Friday, 7 January 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Nothing new is opening this weekend. So, forget Box Office Extra. It ain't coming. Forget a movie review... nothing to review. (Well, I could review The Third Miracle, but it may be on Ebert and if you aren't on the coast, you can't see it anyway and a guy has to keep a little mystery.) So, I guess a quick review of what's in theaters now will have to do.

Now, these recommendations are based on what I would tell someone whose tastes I don't know real well. So while the quality of Galaxy Quest is not on the same level as The Talented Mr. Ripley, G.Q. may be the surest bet out there right now to please almost everyone and offend no one.

Highly Recommended: All About My Mother, Mr. Death, The End of the Affair, Galaxy Quest, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Highly Recommended, But I Know I'll Get Letters From a Lot Of You, Pro & Con: Cradle Will Rock, Magnolia, Man On The Moon, Titus

Recommended:The Green Mile, The Hurricane, Sweet and Lowdown, Topsy-Turvy, Tumbleweeds

Worth A Trip Back To The Theater: American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Bone Collector, Boys Don't Cry, The Insider, Mansfield Park, The Sixth Sense, The Straight Story, Sleepy Hollow, Three Kings, Toy Story 2

Not Recommended, But Some Of You Will Love It Anyway: Anna and The King, Angela's Ashes, Play It To The Bone, The Cider House Rules, Fantasia 2000, Liberty Heights, Stuart Little, The World Is Not Enough

Not Recommended: Any Given Sunday, Girl Interrupted

Kill Yourself Rather Than Be Dragged In The Door: Bicentennial Man, Snow Falling On Cedars

Next weekend, the commercial game starts anew with Supernova and Next Friday leading the
way.

THE GOOD: Andrew Sarris has written his first criticism of the new year, and it's aimed at Titus.

Also, check out Roger Ebert's look at the Most Influential Films of the Century. And R.E. smacks D.D. for giving away a Magnolia surprise, so I don't have to.

THE BAD: The Hollywood Reporter writes that manager-cum-producer Jon Krane has decided to write a book called "Krane on Producing: The New Science of Movie Making". For whatever reason, the Reporter decided that his completion of his manuscript on December 31 was news, and that there was some value to what he claims is "a new scientific methodology to filmmaking based on his 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry." So how valuable is this methodology? Well, let's look at the producing career of this man. He has had two major clients that have included him as a producer on their projects. First, he took Executive Producer credits on most of Blake Edwards' 1980s films (Blind Date, A Fine Mess, That's Life!, Micki + Maude and The Man Who Loved Women). Then, he started taking executive producing credit on John Travolta's movies The General's Daughter, Primary Colors, Mad City, Face/Off, Michael, Phenomenon and The Experts. Not a bad group of credits. However, all they really represent is the power of his clients to get their manager a credit. His Producer credits with Travolta (suggesting greater involvement) include only one hit series, Look Who's Talking I, II and III and one unreleasable miss, Chains of Gold. His producing credits separate from these two clients include 13 films, all but one of which (the first, You Can't Hurry Love) were complete commercial flops. (The Unlucky 13, from the most recent backwards: The Lay of the Land, Point of Betrayal, Boris and Natasha, Fatal Charm, Breaking the Rules, Without You I'm Nothing, C.H.U.D. II - Bud the Chud, Catch Me If You Can, Getting It Right, Limit Up, The Chocolate War, Slipping Into Darkness and You Can't
Hurry Love.) To be fair, The Chocolate War was a terrific movie.

So, 1 hit in 13. 2 of 4 with Travolta, including sequels. So, let's give him 3 of 17. You call that a science? When Krane writes a book about getting actresses into his bed, that will be worth the read. He's a much higher percentage player there. But as a producer, the only science he knows is, get the right client. Not only is Travolta a resurrected star, but he is very loyal. Krane's producing aspirations almost put him under for good, but Look Who's Talking brought him back and Travolta has stuck with Krane through it all. But somehow I think that Mr. Krane will be suggesting that he is actually a successful producer. No. Try another book. (I highly suggest Lynda Obst's Hello, He Lied.)

THE UGLY: The idea of Jan De Bont helming a Spider-Man movie... can't get much uglier than that! De Bont is a man who was given a near perfect script for Speed and made a great looking movie. Since then, crap, followed by crap and then some more crap. Comic book movies, with all irony intact, demand substance over style. The idea of Burton's Batman was what made it so brilliant, not the visuals. Superman was a wonderful mixture of the crass and the innocent. If Spider-Man is not about teenage alienation and the fantasy of overcoming it, and the lesson that power doesn't solve all your problems, it will be crap. Now, what has DeBont done to suggest that he connects with that? Paul Verhoeven understands that irony... not his once cinematographer DeBont. If Amy Pascal is breathing a sigh of relief with the success of Stuart Little, she's asking to be roasted alive in a pot of her own vision if she hires DeBont for Spider-Man. Mark these words now... if she pulls that trigger, 18 months from now, we'll be talking about whether she'll be fired before or after Calley's retirement party.

THE CHAT: Next week, all Magnolia all week. On Monday , writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson kicks things off at 8p ET, followed by songstress Aimee Mann at 9. On Wednesday, the couple most likely to burn the candle at both ends, Melora Walters (at 8) and John C. Reilly (at 9). Only from roughcut.com. Only on Yahoo! Chat.

RADIO RADIO: Yes, Virginia, Anthony Minghella will be in studio with me this Saturday on KABC (and kabc.com). We'll talk about The Talented Mr. Ripley, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman and more. Also due in is Girl Interrupted director James Mangold. So listen if you are in town, listen on the web and for God's sake, call in at 1-800-222-KABC, 10 am Saturday morning.

JUST WONDERING: Do you think I'll ever get back up to speed?

BAD AD WATCH: I was flipping through the paper and I noticed that Snow Falling On Cedars had been nominated as Best Picture of the Year! WOW!!! And the nomination came form the International Press Academy.... Huh? Who?
What? Though I agree that Robert Richardson should be Oscar-nominated this year... for Bringing Out The Dead. After some difficult investigation on the web, I found the Academy. They claim to be the biggest organization of non-American media and they give out The Golden Satellites. They also tout an association with filmbazaar.com for exclusive, global entertainment news, but when you go to their site, the news of the agreement is the only news there. That is bizarre! Now I don't want to be too much of a player hater here, but what is up with these guys and why do we care?

READER OF THE DAY: And this from Mr. Glossy: "On the topic of his recent separation from Jane Fonda, if Ted Turner now starts dating Catherine Zeta Jones, I will lose it. I will join a militia."

Ok, lets not kill Supernova before it comes out. I know you, Mr. Sees-The-Movie-Before-Anyone, have the backstory on all the delays in its release. It looks pretty cool in the trailers, especially the ones currently on TV. Walter Hill needs a hit to regain his place as a kickass filmmaker. He and Peter Hyams deserve more praise then some of these other media darlings like Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino, the Three Kings dude, etc. So, go into the Supernova preview thinking about having fun. I recently did that when watching the DVD of Hyam's Outland. It's just fun sci-fi, not something that will top Kubrick. Relax. Maybe we will even be able to see Robin Tunney's breasts again.

BTW, the real evidence that global warning is here and it's too late: On January 3rd, I could have jogged outside in BUFFALO! January 3rd!"

E ME: Where are you jogging and will you pass by Supernova or stop dead in your tracks?