Friday, 5 January 2001

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Well, amazingly, there is NOTHING to preview this weekend. The entire change in the movie scene comes in the form of the expansion of Traffic and Chocolat... that’s it. Not a single new film on the block. Of course, what this does mean is that many of you will have your first chance to see one of the very best films of the year and some of you will have a chance to see Chocolat as well.

I liked Chocolat! Chocolat is a really nice movie. But the idea of it being nominated for Best Picture in a year in which there are more than a few excellent, meaningful films that are sure to be passed over... the horror... the horror...

The thing is that it now looks like there will be two Best Picture nominees built exclusively on the marketing intent and willingness to expend dollars. One is Miramax’s Chocolat. The other is DreamWorks’ Gladiator. The hype on these two movies is already reaching such an extreme that there is a childish phenomenon going on among industry insiders, downgrading the value of Erin Brockovich. This speaks to two of my Rules of Bad Analysis: 1) If you loved something, it must be bad, because if you felt the movie, they must have tricked you into it; and 2) Time + Quality = Picking It To Death.

The greatest irony here is that DreamWorks learned this lesson in a big way two Academy Awards ago when Saving Private Ryan lost to the vastly inferior Shakespeare in Love. The first 20 minutes of Ryan were amongst the best 20 minutes put on film... but then it became an exercise in analyzing how manipulative those 20 minutes were, even though Spielberg expressed openly that he designed the first 20 minutes of the film to change the audiences’ perspective on the two hours of story that was much more traditional. And then, Ryan came out in the summer, allowing the boo birds to take their spots over the film and to crap all over it. Miramax held Shakespeare in Love in their pocket until mid-January, not going past 100 screens until mid-February, keeping the film fresh and still in the bloom of romantic love. Academy voters responded. I have zero doubt that if the films were released the same day, Saving Private Ryan would have a Best Picture Oscar on the mantle right now.

The good news is that Sony Classics is looking to expand its next expansion of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from a total of 400 screens to a new total of around 600 screens. Good choice. Not enough. I called my friends at Exhibitor Relations to see if they could find any films with a per-screen as high as CTHD with a screen count in that 150 range and the only example was The Empire Strikes Back, which opened, for some reason, on 126 screens and did $9.6 million, for a $76,190 average... but it went a little wider after that. But indie, art, or foreign language, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a box-office phenomenon the likes of which have NEVER been seen. Sony needs to step it up and to go after the Best Picture Oscar, not just be satisfied with Best Foreign Language Picture from Taiwan.

That’s it. I’m worn out. It’s been quite the week of ranting. Sundance is coming up fast. And then you’ll be stuck with me, Andy Klein, Ray Pride, Alli Joseph, and Rod Hewitt every day for 10 days. It should be quite the parade.

If you are wondering, yes, I was at the Spider-Man press event. No, it wasn’t very eventful. Though Sony is already carefully placing Harry Knowles in their pocket for this one, while the marketing department is loudly shouting, "Wasn’t me!" Some things never change.

For the record, I am not questioning the veracity of marketing’s noninvolvement with Harry; however, the studio should understand that they have given up all rights to complain about any stories, nasty or kind, true or false, that run on any outlet about Spider-Man. If Jeff Wells breaks the review embargo in 2002... they asked for it. If some other early-info site gets stolen pictures of the movie and breaks the first shot of Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan... they asked for it. I’m not saying they deserve it. I’m saying that they can’t have it both ways. You want to bring the "renegade" on board, don’t expect the rest of the crew to act like gentlemen. And I don’t care who paid for the trip. The studio made a decision and the decision, like all decisions, has ramifications. I am perfectly happy for Harry. I really don’t care -- as I keep writing -- what access he gets. God bless him. Just don’t expect me to act by any different set of rules than he does on movies where he hasn’t been brought in early and ahead of the rest of the Internet media.

