The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein, known for his notepad-and-shoe- leather scoops, has written an interesting analysis piece about Charlie Kaufman‘s Synecdoche, New York. It sounds a little bit like an in-house Sidney Kimmel Entertainment memo, as it includes no reporting or even quotes.
The title of Goldstein’s piece is “Synecdoche could improve with edit”; the subhead is “Hypnotic film may undergo further cuts.” The Hollywood Elsewhere response: “No shit?”
Potential distributors eyeballing Synecdoche, New York in Cannes “were concerned about its length, especially the fragmented, inscrutable, increasingly fast-paced segments near its conclusion,” Goldstein writes. “In fact, those sequences could potentially be slotted any number of ways, replaced with cut scenes or even excised without affecting the film’s overall impact. A narrative thread doesn’t exist after a certain point in the movie, anyway.”
This is the sharpest point made in the piece. A meditative, dream-like quality does eventually overtake the film, becoming more psychological or analytical, and certainly less of a traditional-type “story.” It is, finally, what it is. And it seems on some level a little unkind to try and shoehorn a movie like Synecdoche, New York into a linear narrative form. You could, I suppose, shorten it somewhat — down from 124 minutes to 105 or 110 minutes.
“Kaufman explained that after the film was cut to three hours, there was more than one version he assembled with different scenes to whittle it to its 124-minute length,” Goldstein continues. “And despite his reputation for an uncompromising vision, he said he’d be amenable to further editing depending on which distributor picks up the film for North America.
“For despite his artistic goals, commercial dictates can’t be ignored. Producer Sidney Kimmel Entertainment (which has undergone a reorganization after recent layoffs) needs to justify the film’s budget, said to be not far above $20 million but rumored to have cost more.
Kimmel, along with fellow producers and longtime Kaufman collaborators Anthony Bregman and (originally slated director) Spike Jonze, deserve kudos for shepherding this uncompromising vision to life. But it likely will pose a unique marketing challenge, even for the pit bull tenacity of Bingham Ray, who handles marketing for SKE films.
“Any feature that dares to run more than two hours risks provoking reflexive groans from audiences and even most critics. Even if the content justifies it — as it did in spades in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 158-minute masterpiece There Will Be Blood — a film’s length has become all too important an issue among audiences with shrinking attention spans.
“In the case of Synecdoche however, less might ultimately be more since it plays like an intense and inscrutable dream. Kaufman could further distill its best scenes to evoke the experience he wants to convey, as if downloading the film from his own idiosyncratic brain. And at some point, on DVD or in an art house run down the road, he could present one of his three- or four-hour cuts, giving an even more personal view into his fascinating mind.”

24 designers, 7 store and service providers, 7 gadgets, 7 publications, 7 sips ‘n’ snacks, 5 items from the pharmacy, 4 Manhattan places and 3 ways of getting around — a list of brand names (60 in all, give or take) that appear in Sex and the City. Compiled by Vanity Fair Daily‘s Kate Ahlborn and Louisine Frelinghuysen.

Variety‘s Peter Bart has launched a gut-punch blog-ish thing that’ll probably seem preferable to his weekly Sunday column because it’ll bring out the primal stuff. Like this complaint riff about Steven Soderbergh‘s Che having failed to dramatize the brutality of the Fidel Castro regime once it took power in early 1959.

True — the movie doesn’t do this. Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Peter Buchman, obviously weren’t interested in going there. The movie’s basic scheme (i.e., showing a successful insurgency vs. showing one that failed) wouldn’t have accommodated depictions of firing squads and other cruelties, and in fact would have been diluted by same. Hey, Peter — how come David O. Selznick didn’t show Rhett Butler dodging the Union Army sea blockades in Gone With the Wind? And where were the depictions of debauchery between Butler and at least one of Belle Whatling‘s prostitutes?

The 2008 MTV Movie Awards in two minutes.

“The Comeback Id,” Todd S. Purdum‘s Vanity Fair scathing piece about Bill Clinton, and Clinton’s enraged reaction to it (audio and video). Clinton’s spokesman Jay Carson issued a statement in response to the Huffington Post piece about his comments, to wit: “President Clinton was understandably upset about an outrageously unfair article, but the language today was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it.”

The time has come to put away all suspicions and convictions about Hillary Clinton being a conniving sociopath of the first order. Because the game is over and it’s time for unity. But all right-thinking people know who and what she is, and they will pass it along. For she is a liar, and the father of it.

“A national IQ test for women takes place starting tonight — it’s called Sex and the City,” wrote conservative-minded film critic Debbie Schlussel three days ago in a piece called “Hags and the City.” The article was highlighted today (6.2) by the Village Voice‘s Roy Edroso in a column about reactions to the film among right-wing bloggers.
“If you like this TV-show-turned-feature-length-film and you’re female, you failed. If you like it, and you’re a guy, you threw away your man card long ago. You’re not a failure, just gay (like the people who created this show)…not to mention, completely bereft of testosterone.
“A close-up shot of a woman’s pubic hair sticking out of her bathing suit, and another woman defecating in her pants — both are, um, ‘highlights’ of the SATC movie. GUH-ROSS. I thought I was watching a bad, juvenile frat boy movie. This is what substitutes for haute culture for women in America, these days. Very sad. But not as sad and miserable as these four haggish women, who like their former TV show, can’t be called ‘past their prime’ because they never were ‘prime.’ Just primitive…and reliably sleazy and low-class.
“Unfortunately, they’re Delphic oracles to far too many American women, if the long lines of drooling women who packed four large theaters at a promotional screening I attended were any indication.”

Some “Funny or Die” Sex and the City video, sent by a friend. I’d normally watch it before posting, but try doing that as you’re sitting shotgun in a little subcompact on a Connecticut freeway with the sun in your eyes.

“The DVD is only 10 years old and yet the doom merchants are predicting it could join the likes of VHS tapes – vanishing from high-street stores and household shelves,” reports the Guardian‘s Katie Allen. “With reports that Apple is poised to launch full-length film downloads in Britain and other companies offering their own video-on-demand services, even DVD industry insiders admit the format may eventually die out.
“Yet they argue that the collectability of box sets, the convenience of re-watchable discs and the relatively slow growth of downloads mean there is still plenty of life left in the little silver discs.
“The British Video Association (BVA), which last month celebrated the DVD’s 10-year milestone at a gala dinner complete with metallic dress code, expects to hold more celebrations in a decade’s time. Lavinia Carey, head of the industry group, says that while its research shows the growing popularity of services such as the BBC’s iPlayer and movie downloads on Tiscali, consumers still prefer to own – and give as presents – physical copies.
“Lots of people are getting used to the idea of accessing their content online but there is also this collecting habit,” she says. “There are so many uses for the physical disc that people won’t just drop it like a hot brick. Particularly for TV shows….people love the boxed sets. They love to have the collection and they love to be able to watch it when they want.”
“The BVA concedes that after being largely flat in volume and value terms in recent years, the DVD market is unlikely to see much growth. But digital films will absorb only a fraction of home entertainment spending — about 6% by 2012.
“Screen Digest, a media research firm, predicts that by 2012 digitally delivered films will make up 2.6% of total spending of about 2.2 billion poounds on full-length films.