Month: November 2004

Entertainment Weekly editors can shill for Finding Neverland‘s Johnny Depp all they want, but he’s not going to be among the five nominees for the ’04 Best Actor Oscar….the resistance to his vaguely maddening performance is stronger than they realize. And Jim Carrey won’t make the cut either for his above-average-but-still-peculiar performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And neither will Sean Penn for playing a pathetic wack-jobber in The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Jim Caviezel was fairly riveting as a bloody-pulp Messiah in The Passion of the Christ, but director Mel Gibson didn’t give this talented actor enough to do. The talk supporting Jeff Bridges in The Door in the Floor subsided a long time ago, and a lot of people are going to be flabbergasted if Kevin Spacey gets nominated for Beyond the Sea.

Not too long ago Lions Gate was, I’m told, seriously thinking about releasing the R-rated horror flick Saw, a decent-enough entry that is nonetheless regarded in most circles as not quite the equal of The Ring, straight to video. But then former Revolution Studios marketing exec John Hegeman was hired as Lions Gate’s president of worldwide marketing in mid-August, and one of his first moves was to organize some Saw test screenings that encouraged him tremendously. He managed to convince his Lions Gate brethren that Saw would perform strongly in theatres, and it was saved from the grip of video. Last weekend Saw came in third with an $18.3 million haul, averaging $7,895 in 2,315 theaters. So hooray for Hegeman….right?

And by the way (and this is not a bracingly fresh observation), but does Hegeman’s departure from Revolution Studios two and a half months ago on top of Revolution marketing head Terry Curtin’s recent decision to leave Revolution early next year for a gig at Intralink Film Graphic Design…do these see-ya’s “mean” anything? Couple this with the marginal interest in Revolution topper Joe Roth’s latest stab at directing, Christmas with the Kranks (Columbia, 11.24), and I’m not the only one, trust me, to observe lately that the Revolution engine doesn’t seem to be cranking at full throttle.

Last weekend’s Zogby cell-phone poll of 18 to 29 year-old voters has Kerry way ahead of Bush. The degree to which the GenY-GenXers get out there and vote on Tuesday is what will finally win it for Kerry…or not. If they do this in sufficient numbers, the under-29’s will always have something to be proud of. But if they follow previous election patterns and sit on their ass in front of the tube and don’t show up in sufficient numbers, they will be known Wednesday morning as the Generation of Shame.