Weekend, 29-30 July 2000

10. Who's The Greatest?: The boxing battle is on between Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. In one corner, you have Michael Mann, Will Smith and Columbia Pictures, finally getting a long-delayed Ali movie into production this August. In the other corner, you have Spike Lee, screenwriting legend Budd Schulberg and boxing historian/raconteur Burt Sugar trying to get financing for a production next summer. The Hollywood Reporter ran what essentially read like a want ad for financing on the picture, tracing the rivalry between Louis and Max Schmeling, which adds the Nazi angle even though Schmeling is said to have been a Jewish sympathizer. Anyway, we're one more boxing picture away from an Entertainment Weekly "News & Notes" box. How about Roberto Duran with Rob Schneider as Duran?

9. Back To God. Zilla: I got an e-mail from a reader, the lovely and talented Donner of Austin aka The Southern Pole, who wanted to turn me on to this cool little movie called Moses Vs. Godzilla. Only The Hot Button turned you on to this one back in February coming off of the No Dance Film Festival in Park City. Brad Morris is the man behind the movie and now the movie is part of MediaTrip.com. However, you can find the link to the film AND more about Morris by going to his Web site.

8. And Speaking Of Hot Links: While I was busy deciding whether roughcut would be sued by Lucasfilm for running the faux trailer for Star Wars: Episode 2, it went up at TheForce.net. Click here to check that great piece of cyber work out. And for a fun faux ad involving the Star Wars teams, go to ayaz.com.

7. Digital Crap: It took a little longer than you might have expected, but Roger Corman is finally, officially, going digital. Cheap is the mode and cheap is the man, so it seems a marriage made in heaven. Corman is actually creating a new studio space for his company, New Concorde, in Venice and digital will be part of the plant. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Corman's daughter, Catherine, used digital cameras to shoot mountain climbing sequences in her new movie, Take It To The Limit and they were so impressed with ease of use and the results, they bought into the system.

6. Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut: Neil Jordan, who I consider to be on the very highest level of directors working today, is in turnaround. Warner Bros. pulled the plug on his remake of the Jean-Pierre Melville flick, Bob Le Flambeur aka Bob the Gambler. (The film is available on video.) Perhaps the film meant that Warner Bros. would have one too many casino heist movies in one year. Nonetheless, it's back out in the ether. Will Jordan set the movie up at DreamWorks? Probably not or you already would have seen the press release. But Jordan does have another project set up at ImageMovers, the Bob Zemeckis/Steve Starkey/Jack Rapke (How do you list them without pissing someone off? At least DreamWorks has the SKG you can blame.), so maybe it has a shot. All I know is that Neil Jordan should be allowed to work as much as he can. The guy is a genius. And in terms of a small world, look at some of the similarities of In Dreams and What Lies Beneath. Fascinating. Ultimately, I don't think Jordan's film worked, but MAN, does it have some powerful images. And a lot of water.

5. Huh?: I'm enjoying Inside.com more and more, though they still haven't come close to fulfilling their promise of being remotely revolutionary. And they still have too many flat-out wrongheaded stories, like Sandy Brown's current piece on there being too many movies this holiday season. One has to love it when Chicken Little shows up, but where was Sandy when Sleepy Hollow, Toy Story 2, The World is Not Enough, Pokémon, The Messenger, Anywhere But Here and Dogma all showed up in the same 8 days last Thanksgiving? And The Insider, The Bachelor and The Bone Collector hit the weekend before that? And I count another 20 major films in release, if only for Oscar® runs, by Christmas. So tell me, what's new?

4. Flowin': Sony is still spewing red ink. They were forced to write off over $900 million in advertising costs that they have been storing in their corporate books because of a new tax law. But aside from that, the corporation did okay, with an operating profit of just over $300 million. but that came mostly from electronics. If you take the write-off and the profit in electronics, you're still looking at over $200 million in losses somewhere in the company. Hooray for Hollywood.

