Friday, 14 July 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

What a difference a week makes. 168 little hours.

The buzz on X-Men was worried, fearful, unsure, dubious, redundant. Now, after the film has been seen, some serious heat seems to be building. The comic book obsessives are still mortal locks to show up and sell-out theaters everywhere on Friday. But even people who know nothing about the comic seem to like this movie…they really, really like this movie.

In the case of roughcut, I assigned both of our critics to see the film, not sure of what either of them brought to the theater. As it turns out, neither knew anything about the X-Men going in. As it turned out, both he and she…well, take a look at their two very different reviews.

And now that the signal has gone out (the Internet is good for something after all), the excitement seems to have built to a fever pitch that seemed impossible just a few weeks ago. Scary Movie is still the phenom opening of the year and The Perfect Storm may well be the top grosser, but X-Men fever seems like it is about to start. I am still of the impression that the film may be a little too grounded to hit the box office stratosphere, but I have little doubt that a franchise has been successfully born. (For other comments, check out previous columns, THB 7/10, THB 7/11.)

Also opening is Chuck & Buck, a movie I really, really do not like. Why? Because I think it is contemptuous of gays, straights, women and pretty much anyone except fag hags (if you've never heard that term, it is considered affectionate). But I must say, there is a large contingent, especially amongst gay communities, that LOVE this movie. And somehow, someway, I might just not get it. I like to think that I am smart enough to rise above my need for vaginal copulation, but maybe not. Maybe I just can't get the joke. Or perhaps parts of the gay community embrace films like this because the film industry rarely reflects homosexuality in as direct and unflinching a way as this film does. Not that it's a sex movie…don't get the wrong impression if that scares you. In the end, I am not really qualified to get into a full exploration of the politics of gay film. I am a big fan of Taxi zum Klo, the 1981 German film about a gay schoolteacher, even though it includes extremely graphic gay sexual imagery However, I gather that there are those in "the community" who don't like the political statement of that movie. So, I'll return to something simpler for Chuck & Buck. One snap down…haaated it!

Click here after noon PST for Box Office Extra.

THE GOOD: I have gotten a lot of e-mail soliciting my opinion about the Richard Roeper hire for "Roger Ebert & The Movies." I am in an awkward position. I obviously will not be on the show ever again. I am free of obligation. Except that I have become a friend of Roger's and the show's and feel a certain loyalty. So, instead of joining the fray, I've decided to write about what the show has been.

When Ebert and Siskel were first paired for a weekly film criticism show for a local PBS station, no one had the slightest idea of what they were about to unleash on the film world. These guys were local rivals. One, the erudite, somewhat condescending Jewish guy from the bigger paper in the second city. The other, a small town boy from the highly competitive local tabloid paper who really pulled himself up by his bootstraps, actually made a movie, with no less than Russ Meyer, and who had the softer, film geek edge. It wasn't magic from day one. But the magic came.

Siskel & Ebert worked their way through one of the most turbulent eras of the movie business. They were already seated when Star Wars hit theaters and forever, following Jaws, changed the mindset of the studios that the duo would cover every week. Though the pair wore their passions on their sleeves, never afraid of a conflict, they were both committed to the destruction of movie junk and the education of America's moviegoers on the better films of the world, from documentaries to indies to foreign language movies.

In recent years, even before Gene Siskel's premature and unfortunate passing, a new reality has hit Hollywood. The opening weekend obsession has created a need (or at least, a perceived need) for marketers to run quotes before legitimate critics have even chimed in. This phenomenon has created the junket-based quote whore in a way that never existed before. And the quote whore system has managed to make virtually every major critic in America irrelevant to the studio marketing departments. Except for one. Roger Ebert. Yes, they still like it when they can run "Time magazine says…" However, Time magazine has marginalized itself as a real authority by blurring the line between editorial content and promotional content beyond recognition, and how long before moviegoers realize that Jess Cagle has not only liked every big movie he's written about this summer, but drooled on himself trying to get enough expletives out of his mouth to fill a print ad to within an inch of its life?

But I digress…

As Ebert and his audience of a couple million has become the only critic studios care about, their embrace of non-critics and overt mouthpieces has devalued even his thumb value. And the Ebert experience is once again best served by going back to the work Roger was doing before all this TV stuff started. Read his reviews. That is where you will find the depth that you can never find in a four-minute review. That's not his fault or the show's fault. That's television.

And now, television criticism has taken one more step towards irrelevance. What was once a show about two men who weren't terribly television savvy or movie-star handsome, but who really cared about the movies in a way that anyone crazy enough to read this column every day can connect with is now…well, another television show about movies. In the old days, there were few things that got as much airtime on Gene & Roger's show as rants about the studio system making safe, boring choices that made their movie slates easy to digest, unless you were really paying attention. But no one really pays full attention to television anymore, do we? See you in the funny papers, Rog.

"Cameron Runs and Dumb Conclusion Can't Hide"