I’ve called around for some backstory on why Warner Independent chief Mark Gill has been relieved of his duties….zip. All we know for sure is that March of the Penguins weren’t enough to make things right. David Poland says that WIP’s business model amounts to “fiscal folly.” Variety says it’s because Gill’s style “was said to clash with that of Warner production prexy Jeff Robinov, [who] said in a statement that Gill “has done a very good job of establishing Warner Independent.” The inference (it’s always what’s left unsaid that tells the true tale) seems to be that Robinov doesn’t think Gill has done a good job of maintaining or growing the division. Anyway, it’s too bad. I mean, it’s always a bit of a bummer when relationship don’t work out. Variety says Warner Bros. exec up of production Polly Cohen is in talks to fill Gill’s shoes. I mean, in a manner of speaking.
A brilliant move on the part of the ad guys who put together the new Casino Royale trailer: they start it off in black and white, thus signifying this 007 flick won’t be following the usual pattern. And yet the snippets of high-octane action and sex scenes that follow suggest that it will be, more or less, the same old thing…so who knows? Daniel Craig‘s James Bond, described by Judi Dench in the trailer a “a blunt instrument,” seems like the most Sean Connery -like of all the Bonds because he has within him (and particularly in his boxer’s face and buff physique) shades of the primitive brute. At the same time I think we all recognize that Jason Bourne has overtaken James Bond as the definitive espionage-action figure of our time. Matt Damon‘s Bourne is cybered and fibered into the here-and-now; 007 has always been (and always will be) a throwback to the martini-sipping sexual ethos of the early to mid ’60s.
If this Screen Daily review is indicative of general critical reaction, poor Ed Burns has struck out again as a director-writer with his latest film, The Groomsmen. Apparently a kind of I Vitteloni-ish, stag-party psychological meltdown drama, it costars Burns, John Leguizamo, Britanny Murphy, Jay Mohr, Matthew Lillard and
Donal Logue. Burns’ continuing failure to re-generate or improve upon the dramatic gravity in his debut film, 1995’s The Brothers McMullen, has become a cliche, as these final two lines from reviewer Dan Fainaru suggests: “A decade or so ago [Burns] was regarded as a possible suburban answer to Woody Allen, albeit younger and better looking. But while he is certainly more handsome than his model, it is not quite enough.”
As I did in my review, Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has remarked how under-utilized Phillip Seymour Hoffman is as the big baddie in Mission: Impossible III. “Hoffman’s involvement hasn’t been fully exploited [as] this picture denies Hoffman a chance to fully express his character’s personality, to show a little nuance, a mentality behind the evil, some humor or self-awareness behind the malevolence, or to toy with Ethan beyond the simple threat…if you have an actor like Hoffman on board, you’d think it would behoove the writers to cook up at least one big scene to let the man loose to really do his thing.” One wonders if Hoffman might have had one or two such scenes in the shooting script, only to see them trimmed in order to favor the star. As I put it on 4.19, “[Hoffman] kicks ass with the lines and scenes he’s been given, but somebody wanted this to be Tom Cruise’s film.” Threatening second leads have been put in their place before. I’m told by a friend who was close to the backstage action on Sydney Pollack‘s Absence of Malice that Sally Field‘s role as a ruthless journalist was modified and/or reconfigured when it became apparent that she was generating more wattage than star Paul Newman. It also allegedly happened to Jennifer Jason Leigh when her performance in Barbet Schroeder‘s Single White Female seemed to be overtaking that of the presumed star, Bridget Fonda.
I guess there must be a lot of Southland Tales to tell because, as the official Cannes Film Festival website proclaims, Richard Kelly ‘s apocalyptic drama-supplemented-with-music-by-Mobey runs two hours and 40 minutes. That in itself implies sweep, longing, ambition. Ron Howard‘s The DaVinci Code, which is showing out of competition at the beachside festival, runs eight minutes shorter, or 152 minutes.
