SYNER-GEE:  There was something odder about Los Angeles WB affiliate Channel 5 Sam Rubin’s trip on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas than seeing Sammy in white shorts, white socks and white sneakers dancing like a white man.  On March 3, the L.A. Times went after Disney and Ebert & Roeper in a story about their “movie cruise” on a Disney ship.  Now, less than a month later, Sam is presented as being on vacation on this Disney cruise. 

This is how complicated our synergistic system has become.  Every story becomes a big multiple choice quiz with an answer sheet that shifts to fit the moment.

A) Is this a move to diffuse the attack on Ebert & Roeper – which never took wing, since no one has ever accused Roger or Roeper of reviewing based on being Disney employees – showing that film “critics” (Ebert is the only one of the three men involved who has in any way earned that moniker) love cruises,. whether they work for Disney or AOL/Time-Warner or any other mega-corp? 

B) Is this a simple bit of marketing by Disney Cruise Lines, completely unconnected to the L.A. Times story, essentially paying for placement on a popular Los Angeles morning show?

C) Did Sam really decide to take a vacation on a Disney cruise with a camera crew and arrange for a satellite feed so he could send the footage home and do voiceovers for packages that would air with his live spots on board?

Here’s my answer sheet –

A) Could be.  Rubin’s trip is significantly more over the top as a promotional event than the Ebert/Roeper cruise.  While the “movie cruise” was a branding opportunity with no real direct profit in return. (The profit on a few hundred folks showing up to be with Rog & Rich had to be eaten by the expenses associated with bringing in The Thumbs and in arranging the mini-festival they led.)  Next time someone wants to do a story about a conflict of interest on this show, one finger pointing at Sam Rubin diffuses the whole thing even more than the truth… the line is blurry, but the cruise is a minimal transgression in the shifting morality of this industry.

B) Could be.  But then, shouldn’t there be an L.A. Times story taking a look at this great moment in “journalism?”  In a period of extreme cutbacks, does anyone out there think that the WB’s KTLA paid for Sam’s trip, the crew shooting on the boat (probably Disney’s) or the expensive satellite feed from the boat, both for tape transmission and the live shots that filled The KTLA Morning News all morning on Tuesday?  As what does this qualify?  Is it a commercial?  How much is KTLA’s morning airtime worth?  Should there be a little “Advertisement” tag underneath the whole segment, much as magazines have when the advertising sections are designed to look like the rest of the magazine’s editorial pages?   

What about the conflict of Disney paying for this “event” on AOL/Time-Warner air?  Did they offer the deal to News Corp’s higher rated Good Day L.A. on Fox 11 and get turned down?  Or did the threat of Jillian Barberie complaining the there wasn’t enough “action” on the boat scare them away?  (Even worse, would the sight of Ms. B. in a Brazilian thong fondling a Pina Colada at 7a.m. - which would be 10 am in the Bahamas – be the kind of image that Disney just doesn’t want.)  Did they decide not to go after Viacom’s KCBS’ David Sheehan, since he doesn’t do family time slots?  And what of KABC’s George Pennacchio?  Doesn’t George and his lovely wife, Erin, deserve a free vacation? 

C) Uh, no.  Sam is by far the most ambitious of the local TV entertainment reporters.  But even he isn’t callous enough to expose his kids to this kind of exploitation… ew, he did just that in one segment… well, he wouldn’t do it on his own dime, okay?

This all circles back to the Nikki Finke lawsuit against News Corp, claiming that she was fired from The New York Post because of existing business relationships between News Corp and Disney.  It’s not just a small world anymore… it’s incestuous. 

READING WELLS:  Jeff Wells over at Reel.com does a good job with the saga about Frida that’s playing out in the Land of Miramax.  Read him.  And add a few questions from this angle.  1) Is Frida being held out of Cannes because of Gangs of New York?  The idea that the film couldn’t be color corrected in the next six weeks is bull.  2) Why did the story of an angry fight between Big Harvev and Julie Taymor (whose work I love and who is supposed to be a true ball buster, as so many great artists are) take almost a month to turn up in the gossip columns.  Who planted the story and why did they do it last week?  3) Exactly what does Harvey want to cut?  Anyone who has seen any of Taymor’s work knows that she creates surreal images.  Are those images the problem?  Or is it really the side stories?  And if it is the side stories, can they – should they – be cut from this complex, art-film storyline?  Or is this another Almost Famous story? 

LOOKING FORWARD:  I keep forgetting to put it in the column and that’s just wrong!  Next week, I’m heading to the Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF) for the third straight year… and I couldn’t be happier to be doing it.  (Thank God for American Airline frequent flyer mileage!)  Bermuda is evolving, year-by-year, into the kind of intimate enclave that filmmakers and film buyers will be clamoring to attend. 

Going over the program list is like traveling into the last year of my life.  Mike Figgis’ Hotel is about to start domestic distribution in the U.S. and while often attacked at the Miami Film Festival, it remains an important document of the evolution of digital cinema.  Fidel is the pro-Castro propagandistic documentary that was “too hot” to show in Miami.  Grownups was a film or two down the list from getting a slot in Miami.  And I tried to show Malunde, a quiet hit in Toronto, but never got a commitment from its distributors.

