) was still a 30?

Last year was particularly bad, but the ratings have been in a clear and consistent free fall for over a decade now. There is no consistent jump in ratings when bigger movies win. When Gladiator won, the ratings were down. Same with The Departed. And even if Mark/Condon “brings the ratings back up” to, say, a 23, that is back to the normal dropping ratings, not a return to the heyday.

The high target needs to be about a 24 and 40 million viewers. The reasonable target needs to be about a 22 and 38 million viewers. And a 21 and 36 million viewers is not a disaster.

If the rating stays under 20 and the viewership remains under 33 million this year, it will signal a real shift in what is possible for this event and the deal with ABC, which I believe has this year and next left on it, will be in jeopardy of a big cutback in cost. The Academy would like have to end up with whoever felt they needed a ratings boost from the annual event. None of the broadcast networks are that desperate, though the cable/broadcast possibilities of NBC and Fox would make them the most likely suspects.

But I digress…

It is very difficult to figure out whether the ratings decline can be stopped and if so, what the causes are. I would suggest that last year, with dark movies, a distracting WGA strike, and the start of a hot election season, was an anomaly, as the Chicago year was.

But not unlike Siskel & Ebert, when an event is a phenomenon greater than the sum of its parts, it is usually impossible to regain the magic. Mark/Condon can come up with a better show. They can improve the show, within the limitations of The Academy (such as no round tables… too Globes… and no further significant shortening of the season.)

To use another analogy, it is not unlike the festival circuit. There is only so much need for the markets that the biggest festivals have become... and even they are sliding. Meanwhile Tribeca can throw money at their aspirations and still not become “important.” There is only so much need for awards shows.

Make a better show. I am confident that they will. But the ratings are not about quality anymore than movie box office is. Yes, it matters. No, the best movies won’t make the most and the worst will certainly not make the least. Let the creative people do their work, stop guessing and poking at them, and we’ll see the show in a few months.

And start cutting the Academy budget because the show may rebound, but it’s not heading back to Super Bowl numbers… ever. Get used to it.

Posted by dpoland at 01:03 PM | Comments (9)

Morning Poli-Roundup

The McCain Timeline - Observers, critics, even fellow Republicans, were left wondering: where did this sense of urgency come from? After all, it was this past Sunday that McCain hinted on 60 Minutes that he would support the bailout -- "we have to stop the bleeding" -- only to express deep criticisms on Monday and then admit he hadn't even read the three-page proposal on Tuesday.

"I have not had a chance to see it in writing," said the Senator. "I have to examine it."

Horrifying.

Counting Every Question That Sarah Palin Answers Sarah Palin fielded four questions from a small group of reporters Thursday That makes a total of 6 questions asked by working press in the 27 days since she was nominated by John McCain. There have been three sitdown interviews, one by Fox.

Disenfranchised - It struck me yesterday that the idea of disenfranchisement, a word thrown around often these days, is actually a lot less relevant when talking about women as a group or races or ethnic groups than about The Clintons and those who followed them slavishly. Why? Because they were actually enfranchised. And it is absolutely true that an Obama win will disenfranchise them. And they are ANGRY. And I understand. And I still think they are shit for being so selfish and abandoning what they so ferociously claimed to believe.

Speaking of which…
Bill Clinton continues to endorse McCain by supporting his games.
I don't think he needs to be aggressively negative, but does he have to keep on repeating McCain's mantras and never seem to say anything actively supportive of Obama?

Posted by dpoland at 09:58 AM | Comments (15)

September 24, 2008

The McCain Delay

I have been out all day, so I am still catching up with things. I don't want to rush to judgment.

But a couple of items stuck out to me...

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Miss., currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

And...

McCain's behavior to date leaves me extremely suspicious. And I find it hard to look past the political motive of keeping Sarah Palin from being heard by the public in an open forum as a major motivator for him.

Posted by dpoland at 05:24 PM | Comments (33)

Disney Event '08

Nobody does these events better… or as big.

Disney did one of their, generally, once-every-three-years events covering the breadth and scope of their film product. Bread and circuses. Heavy presence of international partners. The big show.

Effectively hosted by Dick Cook, the massive crowd at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood were treated to musical performances by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the USC Marching Band, a live horse, Miley Cyrus, and Dr. John. There were movie star appearances by Travolta, Bullock, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, William H Macy, Nic Cage, the leads of High School Musical 3, The Rock, Isla Fisher, Jim Carrey, Miley Cyrus, George Lopez, and…

Johnny Depp.

Today, it was announced at this event that he would be the Mat Hatter (no real surprise there) in Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland (great conceptual art shown), that he would take on the role of The Lone Ranger for Jerry Bruckheimer, and that there will be a Pirates 4. (Depp appeared at the very end of the event in his fill Captain Jack outfit, along with a mask and a six-shooter, saying not one word.)

Also, Oprah joins the cast of The Princess & The Frog as the lead character’s mother.

Another big announcement from Bruckheimer was Nic Cage in a live-action version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice set in modern New York with Cage as The Sorcerer.

Also, Toy Story 3 will be out a year earlier than originally announced.

There was also some footage from Tron 2 (or Tr2n) with Jeff Bridges that should get the geeks very excited.

The company had a multi-room display of the concept art from next November’s A Christmas Carol, being done in motion capture by director Bob Zemeckis, with Jim Carrey playing eight roles, including five versions of Scrooge. One room was a motion capture room, complete with cameras everywhere are two working capture rigs you could look at.

We watched Bolt in 3-D in its entirety (about 90% complete).

More later….

Posted by dpoland at 04:59 PM | Comments (27)

BYOB Redux

Somehow, in trying to post from the Disney event, I erased the BYOB... my apologies.

Posted by dpoland at 02:07 PM | Comments (42)

September 23, 2008

Gossip Around The Reader

One detail missng completely from the sudden interest in old news regarding whether Harvey Weinstein will release The Reader against producer Scott Rudin's will in December...

Kate Winslet decalred months ago that she will not do press for The Reader if Harvey releases it against her husband's film, Revolutionary Road.

Game over.

Or so it should have been.

But Harvey is stubborn. And he must think that Rev Road is going to tank, awards-wise, or he would know that he was killing two birds with one stone by even considering pushing the two movies into battle without his best Golden Globe bait in Winslet.

Moreover, he is light on cash and sitting on The Reader until 2009 means, 1) giving up millions from the over-Dec-31-Showtime-pay-tv money that he still can grab under his MGM alliance, 2) sitting on the $40 million cost until the film is released, which pretty much precludes waiting until next Oscar season, not wanting to eat millions in interest on the budget.

