Month: June 2011

I only just caught up yesterday with Robin Harris’ 5.18.11 piece about how streaming video is bringing about the death of Bluray. It made me very, very angry. Here are several statements from the article coupled with my reactions.

Harris: “The Bluray gamble has failed. Streaming has won the war for consumer’s hearts and minds. Bluray will limp along, but the action is in streaming.”

Wells comment: In other words, access to fresh content matters much more than quality of image? I watched Mike Nichols‘ Day of the Dolphin on Netflix Streaming three or four weeks ago. It didn’t look very good at all. It looked about as clear and sharp as the worst bootlegged Bluray you might buy from a guy in the New York subway. But that’s fine with consumers, according to Harris.

Harris: “DVD/Blu-ray sales are down 20% from the year ago quarter. Yes, Bluray sales were up 10%, but the larger dynamic is that people prefer to stream video rather than buy — or rent — optical media.”

Wells comment: So most people will tolerate any visual standard as long as they’re seeing something new? Terrific. Morons.

Harris: “In the meantime, Netflix has seen its business soar, and become the largest single consumer of internet bandwidth in the US., according to Sandvine. In North America, Netflix is now 29.7% of peak downstream traffic and has become the largest source of Internet traffic overall. Translation: consumers want what they want and they want it NOW! Note that streaming is growing fast even as Bluray player penetration is still creeping up.”

Wells comment: I really don’t anticipate streaming another film until streaming quality improves. I can see streaming films in the future once fibre optic cable is everywhere, but that’s a ways down the road.

Harris: “As Philip Kortum, psych prof at Rice and co-author of the study The Effect of Content Desirability on Subjective Video Quality Ratings, put it: ‘If you’re at home watching and enjoying a movie, we found that you’re probably not going to notice or even concern yourself with how many pixels the video is or if the data is being compressed. This strong relationship holds across a wide range of encoding levels and movie content when that content is viewed under longer and more naturalistic viewing conditions.”

Harris: “The Bluray window of opportunity has slammed shut.”

Wells comment: “Bluray will thrive as long as there are people like me out there, people who appreciate image quality.”

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino and I recorded Oscar Poker #36 on Sunday afternoon. The best part of the discussion happens when we get into the waning career of Jim Carrey (Mr. Popper’s Punguins), and where he seems to be at these days, etc. Do all comedians experience a hot-flash period followed by the inevitable slowdown and decline?

I asked Contrino to explain the bigger-than-expected numbers for Super 8, and the lower-than-expected numbers for X-Men: First Class. The “monster stuff doesn’t work at all,” Sasha said, but her daughter “loved it.” We also discussed two Devin Faraci issues. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

Madonna‘s W.E., opening later this year from the Weinstein Co., is an oddball title. Right away I said to myself, “Nope…doesn’t work.” I’m not sure if it stands for (a) Windsor Estate or (b) Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, or something else.

The movie is a time-jump thing “about two fragile but determined women — Wally Winthrop and Wallis Simpson — separated by more than six decades,” says the synopsis. “In 1998 Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) is obsessed with the story of King Edward VIII’s (James D’Arcy) abdication of the British throne for American divorc√©e Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough). But Wally eventually learns that the couple’s life together was not as perfect as she thought,” etc.

N.Y. Times guys Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes are reporting that the big studios are feeling a bit antsy about bringing their films to ComicCon 2011. Warner Bros., Disney, DreamWorks and the Weinstein Co. are sitting it out this year, and Marvel also might not attend.

This change-of-heart is essentially due to a conclusion, they say, that ComicCon buzz about this or that film, however enthusiastic it may be inside Hall H, is hermetic and unto itself and doesn’t translate to the general public. And if your movie tanks with the ComicCon crowd then you’re really in trouble.

I’ve been pushing a general assessment about ComicCon movies for some time now. Most of them, based on comic books and video games and smothered in CG-for-its-own-sake, are aimed at undiscriminating fan boys who will give almost any film a pass and a “whoo-hoo!” as long as it echoes or flatters or tips its hat toward their secular comic-book/superhero/cartoon-favoring fan consciousness.

