Clearly the earthquake-tsunami tragedy that recently happened in Samoa (and American Samoa) has been devastating. Numerical perspective matters not to people who’ve lost homes or loved ones or both, but so far I’m hearing that about 100 have been reported dead so far vs. nearly 230,000 killed in the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami. I know this will make me sound uncaring but my first thought, to be 100% honest, was whether we’re going to see any Roland Emmerich video footage of the waves. I’m just thinking of the footage that got around in ’04. Sorry.
The best quote in Doreen Carvajal and Michael Cieply‘s 9.30 N.Y. Times story about the Roman Polanski furor is one from Marie-Louise Fort, a French lawmaker in the Assembly who has sponsored anti-incest legislation. Fort told Carvajal that she doesn’t believe that public opinion “is spontaneously supporting Mr. Polanski at all…I believe that there is a distinction between the mediagenic class of artists and ordinary citizens that have a vision that is more simple.”
Exactly — “simple” as in bad or good, black or white, torches and pitchforks. Don’t muck things up with amoral qualifications or compassionate perspective or legalistic what-have-you’s. And let’s really keep the feelings and wishes of the now-45-year-old victim out of this. Because this is our deal! This man is a demonic, drug-dispensing, due-process-defying dwarf who must suffer for his sins, and preferably in a medieval cell with straw on the floor and a ball and chain around his ankle.
A just-released report on 2010 moviegoing habits by Gordon Paddison‘s Stradella Road, a new entertainment marketing firm, said that if movie marketers want to reach younger moviegers in hawking their films, they need to advertise big-time in daily newspapers because print is where it’s at for the under-30 generation.
No, seriously, the report actually said the wisest strategy is to advertise on sites like Hollywood Elsewhere — i.e., smart, provocative, no-holds-barred news-and-discussion sites that deliver cutting-edge commentary, conversation-starters and back-and-forth rancor between the editor/webmaster and readers. Okay, it didn’t actually say that either.
Triple serious and no more put-ons: If movie marketing aces want to sell younger moviegoers on their films, the report urged them “to embrace social networks or risk being ignored,” a story posted last night by Variety‘s Marc Graser summarized.
“The study found that teens and twentysomethings are especially focused on being able to customize entertainment and are quick to share their opinions with others digitally — especially as usage of the Internet, mobile devices and DVRs has become more widespread. An estimated 94% of all moviegoers are now online.
“The younger demo is especially key in spreading word of mouth, with 73% of moviegoers surveyed having profiles on social networking sites.
“It’s a point that’s been made a number of times as sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have grown in popularity. But the study is one of the few to break down specific age groups and how they consume movies and the marketing messages leading up to their releases.
* Eloi (age 13-17) are “all about sharing information and mostly instinctual, proudly anti-literate, lemming-over-the-cliff group thinking,” the report didn’t say, although it might as well have. With social networking a critical communication tool, easily-led Eloi go to movies in large groups and are heavily influenced by their friends’ impulsive, trailer-prompted, defiantly ignorant opinions. This is due to the demo’s staunch refusal (except in the case of X-factor non-Eloi types, who comprise maybe 10% of this group) to read and consider information on movie sites. “They also prefer texting over having phone conversations. More than 70% also surf the web and text while watching TV, and 67% of them socialize with friends online,” the report said.
* Twentysomething Eloi (age 18-29) “are digital natives who have grown up with technology” and are more likely to go online for movie info and to share what they think about movies via social networks (58% socialize with friends online). They use the Internet to find any kind of information and place a high value on online consumer reviews and sites that aggregate reviews.”
* Auds in their 30s (i.e., those starting to use their brains and show actual aesthetic judgment regarding films they’ll pay to see) are “time-constrained, with parenthood dominating their decisions. They split their moviegoing trips between their children and their spouses.” They “spend the highest number of hours online and rep the highest use of technology (Internet, broadband access, DVR ownership and cell phone).” They also view the most recorded TV and skip the most ads via their DVRs.”
