Warner Bros. has decided to open Ed Zwick‘s Blood Diamond a week earlier — 12.8 instead of 12.15. Fine, whatever, no biggie. WB domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman apparently told somebody that the film has been generating good buzz and the studio wants to give Academy and guild members more time to see it before the Oscar game heats up too much. Except the good buzz thing is a fantasy — the buzz is good about Leonardo DiCaprio, yes, but iffy about the film. The Zwick factor (heavy-handed brush strokes, a tendency to emotionally over- bake, not a single machine-gun bullet hitting Tom Cruise in that final battle scene in The Last Samurai, etc.) leaves the prognosticators no choice.
