August 19, 2003

It’s Lethargy Theme Week in Hollywood!!!

The journalistic standards seem to be sliding into the toilet this week. I don’t want to beat up on yet another stupid story that ran on Sunday, but if you want to find it, got o Movie City News, where it is linked.

There was some great news, which was Laura Kim taking the job at Warner’s Independent Pictures, a new challenge after years as one of the top indie publicists in the biz based at MPRM. Congrats to her and to Mark Gill for getting her.

Sharkslayer is going to be called something else less violent…. and it moved to October 2004… zzzzzzzzzz….

Universal still hasn’t been sold…

The Battle of Shaker Heights is opening in very limited release this weekend… and I expect the girls of Thirteen not only to beat that punk up at the box office, but if the kid from Shaker Heights ran into the girls from Thirteen, their raw sexual aggression would cause his testicles to shrivel up like a guy on temporary assignment to a cryogenic chamber. Gator Ragowski would shoot at him, Ashton Kutcher would date his mother and Lisa Kudrow and Damon Wayans would just refuse to show up at all. Effrem Pottelle’s only chance of a future in Hollywood now will be if he murders a celebrity… preferably Carrot Top.

Do you think that someone at Warner Bros. talked to Rob Reiner yesterday morning about recutting his film into Alex Vs. Emma? I know I would pay to watch Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson fight to the “death.”

There were a few complaints that I didn’t praise the $36.4 million opening of Freddy Vs. Jason yesterday. Sorry. It was a better opening than Armageddon and The Scorpion King. Great. They still didn’t fork up enough to get Monica Keena to go topless… well, in the movie… she was great at the premiere!!! You go, boys.

Anyway… I am feeling as lazy as my counterparts about now… and I’m not going to misquote anyone to make that apparent. But I will be going through the list for the Toronto Film Festival first thing this morning and posting the list and a commentary on Movie City News. So check that out.

Next week, THB will celebrate its sixth anniversary. No wonder I’m tired.

READER OF THE DAY: CC Fights Himself: “Obviously, Johnny Depp struck just the right chord in POTC. His performance was fresh and hilarious and completely unexpected. It's a performance that is impossible for me to imagine being delivered by anyone else. However, it was still basically a one-note performance, even if it was the perfect note.

People seem to believe the performance is Oscar-worthy simply because people are talking about it. While I completely agree that comedic performances are unfairly neglected by the Academy (though supporting performances have some wiggle room), does Depp's performance really hold up to Oscar standards when you remove all the talk surrounding it?

That probably sounds naïve. The term "Oscar standards" looks ridiculous even as I write it, but one of the most obvious problems with the Oscars is that it's a popularity contest, right? More often than not, the biggest money-makers or the biggest hype machines take home the awards. This performance is becoming such a hype machine. Obviously, audience reaction to such a performance will be taken into account at Oscar time, but thus begins the slippery slope of nominating actors and films because of how many people saw them.

In case that all seems moot to you because you believe in your heart of hearts that Depp deserves the nomination, let me say this. The performance is basically a cartoon (intentionally, I know) without much room for displaying emotional or psychological range. But it's not that kind of movie! I know it's not. Why do you have to show psychological range to be nominated for an Oscar? I guess you don't, but Depp's character is the same guy he was at the beginning, his mindset and worldview never suffer a blow, and when it comes down to it, Depp is just coasting through, as good as he is. Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining? A great performance that fit the movie, but he was not digging that deep and you can tell.

If there were any justice, Steve Buscemi would have been nominated for Ghost World. John Cusack would have been nominated for Say Anything. Or if you need an example closer to the cartoonish quirkiness of Depp's performance, Nicolas Cage would have been nominated for Raising Arizona. The difference here is that, despite how broad Cage plays it, you accept him as that character. Watching Depp in POTC, you think to yourself, "Wow, this is a good performance I'm watching from Johnny Depp (which is fine; Kevin Spacey's been giving such performances for years)." It's simply not the stuff of Oscars, at least not in my idealized mind.”

E ME: Is it worth waking up for this?

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