The point is... it has nothing to do with Harvey's will vs Rudin's... it has little to do with the quality of the movie... like so many decisions made by cash-tight companies in this town these days, it is about the bottom line and everything else is a distraction. And the bottom line here is that Harvey is 80% on the way to NEEDING to release this film this year, even though he is completely concious of all the pitfalls (which include dealing with an already not-so-thrilled-to-be-working-with-Harvey 42 West, which works on all Rudin's films and which will be 100% on Rudin's side of any publicity fight)..

Posted by dpoland at 03:52 PM | Comments (8)

Once Again...

Man, is it hard to stay focused on movies right now.

Don't get me wrong. I love movies. I am still taking in information and movies and doing all my normal work that leads to blog entries, etc.

But Ahmadinejad is speaking at the U.N... the bail out package, which involves almost as much money as the Iraq War (though some of this money - possibly all of it - will be recovered), is being debated in Congress... Palin and McCain are still playing hide the candidate and even the wimpy press corps is beginning to be disgusted enough not to accept it for fear of being "Je Accuse!-ed" by the lying class...

I don't care how many cars John McCain has or where they are from. I don't want to listen to spokespeople dancing through the raindrops of truth about who supported what and when they did it. As amused as I am by the right wing of the Republican Party that was bought off by Palin coming back at McCain strong - personally, I think they now sense that they need to start rebuilding before McCain loses - I don't even care that much that George Will can't stop slamming McCain.

Important moments are rare in life. It is, as we saw last week, all too easy to overreact. But this is, unlike any moment since Reagan was elected, a moment in which something truly important and nation changing is in the air. Both parties are ready to leave Iraq and the exit will be even more tenuous than the taking over of the country. We are in a crisis at the end of an economic bubble - not unlike DVD sell-thru in the movie business - with no "next bubble" on the horizon... meaning we actually might have to do heavy lifting as a nation to keep the balls in the air.

And after 8 years of an unpopular presidency, America is within percentage points of choosing to keep playing the same hand instead of moving towards a future the majority claims repeatedly in polling that they want. Forget about which side of that argument you fall on for a second... forget about whether you like the characterization... just think about the choice.

And then get your head around a passionate discussion of Eagle Eye.

Sorry… I know you come here for movies… and I appreciate it… but focusing even for a couple of hours at the keyboard about our entertainment… right now… not easy… right now, it’s a job.

Posted by dpoland at 01:05 PM | Comments (69)

Gurus o' Gold Returns

Early season charts for Best Picture, Actor, Actress & Supporting are here.

But for a slightly different perspective, I Frankensteined a chart of the Toronto movies and how they are perceived coming out of the festival.

Some may say that it's TIFF, but I would argue that it's the many awards hopefuls that didn't go up this year that led not only to a specific mellow tone up there, but which actually depressed press excitement about everything - except Slumdog - launching out of there.

Posted by dpoland at 11:08 AM | Comments (21)

September 22, 2008

BYOB

Sorry... one of those days that got away... please self-amuse...

Posted by dpoland at 03:37 PM | Comments (91)

September 21, 2008

Skip It... Waaaay Skip It!

I have been carefully avoiding “At The Movies” for the first couple of weeks. I mean, you don’t actually have to get into the oven before you realize that whiff of gas says, “Stay Out!”

But in the face of an increasing number of “can you f-ing believe these idiots” e-mails, I decided to DVR it today as I finished watching the entertaining Jacksonville and Denver tough 4th quarter wins.

Uhhhhhhhh….

I got through a couple of “reviews” before I started forwarding through the talking parts. I was stunned to realize, oddly, that Ben Lyons is not only ignorant about film and relentlessly self-involved… he’s actually stupid. I mean, dumb.

Mankiewicz comes across as intelligent, if uninsightful. He was smart enough to understand that Appaloosa, for instance, is really a buddy film first, and not a western first. But there was not a memorable word out of his mouth that a viewer could hang onto after the 3 minutes of frat house level banter was over. (And a note from a big guy with chest hair who does some TV… button the second button. I let the shirt fly at times in real life, but the lack of fashion sense on the show aside, the open second button on TV is a non-starter. Either go 4 buttons deep and be a rock star or go one button or get a tie.)

Lyons… just dumb as a rock. I barely know where to start. How about here

One of the genius ideas of the show is “3 to Watch” on a show with 2 hosts. Uh… math… anyone?

But scroll past that on the “At The Movies” blog - which I couldn’t find on google by putting the name of the show and the hosts, but only when I added “tv” – and you will see a parade of MySpace-like pictures of Ben “Peter Wannabe” Lyons with celebrities at Toronto. Maybe he’s on his way to a gig at the HFPA. All the better, since it would mean that he was at a foreign outlet and we would never have to see him again.

He actually deigned to talk about the editing of Appaloosa, as though he knew jack shit about editing. (The show is so poorly edited that my civilian wife said after 2 minutes, “Are they editing the discussion… because it doesn’t flow at all.” Yeah. If there was a worse piece of cutting done in Chicago, it would never have been the Hog Butcher To The World.)

I bet if Benny knew that the same cutter edited the edit-heavy pilots of Ugly Betty and The Office, setting the standard for both shows, he would rethink… and take a picture with her. As someone who has spent time in a lot of editing rooms and who actually does pay attention to cutting, I can honestly say that I didn’t see a bad cut in the film either time I saw the film. But it is, as Benny Boy put it, slow. It asks the audience to think. And if you can’t do that, I guess you would dismiss it as “slow” or "poorly edited." Good thing he’ll never be asked to review a film in a foreign language. (Ben: “They all… well, I love foreigners, but those people talk funny… and they just talk and talk and talk! My head hurts! Where is my episode guide for 90210?”)

The production (Exec Produced by the once intelligent David Plummer, aka The Last Man Standing) is two chairs on a circular riser looking at what looks like a big TV screen. I would joke about doing the show in my living room, except the production would look better.

Perhaps a piece of producing actually worse that the production design or editing is the “critics roundtable” segment which features three people, one of whom is a smart person who has taken on reviewing responsibilities in addition to feature writing for AP, one of whom freelances and does some interstitial pieces for IFC, and one who doesn’t review, as far as I know, given that Rotten Tomatoes gathers reviews and does not review itself. But the weak casting is only the start of the trouble.

