Weekend, 14 February 1998

WEEKEND PREVIEW
10. Burt's Back: Oscar nominee Burt Reynolds will make a trio of cop movies for us here at TNT. Separate negotiations for Burt's hair are ongoing.

9. Another Falling Star: Melanie Griffith is heading to TV in a new sitcom for CBS. Unlike ex-husbands Don Johnson ("Nash Bridges") and Steven Bauer ("Wiseguy"), Melanie actually has a film career to lose by making the move.

8. Dead Dog: Buddy the Wonder Dog, better known to many of you as "Air Bud," is dead. Wondrous to the end, Buddy's last words were instructions to his owner to remove the stucco from his doghouse. To quote: "Ralph, rough roof."

7. Comatose Web Site: Entertainment Asylum, a lavish Web site that tries too hard to be any good, is barely alive after AOL essentially pulled the plug less than six months after launching it. For any of you who have made the leap to rough cut, welcome.

6. Godzilla Takes Manhattan: Sony's giant lizard in waiting was the hit of this week's American International Toy Fair, but he kept a very low profile. If you weren't buying, you weren't seeing Big Green. The only hint Sony gave anxiously awaiting movie lovers? A giant banner proclaiming, "He's as big as the Flatiron Building." Well, duh!

5. Old Alliances: The team that ran Carolco Pictures into the ground, Andy Vanja and Mario Kassar, are planning a reunion tour. The dyspeptic duo, last seen together going bankrupt despite huge hits like Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct, have recently laid out $9.5 million individually for rights to projects that may never be made: Terminator 3 ($7.5 million) and a Joe "Showgirls" Eszterhas script that's now in development hell at Paramount. Note to investors: Hide your checkbooks.

4. Scream Screwed: Someone is taking their boredom with making scary movies too far. Oh, well. She warned them. Neve Campbell told everyone who would listen that she would prefer something more challenging than Scream 3 as her summer hiatus project. She found it in Three to Tango, a comedy about a guy who pretends to be gay to win Neve's heart. Now it's Miramax's turn to scream.

3. Settling's Such Sweet Sorrow: DreamWorks and Barbara Chase-Riboud finally settled their copyright infringement case out of court with a tightly worded and information-free statement. But it was too late to help at the box office or at the Academy ballot box. Have I said that Djimon Hunsou was robbed yet?

2. Academy Awards: Leo, Djimon and Rupert weren't nominated. Spike Lee is busy screaming that the Academy is racist even though his documentary, 4 Little Girls, was nominated. Meanwhile, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control was the latest documentary to be snubbed by the Academy for being too well-liked. Only one American was nominated as Best Actress. And Hillary Henkin got a screenwriting nod for a movie, Wag the Dog, that she didn't write. Just another year at the Academy.

1. Titanic Suit: The latest explosion in the always tenuous relationship between Titanic co-producers 20th Century Fox and Paramount could get ugly. Turns out that the $30 million TV rights deal that Paramount made with NBC in December was a steal. Men In Black commanded $50 million and Fox paid $80 million for The Lost World. As a result, 20th Century may sue Paramount in an attempt to dump the now embarrassing deal. Gentlemen, start your lawyers.

Reader Of The Day: Rob S. on Leo: "Anybody who can make a line like 'I guess you could call me a tumbleweed blowing in the wind.' sound good and not laughable deserves to be at least nominated."

E ME: Really great e-mail from you all. Thanks. I don't know what next Wednesday's rant will be. Maybe you can help