The UBS Evening Movie News 11.22.07
Posted by George H. Sirois on 11.22.2007
The “Giving Thanks for Progress” Edition…
Welcome everyone to the latest edition of The UBS Evening Movie News. I'm George H. Sirois, and Happy Thanksgiving! This week, I'll be going into a few recent details about the WGA strike and I'll also be sticking up for a movie that didn't get anywhere near the attention it deserved. Keep in mind that I started writing this edition pretty early in the week since my Tuesday and Wednesday of this week involve me being away from a computer. So let's get on with it…
TOP STORY
According to industry insiders who've been in the thick of the shuttle diplomacy to nudge the AMPTP back to the table with the WGA, indications from both camps is that there is a deal to be made. The clutch of agents who were key to getting the sides to set the Nov. 26 date knew that no good would come of a purely pro forma meeting that would result in the two sides butting heads again after five minutes.
Negotiations are expected to take place on neutral turf — much like the last negotiations on Nov. 4, the night before the guild went out, that were held at the Sofitel hotel in West Hollywood. All other meetings since the WGA and AMPTP began formal talks in July were held at Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers HQ in Encino or WGA West's Fairfax Avenue HQ.
The sides also agreed to a "news blackout" in an effort to clamp down on the spin and counter-spin and put the emphasis on the work to be done at the negotiating table.
The WGA will hold its final events today before taking a five-day Thanksgiving break. In New York, the guild is staging a picket at Sony headquarters; in Hollywood, it's holding off on picketing in favor of a Labor Solidarity rally at 1 p.m., followed by a march on Hollywood Boulevard. Alicia Keyes is tentatively scheduled to perform at the rally.
The breakthrough that brought the two sides back to the table came last week, following days of dialogue among key partners of the Big Five agencies — primarily CAA's Bryan Lourd, Endeavor's Rick Rosen, ICM's Jeff Berg, UTA's Jim Berkus and WMA's Jim Wiatt — and the four top execs who have been most directly engaged in the AMPTP's talks: News Corp.'s Peter Chernin, Disney's Robert Iger, Warner Bros.' Barry Meyer and CBS Corp.'s Leslie Moonves.
That foursome kept in close contact as the strike raged during the past two weeks. Meanwhile, the agents conferred and agreed as of last week to largely channel their efforts through Lourd, who had successfully reached out to WGA exec director David Young.
By Thursday, there was an agreement that the sides would have a stealth meeting at Lourd's Beverly Hills home for lunch. It was agreed that the AMPTP side would send two ambassadors, Chernin and Iger, to meet with Young and WGA West prexy Patric Verrone. CBS' Moonves has been among the most active in working the phones and talking with top show runners and industry rainmakers, but he was at his home base in Gotham at the time the meeting was set.
Because none of the principals are talking about the meeting, it's not at all clear what was said over lunch at Lourd's on Friday. But Sources close to both camps say there was enough positive momentum for the sides to quickly agree — much to the surprise of many guild and studio insiders — to get back to the bargaining table right after Thanksgiving.
If this isn't the perfect piece of news to give right before Thanksgiving, I don't know what is. Keeping in the spirit of the holiday, I'm giving thanks that some headway has been made in this mess and I really hope this gets settled soon.
Obviously, I want the writers to get what they want, but if there winds up being a compromise so that both sides are happy, then great! Come on, people! Let's make this happen! I don't want the Justice League movie to be a freakin' train wreck!
Credit: Variety.com
SYBIL THE SOOTHSAYER
UPCOMING MOVIES
This week, two films open on Wednesday the 21st: Hitman and The Mist. I can't go too much into Hitman since I never played the game, so I don't know how faithful the film is, but it looks like fun and Timothy Olyphant's a solid enough actor to keep it afloat. The Mist, however, looks pretty damn good and having Frank Darabont not only be in the director's chair but also be the screenwriter gives me a lot of faith in this.
UPCOMING DVD'S
You remember all the hype around Dragon Wars, right? No? Well, now you can get caught up with it when it comes to stores on January 8 on DVD and Blu-Ray. The disc also comes with a making-of featurette, animatics and a photo gallery. The DVD's retail price will be $28.95 and the Blu-Ray will sell for $38.95.
