Friday, 27 August 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Is this the ugliest weekend of the year? Six major releases and not a damned thing to see!

I haven't seen A Dog of Flanders and maybe that's worth a trip to the theater if you have pre-teens. As one friend pointed out about the "loved by children worldwide" campaign, "I was a child worldwide. I've been around. I never heard of this." Who knows?

But...Dudley Do-Right can't live up to his name. The 13th Warrior has been sitting on the shelf at Disney for 13 months, waiting to put a dent in the marketing department's budget. The Muse is yet another farce played out of rhythm, managing to miss the mark despite having all the pieces, including a script that's better than the final product, in place. The Astronaut's Wife is the wild card of the weekend. How can you dis anything with Charlize Theron and Johnny Depp in it? Yet everyone who's seen it seems to be dissing away. And In Too Deep got the "We have to open it on Wednesday because black audiences are violent" treatment, a testament to one of the few ongoing and accepted forms of racism in this country and no slam on the movie. That said, when a studio like Miramax markets a "black film" only to black audiences, that's a bad sign. After LL Cool J's triumph in Deep Blue Sea (and whatever you think of the movie, he was a movie star in it) and Omar Epps' continuing stand on the precipice of stardom, I have to figure that the movie must not be good enough to chase its potential cross-over appeal.

Of course, with the Wednesday opening, there are already box office numbers on In Too Deep. But those don't go here, where innocents who hate box office info can be stuck reading it. The box office stuff lives on Box Office Extra, which you can read here after noon EST. And in the next few weeks, with me on the festival circuit, Box Office Extra will be written by someone else at roughcut.com so I can focus exclusively on Telluride and Toronto. Should be interesting.

As far as the other holdovers, my highest recommendations are for Run Lola Run, The Iron Giant, Bowfinger, The Dinner Game and Dick. You are likely to be entertained by The Sixth Sense, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Red Violin, Autumn Tale, An Ideal Husband, Deep Blue Sea and Mickey Blue Eyes (disappointed though I was in that one). And if you are interested in an adventure, go see The Blair Witch Project or Eyes Wide Shut or Buena Vista Social Club. There are movies out there worth seeing. But getting to them may be a bit more work than just glancing at the big ads in the paper. But then again, if you are taking the time to read this, you must already know that.

THE GOOD: Jeff Wells got some early poop on Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and thus broke the code of silence around the picture. Jeff's concerns about the over-three-hour running time led to an exchange between myself and New Line's Michael DeLuca on Magnolia, with DeLuca kindly laying out the studio's position on how they handle a three-hour movie: "Here's the straight scoop: There's no pressure on Paul to cut. I don't pressure world class filmmakers. I make suggestions, Bob Shaye makes suggestions, but that's it. I flipped over the film, and all I told Paul was that if he could, he should try to keep the running time requirement for four shows a day as opposed to three in his mind while trimming. He agreed and he's been trimming on his own these past four weeks. I let Paul have his own process, and he often screens changes for me.

We totally knew what the film was going to be when we read the script. No surprises. I thought we'd end up with a three and a half hour movie and he's actually going to end up much shorter. We never thought that the commercial chances for Magnolia would be determined by running time. It's either going to connect as the greatest film ever made before the ending of a millennium, or it won't, but a half hour will not make the difference. With this kind of movie, it's the total experience of the film itself that sells the film. All we told Paul was cut the best movie you can."

In Jeff's conversation with Paul Thomas Anderson, a potential Thanksgiving release on as many as 1800 screens was brought up. New Line got killed in platform release for the underrated and underseen Living Out Loud last year, so one more exchange on the release, so I felt compelled to ask if they were going wider to avoid the past. Apparently not. DeLuca on distribution: "We're actually trying to avoid December competition (Ripley, The Green Mile, etc). There's like four three hour movies in December. So I want to either be the first or the last (a January release with a qualifying run, like we did Wag the Dog). We were always going wider than 800, [it was] just a matter of when."

And I guess it still is. There aren't many production chiefs in Hollywood who surf the Web, much less indulge those of us who work out here. Mike DeLuca is a rare bird in that way and in many others. The most remarkable one is that I don't think he's ever misled me, on or off the record. Could being honest be the future of Hollywood? Let's see. In my experience, Fox and New Line are the most willingly informative and most direct of the studios. And they do pretty well. Hmmmm...Like Cosmo suggested in Sneakers, does the power to create destruction (a big Web issue) come from "Too many secrets?" Hmmmm...

