Month: March 2012

I mentioned in the previous post that iPhone Skype has been operating with the AT&T cellular network since last May, the result being that I can now talk on the iPhone to anyone I’m Skype-connected with anywhere in the world and send live video at the same time. This triggered an idea that might be possible with a new Hollywood Elsewhere re-design that’s now being worked on.

I’d love be able to somehow install a live Skype-video screen option on the Hollywood Elsewhere homepage and transmit instant live video of whatever I’m doing at the moment.

The Skype screen could just be an HE/Skype icon on the side, and could be clicked on and transformed into a video screen. A little red light could alert readers when live video is being transmitted, or there could be a permanent postage-stamp-sized screen that would go live whenever I decided to transmit. The screen would be capable of shifting to various sizes.

I’d love to be able to send live video of events happening at the Cannes Film Festival, say. Or during a sojourn in Rome or Paris or New York or wherever. Live video at any hour of the day — live video interviews during a hotel press junket, live video chit-chat, live-video press of Cannes press conferences, live-video of MSN’s James Rocchi helping bums to reclaim their dignity, live-video dinners with Sasha Stone and Guy Lodge at some backstreet Cannes cafe, etc.

A few days ago I downloaded the latest software for the iPhone 4S. One of the results was a new proclamation in the top left corner that AT&T was generating a 4G signal. I didn’t notice any increased download speeds and didn’t think much of it, but two days ago tuaw.com‘s Richard Gaywood posted an article that called the change “faux 4G.”

I have, however, noticed two intriguing changes within the last two or three days. I’m not saying they’re related to the software upgrade — only that I’ve just noticed them.

One, it used to be that I could only use Skype on my 4S when I used external Wifi. Now Skype works with the AT&T network. Update: This feature was apparently introduced last May, and I just didn’t notice. Return: The result is that I can now talk on the iPhone to anyone I’m Skype-connected with anywhere, and I can send live video to them also. Last night I was speaking on iPhone Skype to a friend in Berlin, and I showed her what I was doing as I shopped at a Gelson’s on Santa Monica Blvd.

And two, a Gmail memory-completion function works faster now. Previously when I would type out my email address the iPhone would wait until I’d typed out the entire handle plus the @ sign before completing the email address (i.e., gmail.com). Now it recognizes me while I’m still typing my handle — two or three characters in and it gets it….ping.

In late February a longtime reader and major-studio employee asked for my help to get in touch with a certain flamboyant character who no longer posts on this site, largely due to issues sired by alcohol.

“I’m interested in offering [this guy] a little guidance and help setting up a platform for his writing that makes him feel comfortable,” the reader explained, “but without being overly formal as he’s expressed a lack of interest in that sort of thing. I do believe with the right assistance, he might be able to get his shit together a bit.

So I wrote the guy back and gave him contact info for the flamboyant fellow in question, but added the following: “You will find, I suspect, that he’s devoted to living a life behind the eight-ball. He is devoted to being miserable and alcoholic and frustrated, because, oddly, these qualities are what keep him ‘on the edge,’ where he feels he needs to be.

“He doesn’t want to thrive and win. He wants to lose. Or at least, this is how he sees things while he’s drinking. There is no winning with a drinking person as long as he/she is drinking. But it’s very good of you to offer him some assistance, and I hope it works out. Have a good day and a great weekend.”

Last night, or roughly three weeks after he first wrote me, the studio employee sent me the following message:

“You were quite right. The guy really doesn’t want to improve his life at the moment. I consider this a shame. It seems [the character in question] will have to hit rock bottom and learn the hard way before he ever decides to change. Cheers to your attempts at better living, as chronicled recently in the column. A tough thing to do. Hope you’re steady as she goes.”

To which I replied: “Yeah, I’m doing fine…thanks. I knew your generosity would fall on deaf ears. Alcoholics don’t want to know anything, and you can’t tell them anything.”

The word “surreal” came to mind as I began watching this Orson Welles pop-song-scored trailer for Turn Me On Dammit (New Yorker, 3.30). I then began to think it might have been a brilliant thing to marry Welles’ song, recorded in 1984, to the Turn Me On trailer. Loony but brilliant. The work of a deranged mind. Beyond the Valley of the Insane.

I wrote Turn Me On‘s marketing maestro Reid Rosefelt and asked if this was his idea, and he said nope — he’d only just been told about it.

It must be said that Jannicke Systad Jacobsen‘s film, a dry and low-key teen sex comedy, has none of the sentimental emotional current contained in the song.

Turn Me On, Dammit will be viewable on Constellation TV on Thursday, 3.22 and 5 pm Pacific.

The film’s copy line belongs to Reid, I think: “How comes there are so many movies about a teenage boy who want to have sex and this is the only one about a teenage girl who wants to have sex?”

Welles’ Wiki page says that in late 1984, or roughly a year before his death, Welles recorded a music single, titled “I Know What It Is To Be Young (But You Don’t Know What It Is To Be Old).” It was done for Compagnia Generale del Disco. The song was performed with the Nick Perito Orchestra and the Ray Charles Singers and produced by Jerry Abbott who was father to famed Metal Guitarist Dimebag Darrell.”

The lyrics are as follows:

“When we are young age has no meaning

i never gave it a second thought

until one day along came this old man

and this is what he said to me

yes, this is what he said to me

“i know what it is to be young

but you, you don’t know what it is to be old

someday you’ll be saying the same thing

time takes away so the story is told

“I have so many questions

for the wise man i met

couldn’t find all the answers

no one has theirs as yet

“There’ll be days to remember

full of laughter and tears

after summer comes winter

so go the years

“So my friend let’s make music together

i’ll play the old while you sing me the new

in time when your young days are over

there’ll be someone sharing their time with you.”