And yes, that was Andy Jones of E! Online showing up 20 minutes late in a T-shirt and sandals, wearing his sunglasses inside, and then screaming at Sony personnel because he couldn’t get into a post-event event to which he hadn’t been invited. Like I said, some things never change. The nice thing here is that Andy already hates me irrationally, so here is a reason for him to really hate me in the new year. Jeff Wells doesn’t have to hate me, but it was amusing as hell to me when the one cell-phone mishap of the event turned out to be Jeffrey’s cell in his briefcase and it was three rings before he figured it out.

Oh yeah, you wanted to read about Spider-Man. Red and blue suit, muted. Organic web shooters. Raimi says that this film will combine his early genre stuff with the sensibility of his more recent dramatic work. Maguire is working out. Kirsten Dunst has become unreasonably sexy for a child who can act. The Green Goblin has a son. Avi Arad said nice things about Stan Lee and didn’t choke on his tongue. Dafoe is looking forward to the physicality of his role. Sam Raimi joked about only having had time to watch the first half of Superman... which coincidentally is what Bryan Singer says he based his X-Men style on... make your own conclusions. The movie starts shooting on Monday. The release day is May 3, 2002... hoping, I suppose to hit $200 million even before Star Wars: Episode Two arrives on Memorial Day weekend.

Radio on Saturday, KABC-790 and kabc.com. Check it out... 11 am PST. Box Office Extra is here. News by the Numbers is looking awfully thin.

I’m out!

READER OF THE DAY: This comes from first-time e-mailer Nick The Non-Greek: "My problem, Mr. Poland, is the very term used to describe your profession and the many amateurs out there ready to usurp you and Roger Ebert and Elvis Mitchell, et al. ‘Film criticism’ has a negative connotation, and that is part of the problem. The word "critic" has come to represent a stereotype in and of itself -- someone who looks for flaws, rather than someone who looks to enlighten the masses with a point of view that might enrich their moviegoing experiences.

"A better term would be ‘film analysis.’ Opinions are a dime a dozen. The early ‘critics’ that you mentioned (before the era of Siskel and Ebert and the dawn of the Internet) were ‘film analysts.’ They were schooled in film theory and they discussed the merits of particular films not just on visual aesthetics and story structure and characterization but also on how those films fit in the broader light of cinema history and within their own specific genres.

"Nowadays, as the cliché goes, ‘everyone’s a critic.’ As you mentioned, people aren’t even ‘reviewing’ films anymore. There are no film analysts out there. Legitimate critics just rehash the plots and tell us in 500 words of meaningless verbiage or less whether the movie ‘sucked’ or ‘ruled.’ Sites like Ain’t It Cool News and others aren’t about "film analysis and discussion," they’re more about trying to find out anything and everything about a film before the movie comes out. Film criticism has mutated into a bizarre act of judging a film before it even comes out based on leaked scripts and costume designs and storyboards and ‘insider gossip’ and that all-important pre-release ‘buzz.’ So is it any wonder that so few movies really enchant us the way they used to? And is it so surprising that these ‘critics’ are just pop-culture ‘media whores’ without any real insight on the films they write about?

"Most of these critics can’t even write, if I can be perfectly blunt. And I’m not just talking about Harry Knowles’s ellipses-abuse and stream-of-consciousness style. A lot of professional writers for the mainstream press can’t seem to put decent sentences together or elaborate on profound ideas that make film-buffs like me take notice.

"You’re right that today’s ‘critics’ need to define themselves better. Most of them are just Naysayers of Doom reporting fluff on the ‘biz’ rather then sharing their reactions to the art of cinema. Hollywood is concerned about the bottom line and, in their case, rightfully so. But critics should become analysts again and not dumb down their craft to feed the lowest common denominator. If they take their profession seriously and view themselves as more than just media whores, then maybe the general public will start taking them more seriously again and be influenced by them again. But as of right now, I value the opinions of critics no more than I do anyone else’s...and oftentimes less. They no longer are the arbiters of taste that they have long claimed to be."

E ME: Is it as quiet for you as it is for me?