This weak, uh week, for no apparent reason, they talked about Righteous Kill, which opened in third place at last week’s box office and was poorly reviewed. This was quickly clear, as all three “critics” gave their “skip it” ranking at the top of the segment… and then spent another 5 minutes chatting about it, as questions were asked after they were already answered in those opening slams. What the hell were they thinking? And why didn’t a producer, looking at a segment that was already chopped up like a cyanide pill for a small child you don't want to OD, just move the concluding, definitive “skip it”s to the end? It’s like telling someone the milk is sour before asking them to taste it.

And what of the lack of thumbs? They have “cleverly” replaced the legendary tag with stop light colors (surely seen by them on Movie City News when we started it months ago… we saw it first on a Christian rating sight, albeit with different subtext) and “See It,” “Rent It,” and “Skip It.” You know, man, just like the kids talk, man, dude, man… cool.

But mostly, the show has been reduced to what it once was… two guys sitting around talking about the new movies. Except these guys aren’t remotely interesting or insightful. I could take the insult of Ben Lyons being worse than the quote whores… at least they know what they are. But boring? Too much.

I stopped watching Roeper soon after Roger left the show. I like AO Scott and Michael Phillips and others who were on the show with Richard. But Richard is an arrogant, ignorant bore (not dumb like Ben) and he never let himself be anything less than dominant after he had the helm. And so, the show, which also deteriorated as a production, was boring.

As I have gotten older, I have learned that torturing myself with unimportant minutiae is simply unnecessary. I see fewer of the crap movies of each year than I ever have, even before I started writing about the movies and then, writing criticism. I have learned to say "no" to ego gratifiers that are soul suckers. And just because E! exists does not mean that it matters enough to command my attention. People who care about Ryan Seacrest get what they want and what they deserve.

So… I don’t ever have to watch this mess again.

Poland out.

Posted by dpoland at 05:03 PM | Comments (44)

Pale In Comparison

Last night's SNL seemed to suffer from the same kind of power anxiety that happened last season when so many news reports circled around the "fairness" on their political bits. Remember… when they just got scared and softened everything… until Hillary really was dead and they put in a final skewer after the fact?

The McCain opening, which might have been funny a month ago, but is now completely irrelevant, was a dud. Weekend Update pretty much avoided politics. And the third-half-hour "make-up" sketch that mocked the NY Times as being so self-sniffingly disconnected from "real people" when heading to Alaska to look into the Palin nomination was not nearly mean enough or smart enough to be funny. There is a great sketch in the idea of NY journos not understanding Hunting America... but lattes and thai delivery are jokes as weak as joking that no one in Alaska not having teeth. Of course, if you wanted to go buck wild, you could do the Deliverance route and have the NYers treating Alaska like the Appalachians and Alaskans going along with it, as a joke, and then seeing it reported.

I don't mean to be sketch writing here. My point is that there has to be some kind of greater truth than just poking at the obvious. Humor is in the twist.

What made the Palin/Clinton bit last week work so well is that it hit on a truth, but not a truth that has been beaten into the ground. They found an angle that worked and it rang true. Clinton must feel like she is in some sort of bad acid trip and Palin is just so happy to be there that she shouts out her talking points with joy, barely conscious of what she is saying.

If they had done a bit this week on the candidates' reactions to the financial crisis, with McCain itching to bomb someone and Cindy stuffing cash in mattresses while Obama backs away from committing to a plan or the language of a release or a lunch order... something to that effect... I would have hated it as unfair to Obama's measured stance, but I would have understood the joke and why it would be funny... McCain as reactionary man of action and Obama as pensive thinker.

The hardest thing for SNL about doing a Biden vs Palin sketch will be how to make Biden long-winded enough without it eating the whole sketch. I imagine that they won't go there. I imagine something more like Palin and McCain at a speaking event where Palin gives McCain a cookie when he talks about being a POW but cattle prods him when he starts down one of his roads to nowhere (or tells the truth).

Anyway... the rest of the show was truly horrible... SNL is in a rebuilding year. When it's as intense a week as it was this last week and Update is not only bad, but weighed down with a too-long guy-in-a-barrel joke and a nothing gag about a guy sexually harassing employees in his underwear... yikes.

They should really hire Lewis Black for the next two months to do an Update spot every show. They really need to figure out whether Fred Armison is really their Obama and have him on the show, since two Saturdays in a row without him kinda makes no sense. They need to find a way to get Andy Samberg think about something political, even if it leads to a dick joke.

I mean, really, how can you do a cougar show right now and not include Palin and/or Clinton? How can SNL go another week without getting Alec Baldwin going nuts on the show? Where is the Hardball sketch where Chris Matthews – who I like, actually – melts down and kills a Republican he thinks is lying with his bare hands while the Dem rep just giggles. Where is the Bill O’Reilly character? Rush Limbaugh?

The show came back early because of the elections… why is it doing so little, so simplistically?

Posted by dpoland at 02:08 PM | Comments (32)

Weekened Estimates by Klady

Posted by dpoland at 01:32 PM | Comments (11)

September 20, 2008

Friday Estimates by Klady

Lakeview Terrace's start has to be a little dissapointing for the once can't-miss Screen Gems team. The thing that strikes me is that the movie is genre, but it's not Screen Gems genre, which is to say horror, girls, teen splat, and black/hispanic/urban. What teen wants to see a thriller about suburban angst? What black audience is running to see Sam Jackson terrorize the nice white guy next door? And how can a quick turn studio division think that the adult audience, who this movie really is after, will show up before weekend two?

Dame Clunk may finally be going away, with this weak's release looking at half of what last year's Jessica-Ablba's-skirt-twirls-up weak shite did.

Igor did not convince the kiddies that this was a must see... not a shock... one actually has to spend TV dollars to do that.

And the not-so-shocking shocker is Ghost Town, which reminds us that America has no idea who the f Ricky Gervais is, no matter how wonderful a performer. WB has him next and I expect to see them lay down a much thicker base coat than Paramount - in one of their weakest efforts on outdoor and print images that I have seen in a long time - did. How ugly is it when Tea' Leoni can't get a second of TV-spot time and Greg Kinnear just slightly less? Maybe someone had a bet that they couldn't open a Gervais movie and was trying to win... probably not.

Of course, it's good to keep in mind that we are still in the studio Dump Zone for movies... which ends next weekend with Eagle Eye and Nights in Rodanthe... we hope.

Posted by dpoland at 03:46 PM | Comments (38)

September 19, 2008

Doing The ParaWorks Math

There are still some movies coming down the pike, but it seems like today is a good day to do that math on DreamAmount/ParaWorks.

