Friday, 17 March 2000

WEEKEND REVIEW

This is the weekend during which you will find it a little safer to go back to the movies. Besides Erin Brockovich hitting theaters, this is the weekend to scramble for those last looks at the Oscar® nominated films. Most people I speak to tell me that the Best Picture nominee that they haven't seen is The Cider House Rules, so things look good for that film this weekend. As critical as I have been about the neck-and-neck scam run by the geniuses of Miramax/The Angelotti Company, it was a little shocking to look at Richard Natale's profit projections column in the L.A. Times (Tribune) and see that Cider House is projected to total out at $50 million, less than half what American Beauty will likely end up grossing domestically. For all our Oscar fears, that should tell you something. Either the film won't be gathering more than one little bald man when push comes to shove or Hollywood is a very isolated and malleable little town.

Which is, again, not to say that I don't like The Cider House Rules. I do. And I like the very talented people involved. The reality of this town, especially this time of year, is that you are either for them or against them. There is no middle ground. And that's too bad. Because there has always got to be middle ground in art. It's just, this has lost sight of the island of art and even for the films that I think most deserve to win the Best Picture Oscar (The Insider and American Beauty), this has become a marketing effort designed to add $20 million more dollars in box office and probably even more to the ancillary bottom line.

Speaking of extremes, someone spit on my car Wednesday night. No one's ever done that before. And my first thought was "Is it a shell thing?" Now, it certainly could have been a random act of stupidity. Gross and cowardly is always a sterling combination. But whomever spat made a point of not just spitting on the side of my car, but of spitting on the driver's seat as well. The top was down, but still, this seems to have required an effort. There is a crazy person who walks up and down my street acting kind of nutso…maybe it was she. Or maybe it was one of those shell people. Or worse, maybe it was someone who I don’t think of as a shell person who assumed that I was writing about them and got so enraged that they had to spit on my car…my car…an innocent in the column wars…who did my car ever abuse in print? I guess I should have taken the samples to the lab for DNA fingerprinting. Geez…what a world!

Box Office Extra will be here at noon e.s.t..

THE GOOD: Erin Brockovich is more than good. It's great. But if you've read the column in the last months, you already know that. Obsessing on Julia Roberts, love her or hate her, is not the way into this movie. This is a Steven Soderbergh film first. A Susannah Grant/Richard LaGravanese script second. A seminal Julia Roberts flick third. An Anne V. Coates edit extravaganza fourth. An Albert Finney triumph fifth. And on and on. I have gotten one e-mail from a THB regular whose date thought the storytelling was "too obvious." Well, he must be itching to go see Final Destination because if there is anything that Erin Brockovich isn't, it's obvious. Yes, in many ways the story and the lead character are iconic. But Soderbergh's artistry reaches beyond that. And that's why this movie is so good. I don't really want to go into any specifics here, lest you spend two hours looking for little touches. But there are cuts, effects, lighting tricks and underplayed performances that are so subtle that I would bet that 95 percent of viewers won't even notice them the first time around. But they are there and you feel them. And they will be noticed eventually because I expect that people will be returning to see Erin Brockovich over and over again and taking friends along for the ride.

THE BAD: I missed the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film and Music Festival this last week. My schedule kept shifting and priorities on the home front grounded my plans. And that really sucks. Because there is little doubt that SXSW is becoming one of the most important festivals of the year, along with Sundance, Telluride and Toronto, here in North America. Something special is going on in Austin, TX, and next year, I promise, roughcut.com will cover the festival from stem to stern. In the meantime, you might want to check out the festival's homepage. I was going to send you to IndieWire for more, but they seem to have passed on the festival, which seems very odd. (Anyone know what's going on there?) So check out The Austin Chronicle's coverage. And of course, this is Harry Knowles’ home festival. So, there will be plenty of coverage at AICN.

THE UGLY: Have you ever seen a nightmare walking? Well, I did.

Damn It! New Line could use that as a pull-quote and it would make it sound like Final Destination was not the filmic equivalent of having every nail removed from your body by someone who wasn't even paying attention while torturing you. Yes, Final Destination will give The Next Best Thing a real run for its money in "Worst of 2000" lists everywhere. This movie 1) looks like crap, 2) makes little to no sense, 3) thinks it's funny, 4) misses almost every opportunity to actually be cool, 5) makes you wonder how people as talented as James Wong and Glen Morgan could do something this awful, 6) puts Devon Sawa in cement movie boots that he's going to have to work really hard to escape if he's not to sink to the bottom of the movie ocean, 7) should make New Line indebted to Ali Larter, who actually sold the excrement out of this movie at ShoWest last week, 8) makes me wonder about Warren Zide, who bookended American Pie with this car wreck and The Big Hit, 9) throws around references to Val Lewton, who will be doing the horizontal corkscrew in his grave as a result and 10) makes Idle Hands seem charming by comparison.

But how do I really feel about Final Destination? It should have premiered on Joe Bob Briggs' show or as a special "Mystery Science Theater 3K" episode. Then it might have been fun.

"Oscars On Radio, Oscars On DirecTV & Oscar-Winning Quote Whores"