wired

Jeff Leeds’ weekend box-office story in today’s (1.3) New York Times quotes Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray saying something rather odd. The crop of Oscar-buzz films “is somewhat anemic this season, and that’s something the Academy needs to be aware of,” Gray says, referring to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose membership votes on the Oscars. He adds, “If they nominate only pictures that people are not going to see, they can expect lower ratings” for the 2.27 Oscar broadcast. Hear that, fellas? If the film or filmmaker you admire the most hasn’t delivered (or isn’t on the way to delivering) a handsome profit, deny him/her your vote.

Two similar-sounding, three-syllable, young-guy-with-a-problem movies are playing at Sundance ’05 — The Chumscrubber and Thumbsucker. And are both about suburban ennui and that line of country. Not to sound harsh or dismissive, but I really don’t want to see a movie about a guy who sucks his thumb. Arie Posin’s Chumscrubber, a Premiere selection about, yes, despair and alienation in an idyllic California ‘burb (is there any other kind?), costars Jamie Bell, Ralph Fiennes, Carrie-Ann Moss, Glenn Close, Allison Janey. Mike Mills’ Thumbsucker, playing in the Dramatic Competition section, is a portrait of addiction but is presumably about something else besides. (Please.) It costars Lou Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Keanu Reeves, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bemjamin Bratt, Vince Vaughn.

Snipers are taking shots at Million Dollar Baby (and not just the Paulettes), and now New York Times critic A.O. Scott has given voice to the one I’ve been hearing for weeks about critics liking Sideways because they relate to Paul Giamatti’s Myles character — they look like him, think like him, he’s a critic type, etc. And because he winds up with a hot soulful lady (Virginia Madsen) who gets what he’s about. Well, yeah…partly…nice fantasy. But if a movie has three good scenes that touch bottom, it’s a movie that stands up on its own despite what admiring critics say. And Sideways has (1) the back porch pinot noir scene between Giamatti and Madsen, (2) Giamatti’s heart breaking when he meets his ex-wife and her new husband after Jack’s wedding, and (3) Giamatti listening to Madsen’s phone message about his book at the very end.

In a TV clip, Don Cheadle said about the real-life story behind Hotel Rwanda: “It’s Africa’s holocaust, and it’s still happening, and people…don’t know about it.” Cheadle paused between saying the words “people” and “don’t,” and I’m sure he briefly considered saying “don’t want to know about it”…until thinking better of it.

Brad Grey, the big-wheel talent manager, is “expected to be named head of Paramount Pictures as early as this week,” according to a Sunday story by L.A. Times reporters Claudia Eller and Sallie Hofmeister. The move “is likely to bring sweeping changes for the storied and recently troubled studio.” Sources said Grey was in the final stages of negotiations with Paramount parent Viacom Inc. to succeed studio chief Sherry Lansing, who announced two months ago that she would retire after 12 years on the job. Grey, the story noted, “has a relatively poor box-office track record, having produced such flops as City by the Sea, What Planet Are You From? and The Cable Guy.” However, the likely ex-chairman of Brillstein-Gray “does enjoy strong ties with talent and agents, whose frayed relationships with Paramount [Viacom honcho] Tom Freston [who hired Grey] is eager to mend.” Paramount production president Donald De Line is apparently on his way out, as he told Freston he’d be gone if he were passed over for the Paramount gig.

A filmmaker friend sat down with Harvey Weinstein in London a few days ago and says he’s lost 35 or 40 pounds, and that the apparent inspiration is that he’s got a new British actress girlfriend and “he’s in love.” I wrote a London columnist friend and asked about this….nothing back yet. Poly Giannabi, a London reader, says she “saw Harvey Weinstein on British TV, at the British premiere of The Aviator. It’s true about the weight loss…he’s down at least 30-40 pounds. I almost didn’t recognize him.”

Got a hot Sundance ’05 pic. Actually, just a flick I’m hearing may be one of the hotties…for GenXers with a desperate need to feel superficially hip, at least. It’s John Asher and Jenny McCarthy’s Dirty Love, a “Park City at Midnight” selection about a Hollywood girl named Rebecca (McCarthy)going through betrayal, homelessness and hard times. The program calls it “a laugh-out-loud, hilarious manifestation” of Asher and McCarthy’s “warped minds,” with “unforgettable and outrageous hijinks.”

No one of any depth or intelligence believes in the theology of New Year’s Eve. The second hand passing the midnight hour on a day that has no particular distinction in the eyes of God or any cosmic authority is no reason to clap, kiss, jump up and down or celebrate anything.

The 96-page printed program for the ’05 Sundance Film Festival arrived in the mail a day or two ago, and I’m already starting to go crazy from all the squinting. Who are the graphic designers of this thing (last year’s program was also an eye-strainer), and what is their compulsion about using pale yellow ink for the credit blocks below each film? You can’t read the names of the actors or the significant creatives unless you’re reading the ’05 program in just the right kind of light, and even then it’s a chore. This is graphic-design sadism at its worst.

Right now this town is dead, dead, deader-than-dead….

Hollywood Elsewhere has been hacked twice over the last ten days, and to make sure it never happens again we’re going to buy and install new software for the message board and chat room, a.k.a. Poet’s Corner. Until we do this we’re going to have to shut down this section of the site down for about a week since this is the doorway that hackers (and their most recent creation, called “sanity”) have used to crash their way in. Poet’s Corner will probably be back up and running by the end of next week, or by 1.7.05.

I’m going right out to rent Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors this evening as a way of paying tribute to the great Jerry Orbach, who died Tuesday night in Manhattan of cancer. Orbach’s performance as Jack Rosenthal, the criminal-class younger brother of Martin Landau’s wishy-washy Judah Rosenthal, is the kind of New Yorker Orbach seemed to actually be — a Bronx-born guy with a touch of the street, who always talked straight and blunt and cut to the chase. I love it when he says to Landau in that Crimes scene in the Jonah’s guest house, “I can’t afford to be….aloof.” Orbach’s Gus Levy in Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City was the same kind of guy, only scrappier and friendlier. Which reminds me: you still can’t get Lumet’s film on DVD.