Weekend, 11-12 November 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10,000. Fava Beans and a Nice Grape: For a remake that isn't a remake and won't be a sequel, even if it's the third in a series (it's a prequel), Dino De Laurentiis has commissioned Silence of the Lambs writer Ted Tally to do a screenplay of Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris novel that previously spawned Michael Mann's Manhunter, starring William Peterson and with Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter. Word has it that Universal is interested in distributing the movie domestically. The unanswered question is, of course, who will play Lecter in the prequel? About to come out in a sequel, Anthony Hopkins may be too old. But do you hire someone who's going to do a Hopkins imitation, bringing the series full circle? Or do you just start fresh? (Remember, De Laurentiis is behind Hannibal, the coming sequel with Hopkins starring.) How would you handle it?

9. Clink: One of the ongoing "movies and the web" stories has been the saga of "Joe Hallenbeck," formerly of Ain't It Cool. Harry & Co. have pretty much disavowed any relationship with "Hallenbeck," whose real name is Michael Gerhard, though he was the source for much of the early-look info that launched the Ain't It Cool site. (For the record, I take Harry at his word that he was never involved with the illegal distribution of the films at issue for profit.) "Hallenbeck"/Gerhard was convicted this week in Toluca Lake of copying and selling movies that had yet to be released in theaters. He was fined $10,900 and given 120 days in jail or 60 days on a road crew.

324. You Wants To Be a President?: The election battle continues. And for me, it comes down to this: you can't unring a bell. I wish you could, but you can't. And as I have recently written to a new friend who keeps sending me pro-Gore stuff, it's an amazingly close election on all levels and it's a shame that someone has to win. (Check out this cool bipartisan election graphic that's been floating around the web.)

1. The Force Is Watching You: Lucasfilm has decided that if they can't lick ’em, they'll suck ’em into the machine. In cahoots with Atomfilms, Lucasfilm will create the Star Wars Film Network as a home for all Star Wars "spoofs and documentaries" on the web. Gifting the participants, Lucasfilm will offer "official sound effects" to all. Makes you feel like an Ewok at the end of Jedi. Very exciting.

28. Adios: Yet another movie site has gone down the tubes. Au revoir to eStar. The company has tried to sell its assets in one block, including, ironically, Alex Ben Block, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and current movie editor for the site. They want at least $1 million for their assets. I have a few thousand left in my 2000 budget for roughcut.com. They can have it. And then I'll turn Alex Ben Block evil... he must have some really nasty stories he can tell, even though he spends a lot of time being nice these days. Oooohhh... it'll be good!

59,333,726. Fighting the WAH! with an Accent: Sony's Howard Stringer finally came out against the WAH! in a Thursday speech in New York. "If two cities, Toronto and Chicago, have roughly the same size populations, the same number of TV channels, and the same number of movie theaters," he said, "why does one city have a murder rate 10 times more than the other? Is it the difference in national character or the difference in the attitude toward guns?" Good question. Important question. He continues, "Last year in Japan, a handgun killed not one child, and yet the appetite for American movies seems undiminished." In fact, many of the movies that are under attack in this country are based on the Hong Kong action style that the entire Far East eats up. Stringer didn't go so far as to embrace self-censorship, but rather he came up with a kind of Affirmative Action for nastiness: "Let's offer our audiences stirring stories of people caring about each other, appreciating and accepting accountability, as well as stirring stories about people not behaving that way. If the sociopaths who parade though our news programs show no remorse, let's be sure that some of our scripts do. If the eyes of killers reflect only the chill of arctic wastes, then our movies can often reflect warmer vistas.'' A step in the right direction.

11. Down Under and to the Left: Just so you don't think that actors only mouth off in Hollywood, there is a battle in New Zealand about a commercial development and Sam Neill has gotten involved. He wrote to the Christchurch Press to object to development, saying, "Dodgy, ugly buildings in Queenstown, suburban tracts in rural areas, a haphazard scattering of houses over the countryside -- these things are not intelligent." Not coincidentally, Neill has property in the area that might be affected by the developments, and local officials accuse him of playing NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) Games.

3462. I Hate, Hate, Hate This Feature: Why can't Inside.com stop constantly sliding from smart, insightful coverage into absolute idiocy? Here we go again with Inside.com's sure-to-be-copyrighted "The Inside Line," which claims to be a reliable statistical analysis, updated daily, that will predict the Oscar nominees and then, winners. Now, Inside.com claims it will soon have an easily accessible list of this ongoing tally, but they have already published their inanity... and in the Best Picture category, it goes like this:

The nominees: State and Main, Almost Famous, Billy Elliot, Shadow of the Vampire, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Of course, they only have a dozen possible Best Picture nominees on their list, excluding titles like Traffic and Finding Forrester and Before Night Falls and Chocolat and All the Pretty Horses and others.

Cast Away is in the running because the "Reviews" category is worth 104 points... even though almost no one has seen the film. Meanwhile, "PG-13 rating is a negative, as is wide release and lack of festival record." The "Pedigree" category rating is only 58... gee, I guess Tom's Oscars, Zemeckis's Oscar, Hunt's Oscar, and the crew full of Oscar winners and nominees just don’t cut it anymore.

On the other hand, State and Main has "Perfect pedigree, with particular strength in the cast." I love Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he's never been nominated. William H. Macy has been nominated once and didn't win. Mamet twice, no win. Alec Baldwin couldn’t even win the American Comedy Award for which he was nominated. Supporting player Charles Durning has two Oscar nods and David Paymer has one, but "perfect pedigree"? On whose radar?

Quills has Oscar-winner and once-failed nominee Geoffrey Rush; two-time winner, thrice-failed nominee Michael Caine; and two-time nominee Kate Winslet... and 70 pedigree points. Hmmm...

Almost Famous, Billy Elliot, and You Can Count on Me all got the same "Reviews" number, 129. Yeah, pretty indistinguishable.

The list has an obsession with any pre-December release date being a problem, yet it also takes away points for lack of "festival record." No December release has ANY festival record. So how can you balance those two issues?

The one movie universally considered a lock, Erin Brockovich, is downgraded for the following: "March release and wide distribution cost points, as does lack of festival record." How do people feel about the movie? That’s irrelevant, apparently.

I am from Miami, so I am acutely aware of the University of Miami currently being out of contention for a national title in college football, stuck by computers in the Number Three slot, behind Florida State University... a team that U of M beat. Statistical analysis of the Oscar race is one of the stupidest ideas ever. Numbers can never substitute for the most important tool people have... feelings. Of course, we're all wrong when it comes to guessing these things down to the details. There are always surprises, good and bad. If Shadow of the Vampire and State and Main get Best Picture nods, I will perform some act of personal degradation and put it on the web... I hope the Inside.com computer will do the same.

PAGE TWO: More Anomalies