* Those in their 40s, the report says, “embrace traditional media like magazines and newspapers, with moviegoing dominated by special family occasions and influenced by teens.” (Really? The internet has been going great guns for at least 15 years and people in their 40s — i.e., those who were in their late 20s and early 30s in the mid ’90s — are basically into dead-tree media? What kind of lazy, grass-munching wildebeests are they?)
* And fiftysomethings “avoid crowds, prefer matinees and ‘skip ads because they think there are too many commercials on TV.'” Fifty-somethings prefer matinees? What else do they prefer? Browsing through funeral home brochures in their spare time? These are 50-somethings trying to live like 80-somethings. People looking to withdraw from life as much as possible. People who watch a lot of TV and like to huddle down with warm blankets and play with their grandchildren twice a year. Paddison needs to find some new 50-somethings for his survey — i.e., people with an actual pulse.
The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond nearly reported today that Sony Classics will be distributing Michael Hoffman‘s The Last Station. I mean, he didn’t actually report this but he did strongly, heavily hint at same. The Leo Tolstoy/Westside Pavillion drama, which costars Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti, will open in December in order to Oscar-qualify all around.
“I’m not too shy to go and talk to the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and to ask him once and for all to look at [Roman Polanski‘s situation],” said Harvey Weinstein in an article posted today in the Independent.
“The problem [has] to do with the legal situation in the state. They are doing this because they want a circus, to make their toughness overt — and that is where I draw the line. This is the government of the United States not giving its word and recanting on a deal, and it is the government acting irresponsibly and criminally.
“It is a shocking way to treat such a man. Polanski went through the Holocaust and the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family. How do you go from the Holocaust to the Manson family with any sort of dignity? In those circumstances, most people could not contribute to art and make the kind of beautiful movies he continues to make.
“When Martin Scorsese was up to win best director for Gangs of New York, we faced Polanski and The Pianist. We were campaigning hard for Marty because he had never won best director, but when Marty lost to Roman, he turned to me and said: “I’m so happy right now. Of all the people in the world that I’d want to lose to, it’s Roman.
“‘You have to understand that Polanski’s films have influenced me as an artist all these years and his terrible political situation has been something we have all had to suffer through,’ he said. ‘We won because Roman won.”
“I think the reason we can all be on Polanski’s side over this is not to do with what happened in 1977. It’s to do with the fact that the punishment for what happened so many years ago had already been decided.
“The deal was that if he spent time in prison, which he did pre-sentencing, his sentence would be commuted but when he came back to sentencing the judge went back on the deal. Forget about the Seventies era and whether this is excusable – this is a miscarriage of justice, and the government is making him a scapegoat.”
Artists who have signed one of two “Free Roman Polanski” petitions going round — one being organized in the U.S. and another in Europe by French philisopher Bernard-Henri Levy — include Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Martin Scorsese, Monica Bellucci, Tilda Swinton, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, John Landis, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Asia Argento, Terry Gilliam, Wong Kar Wai, Darren Aronofsky, Michael Mann, Julian Schnabel, Tom Tykwer, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Pascal Bruckner, Neil Jordan, Isabelle Adjani, Arielle Dombasle, Isabelle Huppert, William Shawcross, Yamina Benguigui, Mike Nichols, Diane von Furstenberg, Claude Lanzmann and Paul Auster.
“American lynch mobs never die; they only become more self-righteous about their savagery.” — critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in a 9.28 posting about Roman Polanski‘s situation.
If rectum bombs catch on in the terrorist world, airline passengers in the near future will have to submit to scanning devices that are more penetrating and all-seeing than ones now being used.
I’m just riffing here, but it seems as if the idea of each and every passenger being given a mandatory “security enema” (i.e., a biological scanning device that determines if a plastic explosive is lodged in a passenger’s anal cavity) prior to boarding isn’t as absurd as it sounds. Are we at the brink of an era in which anal scanners will have to be built and installed in airports worldwide, and in which everyone will have to arrive at airports at least an hour earlier than they do now to allow for this?
A few hours before Roman Polanski was arrested in Zurich, Ratner taped an interview for BlogTalkRadio’s “Movie Geeks United” show and announced he’ll be producing a sequel to Marina Zenovich‘s 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
On top of which Movie Geeks United will post a two-hour Roman Polanski “Director Series” discussion on Sunday, 10.4.