A result is that filmmakers like Jon Favreau have become used to the idea of making fantasy, superhero and comic-book movies for the ComicCon faithful first and then the general public second, and so the plot-driven, character-driven and/or thematic-through-line standards that Joe Popcorn might want to see inserted into films are ignored for the most part. Because filmmakers know that the ComicCon fools will cheer them on no matter how shitty their films might actually be in the eyes of God.

The bottom line, for those who care to acknowledge it, is that most ComicCon movies blow because ComicCon attendees have no taste.

This isn’t because your typical ComicCon attendee is stupid. Far from it. It’s because a typical 2011 believer sees himself or herself as a kind of impassioned monk or follower or deacon or priestess, and judges movies on the basis of whether or not they cater to his/her geek theology and criteria. ComicCon used to be about the faithful celebrating decent, good or first-rate fantasy flicks, but the bigger ComicCon has become the more it’s been about Hollywood fantasy filmmakers catering to the hardcore wackazoids.

It’s become, in short, a totally corrupted dynamic, and fervent ComicCon boosters like Ed Douglas and Katey Rich and James Rocchi wouldn’t admit this if you strapped them down on a metal gurney and threatened to saw one of their arms off.

“A growing number of movie marketers are realizing” that Comic-Con “has turned into a treacherous place,” the article says. “Studios come seeking buzz, but the Comic-Con effect can be more negative than positive. The swarm of dedicated fans…can instantly sour on a film if it doesn’t like what it sees, leaving publicity teams with months of damaging web chatter to clean up.”

“Even a joyous reaction at Comic-Con, which takes place in San Diego from July 21 to 24, can skew expectations, as a platoon of studios learned last year, if hard-core enthusiasm doesn’t spill into the mainstream.”

Ground Control to Cieply/Barnes: If movies are tedious and stinky and pass along to the viewer a kind of swine-flu-in-the-bloodstream feeling, they won’t be well reviewed or be popular with Average Joes.

Ciepley and Barnes mention how ecstatic ComicCon reactions to Zack Snyder‘s Sucker Punch last summer weren’t echoed by Joe Popcorn types when it opened last March. That’s because Snyder’s imaginative compositional flourishes were overwhelmed by his attachment to deadly cliches and his mediocrity as a co-screenwriter. As I said in my review, Sucker Punch “is a digital torture device for those seeking at least a hint of compelling narrative, a tendril-ish remnant of logic, a tiny smidgen of story intelligence, and dialogue with a hint of flair or some kind of tethered-to-the-world normality.”

Disney spent millions on Tron: Legacy at Comic-Con, they report, but “a less-than-fantastic payoff” resulted when it opened last December. Uhm…could that be because it mostly stunk and because Garrett Hedlund‘s character was an idiot and because Hedlund exuded no charisma?

Lionsgate’s Buried “was promoted at ComicCon,” they write, “but the film sold just $1 million in tickets when it opened two months later.” Hello? Ryan Reynolds doesn’t get out of the coffin at the end! It’s a well-made movie about suffocating to death!

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World “was the big alarm,” they write. “That Universal movie was the belle of last year’s convention, and the studio spent heavily to make it so, draping the entire side of a skyscraper with an ad, for instance. Released just three weeks after the convention, Scott Pilgrim fizzled and the $60 million movie sold just $32 million in tickets.”

Yes! And what a glorious moment that was!

My profound regrets over the death earlier today of producer Laura Ziskin, 61, from cancer. I never thought of her as a friend but she trusted me as far as it went when I called for help on various Entertainment Weekly, L.A. Times and People magazine stories in the ’90s . She dealt with me fairly, considerately, respectfully, and I tried to return those tributes in kind.

Ziskin’s producing credits included Hero (’92), To Die For (’95), As Good As It Gets (’97), the three Spider-Man films, the 2002 and 2007 Oscar awards and Stealth (’05). Actually, she wouldn’t take my calls about Stealth, a Rob Cohen-directed actioner that cost $138 million, was critically savaged and became a significant financial flop.

