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Entries in Cinema (20)

Saturday

May082010

You Cannot Have Control of My Television

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Peej says that the back of our television might look something like thisI don't know if this is just hysterics or what:

Hollywood will soon have the power to remotely disable the analog outputs on your set-top box, under a decision by federal regulators on Friday intended to prevent home recording of new movie releases.

The move by the Federal Communications Commission grants cable and satellite providers the power to block consumers from viewing just-released movies in an analog format through a process known as Selectable Output Control. Hollywood requested SOC powers as a condition of allowing providers for the first time to release movies to their in-home customers while the film is in theaters.

The Motion Picture Association of America said its member studios would not authorize the early movie releases unless it won the ability to deploy Selectable Output Control. The reason: Analog video signals can easily be recorded, while digital video standards include a copy protection scheme that lets providers set a no-copy flag on the signal.

Digital rights group, Public Knowledge, said millions of older televisions, including 11 million HD sets, would be affected, a number the MPAA disputes. Owners of those devices would not have the luxury of being able to view the latest theater blockbuster at home through video on-demand services.

Cue the tech geeks who will scream about this, but it's really more than just the greed of a big company and the outrage over disabling a component on a piece of hardware that a person owns in the privacy of their own home.

It's a slippery slope; once they have control of something, they're never going to give it up. It may be innocent and reasonable to deploy a piece of technology that prevents someone from pirating a recently released film; it's entirely another issue when they go ahead and force us to watch commercials and watch television when they want us to watch it. Consumer freedom is precious; giving it up piece by piece is their only hope of maintaining ridiculous profit margins.

Right now, they're making money hand over fist, and they know it. What they're afraid of is losing just a small slice of the pie that they control. There's no reason why a movie shouldn't cost five dollars to see or to own. If it did, everyone would make enough money so that the film business would never go broke. More people would see more films; pirating would almost disappear. Who wants to pay four dollars for a pirated film when you can just buy the real thing for five?

The phony specter of piracy keeps what I, for lack of a better term, call the exclusivity of films in place. Exclusivity, at least as I want to explain it here, means that a film is marketed in such a way as to appear more valuable than it really is; but it's a mirage because none of the films being made are worth much. This one is better, you see, and you can have it if you pay x amount of money for it. They want you to think that such-and-such film, which is probably a mess and plays back like eating a butt sandwich, is worth $25 or more; if anyone ever figured out that it wasn't, and that it could cost a great deal less, without costing the studios or the distributors any real money, the revolt would be too much to bear.

Hollywood would have to start making quality films again. Egad.

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Thursday

Apr152010

They Made a Movie About Me Again

Thursday, April 15, 2010

I have always lived my life like a super hero, and I have always kicked ass. Now, they've made a movie about me.

You're welcome.

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Sunday

Jan312010

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Hey, Miramax Films—I’m not interested in buying you:

The Walt Disney Company has been quietly shopping what remains of its Miramax film unit and has secured seven to 10 interested bidders, according to a mergers and acquisitions expert with knowledge of the process.

The initial discussions indicate a price of over $700 million for the Miramax name and its 700-film library, which is essentially all that remains of the once-mighty art house label, according to the person involved who declined to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.

The interest is sharply higher than a year ago, when Disney briefly floated a Miramax sale but reconsidered because of the recession, reflecting a loosening of the debt markets. It may also indicate renewed interest in investing in entertainment.

A Disney spokeswoman declined to comment.

Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein, who founded Miramax in 1979, are not among the bidders – so far. The Weinstein brothers sold Miramax to Disney in 1993 but ran it until 2005, when they left to found the Weinstein Company.

Wasn’t this the studio that just won huge awards and accolades for yet another Coen Brothers film that figured out a new way to insult the audience? Interestingly, there’s an unreleased Jennifer Aniston film that Miramax is waiting to release, and no, it’s not called Boring Shit Sandwich.

Yes, I went there.

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Wednesday

Jan202010

A Movie I Don't Think I'll See

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

John Wayne, True Grit, 1969

Perhaps it’s my age showing, but I’m not interested:

Paramount Pictures will release Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake “True Grit” on Christmas Day.

At the same time, Par has taken “Footloose,” which was to open June 18, off the release calendar. Remake hit a major roadblock when Kenny Ortega dropped out as director, reportedly over creative differences. True Grit’s” high-profile release date positions the film for an awards run and allows the pic to capitalize on the holiday frame.

Remake stars Jeff Bridges as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, the character made famous by John Wayne. Matt Damon also stars, playing the lawman who teams with Cogburn.

