Thursday, 1 March 2001

Welcome to March. 15 days to the Ides. Be there or be square.

BE AFRAID: Eighteen months ago, Wes Craven was ending his horror career and going into "straight" filmmaking. And then, Music of the Heart was released. (Actually, I think they knew earlier than that, when the film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.) Next up, an updated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Craven has "add(ed) new twists to turn the property into a thriller." Oops. I thought it already was one. Maybe it will start a new wave of remakes, which would have to include Dr. Willie and Mr. President.

DANCE A LITTLE SIDESTEP: Speaking of where's-my-keylight William, the latest Ex-President (has there been an updated version of the cartoon on Saturday Night Live yet?) spoke at Variety's conference on Tuesday and got lots of press attention, almost all of it bad. It's not easy when the competition (Variety's) gets to tell the tale. Beth Pinsker reported, I think fairly, that the event was not well attended or very interesting. My friends at The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Clinton gave "an address at an entertainment and media conference." (I guess THR took my unsolicited advice and decided to declare a quiet war on Peter Bart's publication.) But what I loved best was Clinton's speech, suggesting that the news media should focus on educating America about important issues, like AIDS, human rights, child labor and global warming. Unmentioned were perjury, bribery or petty adultery.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: How many lives will iFilm have? They are, by my count, onto their sixth. First, they were going to be an interactive industry insider news outlet. Next, they decided to get into the movie business-to-business business, acquiring various companies. After that, they became a major short film player, competing head-to-head with Atom Films and others. Fourth, they became an aggregated content company, linking to and promoting short films and movie business news without paying for them. Fifth, with the hire of Lew Harris, they were back into the content business, supplementing the aggregated stuff and focusing on the possibilities of e-commerce that Irwin pushed at E! Online. And now, they are splitting off the companies they bought, looking for each of them to generate revenue for the overall company in separate business models.

ROUND AND ROUND: If you were a computer, what woman would you create? Could be Monica Bellucci. And indeed, the babe who gets more ad time than screen time in Malena and who is credited with making her English-language debut in Francis Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula – in a role with zero dialogue – is now joining the Matrix family in a move that may have an effect that previously seemed impossible… making Carrie Anne Moss seem boyish. (Well, maybe not impossible. I think that one of the keys to Ms. Moss' on-screen persona is that she manages to be both feminine and macho, never more so than in the upcoming release, Memento.) All I'm saying is that Ms. Bellucci has world-class curves. Now we'll find out if she can speak English.

THE SHADOW KNOWS: Who would have ever figured that Andrew Stevens would be embroiled in a conflict as a producer for a dollar figure over $1.34 million? But here he is, now the apparent centerpiece of Intertainment's lawsuit against already-has-been-even-with-films-in-the-pipeline producer Elie Samaha. Intertainment's team says that Stevens flipped on Samaha and is the source of detailed information on how Samaha inflated budgets on his Intertainment-financed movies. Stevens says that the document that Intertainment claims to have, giving Stevens individual immunity in the suit, is a fraud. Could it be true? Would a German company file a lawsuit in America using falsified information? Could this be a lie designed to split the Samaha/Stevens (gag, cough, wheeze) partnership? Wouldn't Intertainment be making themselves vulnerable to a lawsuit for lying about Stevens' involvement, and thus harming him professionally. Was Stevens promised anonymity, now finding himself endangered by Samaha's "friends" even more than he would be by being a party to this suit? So many questions, so few answers.

DOT CALM: The Yahoo! Internet Life Film Festival is dead. The lived by the dot-com dollar and now, they've died by the dot-com dollar. The problem they faced was that, in reality, this was never really a film festival. It was a dot-com schmoozing event and with some companies lying dead and others just bleeding from every orifice, there isn't much to schmooze about and no money to pay for the drinks. The irony is that even the title for the event is somewhat misleading, as Yahoo! Internet Life is a Ziff-Davis publication and, though in business with Yahoo!, is quite editorially their own thing. (Note: In covering this, Inside.com decided to remove the "!" from the long-branded Yahoo! name… ouch.) More ironic, the only surviving part of the festival is the on-line component, which is being sponsored by Yahoo! Movies. Go figure. As one of the 60 panelists already booked for the event, I am sorry to see it go. But I look forward to the next effort from these guys, which may be a few years away, but will ride the next crest of web/film synergy.

JUST WONDERING: When Artisan acquired "Barbie in The Nutcracker" for video, do you think that they realized that it was a stop-motion version of Tchaikovsky's ballet or a low-budget flick about a sexually precocious blonde on a violent rampage?

PAGE TWO: Arnold Soderbergh Takes On Crouching Tigers