In case you were wondering about The Brave One, this Jodie Foster film will be released on DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on February 5. The DVD version will also have a 22-minute featurette and 7 minutes worth of additional scenes. The HD and Blu-Ray discs also offer the same features, but the HD disc will be sold as an HD-DVD / DVD combo with the movie being featured in 1080p on one side and a standard disc on the other. The HD and Blu-Ray versions will cost $35.99, while the standard one is worth $28.98.
MOVIE TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Valkyrie
JIM WEBBING AND HIS IT'S-THE-HONEST-TRUTH-DEPARTMENT
Highway to Development Hell: Tom Hanks' The Da Vinci Code prequel Angels & Demons has become the first big screen casualty of the Hollywood writer's strike. Executives at Columbia Pictures have postponed production on the Ron Howard film as the strike begins a third week. Sources claim Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman's script still needs work, and he is on strike with his Writers Guild of America brethren. The film bosses have also put the film's release date back from the end of 2008 to 2009. The strike has already hammered TV schedules in America with all late-night chat shows immediately shutting down and production on a host of sitcoms and dramas coming to a halt.
There are a few movies that I'm glad to see halted by the strike, and this is one of them. The studios could have easily pushed ahead with production before the script could be perfected, but they're starting to realize just how valuable writers are to the creative process. The writers may be vilified in the press for costing production people their jobs, but you're not going to get anywhere with the production of the film unless there is some sort of blueprint to go by. The script is the blueprint, as Peter Guber once said. It is the foundation that the rest of the project is built upon, and without a sturdy foundation – or a script that has all of its kinks worked out – then the film's not going to go anywhere.
On a personal note, I hope the script to Angels & Demons turns out better than the one for The Da Vinci Code. Or as I like to call it, "The Exposition Express" since so much of the film was Tom Hanks telling the backstory while riding shotgun in a car.
Credit: WENN
Maybe a re-make of Jaws 3 is in the works…: The majority of moviegoers who saw Beowulf over the weekend sought out 3-D theaters to see it in, Paramount indicated Sunday. Although the film played in just 740 theaters equipped with digital 3-D projectors, the film earned twice as much in those theaters than in all the rest combined. In all, the film grossed $28.1 million -- a figure that came in at the low end of analysts' expectations. Nevertheless, Paramount marketing and distribution chief Rob Moore told today's (Monday) Los Angeles Times: "This will do great work in terms of convincing exhibitors that they should be investing in 3-D technology."
Cheryl and I and our friends Charlie and Ryan saw this last Saturday at the Lincoln Square IMAX Theater and everyone really enjoyed it. I had a blast with it, and a lot had to do with the 3-D technology. It looked terrific and it also worked really well with this particular story. A character like Beowulf – a larger-than-life hero who tells even larger stories of his past conquests – deserves a treatment like this. The only thing I have to stress is that this should not be a step towards the status quo. Just because this film worked doesn't mean that every film should start looking at the possibility of being in 3-D.
Would this work as one or two releases per year? Absolutely. It's obviously a very powerful storytelling tool. But filmmakers definitely shouldn't stop using the traditional means of filmmaking and just start using animated renditions of actors. Please keep that in mind so that, whenever some schmuck decides to remake Citizen Kane, he doesn't just put a CGI rendition of Welles in it and shoot it in 3-D. (You know it's bound to happen sooner or later.)
Credit: Studio Briefing
FILM MUSIC NEWS
* 2008 BMI Student Composer Awards Competition Opens
* AFM President Tom Lee Says Artist Royalties on Radio "Vital"
* Orchestrator Pete Anthony Elected President of RMA LA Chapter
* The Scoreboard: Hundreds of Composers and Their Projects
* Signings and Projects: Marc Streitenfeld, Mark Adler, Scott Glasgow and more
* The Chart Doctor - by Ron Hess - "Conduct Yourself Accordingly, Part 3"
* Music Technology and You - by Peter Lawrence Alexander - "The Vienna Ensemble in Action"
* Soundtrack Review: "Southland Tales" (Moby, Various Artists)
* Final Note - by Mark Northam - "The New Editors: When Composers Stop Composing"
Download This Week's Issue at: www.filmmusicweekly.com.
