wired

Studios owned by super-sized corporations haven’t been in the business of making real movies in a dog’s age. Not with any consistency, for sure. We are living in an era of mass devolution, and pitiless world-market realities demand that studios create and sell the hell out of renewable brands and franchises that the least educated, least sophisticated people in the world can groove to with having to think twice.

And yet somehow and in various hard-to-figure ways, studios like Warner Bros,, Universal, Dreamamount, Disney, New Line and 20th Century Fox along with their indie-mentality “dependent” production-distribution arms (Warner Independent, Picturehouse, Miramax, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage, Fox Searchlight) manage every now and then to crank out or at least acquire films that are about something besides an untrammelled interest in making money — movies with an alert mind or a cool attitude or a delicious funny bone or a soul even.

There’s one big studio, however, with a different attitude than the others, a studio that has a “dependent” arm that’s into toney films (Sony Pictures Classics) but also one into genre material (i.e., a euphemism for mostly second-tier junk), and led by people who occasionally get lucky with a quality film in the way that a stopped clock will tell the right time twice a day.

You know who I’m talking about…of course you do. I’m talking about the studio that gave us over the last few months the agreeably made, somewhat satisfying The Pursuit of Happyness, the sad and soulful Mike Binder movie Reign Over Me, and Casino Royale, the best James Bond movie since Goldfinger, and which single-handedly gave a new lease on life to the oldest franchise around. Three films to be proud of, by gum. But the rest…my God, the rest.

When I’m on my death bed I will look back upon how Sony Studios product befouled my dreams and sucked my soul dry from May ’06 to May ’07. I will think back to the twin horrors of the ’06 Cannes Film Festival — The DaVinci Code and Marie-Antoinette. I will remember my inability to laugh (all I managed were a few guffaws and one or two titters) as I sat through Talladega Nights, and how Adam Sandler‘s Click got steadily weaker and thinner after the first act. I’ll remember that horrible feeling of being trapped in an old leather storage trunk with All The King’s Men, and how rancid and putrid so much of Running With Scissors felt, and how infuriated Stranger Than Fiction made me feel. And Nic Cage‘s Ghost Rider, and the contemptible Perfect Stranger and Are We Done Yet?, and the mere thought of all those Joe Roth/Revolution films…don’t start.

And the very possibly wondrous and soul-levitating Spider-Man 3, of course. How do I know Sam Raimi‘s film isn’t a riveting, heart-stopping, spiritually stimulating film on any number of levels? I don’t know this at all, of course, because, as many readers have pointed out, I haven’t seen it and the tone and attitude of the first two films means nothing…nothing at all.

(I probably won’t see it until May 4th, by the way. Sony distribution execs are extra angry that I ran and rah-rahed Todd McCarthy‘s Variety pan and did the same thing with Kim Masters‘ Radar piece about the alleged $350 million production budget, and are determined not to show me Spider-Man 3 before it opens.)

I’m fine with missing freebie screenings (especially of Sony product), but I wonder if anyone’s fine with the lack of sophistication and seasoning and adult attitude that’s coming off the Sony lot these days, and…I don’t know, the overall shallowness and the relentless determination to angle their movies at the mouth-breathers. All I know is, there are reasons to occasionally smile or at least feel respect when it comes to movies made by the other guys (not often but now and then), but Sony product seems to give me a headache on a far more frequent basis. They seem to be following a kind of corporate-think, crank-it-out, bottom-line stinko mental- ity, and I really and truly don’t think it’s unfair or even unkind to call them the most corporate-minded of all the studios.

And I’m wondering why. What factors have led to this? Why is it that the other studios seem to somehow churn out smart, likable, above-average movies aimed at non-idiots with a bit more frequency than Sony? Or do I have it wrong? It doesn’t seem so to me, but one of the great things about a reader talk-back section is that you gain all kinds of different perspectives and insights. It’s not such a crazy or cranky idea that one studio among all the others might have more of a lowball, gorilla-friendly, brand-dependent attitude than the others. And I’m not even saying that this studio is absolutely and positively Sony. But it sure feels that way these days.

