November 14, 2003

"Lovely party."

It was a hot time at Dr. Frank-N-Furter castle last night!

Chris McGurk hosted MGM's now annual love fest at his palatial home last night. I was late, as I will explain below, but I did catch the end of LeAnn Rimes' performance of some Diane Warren song from some movie. (No, it was not the love theme from Windtalkers… swear!)

The odd thing about parties like this is that they create a kind of all day déjà vu. Driving over, I see Katie Holmes, 8 stories tall in a Gap ad, and there she is by the bar, People Magazine reporter in tow, just one story tall. A number of the blonde actresses who dressed for this event took the opportunity to take their fancy duds on the talk show circuit before the party started, the shows airing after the party ended. And there was the endless parade of stars of MGM movies past, from Macauley Culkin (with American Psycho 2 star Mila Kunis in tow) to Rebecca Stamos sans roller ball to Natasha Henstridge, who did her hair differently than Rebecca so people wouldn't come up to her all night and say, "Loved you in Femme Fatale!"

Being celebrity perverse, I was most pleased to see the still surviving cast of Dead Like Me, one of MGM TV's few remaining series. I always feel like I was in on the Cynthia Stevenson thing early, as I watched My Talk Show religiously in its day, waiting for it to fulfill its promise. But anytime an improv girl survives in this business for this long, not only working, but continuing to find good stuff to do, I am thrilled. And how do you say to the show's Laura Harris that she saved the show when her co-stars, who were there before she arrived, are standing around her?

Harris replaced Rebecca Gayheart on the Showtime series and added the spark that was missing from Gayheart's performance. She's had a markedly minor career so far, but has a wisdom in her face of more than her 27 years. If she doesn't get knocked up by some very powerful man and have kids as a life, she is probably just a role away from something special. The opportunity will probably come from someone who can no longer afford Naomi Watts and can't even consider Nicole Kidman. Harris has those kinds of looks (even though she wandered the party last night in a parka, practically daring anyone to notice her) and she has a nifty comic presence.

In any case… the one trick that McGurk & Co. couldn't pull off was getting Steve Martin to make an appearance to announce his signing on the line that is dotted to play Inspector Clouseau. Sigh…

It was, indeed, a lovely party.

AS FOR MR. MINGHELLA, there was a tribute to Anthony/sneak peek at Cold Mountain at the AFI Film Festival last night. And it was a great idea when it looked like the movie would be locked and loaded by now. Instead, the film is still being finished in London as I write this and the event went off with a bit of a thud.

But what can you do? If they cancelled, assholes like me would be saying that they were in trouble and hiding something. Going forward, they didn't have the tools to put the film's best celluloid foot forward. Tough call for Miramax. Rock versus Hard Place.

Jeff Wells sat next to his pal Sydney Pollack and reports today that the film is now targeting 2 hours 45 minutes as its final length. Fine with me. I have no fear of long movies. As Roger Ebert says, "No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough."

The frustrating part of the experience was seeing Avid outputs of the footage, which really didn't do justice to John Seale's cinematography or to Minghella's work. I often say of myself that I speak in paragraphs. Taking one sentence I use out of context is usually a dangerous idea. The same can be said, it seems, of Minghella. Highly respected Oscar pundit Pete Hammond stepped in it last night, asking Minghella open ended questions that were not terribly detailed. As a result, we got long, uninterrupted rambles. I love chatting with Minghella. He is not only gifted as a filmmaker, but his philosophies about the life of an artist are not only insightful but powerfully humane. That said, he can ramble like a muthafucka!

Also on the dais were producer/raconteur Sydney Pollack, DP John Seale and Production Designer extraordinaire Dante Ferretti. But there was little interaction… a little odd for an event billed as a celebration of the collaborative art of film. Ironically, it felt like most movie sets, with the director paying lip service to collaboration as he sucked up all the attention. But I know that Minghella is absolutely not like that. No irony… I mean it… 100%.

As for the footage, the best performance in the clips was Natalie Portman's, who was the only one who was shown in a scene that was both powerful and subtle… which is really what Minghella excels at as a writer/director. His best moments are the ones where words cannot express the feelings of the players. In this scene, Portman's need for human contact overwhelms anything else and the release that comes when she finally has just a touch is amazing.