DREAMWORKS MOVIES UNDER PARAMOUNT

15 movies in the last 3 years : Dreamgirls, Perfume, Flags of Our Fathers, She's the Man, The Last Kiss, Transformers, Norbit, Sweeney Todd, Blades of Glory, The Heartbreak Kid, Disturbia, Things We Lost in the Fire, Tropic Thunder, The Ruins

Worldwide Theatrical Gross; $1.996 billion
Worldwide Rentals: $1.098 billion

Estimated Post-Theatrical Gross Returns To Par: $950 million

Estimated SS Cut On Transformers: $75 million
Estimated Gross Points Out (Murphy, Depp, Ferrell, Stiller): $25 million

Total Estimated Income To Par: $1.948 billion

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION AT PARAMOUNT

5 movies: Shrek the Third, Over the Hedge, Flushed Away, Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda

Worldwide Theatrical Gross; $2.219 billion
Worldwide Rentals: $1.220 billion
Total Theatrical Return to Paramount (10% distribution deal):$ 122 million
Estimate Fees To Par For Home Video Distribution: $100 million
Initial Cost of Deal: $75 million
Par Net On DWA over 3 years: $147 million

TOTALING
Estimated Revenue Created For Paramount via DW & DWA: $2.1 billion
Unrecoverable Cost of DreamWorks Deal: $900 million

This leaves $1.2 billion against the marketing and production costs of the 15 movies listed above.

My estimate on production costs? Just under $800 million. (This takes into account nothing but release costs on Perfume, a split on Flags, and a split on Sweeney.)

A conservative estimate on marketing on these films is $450 million.

POST-SCRIPT

Yes, Paramount owns the non-DWA films and they go into the Par library. That more than makes up for what seems to be an overall loss on the deal.

On the DreamWorks side? Nothing but a mountain slot machine. Win. Win. Win.

If AIG/USA ends up this way, with America coming out about even and AIG recovering from its troubles to be stronger than ever, I would consider that a win.

But Paramount didn’t get into this deal to bail out and enrich DreamWorks. And as I have said from early on, the biggest problem for Paramount is that they spent 3 years dogpaddling instead of rebuilding. So here they are, after huge gross numbers for three years, with very little to show for it, aside from the profits of the Transformers sequel to come, which they would have had at least 50% of as co-funder and distributor as laid out before the DW temp-merger was done.

THE REST OF THE DW/PAR PRODUCT
Eagle Eye 9/26/08
The Soloist 11/21/08
I Love You Man 1/16/09
Hotel for Dogs 1/23/09
Uninvited 1/30/09
The Lovely Bones 3/13/09
Transformers 2 6/26/09
Master of Time and Space 2009
How to Train Your Dragon 3/26/10
Master Mind 11/15/10

DWA’s NEXT 3
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa 11/7/08
Monsters and Aliens 3/27/09
Shrek Goes Fourth 5/21/10

A Note From The Author: Whenever I throw one of these together, I find that there is stuff that people point out as flawed, in detail or concept. I will monitor both the e-mail and the blog comments for anything that seems like a misstep in my calculations and I will happily, in a clearly marked edit, make corrections if they are called for. This is not an attack on Paramount or a kiss for DreamWorks. It’s just mathematics, folks.

Posted by dpoland at 04:28 PM | Comments (1)

A Better Idea

Are you getting the feeling that Sarah Palin is feeling a bit dragged down by "the old guy?'

I mean, mistake after mistake.... she's dancing away from her investigation, she’s redefining the Bridge To Nowhere, she is just so clever… and him... maybe she can’t find Spain on a map, but when she gets her interview prep, she learns every single name!

So, The Hot Blog proudly presents The Republican Solution! (nevermind that he is a liberal... he's soooo cute... and he can learn lines!)

Posted by dpoland at 04:03 PM | Comments (5)

And So It Ends...

DreamAmount No More.

"We congratulate Steven, David and Stacey, and wish them well as they start their newest venture. Steven is one of the world's great story-tellers and a legend in the motion picture business. It has been an honor working closely with him and the DreamWorks team over the last three years and we expect to continue our successful collaboration with Steven in the future.

To facilitate a timely and smooth transition, Paramount has waived certain provisions from the original deal to clear the way for the DreamWorks principals and their employees to join their new company without delay.

The acquisition of DreamWorks has been beneficial both creatively and financially for Paramount and accelerated our strategy of focusing on our world-class franchises and brands. It gave us a solid slate of films to fill out our lineup, a valuable catalog we were able to monetize, and a development pipeline that will bear fruit for us for years to come. The acquisition jump-started our rebuilding plans, which are now well underway and include promising upcoming releases such as Star Trek by JJ Abrams, G.I. Joe by Stephen Sommers, Transformers 2 by Michael Bay, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2, among many others.

The NYT smartly points out that the "goodbye" note comes before DreamWorks has made an announcement. It is only fitting, as Brad Grey has done every major deal in his time at Paramount - even getting to Paramount - in the press before the ink was dry, always looking for leverage.

So... who is left at Paramount from DreamWorks who will be jumping ship? Distrib chief Jim Tharp is unlikely, as DreamWorks is unlikely to be self-distributing. Marketing and publicity are already out. There is no significant development crossover. COO Jeff Small will presumably go to the adobe (has probably lived there from the start). It's unlikely that Kelley Avery, head of Home Ent, formerly at DW, now at Par, will jump, given that the DreamWorks footprint will be tiny in comparison to Paramount... and again, likely that DW will just distribute through a bigger studio.

(And there are still rumors of another major defection from Par that has nothing to do with DW...)

Anyway...

As I have said many times, the biggest loss in this deal, which gave glorious life to the financially troubled DreamWorks, is that Paramount has still not built a legitimate major studio production infrastructure in the nearly 4 years teat Brad Grey has been in charge of the studio. Berman to Weston to Lesher... and still looking for someone who has made money making movies.

There is no real surprise today. The Lesher move, earlier this year, anticipated this situation, as did Lesher's choice to dump Gerry Rich for his own peeps, the illusion of Par Vantage reimagining in business past the first of next year though there will be no infrastructure beyond acquisitions. The ranks are being closed. The Huns are at the gate.

Brad Grey's Paramount will live or die in the next 15 months.

But do keep in mind what Par is trying to ride to success. From their press release: "Star Trek by JJ Abrams, G.I. Joe by Stephen Sommers, Transformers 2 by Michael Bay, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2."