3. Ch-Ch-Ch-Change to Spare: Also on the earnings front, MGM is crowing about a posted net income of $6.3 million in its last quarter. Wowzers! Alex Yemenidijian put it in perspective, saying, "It's been 14 years since MGM had this kind of earnings performance." That might be damning with faint praise, but in reality, MGM has been effectively restructured to be a safe media play and these results are a direct result of that. MGM, on the other hand, is no longer a major, except in memory. But there is a lot of money to be made in the ancillary businesses in which MGM is maintaining their position and they will continue to make a few big movies and a bunch of small ones each year. Safely.

2. You Know the One About the Polish Actress?: You have to wonder what Cary Woods is thinking, doing a seven figure deal for the writers of Scary Movie. Why? It's a huge hit! Well, yeah, but based on the style of movie, I think it would be fair to say that a whole hell of a lot of it came from the Wayans Bros. and not from the screenplay. I could be wrong. It happens. But a big sketch comedy movie from the guys who did "In Living Color." Hmmm. Yeah, hire the writers.

1. Visiting Hours are Over: What's going on with the Monkey movie? Well, there is casting news all over the place and none of it mentions the title, The Visitor. Why? Because the film is back to being Planet of the Apes and it looks like a lock to stay that way. Apparently, the backlash from the announcement of proposed Burton title convinced everyone to go back to the road more traveled. Meanwhile, the speculation about how far the story will stray from the original seems to be sliding back to "He's a pilot, not an astronaut." BFD. So, you have Mark Wahlberg in the "Get your hands off of me, you damned dirty ape" role. You have Paul Giamatti as a good guy ape. Tim Roth as your really bad primate. Estella Warren as The Mute Human With The Leather Bikini The Shows Off The Rack. And now, in a first that they probably couldn't have gotten away with back in the '60s/'70s, a black man will play an ape. Michael Clarke Duncan will play Roth's second-in-command. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure you will tell me if I am. But none of the major monkeys in any of the original series of films were played by blacks. I like to think that casting Duncan is a matter hiring the right actor and forgetting race. But you can be sure that there will be extremists taking positions against Duncan for going ape. And that's a shame. I'm sure that if he is taking it, it's a pretty good role. And that's all the monkey news for today.

READER OF THE DAY: One M From Kosher writes: "I've written before and mentioned that I work at a movie theater. I may or may not have also mentioned that I am a parent. I wish that more parents took the personal stand for their children that Jason has. I see parents bringing children to completely inappropriate movies on a daily basis. Most only bring them because they can't or won't get a sitter. Too many parents put their own desires ahead of what may be best for their children. Sacrifice is part of being a parent. I have all the respect in the world for the sacrifice Jason has made. I admit that I haven't gone so far as to cut out R-rated movies, but I'm certainly not exposing my son (or daughter-on-the-way) to them until I feel they're ready.

I didn't appreciate being denied seeing something when I was a kid because I was 'too young.' I appreciate it now though. I appreciate that because my parents shielded me from the violence when I was young that I can still be horrified by it now. It disturbs me to hear teenagers today talk about how cool one method of death or mayhem is in any given movie. In retrospect, I'm glad that my parents discerned what I should or shouldn't see.

Children don't have a lot of freedom because they don't have the maturity or the wisdom that only life experience can bring to distinguish what's good for them or not good for them (not that all adults do either, but children have an excuse for lacking maturity). While it's wonderful that that young man chose to sneak into R-rated Academy Award winners, the greater share of youth would not have such taste. If the rating system were taken out completely the highest percentage of teenagers would select the less intellectually edifying movies like Scary Movie."

And this from Mr. Mister: "Another review site that I check out just for laughs is capalert.com. It's a Christian movie review site (once you find the reviews, there's a link somewhere on the main page). More like a hard-line, fundamentalist Christian review site, really...Mary Poppins is rated as the perfect family film. Things like The Iron Giant, though...well. The guy who does it somehow manages to have not 1, but four separate reviewing criteria...for some reason The Iron Giant gets a 'Red Alert.' http://www.capalert.com/capreports/irongiant.htm The review for South Park is pretty funny though. http://www.capalert.com/capreports/southpark.htm

E ME: I'm headed to China on Tuesday. Don't worry, you are all coming with me. But what should I do here at home before I head east?