And all the money that Sony has made and will make is beside the point. Movies are fundamentally about dreams, awe, warm hearts, spiritual connections, hopes, longings, wonderment, God…all that good stuff. And I can’t think of any entertainment entity in any medium that has shared and spread around smaller approximations of these things than Sony.

The Tribeca Film Festival acquired an unsavory rep when IndieWire broke that story about ticket prices being raised by 50%. That was three and a half weeks ago. Today, finally, the money issue was addressed by festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein. And the explanation is basically that she and her partners have been saddled with rising costs and have personally been losing money on the festival, and they had to alleviate this.

Rosenthal says the festival loses about $1 million annually, and that she, her co-founder husband Craig Hatkoff and partner Robert De Niro have had to personally cover this deficit.

“No official figures are available on how much the festival costs, earns or loses because, since its second year, Tribeca has been a private, for-profit organization run under the umbrella of the private, for-profit Tribeca Enterprises,” writes Goldstein, “which was founded by Hatkoff, Rosenthal and De Niro in 2003.

“A Tribeca insider does claim that for the past few years, the cost of staging each fest has increased to about $13 million (20% of which is ponied up by the festival’s founding sponsor, American Express), and the event has been running a $1 million annual deficit — which comes right out of Rosenthal’s, Hatkoff’s and De Niro’s pockets.

“Hatkoff says that Tribeca now costs three to four times what it did when it was initially conceived in 2002 as a five-day event that hosted some 150,000 attendees. By last year, it had ballooned to a 13-day event and more than tripled in attendance. And yet they festival has, according to the aboe arithmetic, been bringing in $12 million in revenue to its $13 million in expenses.

“The rationale for a bigger scale is that there are fixed costs inherent in running it no matter how large we are,” Hatkoff tells Goldstein. “It’s Economics 101. Not having it grow will just exacerbate the cost structure. It’s not about making money for the festival.”

“Still, this year’s 50% jump in most ticket prices has caused grumbling in some quarters. Rosenthal defends this by saying she is saddled with having to retrofit theatres and bring in high-cost talent and pony up for pricey hotel rooms.

“When we have to retrofit theaters with digital projection and fly more filmmakers in with fewer hotel rooms available than ever before, we have to pay for it,” she says. “We don’t get city and state funding the way (the Toronto International Film Festival), (the Sundance Film Festival) and (the Festival de Cannes) do. I don’t even get any substantial funding for free events. Without that, I had to raise ticket prices.”

I should have mentioned this yesterday, but George Clooney‘s intention to make a dark and dry political comedy out of Rachel Boynton‘s Our Brand Is Crisis is a very good one. The people who loved Wild Hogs will stay away in droves, but if it’s done right Clooney’s adaptation could be a great metaphor piece about Americans trying to export its own culture and values — i.e., American political values by way of spin, focus groups, compassionate lying and image-massaging — into other cultures and making things much worse in the process.

Boynton’s doc is anything but “funny” — it’s a dry piece of verite you-are-there analysis — but as soon as I read Pamela McLintock and Adam Dawtrey‘s Variety story about the idea of molding it into a comedy, a light went on. I said to myself, “Yes, this’ll work f it’s written well. It could even be perfect.”

Our Brand Is Crisis is about a political consulting firm called Greenberg Carville Shrum (CGS) being hired to help the 2002 presidential campaign of Bolivian presidential candidate Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada of the MNR Party. He was a cigar-smoking rich guy with his hand out who didn’t get it, but hesmart enough to use the (very expensive) services of CCS. Goni paid the fee and the gang flew down to Bolivia (among them consultant Tad Devine, Jeremy Rosner and James Carville) to do what they could. “Goni “was elected, but then teh countruy’s economy worsened and the people took to the streets and he was finally forced to resign.

