Winds of Change Don’t Feel All That Exhibitor-Friendly

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Just about a year ago Variety‘s Brent Lang reported that the National Association of Theatre Owners had flatly ixnayed Sean Parker‘s Screening Room start-up — early home-video access to brand-new movies. “The exclusive theatrical release window makes new movies events,” a NATO statement read. “Success there establishes brand value and bolsters revenue in downstream markets.” The group added that any new distribution models should be created in consultation between studios and theater owners, and not with the help of a “third party.”

The use of the term “third Party” was “a clear dig” at Screening Room, Lang noted.

But now, at the start of Cinemacon 2017, Lang is reporting that studios and exhibitors “do seem closer to signing that grand bargain which would enable films to get early home entertainment releases for a higher price. As an enticement, distributors are willing to cut theaters in on a percentage of their digital sales. Six of the seven biggest studios — a group that includes Fox, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, Warner Bros., and Universal — are having unilateral discussions with major theater chains like Regal and AMC.”

Presumably this willingness to “cut theatres in” on digital revenues is what paved the way for the current constructive dialogue.

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Cinemacon Awaits

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The four-and-a-half-day Cinemacon experience starts today. My flight to Las Vegas (a suffocating plastic nightmare realm that I hate with every fibre of my being) leaves at 10:30 am from Burbank. Hollywood journos go for the product reels — for a clearer, more specific notion of what the coming movie year will amount to. I trust it’ll be worth the trouble. Two years ago I gave up the first day when my suitcase was stolen by an idiot who mistook their bag for mine. I finally got it back but God, what an ordeal. My story was titled “Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Bag.”

I plan to attend all the distributor presentations and tech shows that seem to matter, and otherwise just hunker down and file from my room at Bally’s hotel & casino. No tables, no drinks, no heaping piles of food…a spartan approach.

The problem is that Cinemacon product reels are almost always about megaplex idiot fare. Sony’s 2012 Cinemacon presentation, for example, didn’t even mention Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty, which was easily the most exciting and praise-worthy Sony film of that year. (Here’s my piece about their presentation.)

But that’s Cinemacon and the distributor mindset for you — i.e., previewing ultra-primitive, power-slam, bass-thump CG stuff for the core theatrical audience these days — under-educated simians, schmoes, donkeys, ESPNers, teenagers, what-the-fuckers, the family trade, gamers and others whose taste buds have been systematically coarsened and lowered over the last 25 years, which is roughly when theme-park movies began to be embraced big-time by the major studios.

As the crow flies Bally’s would be a five-minute walk from Caesar’s Palace if it weren’t for the crowds, staircases, elevated walkways, escalators and all the other obstructions. I’m a simple man, a New Yorker, a European. I just like to walk somewhere without all the bullshit. But bullshit is what you get when you come to Vegas.

Orange County Animals In Cut-Offs, Flip-Flops, Drugstore Shades

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One way or another Trump supporters always wind up acting in a brutish and ugly manner and generally representing the lower end of the gene pool. Here’s a 3.25 O.C. Weekly piece (“Huntington Beach Pro-Trump March Turns Into Attack on Anti-Trump Protesters“) by Frank John Tristan and Denise de la Cruz, about a pro-Trump rally at Bolsa Chica State Beach in which some anti-Trump counter-protesters (including a couple of O.C. Weekly staffers) got slugged and kicked and chased around.

Does Franken Have The Hunger? Probably Not.

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I can’t over-emphasize how much I loved Sen. Al Franken‘s grilling of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch last Tuesday. Particularly Franken’s dissection of the frozen trucker court case. I’ve watched the whole thing on YouTube three times. Franken revealed to one and all what a flinty, corporate-favoring prick Gorsuch is when it comes to disputes of this nature, which are basically about the gulf between common sense and humanitarian regard for working people vs. the rules and dictates of large companies.

I came away thinking that the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket should be headed by Gavin Newsom and Al Franken. Seriously.

Hell, I’d vote for Franken himself if he were to run for President in a 2020 primary or general election, although I recognize that he’s not really the running-for-President type, and that his natural place is in the U.S. Senate. 

The other concern is that California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom will have a tough time running for California governor in 2018 if everyone believes that his bottom-line aim is to run for President in ’20. 

So if not one of these two, who? Who has the right kind of post-Hillary, new-generation cred? Who’s got the charisma and magnetism to persuade the dumbshits not to vote for Trump? Will Elizabeth Warren run?

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“The Othahs…Where Are They?”

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Allegedly the first installment of a two-parter, pic takes place after the events of Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. The idea of having to watch this thing is similar to contemplating a visit to the dentist. I can’t wait to feel numb and drained. Stab me in the head with a kitchen knife.

I Could “Watch” It On The Page Right Now

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A guy has sent me a January 2016 draft of Martin McDonaugh‘s Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri. The trailer popped on 3.23.

“Easily McDonagh’s best,” the guy says. “Instead of getting cute at the end, it gets human. The trailer is great but it doesn’t give the drama enough credit. I think it’s easily his most mature, humanist film to date. There’s a No Country For Old Men vibe.” Now I’m wondering if I should read it or wait for the film. This is sounding more and more like a perfect film for Cannes. Everyone will probably praise it, and it’ll kick off Frances McDormand‘s Best Actress campaign to boot.

Should Fox Searchlight re-think their alluded-to policy of never screening a potential award-season hottie on the Cote d’Azur? The conventional Oscar strategist advice is to never shoot your wad in Cannes but wait for Venice, Telluride and Toronto. How then did No Country, which premiered in Cannes on 5.19.07, ever manage a Best Picture win?

