Weekend, 4-5 November 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. I have been ruined by a movie... and I can't even tell you which one. There have been, in my opinion, three truly great films that are within reach of Oscar's grasp this year: Erin Brockovich, Quills, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There is some sense out there that Sony Classics will blow their opportunity with the Tiger, aiming too low and hitting the mark. But I just saw the fourth great film of the year and, somehow, writing about the business of show doesn't seem interesting today. Forgive me. And so, I am going to give myself a break and throw out the stories... you can figure them out yourselves, I'm sure.

9. MGM, the studio that brought us premature speculation that there would be a Rocky V and a revival of The Pink Panther series with Kevin Spacey, is now spreading word that Mike Myers will be doing Clouseau, with Ivan Reitman at the helm. But Reitman has a deal at DreamWorks and, according to earlier reports, if Myers does anything other than a project for Universal, Imagine, and DreamWorks as his next picture, he'll be cutting a $5 million check for expenses on Dieter. So, how likely is this? Not very. But it’s a slow news month.

8. Jada and Will Smith have had a second baby. Congrats.

7. Frederick S. Clarke, creator of the great movie magazine Cinefantastique, is dead. He shot himself in the head on October 17, and the death was just made public. I discovered Cinefantastique when I was at Northwestern University and, to buy every issue I could find, spent what then seemed like a huge amount of money for a magazine. What I read helped me fall even more deeply in love with the movies. I don't know why a 51-year-old man with a wife and four kids commits suicide. But it's a loss for them and for movie lovers. He will be missed.

6. No Friday surprise this week from Claudia Eller, who teamed up with Sallie Hofmeister to sell the glories of Howard Stringer to L.A. this week. Why? Beats me. But it is as pretty as a press release.

5. My other Friday favorite of late, the Wall Street Journal's Tom King, doesn't tell us anything new in his "Hollywood Journal" piece -- Hollywood is spending so much on advertising, it's all a big blur!!! Really?!?!?! -- but at least it's not foolhardy. Well, at least until the inane comparison of The Patriot and The Perfect Storm, as though the difference in ad dollars was the big difference between the films. ("It's the movies, stupid!") And of course, he does kind of miss the point. Additionally, his "Entertaining Question" does show some ignorance. He never explains why the Christmas season does more business than the January/February period. (Two weeks of weekdays that play a lot like weekends.) Nor does he explain that by opening movies in mid-December, the industry is looking to play their films into January and February. (Be sure that Paramount expects What Women Want to be Top Five, maybe Top Three on Valentine's Day.) The movie business is now all about opening weekend... unless a movie is exceptional, box office runs downhill. I think that studios should break out of that thinking and often, when they do, they are rewarded (see: Rush Hour, Meet the Parents, and She's All That). But anyway, a relatively harmless column from Tom this weekend.

4. Great piece by Andrew Hindes in Inside.com about the shuttering of movie screens this year. (Click here to read it.)

3. Pedro Almodóvar will not be making his first English-language film anytime soon, choosing instead to head back to Spain for his next project.

2. Amy Pascal must know that her tenure at Sony is short... otherwise, why would she hang McG around her own neck at $2.5 million for his next movie and another picture after that? Attaching McG to a $75 million budget again is like putting your entire $10 million lottery winnings into the next $3 million lottery drawing. A nice guy with some talent... he needs to be in the kiddie pool for a while if he is ever going to learn how to make a movie that makes ANY sense. Pascal should be giving the Charlie’s Angels editing team a $20 million deal for their next picture, because they saved this one from eternal damnation.

1. Ring Lardner Jr., the last surviving "Hollywood Ten" member, is dead. His accomplishments and his suffering were great. He will be well remembered for his work and his political bravery. He will be missed.

READER OF THE DAY: From Yet Another D.P. -- "Don't understand your Bagger 'T' comment (THB 11/3): ‘...it's the only sequence in the film in which the director is not telling you exactly where to look.’

"But... we DO know exactly where to look, right?

"Whatever the intended focal point, if Charlize is on screen, I'm looking at her."

E ME: Always raising the level of discourse on film...