18 January 2000

THE UGLY: So, since I had 3 or 4 free hours between arriving from Maui and heading off to Chicago, I did what any sane critic/columnist/masochist would do... I checked out the flaming car wreck that is Supernova. Breathtaking! When the incredibly simplistic plot finally appears somewhere in the second act, I had a bit of a revelation. The film started reminding me of some of the movies made during John Calley's reign at MGM... low-budget genre stuff made at exorbitant prices, like Species, which would have been a stunning success at the $20 million it should have cost, but was just a nice hit at $38 million plus P&A. Of course, Supernova went one worse on that formula. They made a good $18 million funhouse movie for $80 million. Not that there was anything wrong with the effects themselves... they just didn't have a reason to be in this movie. Maybe there was more at one point, but basically, this movie is simply a variation on Alien and The Thing. Except with a lot of distractions that absolutely nothing to do with anything. Cheap and more personally violent, this could have been a great first-time director project from the old Corman school.

And I don't know what Francis Ford Coppola cut that could have been any worse than what I saw, but Premiere says that he changed the colors of two characters making love in a weightless environment to create a romance between James Spader and Angela Bassett. Well, one, we had already seem the same exact shots with Lou Diamond Phillips and Robin Tunney, so that was just weird. And then, the early nonsensical sex scene removes some of the gravity from some later scenes in the film. And oh how Peter Facinelli must be praying for the untimely demise of Tom Cruise because even Pete must realize there can only be one Tom Cruise and as long as the real one is alive, he can sue for the theft of all of his acting schtick by a guy taller and bigger than he is. (And that perhaps is one of the reasons why Cruise is so popular... because he isn't the ultra-stud physically.) Did I mention that someone was kicking my seat and two ladies were chatting in Russian through the whole movie? They weren't worth $8.50, but I never asked them to shut up or stop kicking because they were more entertaining than Supernova.

THE CHAT: Well, maybe I'll be chatting with Anthony Minghella this Thursday on Yahoo! or maybe I won't. Keep an eye out on the Yahoo! Chat schedule at chat.yahoo.com.

RADIO RADIO: We were live from Maui this week (with an assist from KABC's Taylor-Davis) and while George will be in studio this week with M. Night Shyamalan with me on line from Sundance, possibly with more celebrity guests as well. OY! You can listen in L.A or you can check it out on the web at kabc.com, Saturdays at 10a.m. PT.

JUST WONDERING: How many of you didn't write in, but thought that I was dissing Michael Mann's Heat, one of my favorite movies, last Thursday? Bzzt! The Heat I was speaking of was the one starring Burt Reynolds and oh so relevantly, based on the William Goldman novel.

READER OF THE DAY: Amazin' Amy writes: "It’s an interesting phenomenon -- the function and responsibility of the journalist in free society -- the relentless pursuit of "the story", "the angle". Yet how much of journalism today is really presented to the public for its "convenience and necessity", and not its latent voyeurism?

Is there not a point when it becomes more convenient and necessary to keep information from the public? One of the wisest things I’ve heard in a movie in recent years came from that rather unlikely source, Men in Black. The Tommy Lee Jones character says, "A person is smart. People are stupid."

What is journalistic integrity? Is it simply remaining objective, or does it come from making wise choices about what stories get presented? The integrity vs. commerce question can be as compelling, if not more so, than the art vs. commerce question.

Not really being in the journalism business, I haven’t gone out of my way to answer these questions for myself. However, I regularly see examples of information -- corporate or governmental -- being disseminated as news that might have been better off staying within the confines of its origin, in my humble opinion.

I suppose I should get my a-- down to the thee-ate-r and see The Insider before it’s too late."

E ME: Send in those intimate Leo questions which I won't be able to answer! Also, anyone have any particular interests as far as Sundance goes?