Star Trek - No Star Trek film has ever cracked $150 million worldwide. There is a good chance that this new, JJ Abrams, fun and gun Trek will break that number. But the film reportedly has gone past the $150 million budget mark, meaning that $300 million worldwide is about the lowest worldwide gross the film can do and get to profit. Double the best ever for the franchise. But hey, Batman did it.

GI Joe – A franchise that has not had the cultural significance of Transformers in recent decades, yet greenlit at $170 million.

Transformers 2 – $200 million-plus budget, co-owned by DreamWorks (without investment) and big dollar one gross points to Exec Producer Steven Spielberg.

The Curious Tale Of Benjamin Button - It may win best Picture, but with a $150 million-plus production budget and WB taking foreign, it will need Troy or Mr & Mrs Smith or Ocean’s domestic numbers for Par to get close to it being a money maker.

Iron Man 2 – Not owned by Paramount. Once again, a distribution fee only. But this too will be insanely expensive.

Get the picture? With marketing, you’re looking at an investment of over a billion dollars on four movies next year (not including Marvel’s Iron Man 2, a 2010 title). And there are 5 other Par-only pics on the sched for next year.

But counting the films that the studios didn’t make profit-on-production with this year (Iron Man/Indiana Jones IV/Kung-Fu Panda/Madagascar 2), their best grossing year ever, the studio might get to $1.6 billion domestic and about $1.5 billion overseas.

If they can match this year’s numbers with next year’s movies (starting with Ben Button), they will have some profit. But let’s give Transformers 2 its $700 million again. Can any of the other movies match that? Top that?

Taking post-theatricals into account, theatrical numbers to make breakeven on the four pictures is somewhere between $1.7 billion worldwide and $2.1 billion worldwide, depending on how big a chunk the points players take.

Racers, start your engines…

Posted by dpoland at 12:59 PM | Comments (15)

Tintin Drama

You know... this project has been sitting around for over 25 year in the Amblin back pocket. It hasn't just sat there because it was an obvious green light.

Universal neither needs to make the gamble on Tintin. The studio is under threat of being sold by GE and remembers suffering from PJ-creep on King Kong. (I think the world of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, but must admit that they raise budgets during production more cleanly and more effectively than any filmmaker of their generation). Plus, the history of converting Euro-faves to American faves and US-obscure comics in general has not been good - nor do they have the freedom to invest quite that much quite that easily.

But you can expect this project to be greenlit by Paramount - if they can get the money together - because they need it. It may seem that DreamWorks exiting Par would make the deal harder to make, but the bottom line is that Paramount needs to fill a pipeline that is about to be half-emptied and dramatically emptied of high profile projects. Spielberg and Jackson would be a good way for Grey and Lesher to float the boat for another year of "but Tintin is coming." Of course, if they are smart, they will take the international part of the revenues or force a 50/50 worldwide split no matter who distributes domestic or foreign.

Likewise, if MGM is going to prove that they actually have the money to fund major studio pictures, this is a chance to jump in.

Of course, there is the very real possibility that it just won't get studio funding. Of course, if Spielberg just took his money from Indy 4 and pu tit on the table... hmmmm...

Posted by dpoland at 12:09 PM | Comments (23)

September 18, 2008

Donate In A Friend's Name

From The Association Of Women Film Journalists

San Francisco-based Indie filmmaker Kate Montgomery (”Christmas In The Clouds,” 2001) suggests that we....

This is really good filmanthropy.

The rest...

ADD - Fri, 1:54p

Dear David Poland,

Thank you for your special tribute gift to Planned Parenthood. If you requested an announcement, a card will be sent to the person indicated, notifying them of your gift.

Your gift will be directed to the area of our work that you selected, and your support will bring us closer to our shared vision of a world where every child is wanted, where family planning is universally understood, accessible, and accepted, and where everyone can exercise reproductive freedoms in health and safety.

On behalf of everyone here at Planned Parenthood, thank you again for your support and generosity.

Sincerely,

Cecile Richards
President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America

P.S. Your contribution to Planned Parenthood Federation of America is tax deductible to the fullest extent allowable under law. IRS regulations require us to state that we did not provide any goods or services to you in consideration of your contribution. You may wish to print or save this message as your receipt for tax purposes.

Payment Information:
================================

Date: September 19, 2008
Time: 4:52pm (ET)
Campaign: Support Planned Parenthood! Honorary Giving
Name: David Poland

This donation is on behalf of or in memory of:
==============================================
Name: Sarah Palin

Send acknowledgements to:
=========================
Name: McCain for President
Address: 1235 S. Clark Street
1st fl
Arlington, VA 22202
United States

Posted by dpoland at 11:51 PM | Comments (10)

BYOB - Thuuuuuursday

......

Posted by dpoland at 05:46 PM | Comments (53)

NT4U GR&PA

Whle the adults are sleeping, kids aren't just watching porno, but rather, some kid who claims to be from a small town, but produces hyper videos that seem a bit too slick to come just from the coimputer of a 14 year old. If they do, huzzah to him...

But the reason this is up here is that a studio - perhaps appropriately, a division of the company that owns MySpace - has managed to place one of their movies in the middle of one of his oh-so-guerilla YouTube postings. Will it work for the movie? We'll see, but it is a creative use of a form believed to be innocent (even if the first comment on the YouTube page was, when I looked, "Was he payed to make this one?")

And here is WSj on the whole thing.

Posted by dpoland at 03:34 PM | Comments (1)

September 17, 2008

Band of Red

Josh Levin does a decent job rounding up the return of the red-band trailer, except that he misses the main event that has led the way...

The states have given the studios access to the nation's driver's license records, allowing for the studio to "responsibily' (in the MPAA's eyes) release red-band trailers onto the web. Instead of dancing through an oddball set of hurdles or the studio imposing the limitation of after-10p showings on the web (calibrated for every time zone), they now have all of us in America on a list. You give your real name and your birthday and you are in. It's when that system came into play that the rush to red-bands really took off.

That said, the choice of Regal to start allowing red-bands is a pleasant surprise. I guess that money really does change everything.

The other interesting angle is the release of trailers worldwide and how careful studios have become in the era of every internet release being found and bounced around every market. All that freedom, as so often happened, continues to lead to tighter restraints.

Posted by dpoland at 02:24 PM | Comments (7)

Roving Eye-deas

It’s pretty tough to focus on Lakeview Terrace, My Best Friend’s Girl, Igor, and the oddly under-screened Ghost Town with so much of substance going on around us.

It’s even hard to stay focused on what is now a desperate effort to reconceptualize the “independent” film business… which really means - aside from Sony Classics, the only studio Dependent that still acquires a significant number of movies for which a gross under $2 million will be a financial success and the road to a successful DVD release - is there anyone out there who will be satisfied with a rocky road business that basically requires at least $25 million sitting in the bank with virtually no opportunity to net more than $10 million in any year (and that would be a great year) and which will inevitably lead to some years with no profit or even a loss?

Let me restate… is there anyone out there who is okay with those conditions and has $25 million to leave in the bank?

The answer has been, mostly, “no” for a couple of years now. The aspiration has been, even amongst those who were once satisfied with the smaller business model, to build something at least 4 times that size. And indeed, the upside potential is greater when you play in the bigger pool. But so is the downside. And that upside, unless you have one of the extremely rare (once in a lifetime, live off of it for the rest of your career rare) indie $100 million movies, is not nearly as high as the downside is low… which is why the only $100 million true indie grosser since Orion’s demise in the early 90s whose distributor is still in business is Lionsgate with Fahrenheit 9/11… and that movie was paid for by the Disney-owned Miramax.

Is that too narrow a stat for you? There have been only five non-studio-backed indie releases grossing $100 million or more since Orion’s The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Traffic from USA… USA was folded into Universal and then folded into the Focus brand… My Big Fat Greek Wedding from IFC, gone as a wide-release theatrical distributor… The Blair Witch Project, Artisan, absorbed by Lionsgate after burning through the Blair Witch money (even without paying the net players)… The Passion Of The Christ from Newmarket, gone, couldn’t collect the revenues… and Fahrenheit 9/11.

That’s it.

Why am I pointing to $100 million? Because that has become where the aspiration is… the horrible, traditional post-70s idea that one monster hit will pay for all the mistakes. There is no avoiding spread sheets being balanced between success and failure. But when the budgets for production and marketing rise beyond sanity, the wish for the mega-hit becomes the desperate need to the mega-hit.

And even the Dependents… Sony Classics had Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ONLY in $100m land, Searchlight has had Juno ONLY, Focus has never cracked $85m domestic, and Par Vantage never cracked $41 million domestic. The studios pushed to grow all of these companies. But if they aren't dumping out of the business, like WB, they have finally been cutting back. Great. So how do companies without conglomerates behind them rebuild from the rubble of ambition in a weak economic moment in US history?

The clearest example is Old Miramax, which had seven $100m domestic films while at Disney, but burnt through so much money getting there that Disney would not make a deal with The Weinsteins unless the company, which had grown into a small major, was cut in half. New Miramax’s biggest domestic grosser has been $75 million for No Country For Old Men, co-funded by Par Vantage… and Disney is in hog heaven, as Daniel Battsek keeps budgets tight and keeps building prestige and a strong library.

Anyway… this was going to roll into politics, but I think I will stop this now (a longer piece will come along soon) and let it stand and get into politics separately…

Posted by dpoland at 01:42 PM | Comments (12)

Mean Girls 2008

From Maureen Dowd's reported op-ed today - R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”

Posted by dpoland at 12:37 PM | Comments (25)

September 16, 2008

TIFF - Che' Goes 131x2

My first reaction to Steven Soderbergh’s Che’ was absolute shock at the idiocy and arrogance of it all… that is to say, the idiocy and the arrogance of the response from Cannes.

This is one reason why I hate seeing a movie “after the fact.” It is a real challenge to all critics – and any one of them that claims it is not is more self-delusional than most and should probably be more distrusted – to not react to the criticism of others, whether to embrace it or to reject it, when one sees a film that gets the kind on biting response that Che’ got in Cannes.

====================

It is ironic that The Wrestler got so much love at Toronto, given that Guerilla is so similar as a storyline, albeit set in quite different universes. The Wrestler tells the story of a man struggling to survive his past while wanting nothing so much as to wallow in it. Of course, in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke’s character is writ small… tiny, really. Ernesto Guevara is as quiet as Rourke’s wrestler, but while Rourke’s character struggles with his tiny fame, Guevara holds many lives in his hand as a result of his… and still, struggles.

For people looking for a snap and slap testament to Che’s greatness or his hypocrisy or anything definitive, this will never quite work. It just isn’t a straight biopic. It has more in common with Malick’s The Thin Red Line and the second half of Kubick’s Full Metal Jacket than any more traditional war epics… there is a bit of Patton, in conceit though not remotely in character, as well. Soderbergh and his collaborators have taken the story of Che’ Guevara to define their ideas much the way Robert Bolt did for Lean, though this film creates intimacy like Bolt created epics (though Lean hired actors who brilliantly undercut the stuffiness of Bolt to make most of their films together a perfect balance). Che’ is Brando to most biopics’ Heston.

The rest...

Posted by dpoland at 08:02 PM | Comments (12)

No Wonder Keith Olberman Hates Her... She's The Competition!

(If she loses, do you think Disney'll team her up with Ben "I'm changing my name to Pete" Lyons?)

Posted by dpoland at 05:43 PM | Comments (14)

Oh My God... Father

The Godfather Blu-ray just landed on my doorstep.

It took as long as unwrapping the package to start watching.

Gordon Willis' blacks.

The light in Bonasera's eye... slowly pulling back... his black jacket just barely clear against the black behind him... the shadowy figures of Sonny and Hagen... the whisper in the ear... the reverse and the make-up that looks as real as ever... the cat... the f-ing cat...

The thing about Blu-ray is not just the amazing density of image, so much closer to film than anything else, but it's the size of the sets we watch on now, in conjunction with the density of image, that makes even a 36-year-old film seem like you are seeing it again for the first time.

Would seeing a great film for the 20th time on a big screen with a pristine print be better? Sure. But that isn't a real option, is it? Instead, I get to see something I love, looking more like the way I first saw it on a screen (better, probably, than the beat up print I first encountered, as the movie was 8 years old by the time I was 16), with all my familiarity now drawing my eye to more than the focus of the frames I know so well..

It’s not only the amazing image… it’s also the fifth little girl following Johnny Fontane into the wedding… it’s the little old lady behind Michael as he tells Kay the story of “an offer he couldn’t refuse”… it’s Vito Scotti and Morgana King reacting as the old guy sings the raunchy Italian song…

Last year, the most significant event in Blu-ray was the five Kubrick films. This year, no question, it is The Godfather Trilogy (followed by Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, their first Disney Classics release, that is the first step towards the single most significant indicator of whether Blu-ray will survive next year, when a bunch of Classics finally land in Blu).

I remember making the leap to CDs. It was Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles. The clarity of CD was just that much greater than the sound of a tape in my Walkman. I quickly added to the collection with great internationally produced recording of everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Bird to The Police.

Sony is still slowing this down – and possibly, killing it over time – by not delivering a cheaper Blu-ray DVD player. The $400 price point is just too high, even for people who are buying HDTVs. But the leap of quality is undeniable. It doesn’t matter for every film. But the great ones… the ones that combine story and image beautifully… wow.

The oranges on Jack Woltz’s table… oooh!

Posted by dpoland at 01:03 PM | Comments (27)

TIFF - Odd Images

Posted by dpoland at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2008

BYOB

Long day's journey into LA...

I was greeted on my flight to the McCain campaign dropping yet another bombshell into an impossibly dense cycle of other news... this time, the choice to deny her cooperation on Troopergate... Harvey Weinstein hocking his very worst films for Oscar until the bitter end has NOTHING on these guys... truly singular in history...

And if you want to know why Karl Rove slapped McCain yesterday, it was the same exact strategy as the Hillary Clinton campaign... attack relentlessly until the crowd starts to resent it, then confess that BOTH sides are doing it and try to make your attacks seem just the same as the other sides when they are not really even close.

It makes the movie business seem sublime.

And as far as the movie business and the funding business, the short answer is... not the biggest deal ever for movies. The movie business' list o' suckers had already been thinned out before this week's loud implosions. But what this may lay out is an even faster run for the auction house for the corporations that are not 100% committed to the movies. It could also make a Reliant/DreamWorks deal for MGM move along, as the giddy hopes Harry Sloan had for a big sale are now even more unlikely.

Anyway... morel tomorrow...

Posted by dpoland at 11:07 PM | Comments (94)

Deja Vu... All Over Again

What is THE ANSWER to the indie problem of the moment?

The parade of "keynote" responses to Mark Gill's overstated bluster of this summer continues to grow, but the one that landed in the inbox this morning was Peter Broderick's... and it's only Part One... and while it does a nice job of showing us what filmmakers without studio or even major indie distribution have been attempting and failing at over 90% of the time in the last five years (and which many of us journos have been writing about for just as long), it offers no real insight into the future or any realistic idea of how to get there.

All the pieces are sitting on the table... but there is a startling lack of insight into the one thing that rules the roost when push comes to shove... for indies or for majors... the money.

Perhaps he'll cross that bridge in Part II.

Anyway... have a look... and have at it.

Posted by poland at 09:04 AM | Comments (20)

September 14, 2008

It's Crappy... But It's Box Office!!!

Klady's Weekend Estimates...

This is actually quite a good number for The Coens... though one should keep in mind that even Leatherheads opened to almost $13 million and it's the worst wide opening for a Brad Pitt film in nine years. Mixed bag. Focus, I imagine, will be pleased.

11a- This just in... This is not only The Coens' best opening (by around 50%), but Focus' best opening ever (by $10 million). Do keep in mind that both entities release most of their product via platform, but still, very much worth noting.

The Tyler Perry is a little low for him, but he is close to unrecognizable in the ads and he shows once again that even without a Madea in his films, he can open in the $20m range (if not $20m this time).

Righteous Kill's opening shows that even if everyone can see that it's a pig in a poke (with lipstick), they want their beloved actors to be there.

And Tropic Thunder closes in on paying for its domestic marketing with its domestic box office. Foreign release has barely begun, but conservatively, the film will have to significantly improve on its domestic number overseas (at least $250 million total ww) to not be in the red when the books are closed.

Posted by poland at 08:22 AM | Comments (36)

September 13, 2008

And Fey As Palin... legally

Posted by poland at 10:52 PM | Comments (17)

McCain's Just Sayin'...

Posted by poland at 10:14 PM | Comments (3)

TIFFed

And so it ends, not with a bang, but with slumdog.

I will have a lot more to write when my delivery system is an actual keyboard and not a virtual qwerty.

In the end, it was an unexpectedly good festival, albeit more about tiny, wonderous tapas and never ever the great grand meal journalists and others have come to expect.

A festival with Slumdog Millionaire (after being unceremoniously dumped by the folks who brought you The Women this weekend), Hunger, Rachel Getting Married, Che', Hurt Locker, Disgrace, The Wrestler, Blindness, A Christmas Tale, Fear Me Not, Waltz With Bashir, Everlasting Moments, All Around Us, and many others, can't be considered a disappointment. Even more impressive, the narrative features line-up turned out to be better than the doc line-up.

It will also be remembered as the first festival in a long while without a sale by Cinetic. (The Zac Efron/Claire Danes starrer, Me & Orson Welles, will surely land somewhere. And the "big sales" were all under $5 million, even with a stunning level of excitement when the "big hits" landed.

But that, in a nutshell, is the story of this year's Toronto. It was great at the unexpected... and a car wreck for expectations. And perhaps this is a good thing... perhaps a very good thing...

Posted by dpoland at 03:11 PM | Comments (21)

Still Saying No

10 days in Toronto without the talking head channels has kept my interest in the election at bay. Watched Palin with Charlie Gibson last night, though I thought it was very generous of ABC not to show the handler throwing the fish in her mouth after she evaded most questions with "but look over there." Anyone who has accused Obama of not being specific - in spite of tons of detail on most positions available from his campaign website - should be forced to watch Palin's answer to the question of what makes her and McCain's economic plans differ from Bush's... even her platitudes were off subject.

That said, I am pleased to see that people of conscience - left, right, and center - are beginning to call the lies out in no uncertain terms. Of course, the spin will be that the truth is just "complaining" from "them"... the ever-present "them" that wants to throw older, white people out of their perfect homes only to replace them with boom box carrying junkies who fornicate on the front lawn and get all uppity about equal rights for women, homosexuals, other ethnicities, and those evil foreigners... ALL of them evil foreigners!

The truth is, for me, my positive feelings about Obama and what he stands for have become completely secondary to my sad, disappointed anger and fear about John McCain and the depths to which he has sunk. After eight years of fighting with fellow Democrats about Bush not being the anti-Christ, suddenly I find myself seeing analogies to John McCain in TIFF movies about fascists of the past.

Really... not kidding.

People allow themselves to be conned on this planet every day. And I am not talking about the political con of George Bush, calling himself a "compassionate conservative" while throwing money at big business, claiming it will built the economy, while under-regulation (like Clinton's failure to get control of the internet boom before it busted) left us with a problem economy, including record-breaking deficits. THAT, I expect. That is par for the course. That is America making a choice and not thinking too much.