It’s not that it wouldn’t be a good film. It probably will be…whatever films become. The original is too fresh in my memory. You see, for years, I imagined that I was Rooster Cogburn, although, without the eye patch and the overly-familiar way of speaking to people. The Coen Brothers are now just a big whatever to me. Yes, they like to do the inside jokes. At some point, their inside jokes and aimless mysteries and meaningless forays into pathos don’t hold my interest. This is not a character that lends itself to the way that the Coens have been making movies, so, kudos to them for trying something different. Perhaps they’ll remove the contempt they have for their audience from this project.

Footloose? What the hell? I’m still not over the last one. I thought the dancing kids should have been jailed for their insouciance.

I never link to Variety, but the outdated way in which they write their blurbs has always caught my eye. They use “Par” for Paramount, “pic” for picture, and they use “Remake” instead of “The remake.” There’s nothing wrong with it. I just like how quaint and “inside baseball” it is.

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Tuesday

Jan122010

Everyone is a Critic

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Avatar

When the Vatican goes after your movie, expect a payday:

The Vatican newspaper and radio station have called the film “Avatar” simplistic, and criticized it for flirting with modern doctrines that promote the worship of nature as a substitute for religion.

L’Osservatore Romano and Vatican Radio dedicated ample coverage to James Cameron’s big-grossing, 3-D spectacle. But the reviews were lukewarm, calling the movie superficial in its eco-message, despite groundbreaking visual effects.

L’Osservatore said the film “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.” Similarly, Vatican Radio said it “cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”

“Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship,” the radio said.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that — film criticism, with no theological weight — they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s views on the dangers of turning nature into a “new divinity.”

Nature is in no danger of becoming a new divinity—that’s just the poor old Catholic church being consistent with the idea that helping filmmakers make more money is the way to go. Their condemnations and protests made bank for films like The Last Temptation of Christ and The Da Vinci Code, and now they are helping to ensure that Avatar is helped along as well. I guess it means more in the collection plate if they can convince church members to pay some sort of penance for skipping out on Mass to go see the film.

I have no plans to see Avatar in the near future, but I’ll probably watch it when it comes on FX or something like that. The last film that I saw was The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but that doesn’t make me a highbrow. It just means I don’t get out much.

Coach Skip: Basically, there’s three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine.
Kristofferson: Got it.

Now, if nature became a new divinity, based on respecting the ecology and conserving our natural resources, it would hurt the coffers of the Catholic Church. The money they’re budgeting for next year would go to buying canvas tote bags and water bottles you don’t throw away. It would eliminate repression and guilt from the lives of millions, allowing us to be a more open and understanding society about things like sex, sexual desire, loneliness, fear and death. It would make this a cleaner and healthier planet full of guilt-free people who are able to enjoy healthy sex lives and operate without shame and fear clouding their judgement, and that will not do, of course.

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Tuesday

Dec152009

America Needs a Robin Hood of its Own

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Ever feel like things are being run by the Sheriff of Nottingham?

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Monday

Dec142009

If This Was a Better Economy, I'd Endorse This

Monday, December 14, 2009

I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but this is a fairly bad idea:

Founded in Australia more than a decade ago, Gold Class Cinemas is a growing chain of luxury liner-like movie theaters that opened its first California location in Pasadena on Dec. 2. The hallmark of the “Gold Class experience,” as Graham Burke, chief executive of its parent company, Village Roadshow, likes to call it, is a small, glowing button on the table next to your seat that summons a black-clad server to your side.

From this stealthy purveyor of privilege you can order a variety of food and drink or just request another pillow on which to rest your worthy head. Show up early and you can start the whole process in the ultra-luxe lounge. When it’s time for the movie to start, your server will escort you and your dinner to your seat. Each of the six theaters has no more than 40 seats, with seats placed in pods of two well out of earshot of the others — the whole process is relaxed and unhurried.

The food, which is prepared on-site by a full-service kitchen headed up by chef Matthew Herter, includes options that are easy to eat in the dark, such as chinois chicken salad rolls, Wagyu beef sliders, charcuterie and potato chips with blue cheese fondue. It’s tasty but not out of this world.

It’s shocking, really, that the Gold Class concept didn’t already exist in the entertainment capital of the world. It’s also shocking that Gold Class, which boasts nearly $30 tickets and $19 strip steak sandwiches, is throwing open its doors in the midst of the Great Recession. But according to Burke, that didn’t stop the theater from selling out five of its first seven nights and signing up more than 10,000 people for its movie club.