Boynton’s doc is about days of GCS Bolivian brainstorming sessions, focus groups, carefully staged TV appearances and whatnot. Some guy on an Amazon response forum called it The War Room, Part II: The Bolivian Years.

Variety reported that Clooney’s Smoke House will produce (with Clooney, Grant Heslov and Nina Wolarsky sharing duties). British writer Peter Straughan will adapt, and Clooney could either director or costar.

Admitting that he “ain’t a pretty boy no more,” Roger Ebert has announced that he and wife Chaz will appear at the Ninth Annual Overlooked Film Festival (opening tomorow nnight) at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Ebert hasn’t been able to speak for several months due to a tracheostomy (he’s hoping that “another surgery” will remedy this), so he’ll be confining himself to facial and hand gestures, “eye rolling,” written notes and whatnot.

“I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival,” Ebert has written in today’s Chicago Sun Times. “I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures and that] people will be unkind. Frankly, my dear, I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

“What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding. A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.

“So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.”

There but for the grace of God….

It’s an old tune about how the Harry Potter movies have stopped mattering. The zeitgeist-connectivity factor peaked three years ago with Alfonso Cuaron‘s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Tens of millions have been programmed to pay to see them, of course (picture those school kids marching into that gothic Orwellian factory in Alan Parker‘s Pink Floyd: The Wall), and you can bet this will happen when David Yates‘ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros., 7.13) arrives.

The trailer looks exciting in the same old flash-cut, ooh-wow way that all trailers for all the expensive CG movies tend to be, but it seems to be selling the same old shite with a slight budding-hormone twist. This time there’s a conventional bald ogre baddie without a nose, Imelda Staunton as a new Hogwarts bureaucrat baddie, and Katie Leung as Cho Chang, Harry’s (Daniel Radcliffe‘s) new love interest.

I wouldn’t go to a free screening of this film with a knife at my back. I wouldn’t watch it if I was on a 15-hour plane trip top Thailand and dying of boredom. Okay, maybe if I’d watch it on the plane if it was being shown in a high-def format, but certainly not on one of those cheap-ass, back-of-the-seat video screens.

Emma Watson (i.e., Hermione) has been my favorite since the series began. She’s now 17 and posing on magazine covers, etc., so why not a little romantic subplot for her also? I wonder why she’s so short though. (Radcliffe is Dustin Hoffman‘s size and he towers over her.) Did they cast these kids based on their genetic predispositions to not grow to anything close to adult-sized height? No matter — Watson’s got the charisma.

I’m running this old photo partly because Jack Nicholson turned 70 yesterday, and partly because those hundreds of little speckles on this photo (it’s a scan of a print) have nearly ruined it, and it’s breaking my heart. Nicholson was my first big-name interview and the print used to be smooth and shiny and all silvery, and now look at it. Anyway…

25 years ago and very cold outside, as the backdrop suggests.

Here’s a bigger 5000 pixel version. I also have a couple of different scans on my desktop. I tried cleaning this scanned photo with “automatic small scratch removal” on my Corel Paint Shop XI software, and it helped some. I’m sure it can be cleaned up and enhanced even more by the right person operating the right software. If anyone has any ideas, please get in touch.

The photo was taken just after an interview I did with Nicholson on the 33rd floor of Manhattan’s Carlyle hotel, back in January 1982. The article was a freelance piece for the New York Post, and it ran four or five days later. The topic was supposed to be Tony Richardson‘s The Border , in which Jack played a Texas border guard, but we wound up talking about this and that, and particuarly about his then-current murderer image that stemmed from The Shining. (One of Nicholson’s lines in The Border was about wanting to “feed them ducks,” and Time‘s Richard Corliss had written in his review, “Feed them what? Strychnine?”)

