Friday, 2 February 2001

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Something has taken precedence over the openings this weekend. But first...

There are four new releases going wide this weekend. And unfortunately, the season of mediocrity continues unabated. I have not seen Hanging Up, but to say that the buzz from those who have is caustic would be an understatement. My rather dismissive review of Boiler Room ran during Sundance. You'll have to scroll down to find the rest of the boiling. As for The Whole Nine Yards and Pitch Black...take a look in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Also, Box Office Extra is back. Click here after noon e.s.t. and see if it's like you remember.

And now, on to the main story of the day.

FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: Before you get to today's story, I want you to know that there is even more to come. Harry has added the complete story of his experience, complete with documentation, to the mix. Unfortunately, it was after deadline for this column. So, as not to rush it and jam it without taking a minute to breathe, the weekend column will address this issue, from start to finish, one last time, hopefully bringing to bear all sides completely. And now, here's another piece of the puzzle...

I now know exactly what happened in the Harry's List saga. (If you haven't been with us the last few days, read Tuesday's column to catch up. The Harry is Harry Knowles.) I don't know what Harry has told me or what he's told others or what the Academy told people or any of that. I have uncovered the original source of the material he ran. It wasn't a hacker. It wasn't a regular Ain't It Cool News source. It was a non-industry civilian who stumbled, completely by mistake, upon the list that Harry ended up printing.

In any case, I don't really much relish beating Harry up over this anymore. He has learned his lesson, I'm sure. But now that I have the real facts, I think they bear publication.

Misinformation: Harry was himself the source (aka Dr. Evil's Evil Lite Son).
Truth: The information came from a computer tech who stumbled onto a file named "oscar_nominations" and sent the info and instructions on how to access it again. The source wasn't even really sure what the list was and presented no theories to Harry when he sent him the material. The title was his only clue. And that's what he told Harry when he e-mailed the materials to Harry on Sunday afternoon, feeling as though if it was something important, he wanted someone to know that he had gotten it or what fun would it have been to have found it. However, Harry did make up the pseudonym for his source, who offered no pseudonym of his own.

Misinformation: The list came off of www.oscar.com, an official Academy server.
Truth: The list came off the home computer of a publicist who, I'm sure, the Academy has identified by now, based on the material. There were no protections of the material which the author probably never considered vulnerable. No passwords. No firewalls. No nothing. He or she didn't realize that cable modems offer open access to everyone on the grid, if you know how to access other computers. Even with that, the access came by mistake. And Harry knew that from the beginning. The file was, in fact, coded in html for possible placement on the Oscars.com Website, but it was not on the server for the Website. It was someone's take-home work.

Misinformation: Harry protected his source by claiming to be the real source (aka Dr. Evil's Evil Lite Son).
Truth: By printing the address of the server that the materials came from, Harry made it easy for any serious authorities who were really interested in who the source was to narrow them down. I'm sure that Harry hadn't thought of it, but were this to have become a governmental investigation, the source would have probably been nailed by way of the same vulnerability by which the material got exposed.

Misninformation: The list was a "complete accounting of the press materials regarding possible nominees."
Truth: There was never any indication of any kind that this list was in any way complete. Harry seems to have based this determination on a couple of categories that he had some form of inside information on, which turned out to be correct.

In the end, the truth is, there was no sleuthing involved. Harry got e-mail Sunday afternoon and printed it early on Monday (not Monday night as has been reported), with no fact-checking whatsoever. Which is ironic, because Harry has maintained for years that he now checks with at least one secondary source on every story he prints. And while I think he's bent that rule more than a few times, I believe that's his rule of thumb. Not this time. This was a big fat guess based on extremely limited information. Nothing more.

Misinformation: Some Academy computer was exposed.
Truth: No. Not that they couldn't be, which is why the Academy continues to say that they put none of the accounting on networked computers of any kind. But we should all keep in mind that the human element - people inside the system, from temps to execs with an axe to grind - is what drives AICN. Not the fact that it's on the Internet. Not hacking. The people around you are much more insecure than your computers. Harry forgot that himself this time.

