QUIET TUESDAY

Once one gets past all the Oscar drama, figures out that E! Online’s Resident Evil quoter Anthony Jones is really Andy/Anderson Jones and realizes that the only way a copy of Attack of the Clones was screened for Harry Knowles without Lucas knowing would be if Ed Harris was trying to recruit Harry to fight Al Qaeda, there’s not much to write about.  I mean, Maggie Gyllenhaal is a nice woman and a fabulous babe, but her appearance in the Yahoo! Entertainment news headlines for almost 48 hours should tell us that we all need a nap.

The only story that really interests me is one on which I am a bit short of real info.  The Miramax layoffs have been written off as a simple correction by a new CFO after what they claim was a wild (my word) hiring spree over the last six months.  Now, I have been out of town.  But why in God’s name would Miramax be hiring anyone, much less adding 20 percent to its staff, in the last six months.  The entire industry is belt tightening, Miramax’s in-house productions are down, their pick-ups are down, they shut down Talk Magazine, their Christmas movie stiffed and Gangs of New York had to be postponed by nine months (that’s about $4 million in interest charges alone).  Were they really on a hiring spree since October?  Or could it be that Miramax is now adjusting to the squeeze that Disney has put on every single division of the company but wants to maintain the illusion of complete independence?  I only ask because I really don’t know on this one, folks.  If you have any insight, please offer it up.

In the meanwhile, I’ll let the readers do some work around here.  Readers of The Day aka ROTDs, the column is yours today.  See y’all tomorrow.

READERS OF THE DAY:  The Zack Attack writes:  “If I could have a vote, I would vote for A Beautiful Mind because it was a well-acted well-written drama that was one of the year's best. Sure the film wasn't true to life, but we have to remember that this is Hollywood. Never trust them with including all of the facts or even getting them right. The makers of ABM chose to ignore the seedy aspects of Nash's life because they felt that it would take away from the story of Alicia standing by John while he fought this terrible disease. Sure she may have left him and they only got back together a short while ago, but it would have made the movie less than it was.

This past weekend, I skipped Showtime, Resident Evil, and Ice Age to catch up with some of the Oscar nominees which finally hit my area. I saw In the Bedroom, Gosford Park, and Monster's Ball. Both ITB and MB were excellent. After I saw ITB, I  decided that I would root for Sissy to win, that is till I saw MB and saw Halle Berry deliver the best performance of her career, especially at the end when she found out about Billy Bob's character and her emotions were shown with no words necessary. Powerful stuff. I'm going to hold off on Gosford until I can catch it again on DVD with the subtitles turned on so I can understand what it was that was said. I was charmed by the atmosphere and the amount of characters, but I feel that until I understand what happened, I shouldn't make a judgment.”

Not Rated counters:  “Universal and Dreamworks deserve an Oscar for ‘Smartest FYC campaign.’ They have continually leveraged any complaints directed at the film into sympathy votes and distracted everyone from focusing on the merits of the nominees.  Instead they have the media and Oscar pundits obsessing about boring arguments regarding fidelity to source material and dramatic license. It's really quite an impressive subterfuge because it also disregards any notion that the film itself would have been better (which is not always the case) had it not taken such licenses and swerved a little nearer to the land of truth.

As a result, this very bland and mediocre film, that really doesn't even deserve to be in the same room with the other accomplished nominees, will likely end up the victor. Sunday March 24th will be a sad day in Hollywood history. I can live with the fact that the Academy rarely chooses the most deserving nominee as the Best Picture -that's a given. But it's a dark day when all signs point to the Academy selecting the worst of the five for their top prize.

P.S. The other best Oscar campaign this year has to be Moulin Rouge!'s spectacularly witty promotion. The Bazmark team has been tireless in its plugging and the ads have been insanely clever and gorgeous. The best being the recent slate of "She Sings! She Dances! She Dies" ads for Nicole Kidman. Great and funny stuff. But we all know that Oscar prefers 'self important' to 'witty' so I doubt they'll do much good.

Not The Quarterback writes:  “I saw Resident Evil this weekend and the string of mediocre films has come to an end after a long couple months. Now granted it's not for everyone, but I like this genre. It sets up the sequel really well and does a great job as a prequel to the game itself. I absolutely hated Tomb Raider and thought it failed on every level. Mila played the lead much better than Jolie and seemed less forced in doing so (ie she didn't have a fancy wardrobe and her breasts stayed the same size throughout the whole movie) It was good to see her back on screen as well. The next few weeks have me excited as hell as I've been waiting to see Panic Room forever and I'm foaming at the mouth to see Blade II Friday as well as seeing ET in the theatres again. The previews for Blade II have done a great job of building up the movie and Sony needs to stop with all the Panic Room ads before I go nuts from not being able to see it (Fincher is my hero btw) But Resident Evil was well worth 4.50 to see it with good explanations for people who may not have played the game before.  The new second preview for Jason X is before RE and is even better than the first. Using "let the bodies hit the floor" as music for a Jason preview is genius and got me even more pumped to see it.”

Fast Jonny opines:  “First you go to Miami and work on behalf of Castro and then you come back to L.A. to support the Palestinians...now how are you ever going to make new friends?”

E ME:  Good question.  I think I’ll be okay as long as Matt Drudge doesn’t pick up your facetious comment and run it as news.  Did you know that I ran more Cuban programming than was ever shown in Miami and we sold out almost every show?  Hmmm…  I wish I was smart enough to have a solution to the Middle East… but I’m not… so I write about movies. 

 

I’m working on the Best of 2001 and my Oscar predictions/predilections.   Anything else we all need to discuss?