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Best 9/11 Whoop-Ass Movie Ever Made

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The first five paragraphs of “The Perverse Thrill of Chaotic Times“, a 3.25 N.Y. Times piece by Teddy Wayne, offer an uncannily accurate capturing of how Type-A specimens have been feeling deep down since Donald Trump‘s election. I fell into it like a guy on a bungee cord. Yes, exactly…we’re in a monster movie, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and while I’m 70% freaked, I’m also 30% jazzed.

But the thing that really turned my head arrived about 14 paragraphs in. After noting that “political journalism — itself under attack by the president — hasn’t been this ardent since Sept. 11,” Wayne reminds that the World Trade Center attacks “ushered in the era of the superhero, with desire for American might to overcome evil projected onto a single figure.”


Illustration for Teddy Wayne’s “The Perverse Thrill of Chaotic Times” by Anthony Freda and Dan Zollinger.

This reminded me of something I said almost exactly 13 years ago about Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire, in my mind the best rightwing superhero whoop-ass movie ever. Denzel Washington‘s Creasy made the bad guys (i.e., Mexican cartel kidnappers) howl and sweat and scream before killing them like a meter maid hands out a parking ticket, water off a duck’s ass.

In my mind (and in Scott’s, I’m thinking) the cartel guys were stand-ins for the terrorist “other.” Everyone understood that, I think, and millions relished the feeling of payback. No mercy, no quarter. No CG superhero movie has ever made me feel this way. I was in the men’s room adjacent to the Zanuck theatre after my first Man on Fire viewing, and guys at the urinals were going “whoa, fucking Denzel…he doesn’t fuck around…Jesus!”

Man on Fire opened on 4.23.04 — two and a half years after 9.11. I don’t think I’ve ever succumbed quite as fully to a film espousing this kind of rightwing, scorched-earth vengeance. No, I don’t feel good about the likelihood that Steve Bannon and the Breitbart guys probably like Man on Fire as much as I do, but I can’t deny that I feel and endorse what it’s putting out. Yes, still.

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Minor Hitchcock

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Kino Lorber’s Bluray of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (’47) pops on 5.30. Please understand this is a sub-par Hitchcock from his post-Notorious, pre-Strangers on a Train phase, which was largely about treading water. He finally got the old pizazz back with Strangers. Stage Fright and Under Capricorn were also made during this fallow period, which lasted four and 1/2 years, give or take.

I’m tempted anyway, of course. I’ve never seen Paradine in 1080p — only once or twice via standard-def cable. I’ll sit through just about any flush big-studio ’40s film if it looks good enough. Hitchcock’s dp this time was Lee Garmes — Detective Story (’51), The Lusty Men (’52), The Desperate Hours (’55), and Howard Hawks‘ Land of the Pharaohs (’55).

“The Paradine Case is a straightforward portrait of obsession and downfall,” I wrote on 12.16.15. “It’s a carefully measured, decorous, stiff-necked drama about a married, middle-aged attorney (a too-young Gregory Peck) who all but destroys himself when he falls in love with a femme fatale client (Alida Valli) accused of murdering her husband.

“A foolish love affair is one thing, but Peck’s exists entirely in his head as Valli isn’t the least bit interested and in fact is in love with Louis Jordan, whom she was seeing before her husband’s death. Not much of an entry point for a typical moviegoer, and not a lot to savor.

“It’s essentially a romantic triangle piece (Peck, Valli, Jordan) but you can’t identify or even sympathize with Peck as Valli is playing an ice-cold monster. But I’ve always respected the tragic scheme of it. By the second-to-last scene Peck’s humiliation is complete and absolute.”

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Klaatu Barada Nikto

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The way this Amazon drone hovers and then slowly descends towards a landing spot on a big green lawn…well, c’mon. You can tell me this wasn’t staged to resemble the arrival of Michael Rennie‘s spaceship in The Day The Earth Stood Still. Yes, I realize that Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos wasn’t even born until ’64, or 13 years after Robert Wise‘s sci-fi classic opened, but he knows this 1951 film cold, trust me. Don’t tell me Klaatu’s arrival wasn’t in the mind of whomever staged this event…don’t tell me that!

Fair Shake for Baywatch

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As a longtime loather of all things Dwayne Johnson (on 12.8.16 I called him “a comme ci comme ca Republican who’s out to make dough and keep things as vapid and formulaic as possible…an amiable baba with a ripped bod”) and one who harbors strong negative suspicions about Seth Gordon’s  Baywatch (Paramount, 5.26), I feel obliged to turn the other cheek and pass along some buzz from a friend. Take it with a grain.

“I can tell you that everyone is surprised at how well that Baywatch plays and has tested,” the guy says. “It went through development for years and years, but somehow the tone came out right and it apparently channels The Rock’s sweet spot.   [Allegedly] the best comedic use of Johnson to date. There’s a satirical current that sends up Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay cinema, mocking the omnipresent shallowness and overt calculation of every set piece, plot point and storyboarded CGI action sequence. Baywatch wasn’t super-expensive, save for its stars, and will surprise audiences as a smart, funny film that works like gangbusters.”

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All Chatters In All Checkout Lines, Take Heed

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In my experience the worst checkout-line schmoozers (i.e., people who couldn’t care less if their chit-chat is delaying you and the others in line for God knows how many minutes) are found in pharmacies. These are people who are probably dealing with some sort of affliction, and in lieu of a doctor are hoping for a touch of emotional comfort and reassurance from the pharmacist. So they talk about their aches and discomforts and lack of sleep or whatever, and the pharmacist, invested in a general alpha attitude towards all customers, feigns interest and offers suggestions along with a caring smile. Which prompts the chit-chatter to unload all the more about whatever’s ailing. And I’m standing there third or fourth in line, listening and sighing and rolling my eyes.