It’s catch up day…

THE REAL GOLDMEMBER:  I ran into a terrific story from last year about the Academy Awards race.  It’s Amy Wallace’s Los Angeles Magazine piece, built around Tilda Swinton and the run for The Deep End that didn’t quite come together.  But the Swinton story is only a launch pad to a strong perspective piece on the whole system.  Click here and scroll down to read the story.

DVD PARADE:  John Lippman of the Wall Street Journal wrote the best story I’ve read in a long time about the growing influence of DVDs on the film business.  Some of this stuff is not exactly new.  For instance, Lippman’s portrait of the clutter of this year’s fall DVD season is interesting, but not new.  However, the early break for the fall release season, reflecting Hollywood’s early start on the summer season, is a fresh discussion.  On that same string Lippman makes the stunning observation that DVD/video release marketing budgets are now in the same range as feature releases, pegging Fox’s marketing budget for the release of Ice Age at $40 million.  Another dangerous stat is the “prime real estate” window for new product at major retailers shrinking from a month to as little as two weeks.  Sound familiar?

We’ve known for years that the ancillary markets were becoming more and more important.  But it was always automatic.  And to a degree, it still is.  But as profits in theatrical distribution becomes less and less the norm, even on very high-grossing movies, studios are digging deeper.  And we aren’t covering it very well, are we? 

You need to have a WSJ subscription to read Monday’s story, but if you do, it’s here.

A LITTLE BIT OVERBOARD:  Tim Arango of the New York Post hasn’t gone over the deep end, but the Disney Rumor of the Day is a bit nutty.  This one has Disney eaten by Time-Warner in some sort of scheme by Dick Parsons.  But my bet is that Arango’s source on this one is spending too much time around the water cooler.

Forget that both companies are struggling to stay afloat in a difficult media economy and are treading water in the stock market.  The number of Disney assets that would have to be sold off in a Time-Warner merger in order for the merger to pass government scrutiny is more than a glitch.  The company would spend more energy spinning off assets than building a company for the first five years or so.

Does anyone think that the government would happily allow two of the six major studios still operating as majors, one mini-majors and three corporate/indie studios to merge?  How about a company that owns two of the six national broadcast networks?  What about the twenty or so domestic cable networks and the dozens of international cable nets that the combined company would own?  The two baseball teams?  US and People… Sports Ilustrated and ESPN: The Magazine.  Hell, I’d start a class action suit on the basis of Bugs & Mickey being under the same roof alone! 

When the courts overturned some of the cross-ownership limits earlier this year, the assumption was that a healthy Time-Warner would be sucking up NBC before Vivendi-Universal could get to it.  The three things that Time-Warner doesn’t have that Disney does are a top four broadcast network, local station ownership and radio ownership. 

The CNN/ABC News deal makes perfect sense in today’s media environment.  Shared assets in the news game is an idea that works.  In fact, I would sadly go as far as saying that it is the only way for these divisions to survive and remain effective.  But a joint venture and a merger of companies with such a huge percentage of overlapping assets are two very different things.  Disney can’t just sell off ABC for the same reasons that Time-Warner would be willing to buy the network.  Unless Disney is going to get out of broadcast television production, they will stick with ABC forever. 

GE’s NBC remains the most valuable near-independent asset on the media map.  It could make Universal Entertainment or Time-Warner stronger and it is perhaps the only major asset I can think of that is worthy of a huge premium on purchase right now.  More important than the fact that the network is on top, is that the value of the asset increases exponentially as a part of a company with a major production division.  On top of that, NBC’s earning potential would be increased by being connected to entertainment-based cable networks, creating the opportunity for the combined networks to maximize split-window distribution of shows. 

Of course, all of this is of a whole… the DVD story as well… media companies turning gambles into commodities, prioritizing consistency over the big wins.  What is often lost, as we critical types whine about the “good old days,” is that just because the nature of the business changes, opportunities for magic still exist.  As I wrote yesterday, art house mini-majors with strong personalities are re-emerging.  Producers who are willing to simply be great and put commerce second will continue to turn up.  But the Big Show that we all grew up thinking we wanted to be a part of… that has changed, just as it did with the advent of film, of talkies, of color, of television, of video, of Tivo and as it will when whatever is next happens.  And we can’t usually have it both ways… if you want to make “real” movies, the best you can hope for is to keep some integrity inside the margins.  And if you want to make “real good” movies, the best you can hope for is to make enough so that they will give you 10 percent more money to work with the next time around.  Everything else is a fluke.

