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February 01, 2008

The Races - Presiential & Oscar

There is a tendency towards self-loathing in our industry, whether entertainment journalism or the various areas of the film business.  After all, they are only movies ... right?

But the basic notions of human behavior apply to all endeavors, whether they seem more or less trivial.  Rich oil men can be as self-absorbed and disappointed with the world as movie stars.  The publicists at the White House have pretty much the same job to do as the personal and studio corporate publicists, albeit with very different stakes.  And the wide range of coverage in the movie world, from gossip to hard news, is reflected in the Washington Press Corps, who deal with personality as often as policy these days.

And so, reading more coverage of the last few weeks of electioneering and the internal arguments in the Clinton and Obama campaigns, I also recognize the desperation on the part of journalists to put a bow on it ASAP.  Things are redefined week by week, yet every week, there is a search for "The Answer."

What it really reminded me of, in my bi-focalled myopia of these last few months, was how the Oscar season presents itself. 

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Posted by poland at 09:46 PM | | Comments (0)

December 23, 1997

A Hot Button Holiday - Day 4

Warner Bros. is looking like a major Oscar player with all the critics awards for L.A. Confidential. If you go to their site, they'll start you off with a trivia question and some ads before you jump into the main site. You can visit L.A. Confidential or The Postman. Or you can check out the last film from Turner Pictures, Fallen, starring Denzel Washington.

My nephew Charles, age 8, loves the WB kids site and the animation site. And he can't get enough Batman, either the movie or the comic book).

Mel Gibson is a long-term Warner Bros. player. The site for Conspiracy Theory is still there. But if you want the hottest news on Mel, check out the wonderful page by Superfan, Lisa Hightower.

The story of Hanukkah, L.A. style. It's the Whole Picture.

E-mail works though the holidays. Try it. You'll like it.

Posted by THB Archive at 08:56 AM |

December 22, 1997

It's Monday! If You Want the Box Office Figures, Try Yahoo

Next studio on our Hot Button Web tour is Disney. Ah, Disney! The sweet siren of kids entertainment. If you click here, you'll find the whole parade of Disney kids stuff. But oddly enough, Eisner & Co. have ripped the adult movies off the site. And I don't mean porno. I mean anything for anyone over 12. To find Disney's other product, you have to go to movies.com, which would appear to be a site dedicated to Disney only, but with no name attached. The conspiracy continues! If you want to go international, sneak over to Disney's international site where they are running a Starship Troopers contest right now. (Yes, it was a Sony movie in the U.S.)

Despite themselves, Disney has made one of the smartest investments in art films possible by buying Miramax. Great studio and great marketing. You'll find the hits and Oscar contenders to be Jackie Brown and Good Will Hunting.

The freaky site of the day should tweak the nose of Disney even more than Mouse Hunt did last weekend. The Natalie Portman Countdown To Legality counts the moments -- down to the second -- to moment when Hollywood's sexualization of a teen turns men from pedaphiliacs to stalkers.

E-mail works though the holidays. Try it. You'll like it. The Whole Picture is all new for the holidays. But if you're good boys and girls, you will unwrap each section as the appropriate holiday comes around. Too much Whole Picture at one sitting will rot your teeth.

Posted by THB Archive at 08:51 AM |

December 16, 1997

The Men who Never Paid a Bill Without a Lawsuit Are Back in Business.

Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, former proprietors of the infamous Cannon Pictures, have talked a health club chain into financing a movie start-up to the tune of about $2 million. Gotta hand it to these guys. They obviously still can make their manure smell sweet to others. Cannon was one of the clearest examples of a company that was killed by the excess opportunity of the Reagan era. After hitting big with the Death Wish series and then turning Chuck Norris into an action hero, the company got big bucks in the junk-bond economy of the '80s. Suddenly, they went from Norris and Bronson to Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. A few years later they were bankrupt after spending millions on films they never made and making some quality films, including Barfly, that no one ever saw. At least in theaters. Welcome back, boys. And readers: If they try to hire you, get cash.

MGM's desperation to hang onto the Bond franchise for themselves and themselves alone was made plain as day last week when the company filed their intentions to take a $30 million writedown for this quarter on Red Corner, the Richard Gere political drama. There will be no writedowns in first quarter 1998 with Bond on the way to save the day. But MGM, already off the list of "real" major studios, is becoming more of a mini-major every day. And, although Lindsay Doran has great taste, expect the film projects, excepting Bond, to get smaller and smaller.

As if to prove that barbarism is still in vogue, a group of Iranian militants attacked theatergoers, including a disabled veteran, as they left a showing of Snowman, a film about a man so desperate to get out of the desert that he disguises himself as a woman with the hope of marrying an American man who can take him/her away. The thing is, the guy falls in love with an Iranian woman and stays put. He doesn't even go the whole route (or is that the full monty?)! Another theater pulled the film under threats of fire bombing. Finally, a movie that really is responsible for community violence.

L.A. Confidential surely has secured an Oscars berth for Best Picture after winning multiple best picture awards by critics already.

Want to bank roll my new studio? E-mail me a dollar figure. Or just drop me a line to say hi.

Posted by THB Archive at 02:30 PM |

September 15, 1997

LA Confidential Emerges as Strong Oscar Contender

It was no contest as The Game won the weekend box office race. It was the only real contestant. With over $14 million at the box office, it did more than four times as much as G.I. Jane, yet fitting its labyrinthine plot, The Game disappointed. It was Douglas' best opening since Basic Instinct's $15.1 million, but movies had a longer theatrical life back then. It was the second best September opening ever, after last year's The First Wives Club, but Goldie, Bette and Diane did $18.9 million, 35 percent more than The Game. Ultimately, The First Wives Club hit $100 million. The Game won't come close. Especially with L.A. Confidential coming in hot on its tail.

Speaking of L.A. Confidential, the first of this year's serious Academy Awards contenders, it has three remarkable features. First, with an Oscar in hand, Kevin Spacey now gets top billing for playing the same kind of small character part he played when he was billed fourth. Second, two Australians, who first became famous for their work as gay men -- Guy Pierce in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Russell Crowe in The Sum Of Us -- are now going to be known as hard-bitten L.A. detectives from the '50s. And third, Kim Basinger really can act. The degree of amazement may not be in the order listed.

Sony's promoting Gattaca by running realistic print ads for genetic engineering with a small Sony tag on the bottom. Those interested are instructed to call 1-888-4-BEST-DNA. Don't dial quite yet. The number wasn't working as of posting time. Seems that there has been some controversy about the ads being too real and somehow insulting those of us who haven't been genetically engineered. For my two cents, I wouldn't put my child's DNA in the hands of a company that couldn't come up with a better name for a movie than Gattaca.

E-Mail Dave with the issues that get your button hot!

Posted by THB Archive at 08:13 PM | | Comments (0)