Day: September 4, 2014

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that while Focus World, the nickel-and-dime, straight-to-VOD division of Focus Features, will not launch an Oscar campaign for David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars or its Cannes-honored star Julianne Moore, the producers “are in the running for Golden Globes, BAFTA, film critics’ trophies, and SAG and other guild awards. In fact, discussions are currently underway with the film’s handlers and all of those awards, which are much easier to win without hefty campaign investment required at the Oscars.

“Many of the guilds like SAG have screening committees that decide nominations and are easy to access for a reasonable investment,” O’Neil explains, “and so voters in the film-critics groups can be targeted efficiently. In fact, many of them are seeing Maps today at the Toronto International Film Festival. By contrast, to launch Maps effectively into the Oscars derby could cost up to $20 million, which is what many frontrunners have spent in recent years. Technically, a film may qualify after unspooling just one week in a L.A theater just like the Globes, but it needs a fullblown campaign to bring it to the attention of lazy Academy members who insist upon private screenings, personal copies of the DVD and more.

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I’m all set to attend a demonstration next Thursday of Douglas Trumbull‘s MAGI process, which aims to be the most dazzling and fluid high-frame-rate process yet at 120 frames per second. On top of it being a 3D process projected at 4K. The mid-day demo will happen in Toronto, and has been relatively difficult to get into. My interest was sparked by Scott Feinberg‘s 9.2 piece about MAGI in The Hollywood Reporter. I know, I know…the rejection of high-frame-rate photography in Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit (which used a 48 frame process) means nobody wants to go there again…right? Trumbull claims otherwise in his conversation with Feinberg. I’ve been told since the early days of the 60 f.p.s. Showscan process, which was first unveiled in the early to mid ’80s, that the human eye can’t differentiate between 60 f.p.s. and 120 f.p.s. I saw a demo of differing high-frame-rate test reels at a Los Angeles SIGGRAPH conference in 2012, and I couldn’t really tell. There’s an easy-to-spot difference betwewen 24 f.p.s. and 48 f.p.s., but not so much between 48 and 60 or 120.

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Two weeks ago I sat down with Black and White director-writer Mike Binder at his West Los Angeles office and talked about a lot of things. The film, the chasm between black and white culture, his new novel-writing career, his recent decision to move away from dramadies and into more plot-driven material with a little “bounce,” Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, the relentless glossiness of BET, alcoholism, watching screeners vs. seeing films with a paying audience, etc. It’s an open, relaxed, no-bullshit discussion — one of the most engaging I’ve ever posted on this site.

I think we all understand by now that Black and White is about a child-custody battle over a young African-American girl (Jillian Estell), and that the heart of the conflict is an argument jointly waged by her somewhat unstable, drug-dabbling father (Andre Holland) and her paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer) that she needs to be raised by her own people. On the other hand her white attorney grandfather (Kevin Costner), who’s been raising her for years with his recently deceased wife (Jennifer Ehle) following the death of the girl’s mom, is determined to keep her in a more stable (i.e., drug-free) environment, which is ironic given that grandma’s death has turned grandpa into a raging boozer.

What I learned during our talk is that Binder is drawing from a personal history with a mixed-culture upbringing. Back in the late ’80s Binder’s in-law Maria Murphy, the sister of his wife Diane Murphy, died from an accidental infusion of HIV during a medical procedure, and it was left to Binder and his wife to raise Maria’s half-African-American son, Sean, who was 7 at the time. But it wasn’t a 100% proposition as Sean spent a lot of time with his absent father’s family in South Central. Sean is doing well today and living in Tampa, Florida. Binder says, “I’ve been wanting to write this story for a long time. The custody battle and the father with the drug problem…it comes from a real place.”

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