THE BAD: I must admit, I had a bit of a queasy feeling after sending in yesterday's button on Ain't It Cool News and The Hollywood Reporter. Something about starting Year Three - Day One with an item that is so - what's the word I'm looking for here? - Petty? Meaningless? Tired? Unkind? Inside The Freeway? I don't know. All I know is that I can't stand lies being made into fact by magazines and newspapers that are taken as seriously as the trades and the major papers. I've stayed away from writing about AICN and Jeff Wells' columns and whatever else quite intentionally lately. The fact that there is so much worthless speculation on the Web is the story. Not the individuals. It's funny though. Writing about AICN seems to define the "real" Hot Button readers. I used to get a lot of mail screaming at me whenever I dared to do anything but send hearts and flowers Harry's way. Now there is almost none. I did get one "you're jealous" e-mail, which included an accusation of obsession with Harry's numbers. Well, what does one expect? That I make an accusation and not back it up with numbers? Wrong site. In any case, looking the other way when it comes to "competitors" (in quotes because, as I seem to always write, none of these people really do what I do) seems to be the best choice for my own happiness. But a piece like the one in The Hollywood Reporter just pushes my last hot button. I apologize for that weakness.

THE UGLY: The worst part of the AICN column was that I mis-named GalaxyQuest as DreamQuest for no reason but my own brain damage. Ironically, as I was gathering info on the film, I kept making the same mistake and couldn't figure out why I couldn't find anything. I figured it out doing the research but my subconscious wrote the column, I guess. Maybe this explains why I keep writing "Mommy" instead of Susan Sarandon.

THE CHAT: Next week, we are loaded to the gills with chats. On Tuesday, a little Astronaut's Wife action with writer/director Rand Ravitch at 8pEST/5pPST and an hour later, with the lovely and talented Clea Duvall. Clea is the tough blonde, Stokely, in The Faculty, she was Misty in She's All That and she was The Invisible Girl on TV's "Buffy The Vampire Slayer". Ahhhhh...now you remember the name. In The Astronaut's Wife, she plays Charlize Theron's sister. Let's hope she don't know nothin' `bout birthin' babies. Wednesday, we take you live to the New York premiere party for Artisan's first post-Blair Witch release, A Stir of Echoes. Everyone from Kevin Bacon to Ileanna Douglas to writer/director David Koepp to Kathryn Erbe will be there. Hope you will too. 10pEST/7pPST.

JUST WONDERING: The Weal Deal sent in an e-mail about A Bug's Life, which included this link: http://www.homecinemachoice.com/boxoffice/ukdvdnews.html. Has anyone seen a site that was more honest about their coverage of the industry? Take a look. Every story is honestly sourced so you can determine its value. It gives me hope.

HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: The trailer for Snow Falling On Cedars feels to me like watching a hybrid of Alan Parker's Come See The Paradise and Julio Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle. In other words, who the heck knows? It looks pretty and dramatic and we'll have to see it to know. Fortunately, I believe it's going to be at Toronto, so I will, I suspect, get to see it and have a more complete opinion then.

BAD AD WATCH: Today's BAW comes from Sammy The Fib, who points out a form of bias so pervasive that it didn't even occur to me and it should have: "David, did you ever mention the ad for Miramax's [fill in the blank]ing Mrs. Tingle? To me, this isn't just a bad ad watch, but downright cruel and disrespectful. It does not feature top billed Helen Mirren, a highly respected actress. (aren't all Brit thesps highly respected?) The fact that she's over 25 (way over) and a woman, apparently makes her poison to the targeted market...like it mattered! By the way, happy anniversary. I celebrated by going to Vegas!

READER OF THE DAY: Cliff is right. I got a lot of e-mail on this. Here is his: "You've probably gotten a bunch of responses on this, already, but just in case...The DVD of A Bug's Life features both the original widescreen theatrical version (2:35 to 1 aspect ratio) and a full-frame version. Instead of using pan-and-scan on the latter, however, the filmmakers went back to the computer and created TV-friendly compositions.

So, for instance, if three insects are onscreen in the original version, you'll still see all three insects in the full-frame DVD (and the videotape), but they've been moved closer together so that you'll still see all three on screen at the same time. They've also added picture information to the "extra space" at the top and bottom of the full-frame version, notably at the "fruit fireworks" display at the conclusion.

I've watched both versions, and didn't catch many big differences between the letterboxed and the full-frame. It's not practical for live-action filmmaking, of course, but in a project where all your sets and actors are in a hard drive, it's a practical alternative that's much less intrusive than pan-and-scan.

Speaking of live-action "covers"--does anyone know if any film besides Oklahoma was filmed and re-filmed for two different projection methods? And does anyone remember the "TV friendly" version of Animal House? John Landis shot several "alternate takes" for eventual network TV airings. Girls who were topless in the theater wore bras on NBC, and Dean Wormer would say "You'll be out of here so fast it'll make your head spin" instead of the original "You'll be out of here like s**t through a goose." Did home video and premium cable kill the need for PG re-takes?"

E ME: Ageism, runing-time-ism, Harry-ism, bad-movie-ism? Which bias pushes your hot button?