Ziskin was diagnosed with cancer in ’04 but kept her hand in. Her final credit will be 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

For what it’s worth I saw Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris again last night. (My first viewing was on 5.11 at the Cannes Film Festival.) I presumed it would play more or less the same, but to my surprise it gained. It’s a little bit cleaner and more carefully structured than I remembered. So I understand the popularity — it’s a very likable and highly satisfying film in a sort of easygoing, light-touch way.

The Westside Pavillion theatre I saw it in (#1) was completely filled. It’s weird to see movies projected at what looks to me like a 1.5 to 1 aspect ratio. Landmark definitely chops off the sides of the image; I’m just not sure to what degree.

“I don’t think it’s possible to discuss it without using the terms ‘thinking man’s fantasy film’ or ‘time-trip movie’ or ‘a down-the-rabbit-hole excursion’,” I wrote on 5.11, “so I’ll just say it’s Allen’s most charming and engaging film in this vein since The Purple Rose of Cairo…how’s that? And certainly his overall best since Match Point.”

Earlier today two photos of the recovering Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were posted on her Facebook page. They were taken almost four weeks ago, on 5.17 — roughly 21 weeks after she was shot point blank in the head during a Tuscon political gathering. She looks serene and mentally attuned (as far as visual impressions can convey this). She’s suffered a slight alteration in the appearance of her left eye, but otherwise it’s amazing that she looks so good.

I’d like to know how much she’s really recovered and what her actual prospects are, but that information isn’t likely to be divulged. All that’s been said so far is how remarkable and even startling her recovery has been.

How much better, I’m wondering, is she doing right now compared to former Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady after he was shot in the head during the March 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life? What is a reasonable prognosis for her mental recovery? Where is she right now, and will she be able to regain 80% or 90% or even 95% of her former intellectual acuity? Less? To what extent are her language skills coming along and will she be able to work again in some capacity?

“At nearly three hours, The Big Country takes its time with each scene,” writes Tony Dayoub in a 6.8 posting on Nomad Editions Widescreen, an iPad publication. “But [it does so] with a deliberate purpose and payoff that can now be fully appreciated [on the Bluray version].

“Take my favorite scene, near the climax: The Major (Charles Bickford) has brought loyal foreman Leech (Charlton Heston) and his men to the narrow entry into Blanco Canyon, which separates his ranch from Hannassey’s. They’ve been lured there after Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives) had ordered Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) kidnapped.

“All of the Major’s men are aware it’s a trap, with the Hannasseys hiding behind the rocks that line the canyon, ready to shoot. But the Major is itching to settle his feud with Rufus, and is (over)confident that his men are up to the fight ahead. A chastened Leech has come around to believing McKay’s suggestion that the Major and Rufus’s feud will not end well for anybody. So Leech tries to talk the Major out of going into the canyon. But the Major calls him a coward, and after failing to enlist Leech’s men to follow, decides to go in alone.

“Quietly, Moross’ musical accompaniment starts as the Major marches into the canyon. A couple of shots later, in a beautiful setup that foregrounds the Major and places the entry into the canyon behind him near the horizon, we see a small solitary figure on horseback galloping toward the screen as the music begins to rise. It is Heston’s loyal Leech, deferentially sidling up to the Major as the music continues to rise.

“The same shot continues — this is all in one take — as another rider, and another, and then a whole group of them emerge from the same entryway into the canyon just as Leech did. They all slowly catch up to the Major and Leech as Moross’ rousing score hits its crescendo, the proud Major never once having turned back to look at his men. It’s an evocative sequence that captures the immensity of the setting and the characters that populate The Big Country.”

Could someone please explain why Act of Valor, a “very patriotic” Navy SEALS film costarring actors with zero name value (i.e., not even on an indie-cred Spirit Awards level), written by the author of 300 and directed by a couple of stuntmen (Scott Waugh and Mike “Mouse” McCoy, a.k.a. “the Bandito Brothers”) would be of any interest to discerning moviegoers like myself? Because it feels like a something made for machismo whores and mutton-brained righties and captive audiences on military bases.

Honestly? It sounds to me like a film that could be double-billed next year with The Expendables at Quentin Tarantino‘s New Beverly Cinema. Is it some kind of rah-rah recruitment thing? It’s in the can and was shot under the radar in Cambodia and the Mexico-Caribbean area with the backing of the military. The lead roles are played by actual Navy SEALS so it’s obviously about some kind of commando operation…big deal.

Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that Ryan Kavanaugh‘s Relativity Media will pay a $13 million minimum guarantee and a $30 million p & a commitment for this thing. It will open on 3000 screens, Fleming reports, on either Veteran’s Day weekend in November or on President’s Day weekend in February 2012.

It’s well and good that Super 8 will do $38 million this weekend, topping Phil Contrino’s boxoffice.com projection by $7 million. A B+ CinemaScore obviously indicates audience reservations to some degree, but let’s see what happens next weekend. The surprise, for me, is that X-Men: First Class dropped between 53% and 55% for a second-place showing of $25 million. I thought it would decline more in the range of 25% to 30%. I was under the distinct impression that word-of-mouth was somewhere between very good and excellent on Matthew Vaughn‘s film.

Two days ago Movieline (which goes to sleep on weekends) noted that Raiders of the Lost Ark opened exactly 30 years ago — on June 12, 1981. It cost $18 million to make and earned $384 million and change worldwide.

This, for me, was the movie that finally persuaded Hollywood that infantile Spielberg-Lucas fantasy-trip movies were the thing to invest in or at least try to imitate, and that dark/smart moody movies about narcotics detectives and oddball-rebel piano players and doomed extra-marital love affairs probably weren’t worth the trouble.

I remember muttering to myself after seeing Raiders the first time, “Very cool movie and a lot of fun, but things are going to be a lot of shallower from here on in…this may be the beginning of the end for depth and angularity and middlebrow introspection in mainstream Hollywood cinema.” Did Spielberg and Lucas cause this to happen? Did the Pied Piper of Hamelin not lead the children away from the village? Lucas-Spielberg showed Hollywood a way to make much more money from movies that were much thinner and more winky-wink popcorn with high-end production values and John Williams music, so in a way, yeah….they did.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

The second time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark was at an all-media screening inside the ground-level theatre at Leows’ State at Broadway and 45th. When it was over and the lights came up and everyone was leaving I realized I was slowly walking behind John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who at the time were shooting Neighbors. They were just shuffling along, not talking to each other, and nobody was paying any particular attention to them.

But I was two or three feet away from Belushi, and I did hear him suddenly say to no one in particular, “Yeaahhh.” I knew what he meant by that. He was saying, “I’ve worked with Spielberg and this is what he does, all right. I’m no genius but I’m kind of a subversive comedian….right? My schtick? And Steven, as good as he is, is probably one of the least subversive filmmakers around. Nobody can beat him at this kind of thing and this movie is going to make a boatload of money, and on some level…well, I’m not sure that I feel all that good about this because I’m not sure if I fit into Spielbergworld all that well….although I liked the money I made for doing 1941. But otherwise fuck me. I’m gonna be dead next year.”

Two days ago I scolded Deadline‘s Mike Fleming for not even mentioning the Phil Spector movie that Barry Levinson and Al Pacino had decided to make together (according to a 10.8.10 Brooks Barnes N.Y. Times story) in the midst of a 6.10 Levinson interview piece.

Well, it turns out that David Mamet, rightwing author of the Spector biopic screenplay, is going to direct, and not Levinson. Mamet confirmed this to Financial Times writer Jon Gapper in a piece that went up yesterday.

Mamet “is in New York with his producer to scout locations for a film he has written and will direct for HBO about Phil Spector, the legendary music producer,” Gapper writes.

“Spector, to be played by Al Pacino with Bette Midler as his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, was jailed for murder in 2008 after being convicted of the killing of Lana Clarkson, an actress, at his California mansion.

“I don’t think he’s guilty,” says Mamet. “I definitely think there is reasonable doubt. They should never have sent him away. Whether he did it or not, we’ll never know but if he’d just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him.”

I’m as appalled as the next lefty at Mamet’s conversion to arch-conservatism, but I agree with him on this last point. Spector was vigorously and relentlessly prosecuted because he was the arrogant Phil Spector of legend with the mansion and the bodyguards, etc.