I'm talking about outright lies meant to divide and force the election discussion to be about who you are comfortable with and not about the future of the American government. I can actually live with Sarah Palin spinning her anti-choice position as somehow "personal," suggesting seconds after saying Roe v Wade should be dumped, that the "personal" is not the political. That is traditional election year bullshit.

But the endless, outright lies...

And sad to say... once again, a Clinton has led the way.

Bill Clinton destroyed the feminist movement by having a sexual tryst that by every standard that the mainstream feminist movement had maintained about workplace behavior would have seen him fired from any CEO job in America... and then letting the feminists defend him against the "vast right wing conspiracy." That was the end. The standard could no longer be held because it was abandoned for political expediency.

Likewise, Hillary's desperate - much more desperate than McCain, given the virtual impossibility of coming back from Obama's pre-PA lead - mudslinging at Obama has become the standard for McCain because... taa-dah... it worked. She still couldn't win. But she wounded him and the party with him. And now that Sarah Palin is pretending to be a woman of Hillary' substance - and even as a bit of a Hillary basher, I can see that she is objectively far more qualified than Palin - where is Hillary Clinton, speaking out against Palin? Why is she not taking on this battle when she is the best person to do it?

She should just say no to Palin... and if she wants to be well remembered, she will.

Posted by poland at 08:18 AM | Comments (57)

September 12, 2008

BYOB Weeekend

Heading off to Steven Soderbergh"s 4.5 hour epic biopic of New Line co-founder Bob Shaye as the closer for this year's TIFF. Can't wait to see if the John Waters years are really better than the Lord of the Rings years or vice versa. But with Ben Kingsley as Tony Kaye, Robert Downey, Jr. as Wes Craven, Brett Ratner in a duel role as Michael DeLuca and himself, Noah Emmerich as Toby Emmerich and of course, Lyn Shaye as Bob... well, it should be interesting.

Leaving the rest to you, for now...

Posted by poland at 04:50 AM | Comments (50)

September 11, 2008

E-Mails... I Get E-Mails...

This one came from my sister, a rabid Hillary supporter... better than the usual jokes she sends... I only wish there was something funny about this...

=======================

This maybe oversimplified but still...

If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified
candidates you're a "token hire."
If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more
qualified candidates you're a "game changer."

Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America.
White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic."
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential
"American story."

Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic."
Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the
individual you're "reckless."
A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick."

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization
from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then
become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a
voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African Amerian
voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend
nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over
750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human
Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States
Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131
bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works
and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.

If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a
town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor
of a state with 650,000 people, then you've got the most executive
experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the
Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be
called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of
people you are an "arrogant celebrity".
If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are "energizing the
base".

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his
own decisions you are "presumptuous".
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you
refuse to explain, you are a "shoot from the hip" maverick.

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are "an elitist-out
of touch" with the real America.
if you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of
Anapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an
"empty suit".
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an
"experienced executive".

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist".
If you believe in creationism and don't believe global warming is man
made, you are "strongly principled".

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman with whom you've been wed to
for 19 years and raising 2 beautiful daughters with, you're "risky".

If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her
water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent,
endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you
"First dog."
If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the
right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."

If you kill an endangered species, you're an excellent hunter.
If you have an abortion you're not a Christian, you're a murderer ( forget
about if it happen while being date raped.)

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the
proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If you're a Republican senator who solicits gay sex in an airport
bathroom, you get to return to your job in the Senate and are encouraged
to run for re-election.
If you're a Democratic Senator who is out of public office and have an
affair, your political career is over and your wife who has terminal
cancer is to blame.

And finally:

Quiz question for the RNC, specifically those on the Religious Right.

Who is one of the most revered, and famous community organizers in
history?

......
.........
............

JESUS CHRIST

Posted by poland at 08:46 AM | Comments (84)

TIFF - Ghost Town

Not the movie... the festival.

This is one of the things I never understand about this event... there is a lot of power in how a "must attend" event is laid out, yet Toronto (like Sundance and Cannes) continue to treat the second half of their festivals as "if you build it, they still won't stay four more days."

On Tuesday, you couldn't hear yourself think at the Bus Terminal Of The Damned Beautiful at the Intercontinental. There was rain, making the inside even crazier, but wall-to-wall people, photogs, journos, publicists, and gawkers. By Wednesday afternoon, you could have thrown the rock you wanted to throw all week and the only thing you could have hit was Jeff Hill & Co, so tired and beaten after a week that they would have just pulled the rock out of the bloody wound and asked, "Who lost a rock?"

Ya know, it's nice to be able to wander into the few press screenings left without worrying that you are going to have to fight for a decent seat. But in this last day and a half, we're not exactly getting the Best of the Fest to catch up with. This is not to dismiss the films that are showing, but a smattering of the films from the overbooked opening weekend would be nice... mostly because it was so overbooked and thus, impossible to keep up with. Last year, the festival came close to getting it just right with the press screenings... this year, there was a step backwards.

Even the public schedule is not much to choose from at this point in the fest, though the 4.5 hours of Che' is on tomorrow morning's (to afternoon's) schedule.

Anyway... the weather is nicer today than yesterday... catching up with friends from up here is now possible... and I haven't been to Pages Bookstore yet, so Queen St calls.

Posted by dpoland at 05:56 AM | Comments (12)

September 10, 2008

BYOB - 9,10,8

No time to discuss how scary it is that anyone in their right mind without strong right-wing ideas would consider voting for a ticket with a VP who can't be allowed to talk to press...

What are you are talking about these days?

Posted by poland at 05:17 PM | Comments (46)

TIFF - chasing...

It's almost time for a list of the films I really haven't liked while here... but not right now... still running around like crazy.

One of the films I really did like - and again, not enough time right now to really go into it - was Malkovich in Disgrace, from the JM Coetzee book. A strong story. A nice piece of directing. But mostly, a fearless, unshowy, brilliant piece of acting by Malkovich. I mean, he gives it all up to this movie. All of his gimmicks... all of his vanity... all the stuff you expect to see when you see Malkovich. But he is fantastic as a vain, selfish, sad little man who can endure what he thinks he has control of, but who has to find new colors in himself when he is pushed beyond that place.

Commerciality is always discussed seconds after any rave up here... and I don't know. It's South Africa. it's a dry piece, as befits the material. And it demands some work from the audience, mostly in the form of self-reflection. It isn't spoon-feeding us. And I l