April 3, 2003

Monday’s April Fools Day column could never have anticipated the spate of stories about Vin Diesel and Guys & Dolls.   Ha ha ha.  So far the only person taking Vin Diesel in Guys & Dolls seriously is Vin Diesel.  For one thing, when the idea was first floated a few months ago, it was connected to the concept of updating the show and grabbing J-Lo and Vin.  That idea never got past the families that hold the rights as tightly as Mike Myers holds onto Austin Powers.  They never even got to the step of finding out whether Froggy could sing.

Unfortunately, by the time Vin gets to the set of Riddick, set to shoot at the end of this month in Vancouver, A Man Apart will have put the b.o. back in Diesel’s box office prospect.  And then, we can wait for Riddick… next summer.  You know, Leonardo DiCaprio went three years between his first big hit Titanic, and The Beach.  Of course, that was Titanic.  And that was DiCaprio.

Vin needs a great drama or comedy to do between Riddick and Rob Cohen’s XXX-squared or this could be the end of a very promising career. 

WOW:  Today’s Variety offers a really major story in the history of cinema.  Landmark Cinemas is installing digital projectors in all of its 177 screens across the country.  They made some sort of deal with Digital Cinema Solutions to get the projectors at a deep discount.  It may well involve financing by Microsoft, whose Windows Media software will be used in the project. 

Don’t get yourself all worked up about seeing the next big action film in digital.  These placements will be relatively small houses.  The real beneficiary will be independent films that do not have the money to make prints.  Even on the festival circuit, many festivals cannot afford proper digital projection for the loads of films that are “stuck” on digital video. 

With a reduced risk and a willing player, a new era of indie distribution might be starting here.  An organization like Larry Mesitrich’s Film Movement, created in the wake of Shooting Gallery’s national touring indie program, was designed as a DVD program.  But now, Film Movement could afford to release a title onto, say, 25 Landmark screens at the same time.  The couple hundred thousand dollar expense of making enough celluloid prints to do that would be eliminated.  And if a film got a little traction, a wider release could be negotiated. 

And suddenly, the Wellspings and Kinos and Cowboys of the world are in a new game. 

Mark this date.  History is being made.  (Variety’s subscriber-only story is here)

DOWN UNDER:  I was looking at a story about Nicole Kidman’s flirtation with The Heidi Fleiss Story and I saw and ad for something that looked really good.  It’s not a movie, but it might be a good movie snack.  Click here  to take a look at what the Aussies have that we don’t.

NO ONE’S GIGLI-ING ANYMORE:  The much-delayed release of Gigli has become the August 1 release of Tough Love.  Some movie, pronounceable name.  But according to a report in yesterday’s Page Six --  a report from a test screening which has been disputed in detail, but not in principle -- suggests that the film may be in the same kind of trouble that dogged Martin Brest’s last release, Meet Joe Black.  (If you were wondering… $45 million.) 

Who has to be the most concerned about the fate of this film right now?  Revolution Studios has been doing well enough to take the financial hit, if that’s what’s coming.  Columbia will be fine.  But Miramax and Kevin Smith are betting the house on the dynamic duo (J-Lo & Ben-Leck) and their star power, currently scheduling Jersey Girl on November 7 against Love Actually, which may well be a $100 million-plus smash and a little film called The Matrix Revolutions.  Given the news about the former Gigli, I would guess that the November 7 date for Jersey Girl is now as shaky as Don Knotts trying to aim. 

Please note that I AM NOT dissing Kevin Smith or his film.  This is a marketing issue, not a quality issue.  An $8 million opening for Tough Love, based on what seems like may be horrible pre-release word of mouth, is a disaster for everyone. 

Of course, it is always possible that Brest is 100% right and others are wrong about his movie.  I still believe that had someone convinced Brest to cut 30 minutes of Meet Joe Black, he would have had a moderate hit on his hands.  The guy is brilliant.  But he also may need to get down to simpler filmmaking again, with a clean, fresh script like the wonderful Midnight Run, the star-turning Beverly Hills Cop or the quirky Going in Style. 

