Day: July 28, 2005

Chris Columbus’s Rent (Columbia, 11.11) is already being dismissed as damaged goods. In a recent Oscar prediction chart David Poland asks, “How can something less than a decade old feel so passe already?” (Uhhm, because it deals with one or two characters dying from AIDS and because medical breakthroughs since the mid ’90s have made AIDS a survivable affliction?) Plus in a recent Entertainment Weekly Oscar forecast piece, Dave Karger warned than Rent might not get awards traction if it winds up feeling like a “dated” stage show. Now, maybe Rent works and maybe it doesn’t, but the early dissing isn’t just about AIDS cocktails. It’s partly due to many journalists despising Chris Columbus, Rent‘s director, because he always sentimentalizes and sugar-coats his films. (In weighing a possible Best Director nomination for Columbus, Poland wrote there are “525,600 reasons it ain’t happenin.'”) It’s also about Rent‘s Broadway stage show having been chided by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in ’04’s Team America: World Police, when they included a scene of a Broadway show with several young marionette performers in a chorus line style singing, “Everybody has AIDS! Everybody has AIDS!” So Rent is dead, is that it? No, that’s not it, but you could easily get that impression.

So the reason the ’06 Oscar schedule is a week later than last year’s — the Oscar show is happening on 3.5.06 rather than late February — is because the Academy didn’t want to compete with the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics, which is set for 2.26? Does anyone apart from the families of the Olympic athletes really care that much about a closing ceremony? I really don’t get this.

I listed my Aristocrats favorites in Wednesday’s lead piece — Gilbert Gottfried, Kevin Pollak-as-Walken, Martin Mull-kiki, and the South Park telling. But I just realized I totally forgot to mention the bit when Andy Dick explains the meaning of “rusty trombone.” I never knew what it meant before — now I can’t think about it without smirking. This film is truly diseased.

Some people have been writing and tell me that the news ticker, which just went up last Friday, has been gumming up and/or freezing their computers. This is because the original program driving the ticker was slow and clunky and from Romania. We’ve just installed a new all-American version that may be easier and smoother to contend with….I hope. We’re also looking around for ways to rewrite this news-ticker program with Flash, which may be even easier for everyone to process. Anyone out there know about writing Flash programs who’d be willing to help out?

Listen to these sound clips from The Aristocrats (ThinkFilm, 7.29 limited)…a nice taste. No, that’s putting it wrong. The word “taste” is distasteful given the repeated mentions of…forget it, I won’t go there. But listen to the Gilbert Gottfried and Kevin Pollak clips.