Those may seem like good numbers, but remember—Gold Class Cinemas has four locations in this country right now. Four. It’s not exactly a household name, nor is it actually going to work. I give it a few more years, and then this thing will either establish itself as a permanent niche or die off altogether. We are no longer rolling in money, living high on the hog. Don’t expect any of these to open in Podunk, Alabama any time soon.

I would say that what kills this idea is the flat screen television. You’re going to spend several thousand dollars on one, and then go to a Gold Class Cinema location not near you and spend over a hundred dollars so that you and your spouse can eat overpriced food in luxury chairs someone else’s fat ass spent three hours sitting in? Good luck with that.

I hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t see it working. Americans are getting cheaper fast, and the movies aren’t that damned good anymore.

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Monday

Dec072009

Patricia Highsmith Reconsidered

Monday, December 7, 2009

Scene from Strangers on a Train (1951)

I have often wondered what they will say about me when I'm dead. I hope they say awful things. Nothing else would do.

It's too bad that Patricia Highsmith isn't around to enjoy having terrible things said about her:

"She was a horrible human being," recalls Otto Penzler, one of her publishers. It's an apt eulogy for a novelist whom Graham Greene, rather more charitably, dubbed "the poet of apprehension," a 20th century demiurge whose "world we enter each time with a sense of personal danger, with the head half turned over the shoulder." The first words of Joan Schenkar's splendid, sinewy new biography, "The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith," concede the point: "She wasn't nice," Schenkar admits; "She was rarely polite." Yet the "toxic brilliance of [her] trail goes on glowing" 15 years after her death in 1995 -- when "she drove a last, devoted visitor from her hospital room and then died unobserved."

She, of course, is crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, later creator of Tom Ripley -- whose exploits, chronicled in the five-volume "Ripliad," have inspired numerous films, including Anthony Minghella's 1999 poisoned Venetian valentine "The Talented Mr. Ripley" -- and author of "Strangers on a Train," which Hitchcock adapted in 1951. Misanthropy seeped through her work like blood into terrazzo (one short-story collection even features homicidal pets exacting lethal vengeance on their masters); she hated Jews with rancid fervor; she "seemed to be the sole curator of a Museum of Twentieth-Century American maladies," suggests Schenkar.

But throughout 22 novels and dozens of short stories (if not her improbable children's book, "Miranda the Panda Is on the Veranda"), Highsmith revolutionized the field of suspense fiction, perverting and inverting a genre once synonymous with moral education and civic virtue. Her output rebuked the essentially wholesome stories of Chandler and Hammett, in which detectives punish felons, restore order and admonish readers; "Nothing," Schenkar argues, "could have been more American" than the scenarios Highsmith fashioned in turn: "two men bound together psychologically by the stalker-like fixation of one upon the other."

Greene noted that Highsmith's "characters are irrational, and they leap to life in their very lack of reason; suddenly we realize how unbelievably rational most fictional characters are as they lead their lives from A to Z, like commuters always taking the same train." Biography, too, tends to trundle along settled tracks, departing from the childhood platform, admitting and ejecting passengers at intervals, finally arriving at the terminus of legacy and legend -- a linear transit in many ways ill-suited to the reversals and revisions of subjects' lives. Dispensing with the familiar acorn-to-oak approach, Schenkar instead declares that "[o]bsession . . . will be the organizing principle of this work," and exhumes Highsmith via a taxonomy of neuroses.

Actually, Penzler said this:

"She was a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving person," said acquaintance Otto Penzler. "I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly."

Now THAT'S a eulogy of a life spent making an impact on others. I'd shoot for the moon, but I'd probably just land in the weeds.

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Sunday

Nov292009

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is the Best Film of the Year

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

I don’t do film reviews.

I do go out and see films. I love to watch films when I have the chance. I cannot claim to have seen enough films this year to make more than a passing, half-hearted attempt at gauging what will win an Academy Award. I don’t even know if this film even qualifies, but I don’t care. I saw this entirely by accident in a crappy theater with terrible seats, a tin-horn sound system, and on a screen best described as two king sized beds side by side. Thin, narrow, and poorly illuminated as well. And, despite that, I was enthralled. Quality beat the presentation by a country mile.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is the best film of the year, and it is the best film I’ve seen since I can remember. It is so unique and well done, I can’t compare it to anything else I’ve ever seen. It compares well to two other films by the same folks—Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit film from a few years ago. I hate computer animated films, or films with too many special effects, but I like the animation techniques in all of these films, and it really takes on a new life with The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Deliberately retro, almost intentionally cheesy in some ways, but brilliant to look at.