Merissa Marr‘s Wall Street Journal piece about how Tom Cruise has lost his footing with women fans (and what his people are doing to tryin and get some of it back) echoes what the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell told me a while back, which is that women went cold on Cruise last summer, which was perhaps due more to his attack on Brooke Shields over post-partum depression issues. “At that moment, he moved from the realm of acceptable eccentricity to something scary and cruel,” comments Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, in Marr’s piece. “It’s easier to forgive his joking about placenta than what is perceived to be an attack on a vulnerable woman’s real problem.” Marr comes to more or less the same conclusion I came to in an earlier piece about Cruise’s image problems, which is that they aren’t bad enough to hurt Mission: Impossible III in a serious way, but they may be bad enough to shave at the profit margins. Enough so that Paramount number-crunchers may slide their glasses down to the bridge of their nose and go, “Hmmmmm…yeah.”
Stephen Colbert‘s Bush-lacerating address before the recent White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — an extremely dry riff on the power and persistence of denial — is worth a looksee.
Thanks for the supportive, encouraging comments about the newly designed main page, which is simultaneously a default home page as well as a kind of parallel-universe home page, since “Elsewhere Classic” — or the good old Hollywood Elsewhere — is alive and kicking and just a click away. The next move is to create a click-thru “comments” template that would link to each item. In fact, I’m trying to figure how to set this up right now.
The biggest flop of the summer? I liked Poseidon and all, but financial prospects for this Warner Bros. release (5.12) are not good. It cost $160 million to make. To be regarded as a seriously performing hit, a movie of this sort needs to bring in $35 or $40 million on opening weekend. Right now, 10 days from opening day, tracking indicates perhaps a $15 million opening weekend at best. Having decided against a nationwide sneak last weekend, Warner Bros. is now trying to jack up interest with big ad buys. A 90-second
The latest NRG numbers on The DaVinci Code are huge — 94% general awareness, 58% definite interest and 25% first choice. Ron Howard’s film (and I have to say that David Poland’s nickname for this film — Opie’s Dae — is inspired) may be the biggest film of the summer because it seems to have the broadest advance interest among the four quadrants. It doesn’t appear to be as big with under-25s as, say, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest or Brett Ratner‘s X-Men: The Last Stand but still…
This morning marks the launch of what I’m calling “Elsewhere Now“, which is the new default version of Hollywood Elsewhere. From here on, the front page of the column will be a series of items all running the same length, most of them WIRED-type quickies (which can be read in their entirety on the main page or, if they’re longer than 105 words, will require a jump) with a thrice-weekly feature story thrown in with a little clapboard icon signifying this. For those of you who hate change in any form, this isn’t as big a shake-up as it might seem. If you don’t like the new design just click on “switch to Elsewhere Classic” and you’ll be taken to the standard page with the “old” design (i.e., the one I started with in September 2004). There may be one or two more tweaks or touch-ups over the next day or so, but nothing much. Two designers co-created this new look — one of them is Team Elsewhere’s Jon Rahoi — and if you ask me a beyond-splendid job has been rendered. (Rahoi, a San Francisco-based programmer and web design professional, lists Amazon, Hewlett-Packard and Lucent among his clients.) In any case, sweating out this new design plus being in Houston and travelling on Continental Airlines is why I haven’t posted as much as I usually do the last three days, but it’ll be the usual-usual from here on. I mean, it won’t be the usual-usual because now there are two (clap!), two (clap!)…two Hollywood Elsewhere’s in one.
I for one (and I know I’m not the only one) thoroughly respect Universal honcho Ron Meyer‘s decision in late December 2004 to drive out to a prison in Taft, California, in order to visit wiretapper Anthony Pellicano, who was incarcerated there. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out, and you can double or triple that if you’re behind bars. So in my view guys who visit you in the slammer (especially during the Chistmas holidays) are good hombres . Obviously Meyer’s visits implies this or that, but let’s take a second and acknowledge what loyalty is all about .