We talked for just under an hour. (This was back in the days when they actually let you talk to celebrities for that long.) The interview began around 10:30 a.m., and I remember how Nicholson suddenly popped open a Miller High Life about halfway through. I wanted to be in the same wavelength so I asked for one also…why not?

When I first came to the hotel room door, the publicist, Bobby Zarem, answered and said, “How are ya, Jeff?” And Nicholson, sitting in the living room that was down the hallway and off to the left, was listening very carefully. New York City had been going through a long cold streak and it was in the low 20s that particular day, and I’d just come off the street with a red face and windblown hair. So I told Zarem, “Cold as usual.” And out of the living room came that unmistakable Nicholson voice, imitating me saying “cold as usual.”

Nicholson’s mind would jump the track every so often. You’d be getting into one topic, and before you know it he’d shift into a whole different realm. We were talking about scarves and winter coats for a little bit and he said he’d probably be shopping around for something later that day. “What are you looking for?,” I asked. “I don’t know,” Nicholson replied. “I haven’t known for quite some time.”

The official poster for the 60th Cannes Film Festival is up. Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Wong Kar Wai, Penelope Cruz, Pedro Almodovar….who is that, Ken Loach in the middle? I almost recognize the other three. If this image is too small, a bigger version is at the Cannes Film Festival website.

As they finish post-production chores on No Country for Old Men, which will play at Cannes next month, Joel and Ethan Coen are making it known that their next two films will come out of a new deal with Focus Features and Working Title. The first, which will begin shooting this summer, is called Burn After Reading, and will costar George Clooney, Brad Pitt (as a gym trainer) and Frances McDormand. This will be followed by A Serious Man, which was reported by Variety‘s Dade Hayes as being “a dark comedy in the vein of Fargo.” If anyone has either script, please get in touch and we’ll do a trade.

I was so caught up in the drama of Carina Chocano a few hours ago (which turned out to be not so dramatic) that I missed the late-morning news about the death of Boris Yeltsin. He was the first Russian leader I genuinely admired (or half-admired), and I think he’s also the last one to qualify in that regard.

Yeltsin was a brave, erratic man, a fighter, a moody reformist, a drinker (which led to health problems), charismatic and bear-like…the guy whose best moment came when he stood up on that tank in August 1991 and rallied the Soviet people against an attempted coup against the government of Mikhail Gorbachev, “a heroic moment etched in the minds of the Russian people and television viewers all over the world,” as Marilyn Berger‘s N.Y. Times story reads.

“Although his commitment to reform wavered, Yeltsin eliminated government censorship of the press, tolerated public criticism, and steered Russia toward a free-market economy,” Berger wrote. “Not least, Yeltsin was instrumental in dismembering the Soviet Union and allowing its former republics to make their way as independent states.”

There was an item saying that L.A. Times film critic Carina Chocano had allegedly been “taken off duty” by her editors and given a weekly opinion- analysis column in the Sunday edition. I called six or seven people and heard nothing, then someone finally called to explain. The deal is that Chocano hasn’t been kicked off the beat as much as subjected to a kind of editorial experiment. Plus she got married recently (i.e., out of the country) and has been honeymooning. Plus, I’m told, she’s going to be reviewing again starting Friday.

The Anne Thompson item that started the rumpus made sense on the face of it since it sounded like another L.A. Times cost-cutting measure — a very common thing these days when discussing the most miserable and self-torturing newspaper on the face of the planet. Other reviewers Kevin Crust and perhaps a freelancer or two (Sam Adams?) have stepped in during Chocano’s abscence, and will presumably keep their hand in.

If the Times is looking for alternate freelancers, how about City Beat critic Andy Klein for some pinch-hitting? One of the smartest and most knowledgable critics on the planet, and a guy who writes in a nicely honed, plain-talk style.