The voice acting though, is the best. The interplay between Mr. George Clooney and everyone else is so subtle and dead-on that it is not to be believed. There is so much real chemistry between the actors, even when handed nothing but a script and a microphone. There is not enough attention given to voice acting, I believe. It can either work or fall completely flat and sound forced. What Clooney does is to refuse to rush or push anything. He just lives within the sound of his own voice here. He is so capably complemented by Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman that it really does create something unique.

And Hollywood doesn’t give us unique very often. Nor does it give us quality when cheap and loud can be handed out in buckets. The Fantastic Mr. Fox has originality and quality embedded into it. The sprawling sets, the finite detail, and the delight of watching the miserable villains we see in this film are so rewarding. Political correctness goes out the window in this film. Someone had a snit over much of what we see in it—a Hollywood snit backed by focus-group research. Thank God Anderson won as many fights here as he did. I don’t know if he won them all, but he had to have won quite a few.

I think the film that I can compare it to, favorably, is Miller’s Crossing, with a loopy, invented language all its own and characters that are fleshed out and real. There are more ideas explored in the first five minutes of this film than you will see considered in more than half the films that are out right now, combined.

It truly is the best film of the year and I don’t say that lightly. It is an absolute triumph of filmmaking. It makes up for a year in which crap has been king. Do we need to see Robin Williams in anything anymore? Nope. Do we need any more Seth Rogen films? Not on your life. Do we need to hear anything else from Jennifer Aniston and her pals who make films no one remembers? No, and she’s really getting old fast, isn’t she, the poor girl. And I’ll tell you what absolutely hit me—the preview for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland played before The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It shouldn’t have.

Tim Burton should run screaming from this film and get those previews pulled. You cannot compare the randomly arranged muck of Tim Burton’s shit sandwich school of filmmaking with anything related to what Wes Anderson did with The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I realize it was a trailer, but it was a bad trailer. It was cut with a dull butter knife. Alice in Wonderland looked like Johnny Depp’s worst attempt at being mannered and weird since about twenty minutes ago. Really, can’t anyone see through his schtick by now? He’s still playing Benny and Joon for you suckers, complete with hangdog looks and someone else’s ideas. All of the characters in the forthcoming Alice film looked like they were done ten years ago by a terrible designer on the wrong computers. Depp looked like he had a flattened carrot on his head and as if he had insisted upon wearing porn star makeup, complete with a dashing smear in the wrong place. The Cheshire Cat looked like someone’s stuffed kitty. It was horrific and dull looking—much like everything else Tim Burton has been doing since Batman. The presence of Depp alone will bring in the money, but for what? For something pedestrian and half-baked? That’s just sad.

I marveled at the fact, leaving the theater, that Anderson absolutely owns Burton now. Forget the money and the numbers—Anderson owns everyone now. He’s done something that will force everyone to tear up whatever they’re doing and try much harder.

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Sunday

Nov012009

Life Imitates Art

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The White House, 31 Oct 2009

Contrast the image above, with a poorly-positioned Imperial Stormtrooper, and this:

Trying to explain successful efforts by conservatives to topple the Republican establishment’s pick to run in an upstate New York congressional special election, a leading Republican said Sunday that he thinks the country is in the midst of a “political rebellion” driven largely by people who have not previously been vocal in the political process.

“We’re in the middle, I think, of a political rebellion going on in America,” House Majority Leader John Boehner said on CNN’s State of the Union, ”And this rebellion is by people who really have not been actively involved in the political process and they don’t really care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. They want to see people who are going to stand up and protect the future for our kids and grandkids.”

These are ridiculous times. The "stormtroopers" from Star Wars were the bad guys, cloned fanatics who were the "muscle" of the Empire. I don't understand why they are ubiquitous in the culture when, clearly, it was the small band of rebels, who, in their rebellion, were able to outsmart and outfight the Empire. And, of course, what a poor choice of names. No phony outrage here--I'm just pointing out that there is no political "rebellion" in this country. There are simply screeching, overly-vocal people (many with antecedents in the Free Republic movement and in the Ron Paul movement) who are shouting their way into the debate without regard for the truth. It's not your father's Republican Party anymore, but it's still a Democrat Party that can't cooperate with itself or run a one car parade.

What is lacking right now is a loyal opposition that is not insane. We expected good government after last year's election but what we have gotten are countless examples of incompetence, fraud, and bungling.

Whose idea was it to put one near the door of the White House? Harmless though it may be, what a poorly-chosen symbolic image.

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