And that should end it in the present. And that should hold a place in our minds for years to come.

THE ALMOST GOOD: I bet The Whole Nine Yards had a great screenplay. The movie happens to hinge on some very clever conceits. The package was nearly perfect. Jonathan Lynn can hit this kind of material out of the park. Bruce Willis is funny. Matthew Perry fit. Michael Clarke Duncan was a terrific choice at the right time. And best of all, Amanda Peet was ready for her breakthrough, career-making role. And this was it.

Except...

Natasha Henstridge, who is stunning, simply cannot act. And that begins the downfall of this movie. Jonathan Lynn can hit a good farce out of the park. But he does his best work with actors working in a space. Usually in shots with 2 or 3 or more people working in the frame. Virtually every shot of Henstridge was either a single of her or an over-the-shoulder with another actor. If she's in the scene, the safe thing to do was to shoot around her so that she could try to squeeze something out in her close-up. But Lynn shot almost the entire film this way. Lots of cuts. Too many. Perhaps it was the problem of getting the perfect lighting for all the beautiful people involved. He clearly had trouble dealing with Michael Clarke Duncan's size to its best effect. I don't know. But the few big laughs in the movie all come in relatively wide shots with things going on away from the speaker. When Willis and Perry and Peet are in a room working together, this movie smells of a great farce. When they are sitting in mood lighting, the movie simply smells.

All that said, the movie really is almost worth going to just on the basis of it being Amanda Peet's coming out party. And not because she ends up topless. She has a lovely rack, however, I kind of wish she had kept her top on or simply teased more, as Cameron Diaz did in There's Something About Mary, where she actually convinced The Farrellys that less was more and was right. Amanda Peet's goofy grin is more intoxicating than any pair of breasts. She might be the really real thing. (Why didn't she get Charlie's Angels?)

THE ALMOST BAD: Pitch Black is a movie that makes as much sense as paying $3.75 for a box of popcorn. It's there, you're trapped, you go along with the options they give you. Director David Twohy had a surprise hit with The Arrival because it surprisingly made sense and gave you more than you expected. Here, you have the opposite. This movie never goes more than 3 minutes without an absurd coincidence that is necessary to drive the story. If a planet is only dangerous when it's dark and it's only dark once in every 22 years, when does your spaceship crash there? If the monsters are afraid of light and you are travelling in a lit pack to avoid them and something rolls away, what do you not do? If there are four actors you recognize and seven you don't, how long will those seven last?

But it's worse than that. Vin Diesel, who will eventually find a second decent movie to appear in and will become a movie star, can see in the dark. Great effect...with absolutely no bearing on the movie. The monsters, though cool looking, have absolutely no personality. Why do they kill? We have no idea. It can't be for food or they'd all be dead. Why does the spaceship crash? Don't know. How is the Captain killed? Don't know. When they decide to play the old good guy/bad guy reversal game, do we care? No, because we don't really care about the good guy in the first place. And unlike other great haunted house movies, Twohy, shooting in the best interest of his budget and an effort for style, shoots the movie almost entirely in close-up. Knowing the landscape is the key to suspense when something may come up and bite you from behind. A bunch of flash frames of someone being eaten doesn't do the job.

Except on TV.

And that's why this movie is "almost bad" and not bad. If you saw this as a cable movie premiere, it would rock. It's shot like TV, it is as dumb as TV and the effects are better than most TV. The expectations are lower, so for instance, when you really have no clue about what the monsters are about, that's okay. They look cool. Radha Mitchell looks great. And Vin Diesel says cool things. You couldn't ask for more from your TV.

One last thing, since many of you will pay theatrical release prices to see this thing anyway. How does the Radha Mitchell character get out of the cave in the third act? Riddle me that, Batman! (Vin would make a great Batman if he could lose the accent.)

PAGE TWO: "Critic Killin' and Some Great Links"