Weekend, 14-15 October 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. Linkin' Up Is Hard To Do: I got e-mail from a new on-line movie magazine called “Hot Dog Magazine," which seems like yet another attempt at a movie version of "Maxim." What caught my attention was the news that the cover of their premiere issue got flack from the Advertising Standards Authority. So I checked it out and found this story. Unfortunately, I found the rest of the site almost completely unsurfable, and it was impossible to find stories that were promoted as news. The site looks slick, but unless they get it together technically, it's an one and out visit.

9. Get Those out of My Union!: Speaking of T&A and film, the biggest threat to that corner of the industry this week is from SAG, which is considering excommunicating Elizabeth Hurley for making Estée Lauder ads during the strike. Tim Robbins bravely attacked the bustful brunette, saying, "She won't get away with it." Ooooh…scary! Villagers with torches can't be far behind. Hurley, of course, is claiming that she didn't know that she was breaking the rules when she did her spots, which is probably an outright lie. But this is the kind of "really important story" that distracts everyone from the boring labor negotiation that's going on, doesn't it?

8. Sister, Mother, Mother, Sister: I guess overt cynicism is becoming a game for younger and younger people. There will be a student protest this weekend as the University of Rochester celebrates its 150th anniversary. Jack Valenti will be in town to moderate a conversation amongst Hollywood-related alums. The students will be rallying against a ban on DeCSS on the basis that it might hurt the expansion of Linux and Unix. Come on! Who is kidding whom? These students are taking a page from Valenti's book, claiming one motive while acting on a completely different one. Are they getting funding from Oracle or something? Why are they protesting on the basis of a threat to commercial competition between competing platforms? That's not free speech! They want their free music and movies and video games, no? Says one of the protest leaders, Eric McCarthy, "We consider it unconstitutional. It violates freedom of speech by putting restrictions on source code for computers." Uh, Eric, take a course. Free speech is about the freedom to express one's self, not your freedom from paying to hear them if they choose to charge you for the access.

7. E! Entertainment Jackasses: It's good to know that an outlet can build itself up on tearing people down and examining the corpses, yet when they get made fun of, the first thing they do is whine. iFilm has been running a short called Jar Jar Binks: The E! True Hollywood Story. So, who protests? Not Lucas, but E! Talk about your thin skin! Yeah, we all thought that it was a real program from E! and those kids who made it were thieves. Come on! Now, iFilm has removed the movie from its site. Boooo! Hissss! Get a sense of humor!

6. So Sue Me: What has E! Entertainment Television driven Joan Rivers to do to her face? You know, it's their fault. She never would have pulled her skin tighter than a nipple on a stripper if it weren't for the pressure to look good when she's shredding celebrities for wearing clothes she doesn’ t like. I blame E! directly. There should be some form of litigation. And here's another tidbit…E! doesn't really care about how knowledgeable their anchors are about the business…just how good their Ts and As look on camera! Ooooo whee! Big news! And AJ Benza just shows up and reads copy off a prompter! And the networks biggest programming challenge is trying to get women to wear bottoms tight enough that their labia can be seen on camera! Yeah…go get 'em. Make sure to beat up some kids doing a parody! That's real honorable.

5. Top from the Top: Sandy Litvak, Disney's vice chairman and one of Michael Eisner's few close deputies who was still left, is leaving the company. No one's really surprised, but no one is thrilled either. The buzz around Eisner's lack of a successor has quieted a bit lately, but only because people got sick of talking about the subject. This is yet another step toward the Isle of Mike. Litvak will surely be missed at Disney.

4. A New Dimension: The turnover at Miramax continued as the company announced that Andrew Rona and Brad Weston will take over at Dimension in the wake of Cary Granat's exit. The question is, what does this mean for Dimension's direction? Andrew Rona has been part of the company for a while, and this move is a promotion. Brad Weston, on the other hand, comes from Millennium Films, a company that has not only failed to produce a single critical or financial hit but also makes films that seem diametrically opposed to the former direction of Dimension as a teen-focused answer to New Line. The Miramax wheel is spinning, and where it stops, almost nobody knows. (P.S.: My favorite line from the coverage of this hire is in "Variety": "Rona is overseeing completion of sci-fi pic Impostor and the Western Texas Rangers, both due out next spring." No mention of the fact that Texas Rangers was supposed to be an early summer release, then a late-summer release, and is now a next-spring-probably-up-against-Eye See You-and-Town & Country-release. Tee hee.)

Page 2: "Requiem for a Dream & When ROTDs Attack!"