December 23, 2003

Look! …. I’m pretending that I’m writing a column…

I’m not the only one who is just playing out the half-week. Even The New York Times is treating Tuesday like a Friday this week.

Everyone seems cranky and everyone who isn’t cranky is whining and that includes me. Get thee to a beach already.

There will be a real column tomorrow and a Christmas Edition of 20 Weeks To Oscar and MCN will plow along throughout the weekend as usual, as the Top Ten Lists continue to come in hot and heavy.

But today…. nah… playing hookey… maybe I’ll do some shopping… watch the kids prowl around Oscarwatch.com like a bunch of hungry lion cubs who know there’s no fresh meat coming for a while. (Did you know that someone is willing to say, alternatively, that every movie is dead and that every movie is guaranteed to win? Yup. Strong positions get lots of attention.)

All I’m going to say now is that I hope Oscar voters will get out and see every movie they can on the big screen and leave the screeners in their FedEx boxes. That’s my idea of a fair fight.

And just in time for Christmas, some kid at NYU – a jew, no doubt – came up with the perfect answer to all the capital-D Drama around The Passion of The Christ. It seems to work better if you cut and paste, so… http://homepages.nyu.edu/~scs273/01.mov. All that’s missing is the “Volume One.”

READER OF THE DAY: This came from THE ORIGINAL HOBBETTE: “Here is what I see to be the problems with movies and scheduling:

Too many damn movies, all of them are “Must See!”, “Best Movie of the Year”, etc. For those of us who are not in the business of making movies or don’t have access to free screenings or can’t write off the price of a ticket, you become choosy about what you are going to see. The window from screen to DVD is getting shorter and shorter now and I think to myself, okay, which movie do I want to experience on the big screen and which movies can I wait and buy when they come out on DVD since the cost of the DVD is less than two movie tickets, primetime at the local Cinema.

It seems to me for the most part that studios are definitely going for opening weekend bucks and then counting on video making up some of the difference. DVDs are sold at sell through prices, there isn’t anymore two tier pricing strategy and as previously stated, the window between screen and DVD is fairly short, sometimes as little as 2-3 months, you can easily wait for it to be released to DVD. There are of course exceptions to every rule and that applies here as well, Finding Nemo is a good example. Those are the movies that I put in the category of “perfect film, released at the right time and hitting all the right buttons”.

We Americans are fickle and are very much of the moment (and those moments don’t last long). Our attention span is very short and we are always looking for the next big thing. That includes movies. For big movies, you have marketing overkill for weeks before the movie opens and then, nothing more, at least in TV advertising, print still is being used, but heck haven’t bought a newspaper in years other than when I am flying. I get most of my information off the internet.

Here is what I see needs to be done:

Make less movies. And those that are made, make better ones. Don’t fit a movie to a star, fit a star to a movie. For me the best movies are the movies I could not imagine anyone else in the roles of the characters. Gone With the Wind is the best example I can give of a perfect cast. I will never be able to imagine anyone other than Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara and they better not try and remake that. Silence of the Lambs is another one. But sometimes a star can get in the way of a movie too. One of Steven Spielberg’s great talents is not just that he makes good movies, but that he makes him with largely unknown, or lesser known casts. By not knowing the actors that well, you don’t have a preconceived notion of them in the film and they don’t overshadow the movie. A big star may open a movie, but it is the movie that will determine if it has legs. And sometimes, because they have spent so much of the budget on big named talent, there isn’t much left over for the supporting characters and those roles are filled by actors who are probably quite cheap and the difference shows.

Make better trailers. Give us enough to make us want more but not so much that when we see it we are disappointed. Comedy’s can be notorious for making trailers that take all the best lines and when you see the movie, there is nothing new left. What happened to the days of suspenseful trailers. I remember when I lived in Holland (of course, long before the internet as we know today) there was the trailer for ET, just the two fingers touching. I went and saw ET and oh what an experience, I didn’t know what to expect and it was wonderful. Forrest Gump was another one, all I had seen were the billboards. I honestly don’t recall ever seeing any trailers. I loved it.

Better concepts. When I saw the print ads for Se7en, I was intrigued. I went and saw it and came out with my jaw on the ground. Another one was No Way Out. For everyone of those though, there are multitudes of rehashed and unimaginative concepts.

Better marketing. We get bombarded with ads for movies, but sometimes I wonder what the rhyme or reason is of the ads. One movie that I thought did a great job of advertising was Mission Impossible. They did a bunch of short (10-15 seconds) ads that they ran on TV. They were short, there were different ones and they got your attention without overloading you. When you see the same ad over and over, it gets boring.

I love movies, I always will love them, but there just is so many of them out there now, I just can’t get to see them all.”

E ME: I’m too lazy to write a column and you’re going to send me e-mail. You’re really nice.