I am told by a critic I respect, who snuck into a test screening, that Renee Zellweger gives a great performance. Didn't see it last night. It looked a bit more like Annie Get Your Gun at a Pacoima dinner theater. But I have faith. The clips of Nicole Kidman were all affect and needed more moments of character development to support the performance. Likewise, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who normally never seems to be bad. Jude Law was solid and stoic, suggesting good things. But in a movie like this, context is critical and it was in critically short supply last night. We saw sentences, from a director who directs in paragraphs and pages and slow moving flourishes. And there was no time, because of Minghella's unfortunate tardiness, to ever get into Minghella's thoughts on specific scenes.

I am still looking forward to seeing Cold Mountain, a few times. And this evening will not in any way make me lower my Oscar expectations for the film. The only real shift is that I am now less convinced that Phil Hoffman has a shot at a nomination and much more interested in the prospect that Natalie Portman could be a contender. I can't wait to see Kidman and Zellweger in moments as powerful as the on Minghella created for Ms. Portman.

So, Chris McGurk got me drunk after Anthony Minghella got me sober. It was that kind of night.

REVIEWS: Go see Master & Commander. What they are saying is mostly true. You have never seen a movie that takes you closer to the real experience of the high seas. You can feel the spray on your face. Weir's work is brilliant. Russell Crowe is perfect for this role. The movie is not terribly emotional. But it is a very fine piece of work. I'll write more next week.

I haven't see Looney Tunes: Resurrection or Tupac: Back In Action, so I'll have to leave that to you…

READER OF THE DAY: On yesterday's ROTD, NOT PARIS HILTON writes: "This guy nailed it right on the head. I serve up as my example the movie Goodfellas, which is a favorite of mine and I have not bought in the years since I bought a DVD player because I heard about a "special edition" DVD that was in the works. I did not want to spend 24.98 on a disc with almost no features when I was under the impression a features-laden would be out shortly.

That was in December of 2000. Still no special edition. I am still afraid that the minute I plunk down for the disc, the special edition will be out and I will feel like a sucker.

Another example is the Back to the Future movies. The first printing of that was screwed up. Rather than recall the screwed up discs Universal decided to just wait until that printing sold out and was unloaded on millions of consumers. (And these people wonder why consumers feel justified in the occasional dabble into piracy and bootlegging). Then they'd put out corrected editions. (I didn't buy the set, but I have some very irritated friends who did.)

Music piracy really started to become an issue when BMG made the decision that it was more profitable to sell fewer 17.98 discs than a bunch of 13.98 discs. Then they wondered why people were pissed off and downloading free copies of songs. The movie industry is already there, and I hope they enjoying reaping the field of discontented consumers they've sown."

But THE FREE YAK says: "Yesterday's featured e-mailer, Not Daredevil's Brother, could use a reality check. He claims that never-ending reissues of popular films on DVD is a justification for "people" (not him, of course) to steal them - presumably online. Actually, it's only a strong justification, as NDB mentioned, to resist purchasing another version. The self-control to not continuously buy the same product is admirable, but piracy is still piracy. You know that, David, and should have taken a stand against it.

As for milking the DVD cash cow, NDB is clearly angry at the wrong folks. First he goes off on a completely hypothetical rant against Terminator 3. Then he criticizes the Star Wars franchise, which so far has seen the release of exactly two of its films on exactly two DVDs. In fact, George Lucas has continuously stated that he hasn't put the original trilogy on DVD yet because he's avoiding the potential re-release of the same movies. We all know that, if he wanted to, he could have already made a small fortune off a bare-bones version of the trilogy... just like Peter Jackson has with "The Lord of the
Rings!" Strangely, NDB praises the extended versions of the LOTR movies, but he neglects to mention that Jackson also puts out the far less-substantial theatrical versions on a separate DVD, with a whopping three months between releases. If he already had four disks in the extended package, why couldn't he have thrown in one more to include the theatrical version? Steven Spielberg put both versions of "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial" in one package. Could it possibly be because Spielberg doesn't need the money?

Truth is, though, that for the die-hard fan, too much is never enough. "E.T." may have blessedly included the version with guns and puppets, but I still wanted to see the deleted scenes that weren't incorporated into the 20th Anniversary Special Edition (but were included on the LaserDisk). And however much Lucas prefers his Special Editions, hordes of the Star Wars faithful will be depressed when he makes good on his word to not transfer the original versions onto DVD. And if he does include them, some will bemoan the lack of the old "making of" documentaries made, while others will wonder why that fabled deleted scene of Lando's death wasn't even mentioned. So NDB can complain all he wants, but in the eyes of a fan, there will never be a final edition of any film on DVD."

E ME: Please let me know what you think of this weekend's movies. And please forgive me if I have been a poor correspondent lately… too much e-mail with too many interesting ideas and not enough time to respond.