Hosts Jamey DuVall and Jerry Dennis will talk with Ratner, Bobbie O’Steen, the wife of Roman’s late editor, Sam O’Steen (Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Frantic); cinematographer William A. Fraker (Rosemary’s Baby); and critic Keith Uhlich.
Also featured will be highlights from a January 2008 interview with Marina Zenovich, director of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
How exactly is Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost, a political thriller costarring Pierce Brosnan and Ewan MaGregor, considered to be in limbo now that Polanski is temporarily in a Swiss slammer?
Pierce Brosnan, Ewan MacGregor in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost
We’re in a down market for smallish character- or plot-driven adult films (and especially ones starring Brosnan and MacGregor), but since Saturday’s arrest this film is in great shape…hello? Supermarket moms will want to see this now so they can hiss Polanski’s name when it appears on the credits. And with any luck rural retards will be out protesting it with placards when it comes to their plex…”we don’t want this film shown in our God-fearing Christian community!,” etc. Before Saturday The Ghost was looking like an in-and-outer and maybe even a straight-to-DVD title, but now it’s got a fighting chance to actually make some money.
And getting it ready for release will be a snap, even if Polanski gets serious American jail time, which he won’t.
Several weeks’ worth of extra editing, music scoring and sound mixing may be required before it’s ready to play commercially, but Polanski will have some measure of limited freedom once he arrives on U.S. soil. One way or the other he’ll be able to do the work soon enough, even if he gives orders from a jail cell about which music clip to use and where exactly to cut, etc. 2009 technology will find a way.
Brosnan plays a former British prime minister and McGregor a ghostwriter hired to help complete his memoirs in this adaptation of the novel by Robert Harris. Pic also features Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Olivia Williams and James Belushi.
And incidentally…
The people who requested the Swiss to detain Polanski — the U.S. Marshals Southwest Regional Fugitive Task Force (representing the Los Angeles D.A.’s office) plus U.S. State and Justice department officials — are, according to this 9.29 story, so caught up in their bureaucratic rigamarole that “the expected U.S. extradition request” regarding the delivery of Polanski to U.S. soil “has not yet been received by the Swiss.”
This is the slow-as-molasses American legal system. Anyone who’s ever gotten a ticket from a Highway Patrolman and then waited at least 20 minutes as he sits in his car and slowly fills out the ticket with the squawking radio going the whole time knows the truth of this.
Can you imagine being the guy in charge of flying Polanski back to the U.S. and asking a subordinate, “So the Swiss have our formal extradition request…right?” And being told, “Well, they’ll have it before too long.” And you saying, “Whaddaya mean, it’s not ready? You guys have known we’d be arresting him in Zurich for the last two or three weeks…what have you been doing?” And the subordinate saying, “Well, we were just told there’s this extra form that Justice needs, and it requires eight separate signatures and two of them are out sick.”
You have to wait until the 7:00 mark for Arianna Huffington and the Morning Joe gang to talk about the Polanski case. First they run a tape of Zurich Film Festival jury member Debra Winger protesting the arrest, Arianna then compares Polanski to Pablo Picasso (the title of her Picasso biography described him as a “creator and destroyer“) but also wonders “if this is the best use of everyone’s time and energy.”
In response to this a shocked Mika Brzezinski goes “wow” and then suggests with zero proof was Polanski might be (or might have been) some kind of chronic offender with underage girls. (Pat Buchanan later seconds this suspicion,.) And then Mike Barnacle and Willie Geist wonder “why now?” If only they’d bothered to read Michael Wolff‘s 9.28 Newser piece.
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/reviews/"><img src=
"https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/reviews.jpg"></a></div>
- Really Nice Ride
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More » - Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More » - One of the Better Apes Franchise Flicks
It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/classic/"><img src="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/heclassic-1-e1492633312403.jpg"></div>
- The Pull of Exceptional History
The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More » - If I Was Costner, I’d Probably Throw In The Towel
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More » - Delicious, Demonic Otto Gross
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »