wired

In a sidebar called “Blogger’s Choice” in their 1.18.08 issue, Entertainment Weekly is running counterviews and tea-leaf readings from seven of “the film industry’s top bloggers,” including predictions about the 2.24 Oscar Awards broadcast. I’m the only one who is flat-out skeptical about the Oscars even happening. Everyone else — David Carr, Pete Hammond,. Tom O’Neil, David Poland, Sasha Stone and Anne Thompson — is predicting that a deal or a waiver will allow the show to broadcast.

Pages 44 and 45 of Entertainment Weekly’s 1.18.08 issue, #974

I know this much: the AMPTP is sensing that WGA negotiators, who are regarded in some circles as erratic and inconsistent for making side deals here and there, is weakening because significant voices are bitching about their tactics and general leadership qualities, and the WGA guys know this. If the WGA grants a waiver for the Oscars they will be seen as flat-out pussies by the AMPTP hardballers, and the WGA guys know this. They need to either cut an overall deal by 2.10.08, or two weeks before the show (one week would be cutting it too close), or the strike will continue, the Oscars will get no special waiver and the WGA negotiators will have held on to a semblance of battlefield honor.
A 1.13 Toronto Star article by Peter Howell takes a somewhat more pessimistic view, or at least what you’d call a wait-and-see one.
“The Oscars are viewed as the ultimate example of the show that must go on,” Howell writes. “The Oscars have been delayed three times in the 80 years — by floods, by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and by the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan — but they have never been cancelled.
“The cancellation of the Golden Globes is a $75-million to $100-million blow to the L.A. economy, by one count, and the loss of the Oscars would surely dwarf that. What is apparent here, however, is that the awards shows are mere collateral damage in a bigger war for the future of movies and TV shows in the digital age. The old Hollywood of L.A.-based studios making films for bricks-and-mortar theatres is rapidly being replaced by international conglomerates making entertainment product for the iInternet, the iPod and the cellphone.
“As Variety gloomily put it recently: ‘Hollywood is a mere plaything of the international congloms, and Hollywood product represents a relatively minor sector of the product line.'”

I’d been thinking all along that Sylvester Stallone‘s Rambo (Lionsgate, 1.25) would be called Rambo IV, but the Lionsgate marketers obviously figured it’s been 19 years since the last one so who cares? The legend begins anew! When I look at the stills I can’t help but observe that, yes, Stallone seems in good shape, but being 60-something he’s naturally a little chunkier than he was 25 years ago in First Blood, the only truly decent Rambo film.

So I think of this film as Bulky Rambo or AARP Rambo or something along those lines. The calendar is the calendar, biology is biology….you can’t fight it.
Industry know-it-all to Lionsgate publicist: “So are you screening Rambo?” Lionsgate publicist: “”Oh, sure!” Industry know-it-all: “And when would that be?” Lionsgate publicist: “January 25th.” Industry know-it-all: “That’s the day it opens.” Lionsgate publicist: “Yes.” Industry know-it-all: “Is this what’s called a critics’ courtesy screening?” Lionsgate publicist: “Oh, we don’t like that term. It’s just a critics’ screening.” Industry know-it-all: “But [a Lionsgte executive] said it’s great. Why aren’t you letting critics review it on opening day?” Lionsgate publicist: “Well, it is great. We just don’t believe it’ll be celebrated by very many critics.”

Watch John Cooper‘s welcome-to-Sundance video piece on http://www.sundance.org/festival — it starts automatically when to go to the site. Nothing special, but a nice little primer for anyone who’s never been.,

By tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest, Juno — now at $71,250,000 (according to boxofficemojo) — will become Fox Searchlight’s highest grossing movie ever, surpassing the final domestic Sideways tally of $71,502,303 (according to the IMDB). You can check the numbers here also.

“What’s wrong with the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. can’t be fixed by making members sign waivers or by banning parties during balloting,” Sharon Waxman wrote two days ago in the Los Angeles Times.
“The group needs, finally, to open its membership to a far broader pool, to encourage membership of bona fide journalists and critics — maybe even domestic ones.
“With the timeout provided by the strike, NBC Universal president and chief executive Jeff Zucker can make this happen. He should fix the Golden Globes or take them off the air for good.” And forego the potential of raking on $20 million in ad revenue? Jeff Zucker didn’t get to be Jeff Zucker by thinking like a reformist.

Bill Maher said something noteworthy about the WGA strike on last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher: “We’re very narcissistic out here in Hollywood, and I don’t think [the WGA strike is] the most important issue. But writers are important to me. As Paul McCartney once said, I’d rather have a band [to play with] than a Rolls Royce, and I’d rather have my writers than a Rolls Royce. And for sure, corporations are taking over everything and strangling this country and strangling little men. We do need unions more than ever but…

“What I don’t love is an atmosphere that has taken over this town. An atmosphere of witch hunt and threats, and that’s coming from the union and I don’t like that. The analogy is this: liberals criticize the conduct of the Iraq War, whether that was the right move and what it’s led to, and the Bush administration tried to conflate that by saying if you [believe this] then you don’t support the troops. That was a lie then and a lie now.
“In the same way, when I question whether this was the right strike at the right time, and I question the leadership which has not been very consistent…it’s the same kind of deal. You have a situation where these guys, these writers have been led into a situation in which there is no exit strategy, and we may not win this war. So we’re not wrong to criticize it. This is still America.”

Because No Country for Old Men has gotten 7 guild mentions (ACE, ADG, ASC, CAS, DGA, 3 from SAG, WGA), There Will Be Blood has gotten 6 (ACE, ADG, ASC, DGA, one from SAG, WGA), Into The Wild 5 (ACE, CAS, DGA, four from SAG, WGA), Michael Clayton 5 (ACE, ADG, DGA, three from SAG, WGA) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 4 (ASC, ADG, DGA, WGA), Red Carpet District‘s Kris Tapley believes these five are the most likely Best Picture candidates.
Disputes? Laments? With all due respect to talented good-guy Tony Gilroy, I say “no” to Michael Clayton. It’s a very fine and assured film of its type, but it’s nowhere near the achievement that Zodiac is and always will be. And I’d much rather see Once as a Best Picture nominee in place of My Left Eyelid. Wait…Tapley is saying the great Juno isn’t a likely Best Picture nominee? But it has to be because it’s making so much money…right?

An exceptionally well-cut tribute to the best 2007 dramas from Matt Shapiro, who regularly posts at http://www.worldofkj.com. The genius stroke is the use of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova‘s “Falling Slowly” as the “score.” Notice Shapiro’s choice of just the right cuts to accentuate the song’s final four chords. One error: using a line of Juno dialogue at the very end. It messes with the mood.

Rosebud-the-sled just wrote that with The Hottie and the Nottie, “the French now have another reason to hate us.” I’ve said over and over for years that movies like this are a major symbolic reason why Islamic fundamentalists despise Western culture and materialist values, and not without justification.
I have an idea that addresses this. In the same way that primitive South Sea cultures have been known to sacrifice a young girl to the Gods by throwing her into a volcano, we give Paris Hilton to Al Qeada. We deliver her, sedated, bound and blindfolded, to a location of their choosing and let them do whatever they want to her. It would be our way of saying, “As far as Paris Hilton is concerned, we get where you’re coming from. In fact, we sort of agree with you.”
It sounds horrific on one level, but a gesture like this could be a significant step in defusing tensions between our cultures. One life in exchange for the beginnings of rapprochement and a turning of the page.

The ickiest and most ignoble promotion riding the coattails of Sundance ’08? How about The Hottie and the Nottie (Regent, 2.8), a seemingly vulgar relationship farce (to go by the trailer) starring Paris Hilton, Joel Moore and Christine Lakin? Moore has always been hot for Hilton, makes a pitch, gets the come-hither (total fantasy), has to deal with Hilton’s witch-ugly best friend (Lakin covered with grotesque “ugly” makeup), etc. Obviously a pathetic Troma-type deal.

Hilton will presumably attend the two Hottie and the Nottie parties on Sunday, 1.20 — a pre-party and an after-party (after what? is there a screening?) at the Bon Appetit Supper Club, 540 Main St., Park City. They’re being thrown by Livestyle Entertainment‘s David Manning.
From the mid ’80s to the mid ’90s, there was only one Sundance Film Festival. But over the last ten years (certainly since the turn of the century) it has split into two entities — the real-deal festival centered around screenings at the Eccles, Racket Club, Library, Prospector Square, Holiday Village and the Yarrow and the various dinners and parties celebrating various real-deal filmmakers, and the piggyback faux-festival that (a) happens on Main Street, (b) has nothing to do with movie-worship, (c) is primarily about companies looking to ride the Sundance hoopla in order to promote their brands and wares, and (d) is economically propelled by thousands of under-35 party animals who come to Park City to drink and score and go “hoo-hoo!” until 3 ayem for nine or ten days straight.
If anyone has heard of anything more odious than The Hottie and the Nottie as the flagship for the faux-festival, please inform and I’ll take a look.

According to “The Fattening of America” author Eric Finkelstein, the ballooning of America is less of a health problem than it is a “lifestyle choice.” Obesity, he asserts, “is a natural extension of an advancing economy. As you become a First World economy and you get all these labor-saving devices and low-cost, easily accessible foods, people are going to eat more and exercise less.” Are you hearing this guy? He’s enabling — he’s selling the idea that obesity is a so-whatter.

Finkelstein’s book explains the prevalance of childen and adults with the bodies of sea lions has more than doubled in the U.S. between 1960 and 2004, rising from 13 % to around 33 %. That’s averaging in the blue areas where people actually exercise and try to eat healthily, of course. Visit any airport in any middle-American region and it’s obvious that at least 50% (if not more) are Jabba-sized.