Month: December 2005

“I love you, Kong, and I don’t know to say except that I can’t be with you and it’s breaking my heart, just as it’s breaking yours. The wind chill factor feels like icy serrated steel 89 or 90 stories above Manhattan in the dead of winter with snow on the streets, and little me wearing only a sheer white evening dress. But I’m not thinking about my physical comfort or how soggy and stinky your palm feels against my skin, but how you must be crying in your heart, and how similar our bond is to the one Jessica Lange had with that guy in the ape suit in Dino de Laurentiis’s 1976 crap-level Kong film. It’s the same sentimental shit, basically, and all I want to to is let go and let the tears run down my cheeks.”

20th Century Fox has decided against sneaking The Family Stone the weekend after next (i.e., the one before its 12.16 opening), and that means they’ve basically decided that as good as it is, they don’t believe that the film will sell itself to the ticket-buying public out there and their only chance at spiking the interest levels is to try and land some Golden Globe acting nominations for costars Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker. If I were the Fox guy in charge of selling this film, I would definitely sneak it…but that’s because I really like it and can’t imagine anyone not feeling the same way. Is it unfair to say that Fox marketing’s attitude towards The Family Stone seems a little bit cooler than mine?

“Elsewhere Live” (which will broadcast live today at 6 pm Pacific instead of the usual 7 pm) is now on the home page for the iTunes Music Store. It’s listed on the top row of the “New and Notable” podcasts.

By all means read this fascinating piece by Ivor Davis about the challenges faced by Steven Spielberg in the making of Munich (Universal, 12.23), which a source who worked on the film in Europe calls “Steven’s Passion of the Christ.” I’m going to dig into the ramifications in a column piece this after- noon when I return from my Rachel Weisz sit-down at the Peninsula, but I can at least say that Davis delves into a concern in the Jewish community that Munich might be a little too humanistic in its portrayal of the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre, since it is reported that Spielberg hired play- wright Tony Kushner to, in part, “soften” the portrayal of said characters. What Spielberg was facing in making this film, Davis explains, was a damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn’t conun- drum. If anyone has any reactions to Davis’s piece, send ’em along and maybe I’ll incorporate ’em into my thing this afternoon.

Will someone at 20th Century Fox please do something to save The Family Stone? Are they planning on at least sneaking it in theatres nationwide on the weekend after next (12.9 to 12.11, which is the weekend before the 12.16 opening)? I’ve tried not to oversell it but it shouldn’t be undervalued either. The Family Stone is one of the cleverest, warmest and most likable films of the holiday season, as well as the best home-for-the-holidays flick ever made. But (and here’s what makes it so fresh and alive) it’s also one of those delightful in-betweeners — not exactly a comedy, not precisely a drama. And yet people keep asking, “Is it a comedy or a drama…which is it?” and I’m really starting to lose it over this. It’s both, genius brains! You know…the way life itself tends to be? I’m also fretting because Stone‘s latest tracking figures haven’t shown signs of improvement. First choice is 1% (which is terrible for a film opening in two weeks’ time…a decent number would be 5 or 6), definite awareness is 24% (it should be in the 30s by this point) and general awareness is at 45 (it should be in the 60s). You can pay some attention to that teaser-trailer that’s been showing for months that suggests the film is some kind of Sarah Jessica Parker-ish relationship comedy…obviously an attempt to grab SJP’s Sex and the City fans. It’s partly that but it’s so much more.

A solid story by New York Times reporter David Halbfinger about Emilio Estevez’s Bobby, the 43 year-old actor-director’s upcoming film about Robert Kennedy’s last active day of his Presidential campaign in 1968..a day which ended with his shooting in a kitchen passageway inside L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel. And yet Halbfinger has it wrong when he says that Estevez’s Rated X, Estevez’s film about the San Francisco porn entrepeneurs Jim and Arnie Mitchell, “fared well at the 2000 Sundance festival before being picked up by Showtime.” Obviously, if the film had “fared well” the producers would have found some kind of theatrical release deal and not just sold their film straight to Showtime. I watched Rated X at the Eccles and I could feel the vibe in the air as it played, and I think I’ll leave it at that.

A couple more of those films I listed in that earlier “tipped for Sundance” item (the source of which was a Film Finders document) have turned up in the Sundance ’06 Premieres section. Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential and Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money, to be precise. Holfocener’s film having been chosen as the festival opener raises red flags. As everyone knows, opening-night Sundance flicks have a historical record of being either a bit soft or lacking in provocation or too emotionally simplistic or even mainstream mushy.

My stay in Brooklyn last summer happened because of an apartment swap deal I arranged with screenwriter Michael Arndt. And now Little Miss Sunshine, the film that Michael wrote that was filmed in and around Los Angeles last summer, has been announced as one of the premieres at January’s Sundance Film Festival. A heart-warmer about a family supporting their young daughter in the finals of a Junior Miss type beauty pagent, pic costars Gregg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin. Johnathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directed.

Blockbuster has had a rough year and its execs are feeling blue. That’s a good thing, right? Aren’t they the bad guys?…the Wal- Mart of home video?…corporate thugs?…Orwellian homogenizers and discouragers of too-particular tastes?…the great film culture Satan?

Congrats to Bennett Miller’s Capote and Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s Murderball for being named Wednesday night as the year’s Best Feature and Best Documentary at the annual Gotham Awards. Miller also received the org’s “Break- through Director” award.

I realize this will put a dark cloud over Kris Tapley’s world and I’m not entirely sure how industry-significant this may be in a heavy-duty sense…it is signficant in and of itself, of course, and good for the good guys and all that…but last night the British Independent Film Awards (sort of the London Spirits…right?) gave Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardender its Best Film prize, plus a Best Actor and Best Actress award for the film’s two stars, Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Weisz and Meirelles weren’t in London to accept as they’re here in Los Angeles to push Gardener with journos and keep it as front-and- center as they can with all the awards-season crap heating up right now.