A few of the other films in the program have been around the festival circuit (Blue Vinyl, Daughter from Danang, Last Wedding, No Turning Back, Lantana, To End All Wars, The Bank and Monsoon Wedding).  But they are all quality films, most of which haven’t found the expected distribution in the U.S. 

But it’s the movies about which I know almost nothing that make Bermuda so much fun.  The Bermuda team (Aideen Ratteray Pryse, Duncan Hall, David O'Beirne, Tony Fernandes, Helen Ann Chisholm, Neil Glass, Nita Grewal, Judith Ruijter , Anna Summers and Susanne Notman as The Hostess) searches high and low to find quality pictures – particularly features - that have not found their way yet, even as they travel to such high profile fests as Toronto, Sundance and Montreal.  A film like Disco Pigs would never have made it to Miami were it not for this festival. 

This year, there are 12 films at BIFF that haven’t made it onto my radar until now.  These films are wildly diverse.  There’s a 1998 Aussie drama called Radiance, a French release called Plus Haut and a Japanese film called An Adolescent that sounds like a classic Harvey Keitel vehicle.  There’s a new film from Stuart Urban, who is a minor legend for getting a film (the short The Virus of War) into Cannes at the age of 13.  Heck, there is even the rarest of things… a Bermudian film!  It’s a documentary about segregation in Bermuda – a fascinating subject, as I found out last year over many dinner conversations - from local filmmaker Errol Williams.  And a whole lot more.

Best of all, air fare to Bermuda is incredibly affordable these days.  So, if you are so inclined, you can make the trip too.  But besides the commercial, there is the joy of a small festival really well done.  I have spent the last few months suffering, aware that I had to give up something I loved for reasons that had nothing to do with film, but with internal politics, unrealistic expectations caused by ignorance and one petty, abusive media outlet.  To spend a week with people who really work together and love what they are doing – mostly as volunteers – will be a tonic for which I could never pay.

JUST WONDERING:  Has anyone else noticed that Cameron Diaz’ bikini – and her stripping down to it - has become the new central image of the TV campaign for The Sweetest Thing?  I guess the tracking is telling them that young men aren’t really interested in a sweet romantic comedy.

READER OF THE DAY:  Not Kid-ding writes:  “I've been noticing a pattern this year of complete stupidity by the various studios when it comes to releasing movies that target the exact same audience with no break between, and I was wondering if it's total lunkheads in charge of release dates or if they enjoy cannibalizing each other?

First, on February 8th Collateral Damage and Rollerball come out on the same day. 2 expensive action movies with questionable appeal at best (Schwrazenegger is on a serious slide, and everyone knew Rollerball was trash). Why you would ever release two straight action movies on the same day outside of summer is baffling, but 2 mediocre to bad action movies on the same day? Not to mention the fact that MGM released Hart's War, a movie they sold on its action dynamics one week after releasing Rollerball means that they were shooting themselves in the foot directly rather than allowing another studio to shoot them in the foot. In fact, the total gross from all of these movies was $80 million, which is probably what each of them cost to produce.

Then we have Sorority Boys and Van Wilder opening within 2 weeks of each other. 2 grossout college comedies with extremely limited star power in a market where grossout comedy is dead unless the first two words of you movie are American Pie. Genius idea by these studios. I'm sure that after Slackers opened to about $3 million and Sorority Boys lit it up for $4 million, Van Wilder will slay at the box office.

The kicker for me though is the fact that there are 4 female driven action/thrillers being released between March 15 - April 19th (Resident Evil, Panic Room, High Crimes, and Murder by Numbers). Are any executives looking at the schedule thinking maybe if we hold off on our movie for a couple months, we may not bore the shit out of the American audience? Something has got to give, and I'm guessing it's going to be the mediocre looking High Crimes and Murder By Numbers. These movies appear to not have an original idea in them and with Panic Room opening so strong, how many people will want to see another female driven thriller when Murder by Numbers opens in 3 weeks. I have to believe that if one of these movies were pushed to Fall, it would have a much better chance to make some money. And please don't forget that one month after this spate, Enough opens at the end of May. In fact in all of the examples I've mentioned, Panic Room is so far the only of these movies that will turn a profit although the fate of High Crimes, Murder by Numbers, and Van Wilder are not sealed yet.

Are the executives who make these decisions just so stubborn that they won't change the dates of their movies to accommodate other movies? or do they believe the market can handle complete saturation in one genre without their box office return being affected? I understand that in the summer, the market can handle a big budget action movie every week and that in the winter all the quality movies can be released in 6 weeks, but releasing these kinds of movies so close to each other has to be bad business. I know that good movies will find their audiences even in this kind of market, but it should be the mediocre movies they're worried about since that's what most of the above mentioned movies are. Mediocre at best, and distributed with the same flair apparently.

E ME:  No, this guy is not my illegitimate son.  But he hits a point that I hadn’t really been tracking and he’s absolutely right.  Besides having good films (fat chance!), what kind of variety of programming would you like that you don’t see now?