I saw this last night. Tits and jizz and horndog shenanigans. Directed and written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the Harold and Kumar guys. Junket this weekend. Reactions in early April.

For some reason Paul Schrodt‘s undated Esquire.com review of the most recent Men in Black 3 trailer (uploaded on 3.5) struck me as funny. Key comment: “Will you see it? Yes, if for no other reason than because you can’t remember the last time you saw Will Smith in anything.”

Let me reiterate something. Smith is all but finished. He’s become a superstar mummy. He has conservative-choiced his career into a state of aloof Olympian ruin.

I wrote the following three and a quarter years ago: “Take a look at Will Smith’s IMDB page and you’ll notice that over the last 15 years he’s made four movies with four top-ranked directors — Fred Schepisi‘s Six Degrees of Separation (’94), Tony Scott‘s Enemy of the State (’98), Michael Mann‘s Ali (’00) and Robert Redford‘s The Legend of Bagger Vance (’01). And Redford’s film (a.k.a., Bag of Gas) was probably his worst and therefore barely counts.

“The rest of Smith’s directors have all been journeymen — nice guy professsionals (Barry Sonnenfeld, Peter Berg) but mainly fellows who can shoot a film in focus, get it in on time, etc, but none of them visionaries or even marginally outside the box.

“25 years hence which films will Smith be remembered for? Ali and what else? The man only has a few years to knuckle down and work with the AA-quality directors, or history will not remember him with any great respect or kindliness.”

And here we are 40 months later, and Smith has not made any kind of exciting or highly respectable movie since. As Mosquito Coast was to Harrison Ford (i.e., the somewhat risky, financially unsuccessful film that convinced him to never risk anything ever again), Seven Pounds was to Will Smith.

The arrest today in Washington, D.C. of George Clooney (along with his dad Nick) at the Sudanese Embassy is obviously a case of big-time celebrity being used to focus attention on an obscure and horrific situation that warrants everyone’s attention and then some. Bravo. Political-minded celebs should show this kind of moxie more often.

Update: Clooney and frieds are out of jail and free on bail. TMZ says Clooney only had to post $100.

A few days ago Bluray.com’s Dr. Svet Atanasov wrote that Criterion’s Bluray of The Last Temptation of Christ “represents a massive upgrade in quality over the old DVD release Criterion produced in 2000…the high-definition transfer boasts fantastic organic qualities…during close-ups detail is excellent while the panoramic shots look notably fluid..contrast levels have also been stabilized, and as a result the desert sequences look notably stronger.”

The tone of Davis Guggenheim‘s Obama tribute piece, released earlier today, isn’t slick or silky or trumpeting, but quiet, reflective…almost meditative. The writing is plain, concise and nicely shaded. Okay, the doc ignores 90% of “the story,” but it seems to focus on what mattered. It doesn’t lie.

Hunger Games opens on Friday, 3.23, or at 12:01 midnight that morning. I won’t be seeing it in Los Angeles until Monday night. Boxoffice.com is projecting an opening Weekend tally of $95 million and a total domestic gross of $235 million. Fandango says more than 1000 showtimes are already sold out across nationwide, and that theater owners are adding showtimes — some as late as 3:00 a.m. on Friday morning — to meet the demand for tickets.

I finally saw Lee Hirsch‘s Bully (Weinstein Co., 3.30) last night, and guess what? The f-bomb hassle that Hirsch and the Weinstein Co. are involved with is just a lot of smoke and hot air. Seriously — there’s nothing to get alarmed or excited about. It’s all a lot of needless hooey, the petition being circulated by Change.org and Katy Butler included.

Hirsch, the Weinstein Co. and Ms. Butler have been trying to get the MPAA to change its R rating to a PG-13. They’re claiming that the f-bombs are necessary for the integrity of the film because they represent the hateful attitudes directed at the victims of bullying in the film. Or something like that. The MPAA has predictably dug in its heels, and the Bully team is saying it’s important for school-age kids to see the film but they won’t be allowed to if it’s rated R, hence the ratings battle.

But the whole issue — and I’m saying this with sincere admiration and respect for Hirsch and the film, which is very well done and quite touching — is utter bullshit because f-bombs are meaningless in the context of what’s shown and the flow of the film and the music and the abundant feelings. This is a doc about cruelty, and the measure of that is in the stories of the victims (two of whom have taken their own lives) and in their faces in photographs and home videos, and especially in the faces and hearts of their parents and brothers and sisters.

Hearing an f-bomb or three or five is absolutely meaningless in the midst of all this tragedy and grief.

I myself heard only one f-bomb, and a friend/colleague who sat next to me at the screening said he heard only one also. I checked with a Weinstein Co. rep after the screening and was told that the film contains six of them.

Honestly and truly I didn’t hear the other five and even if I had (or if my colleague had) it wouldn’t matter. The f-bombs are said by kids during some school bus footage, but the sound is from an iPhone or flipcam video so the aural quality is lousy. It doesn’t matter anyway. This film is about stopping cruelty and raising the consciousness of parents who are too stupid or bull-headed to understand that they need to make sure that their kids don’t make other kids miserable by constantly harassing and teasing and slapping them around.

The Weinstein Co. should have caved on this issue immediately. Bully is an important film that needs to be seen by younger kids everywhere, and it’s absolutely idiotic to insist on keeping six f-bombs on the soundtrack as it means nothing to hear them or not. Get rid of them or overdub them but kick this issue to the curb and don’t let someone’s obstinacy get in the way of this film being seen by kids and parents who really need to see it.