Day: April 23, 2012

I’ll be spending most of my Cinemacon time at Ceasar’s Palace**, the headquarters and the nerve center, so naturally I’ll be doing 80% or 90% of my filing from here. Does Cinemacon provide complimentary wifi? No. Is wifi available within Ceasar’s for a fee? Yes — nearly $25 effing dollars per day. The greediest, most money-grubbing wifi provider at an airport will charge $12.95 a day or thereabouts. Charging nearly double that is unconscionable.

Cinemacon is an exhibitor thing, but it’s really not about movies — it’s about product. Almost all the movies being pushed here are theme-park rides. Hot whizbang bullshit empty flashy crappola. It’s like the AFM here. And all the people walking around look like they’re cut from the same cloth as John Cassevetes‘ Guy from Rosemary’s Baby. I’m not exaggerating. This place feels vaguely…make that faintly demonic. If Satan were to materialize as a human he would fit right in and go “whoo-hoo!” and order a drink and watch ESPIN. The wrong people are here. People who believe that movies are about fireworks and noise and cliches and cheap distraction.

Contents of goody bag provided by Cinemacon.

** Yes, I’m aware that management spells it Caesars Palace without the apostrophe, but of course thast’s nonsensical. I refuse to play along.

I take full responsibility for flirting with actually shelling out for the upcoming German Bluray of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (’62). How much better can this black-and-white film look on Bluray compared to the DVD? Somewhat, I’m sure, but is it likely to be cause for cheering in the streets? It was always obvious that James Stewart and John Wayne wore toupees during filming, and now the evidence will be even more distinct.

The Leonardo DiCaprio biopic rule of the 21st Century states that you don’t have to even vaguely resemble the person you’re playing. Leo didn’t look a bit like Howard Hughes, the resemblance between DiCaprio and J. Edgar Hoover was zilch, and the idea of Leo playing Frank Sinatra (which Martin Scorsese has discussed with a straight face) is ludicrous. So Lindsay Lohan can totally play Elizabeth Taylor as she looked during the making of Cleopatra in ’61, ’62 and ’63. She’ll just have to gain a little bit.

The Lifetime film will be a joke, of course, because it’s not a Liz movie as much as a Liz- and-Dick movie, and I guarantee that budget-minded Lifetime won’t be able to find an actor who can even come close to impersonating Richard Burton. It’s a gross understatement to say that Burton’s voice was highly distinctive. Nobody will be able to “do” it…forget it. No decent Dick = no movie.

I arrived in Las Vegas two hours and 5 minutes ago. The room at the Hard Rock Hotel is very pleasant (black and white motif) with satisfactory wifi. It’s about 90 degrees out and a little less than a mile between the Hard Rock and Caesar’s Palace, which is ground zero for Cinemacon. So yeah, maybe I’ll cab it. I have to get over there but I need to file a couple of things first.

Is that a view or what?

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As I mentioned the other day, I once tried to play drums (i.e., none too successfully) in a semi-conflicted Connecticut blues band. It was fun but I was the weak link. The band had five names at different stages of the game — the Golden Rockets (which I hated), the Sludge Brothers, Blind Pig Sweat, Amos Bouldcox and Dog Breath. My problem wasn’t a lack of joie de percussion, but that I obliged to bang it out on a conventional drum set when my true gift was in the realm of thigh-slapping and coin-jingling and simulating bass riffs in my throat. Today we have sensitive-enough microphones that would permit me to do that.

Hollywood Elsewhere has to drive out to Burbank airport around 10 am in order to arrive at long-term parkling by 10:35 or 10:40 am in order to catch the shuttle and be at the gate by 11 am for a Las Vegas flight that leaves around 12 noon. Okay, I guess I don’t have to be there precisely by 11 am but why flirt with fate? Because there’s always something else I want to post, that’s why, and I’m compulsive that way.

Arriving LV at 1:05 pm. Check in at the Hard Rock by 2 pm. Off to Ceasar’s Palace on foot by 3 or 3:30 pm. Pick up badge by 4 or 4:30 pm. And then do a little filing between then and the first event.

Did I mention this is all about Cinemacon? I didn’t? Ah, well. “It’s the charge, it’s the bolt, it’s the buzz, it’s the sheer fuck off-ness of it all. Am I right?” Wells to Katherine Brodsky: Name the film, the screenplay author, the actor who said it and so on.