ATTENTION K-MART SHOPPERS:  Last week, Vivendi Universal announced plans to sell off its 2500 piece art collection.  Bye-bye Picasso!  Au revoir, Miro!  And Jean-Marie Messier’s $18 million Park Avenue pad is on the way out the door too, along with corporate jets, an Airbus and a Parisian soccer club. 

Meanwhile, Time-Warner is going to be a little less funny after selling its 50 percent pieces of Comedy Central and Court TV.  The sales should raise about $2 billion… if they can find buyers in this market.  You know who would be a good potential buyer?  Time-Warner/Disney, which would need a comedic cable net… if it were ever to exist!!!  (Or as that dog from Conan O’Brien would say, “This would be a great deal… for me to poop on!”

STARTING TOMORROW:  We’ll be running a White Oleander giveaway here at The Hot Button.  Win good stuff… sign up for WB e-mail…support THB.

MOONLIGHT RUCKUS:  Brad Silberling’s Moonlight Mile has definitely split opinion.  It seems to be one of those love/hate movies.  Slate’s David Edelstein called it The Worst Movie of the Year!  But here’s the ironic part… that David hated the film for many of the reasons that this David loved it. 

To wit, Edelstein says in his review:  “Silberling is reportedly a warm guy, but as a writer and director he's gruesomely insensitive. I'm at a loss to account for how off this film is—how a movie can seem so conscientiously earnest yet so creepily exploitive. It's like a Christmas stocking over a crematory.”

Exactly!!! 

People are not supposed to die in their 20s.  They are not supposed to leave the people who love them alone with feelings that they could never be prepared to handle.  Fighting for air in the nightmare of that situation is like hanging a Christmas stocking in a crematory.  How can this boy fall in love less than a week after his fiancé died a shocking death?  How can everyone be so selfish? 

How could they not be?

OBSERVER STUFF:  Two great pieces from last week’s New York Observer.  First, Ronda Kaysen goes to a free acting class from NYC diva Susan Batson.  Kaysen sees what so many can’t.  It’s here.

And Bruce Feirstein delivers satire the way I expect to see it… his memo from Mike Ovitz to Sadaam Hussein hits to every field.  Really smart funny stuff, here.

READER OF THE DAY:  THE HGH HAT writes:  “I don't get the notion that "genre" or "Hollywood" movies should be dumb and that the "indie" or "dramatic" movies are the only films people with intelligence should get to chew on.  It shouldn't be like this -- there should be room for high ideas and art even in a high-concept movie, but it seems these days that few distributors are interested in releasing movies like this.  There was plenty of room for satire and subtext in movies like Scooby Doo and XXX, but they chose to ignore these possibilities and make them as dumb as possible.

As a fan of the horror genre, I know that a lot of smart directors (David Cronenberg, George Romero, pre-Invisible Man John Carpenter) put subtext into their movies, allowing them to explore ideas and themes in movies that were still fun, well-made and appreciable strictly on a popcorn level.  M. Night Shymalan and Darren Aronofsky have done this really well, too.  But for the most part now it's all about the post-modern joke, the reference to something that's been done before and as a result a lot of genre movies have gone from being "influential" to being "influenced".

Likewise, there used to be a lot of impish fun in the dramatic films released in the 70's and early 80's -- Five Easy Pieces and Taxi Driver are definitely in the "art" film category, but they're also imminently watchable and unafraid of putting in a light moment for the fun of it.  This current dictum of "one film, one tone" is part of what's wrong with so many films these days that seemed loaded with potential when you first hear about them.”

And YAC-AMA CANUCK offers advice:  “I would give career advice to Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Michael Bay.

Freddie- Drop the whole wanting to be a good actor schtick and just exit Hollywood. We don't need you around to fuck up every movie you're in. Why you think you have talent is beyond me. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Sarah - Sweetie, you don't have the drawing power to be a movie star, not yet anyway. Sure, you're drop dead gorgeous and can kick some ass, but stay in TV land and keep Buffy the kick ass show it is and will be if you stick around. If you must venture into movies, take supporting roles. Oh, and that 150 pound deadweight you carry around a.k.a. Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar? Drop him A.S.A.P. so that the world can be a better place.

Michael - Stop trying to make the save the world, patriotic shit you subjected us to with Armageddon and Pearl Harbor and get back to make slick, over the top action like Bad Boys and the Rock. You do better when you let the action and dialogue on screen flow rather than control it and manipulate it. It's not too late to get yourself out of your tailspin.”

E ME:  Okay… Red Dragon or Veggie Tales?