TV ASIDE:  I said it last time and I’ll say it again… the American Idol competition has an ugly racial element.  This week, along with the scummy move of removing a competitor and not removing any contestants after putting the show’s viewers through the regular ringer, both black female contestants were in the bottom three.  Virtually any objective analysis would put them both in the top half of the eight contestants.  Last year, two black women singers – one of whom is now guesting on Fox’s Boston Public – were eliminated before clearly inferior performers. 

I’m not a big fan of crying “race.”  And I don’t know if there is a way to get more black people to watch the show or to get more white people to vote for people regardless of race.  But while neither of these two young ladies seems likely to make the Top Two, they both seem to deserve the Top Five.  And based on this week’s voting, it looks like both will be gone in the next three weeks. 

ROTD: FOUR MORE THINGS THAT MONDAY’S READERS KNOW

11. Concerned over financial loss due to potential anti-France boycotts, a coalition of Hollywood movie studios led by Miramax, DreamWorks, Focus Features and Fox Searchlight have decided to pull their films and stars out of this May's Cannes Film Festival.  Instead they will host their own international film festival, dubbed the Freedom Film Festival, on a Princess cruise ship just off the French coastline in neutral international waters.  A fleet of ferries will be on hand to bring journalists and paparazzi to the ship directly from the Boulevard de la Croisette; the stars will be flown in via helicopter directly to the cruise ship from Barcelona, Spain, a partner in the "coalition of the willing."  An early sponsorship deal has already been struck with California water bottler Arrowhead to ship in 200,000 bottles of flat and sparkling American water as a statement against France's Perrier and Evian.  More studios are expected to follow suit.

12. Joel Schumacher's new film, Phone Booth, is being plugged as a back-to-basics effort form the man behind Bad Company, Batman and Robin and other cinematic crimes: A 10-day shooting schedule! A budget under 2 Mil! Of course, factor in all the CG and post-production -- which Schumacher said was "donated" at the Toronto Film Festival --as well as the re-shoots to replace Ron Eldard with Kiefer as the bad guy and it becomes apparent that hack work on a smaller scale is still hackwork ... and that the only thing more obscene than the fact Schumacher's asked to make movies is the idea that suddenly the king of bloat and bombast is trying to play like Joe Carnahan or Robert Rodriguez. There's a difference between poses and positions ... but will anyone else notice this, or care?

13. Fox announced that Rupert Murdock personally greenlighted Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine  follow-up, Stumping for Shrub. Apparently the two bumped into one another at a Log Cabin Republican fund-raiser for Al Sharpton's possible 3rd party presidential bid. Shrub is said to be Moore's mea non-culpea that when he called Bush "a fictious president" people confused his contempt for the presidential elections with his in fact deep and unwavering affection for the president himself. He will reportedly attempt to interview key Bush team members like Connie Rice, Dickey-boy Cheney, Wolfie Wolfawitz, etc while inserting out-of-chronological order tidbits of G.W Bush's lifestory, ala Roger & Me (although his sequence that seems to suggest the commander-in-chief was an architect of America's Vietnam policy seems to have curtailed Laura's participation) and footage of Moore out on the road trying to get out the Bush '04 vote to restore legitimacy to the presidential office. Look for a Fall '04 release and a January 20th, 2005 DVD street date.

14. In a surprise move, screenwriter William Goldman and director Martin Scorsese have teamed up.  After Goldman's published screed against "Gangs of New York" in Daily Variety this winter, few thought these two movie legends would ever talk to each other, much less work together.  Well, it turns out that Goldman's latest opus "Dreamcatcher," isn't the bombastically bad turkey everyone else thinks it is.  No, Scorsese is such an enormous fan of this classically awful 'mess' of celluloid that a sequel is already in the works.  Who cares if this one is on its way to lose $50 million-plus?  Film is set to roll in December 2086, after an entire 4,000-acre forest is fully matured for the perfectionist director.

E ME:  Are you ready for the future?