Day: October 28, 2007

Writing about the Wes-and-Owen chat video that went up on Friday night, ABC News columnist Sheila Marikar is calling it a regrettable new form of celebrity spin. Regrettable, in part, because celebrity-controlled internet chats have the potential to diminish the drawing power of the big networks and news stations.

“It used to be that controversy-saddled celebrities sidled up to big-name reporters when they were ready to tell their tales, revamp their public image and revive their careers,” she writes. “Gary Condit came clean to Connie Chung, Monica Lewinsky cried to Barbara Walters, Britney Spears sobbed to Matt Lauer and Paris Hilton pledged philanthropy to Larry King.

But “now that internet video has come into its own, thanks to the popularity of YouTube and the advent of highly produced shows on sites like MySpace, fallen stars have a far more appealing option: Cut the pesky journalist out of the mix and tell all, on their own terms, on the Internet. It’s the ultimate form of image control.”

Right off the top, within the first ten seconds of the trailer for Awake (Weinstein Co., 11.30), Terrence Howard (a doctor) is standing next to Hayden Christensen (a rich guy) and saying to him as they look out at New York harbor, “You’re saving jobs, you’re creating companies …you own half of this city.” Anakin Skywalker (“I need haahlllp!”) owns half of Manhattan? At age 26?

That’s it — I’m out the door. I don’t support movies that depend upon exposition dialogue that’s written as crudely as this. If Howard had said Christensen owns 20% of the city, fine. If he’d said Christensen would own half the city by the time he’s 40, fine. (A stretch, but I’d buy it.) But no — the film has to go for the brass ring with that “own half of this city” line. And because director-writer Joby Harold was foolish and intemperate, he must pay the price.

Awards Daily has taken note of trade ads pushing Robert Zemeckis‘ Beowulf (Paramount, 11.16) for Best Picture as a safety measure should the Academy decide to rule that Beowulf doesn’t qualify for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. I won’t see the completed film until Friday, but I’ve seen a reel and as far as I’m concerned Beowulf not only qualifies as an animated film, but it deserves an industry-wide salute for expanding the definition of “animated” in a truly brilliant and innovative fashion.

The short list of eligible animated films will be announced on Monday, 11.5, so we’ll know soon enough if the Academy reactionaries and fuddy-duds have succeeded in keep in Beowulf out of this category.

Image technologies have been blurring the line between live-action and animation more and more in recent years. Technically, Beowulf is digitally enhanced live-action film, but it’s so richly and imaginatively composed that it seems absurd not to call it animated. Animation tools are obviously computerized today — the industry has come a long, long way from the days of Disney animators painting cells for Bambi — and it seems that the liberal view would have to be that Beowulf is not live action — it’s been “painted” on a bit-by-bit, frame-by-frame basis.

The foundation of the objection to Beowulf‘s being considered for the Best Animated Feature Oscar has been the Academy’s “Rule Seven” which states that (a) “movement and characters’ performances [in an animated film] must be created using a frame-by-frame technique,” and (b) that “a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the pictures running time.”

Don’t kid yourself: Rule Seven is a blocking move by old-line Academy types in order to protect the entrenched old-fogey animators from encroachment by the digital crowd.

A senior Paramount marketer told me three days ago that Pixar chief John Lasseter “is firmly against motion-capture being eligible for the animation”, and yet John Bloom, the head of the Academy’s animation committee, which numbers about 100 people, “fully supports Beowulf and live action.

“Remember when old-line animators complained that Toy Story wasn’t real animation?,” the Paramount guy reminded. “Remember that kerfuffle? People at AMPAS who are not animation specialists are confused that the characters look like the actors playing them, but that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. The Beowulf character doesn’t look like Ray Winstone, although he’s got Ray’s voice and acting style.”

In any enterprise of any kind, be it business or creative, the old-schoolers will always try to protect their turf by blocking the innovators. Everyone knows that trying to hold back the tide is futile, except for those who try to do it anyway.

Angered by the Academy’s disqualification of The Band’s Visit, a much-praised Israeli film, because it had, in their judgment, over 50% English and less than 50% Hebrew or Egyptian in the dialogue, and having heard from Band’s Visit‘s producer Ehud Bleiberg that allies of Beaufort, another Israeli-produced contender, had lobbied against The Band’s Visit on this issue, I wrote a paragraph the other day that voiced my feelings but which also contained a small but crucial error.

I wrote that “if I were king I would scratch Israel’s Beaufort” from consideration for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar [as] There doesn’t appear to be any question that Beaufort‘s producers lobbied the Academy’s foreign film committee on the 50%foreign-language issue that wound up disqualifying The Band’s Visit. Punish the Beaufort team for playing dirty, discourage this kind of thing, etc.”

Wrong. What happened is that Beaufort allies addressed the issue in some fashion with Israel’s motion picture academy, not the Beverly Hills AMPAS, and somehow I switched the two in my head. I hereby apologize to the Beaufort producers for blurring this and confusing the facts.

The principal ranter against the Beaufort team has been Bleiberg, producer of The Band’s Visit and producer / CEO of Bleiberg Entertainment. When I spoke to Bleiberg on or about Tuesday, 10.16, about the unfortunate 10.11 (or 10.12) AMPAS decision against The Band’s Visit for eligibility for Best Foreign Language Feature, he was emphatic in saying that certain parties allied with Beaufort had lobbied and/or strategized in some fashion to push the language-qualification issue.

Bleiberg was adamant about this, and asked me to quote him as having said this. He said that even the Beaufort people hadn’t made a secret of their agenda in this matter.

I had suspected that someone’s agenda was being served in the disqualification, and as Beaufort obviously benefitted from the AMPAS decision logic suggested they had a rooting interest in the matter.

Part of my determinations came from a 9.25 story about this matter by Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke. Having spoken to Israeli film critic Yair Raveh, she reported that “rivals are claiming that the political movie…has more than 50% English dialogue and therefore must be ruled ineligible for the nomination. Raveh…reports that The Band’s Visit producers, backed by Sony Pictures Classics, insist the English dialogue is less than 50%. The Israeli motion picture academy says it’s the producers’ call, not theirs. That has infuriated rivals who are calling on the local academy to check into the matter before the film is officially submitted.”

Raveh explained to me today that “days before [Israel’s] Ophir awards I heard that Beaufort‘s producers sent the Israeli Academy a letter from their international sales agent Bavaria Films, saying they counted the words in The Band’s Visit, it has 60 percent English and therefore will be probably be disqualified. Beaufort‘s team wanted the Israeli academy to find out only one thing: whether they will have the chance to send the runner up after dead-line if the film is disqualified? This is the only lobby I heard of from Beaufort’s producers, and it was aimed at the local academy.”

Two days after an announcement of the AMPAS decision to disqualify — on Sunday, 10.14 — IndieWire‘s Anthony Kaufman wrote that The Band’s Visit had been disinvited from the Abu Dhabi Film Festival for cloudy reasons. The festival’s director Jon Fitzgerald told Kaufman “it’s not the cleanest situation” and then Kaufman quoted you as saying that the film was turned down for “political reasons.”

Here we go again, I said to myself. The Band’s Visit once again getting elbowed out of the room due to political agendas and back-room maneuvering.

Raveh’s final word on the situation is that Bleiberg’s claims were inaccurate — he and others allied with The Band’s Visit knew the English language content was more than 50% all along, Raveh says — and overheated. “No one ratted anyone out. Not that I know of. As I see it, it’s all about a producer lying — as producers often do, and maybe should in order to protect his movie — and when Bleiberg’s bluff was called he said ‘someone snitched’ instead of bowing out with grace.”