Chocano is a very smart and skilled writer, and for what it’s worth her reviews have always seemed fairly engrossing to me. I like her the way I like Anthony Lane, although his reviews are funnier and more deftly phrased. But Chocano has never been accepted by the film-critic elite as being “one of us,” or at least she wasn’t when she first landed the Times film-critic gig. Some had bristled about her TV criticism background and the suspicion that she hadn’t paid her dues the way the hard-core monks have. And others have said they’re not big fans of her reviews, but I’ve always taken these views as expressions of political discontent.

“I actually came to like her stuff,” an L.A. Film Critics Association member told me a few minutes ago. “I gradually came around. She hasn’t applied for membership in LAFCA and I don’t know what that’s about, but I don’t see that much resentment towards her these days. That was before, I think.”

If you care about westerns or urban action movies, you care about the sound of gunfire. I love it when a filmmaker takes the time and effort to make the old blam-blam sound exactly right, or in some better-than-real-life way (like Michael Mann did with Tom Cruise‘s pistol shots in Collateral). And it always turns me off when gunfire sounds wrong. This hardly happens any more, but I was reminded last weekend as I watched John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven what really bad gunfire sounds like.

Then I remembered that I wrote about this very topic close to six years ago, so here ‘s the piece again. I’m figuring some of the present-tense readers weren’t around back then, so here, in honor of Nick Nolte‘s journalist character in I Love Trouble, is a Reel.com re-run.

“Good work has gone into MGM Home Video’s DVD of The Magnificent Seven,” I began. “The 1960 Western didn’t create a huge stir initially but has since become a kind of cult flick, particularly beloved by boomer critics and filmmakers who were kids when they first saw it.

“But the sound of the gunfire in this film is wrong. I would even say irritating. Every time an acto rin that film shoots a rifle or a handgun, we hear the exact same report — a three-syllable sound that phonetically translates as ‘guh-BACH-owhl.’ Most of you know this sound. You’ve heard it in a hundred other westerns (cheaper ones, usually) and ‘guh-BACH-owhl’ is its name.

“I’ve shot pistols and rifles and M-16s and machine guns, and none of them went ‘guh-BACH-owhl’ when I pulled the trigger. They usually go “Bauhlnt!” but shortly, succinctly. Another sound I’ve heard from live guns is “Puhng!”

“One of the least accurate-sounding gunfire recreations you’ll ever hear on a soundtrack is in George Stevens‘ Shane, although it’s absolutely one of the coolest. The guns in that film roar like cannons inside an echo chamber. Warren Beatty once said in a documentary about Stevens’ life (George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey) that he tried to recreate this same sound for Bonnie and Clyde.

“Beatty understood how great the Shane guns sounded and cared enough to make the effort to reproduce them. Sturges never went that deep. There are about 145 ‘guh-BACH-owhl’ shots in The Magnificent Seven, and by the time you hear 40 or 50 it starts to get bothersome. I don’t mean to sound petty or obsessive, but when you’re doing a Western you have to get this stuff right.”

The fanboy factor has resulted in a buy-out of tickets to tonight’s 30th Anniversary screening of Star Wars at the Motion Picture Academy. But “due to attrition, no-shows and cancellations,” a certain quantity of seats should be available to pikers in the stand-by line. People like myself, I mean.

I’d like to attend because producer George Lucas will be doing a q & a after the screening along with other members of the team, but I’m not sure if my withered sense of dignity will allow me to wait in line for 90 minutes or more to see a 30 year-old film that I’ve always regarded as, at best, an okay diversion. (It would be a different story if The Empire Strikes Back were showing.)

The Academy website doesn’t say whether they’ll be showing the 1977 original or the digitally augmented “Greedo shoots first” version, but Academy spokesperson Leslie Unger told me a while ago it’ll definitely be the digitally augmented version.

It can probably be safely assumed that a mint-condition version of the 1977 original will never be shown at a first-class theatre ever again. Wasn’t the recently released DVD of the ’77 version taken from an old laser-disc master from the ’90s? Lucas couldn’t be bothered to restore it or even tweak it up.