VOX POPULI
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: November 16 – 18, 2007
1. Beowulf: $27,515,871
Total: $27,515,871
2. Bee Movie: $14,008,444
Total: $93,570,695
3. American Gangster: $12,875,250
Total: $100,650,615
4. Fred Claus: $11,914,323
Total: $35,712,980
5. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: $9,630,085
Total: $9,630,085
6. Dan in Real Life: $4,343,185
Total: $36,931,806
7. No Country For Old Men: $3,075,722
Total: $4,907,572
8. Lions For Lambs: $2,896,594
Total: $11,584,339
9. Saw IV: $2,248,805
Total: $61,766,718
10. Love in the Time of Cholera: $1,924,860
Total: $1,924,860
Ever have that moment when you're flipping through the channels on HBO, and you come across a movie that you've heard about but never took the time to watch? And then, when you watch it, you are angry at yourself for not having seen it sooner? That's happened to me on more than one occasion, with Searching for Bobby Fischer and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as two major examples.
Now, I have one more movie to add to that list: Idiocracy. For those who haven't heard about this one, and there are quite a lot of you that haven't for reasons I'll get into later, here's a quick rundown of the plot. Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph take part in a military experiment where they are put into cryo-freeze for one year. While they're under, the project gets scrapped and the complex gets torn down. 500 years pass before the two of them are awakened, and when they come to, they realize the world's intelligence has declined so much, they're the two smartest people in the world.
Keep in mind that this film was co-written and directed by Mike Judge, he of "Beavis & Butthead," "King of the Hill" and Office Space. After watching this, and loving it, I wanted to know why a movie of this high quality was released with so little hype and left theaters so quickly. So I looked it up on wikipedia, and here's what I found regarding its release:
"Lack of concrete information from 20th Century Fox led to speculation that Fox may have actively tried to keep the film from being seen by a large audience, while fulfilling a contractual obligation for theatrical release prior to a DVD release, according to Ryan Pearson of AP. In the New York Times Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from a cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics. John Patterson of The Guardian suggests it is a result of the film's anti-corporate message, noting that in the film Starbucks now delivers handjobs, and the motto of Carl's Jr. has devolved from "Don't Bother Me. I'm Eating." to "Fuck You! I'm Eating!"
Also in the film, a Carl's Jr. vending machine cheats a customer, Fuddruckers' name gradually morphs into "Buttfuckers", the fictional Brawndo corporation buys the F.D.A. and the F.C.C, and the Fox News Channel is depicted in unflattering newscasts (20th Century Fox, which distributed the film, and the Fox News Channel are both owned by the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corporation)."
Pretty interesting, huh? It seems that even though 20th Century Fox brought Mike Judge onboard and let him shoot this film, they were still content to just sweep it under the rug and eat the costs. And this didn't look like a very cheap film to make, either. You have to wonder what the hell Fox was thinking when they chose to just abandon one of their own projects like this.
Were they afraid of companies like Carl's Jr., Starbucks and Costco lashing out at them? If they were, then all Fox did by shelving this was prove they're even bigger morons than the characters in the film. The film takes place 500 years from now, and everyone on the planet is an idiot, so everything they have is there to cater to the most primal instincts. They want fast food and easy sex, so they get handjobs at Starbucks after they go to the Carl's Jr machine. It's not a knock on the companies themselves; it's making fun of the intelligence level shown in the film.
As for the shots at Fox News? Ummm… you guys distributed the movie! Did you happen to miss that little segment in the script? And even if you did, get over it. You have a news channel that puts a huge "Breaking News" graphic up right after Britney Spears hits a car!
Personally, I agree with Dan Mitchell's belief that the subject matter was too sensitive and the studio believed that the audience wouldn't be able to take it. Well, it is a science-fiction tale, and the best kind of sci-fi has a lesson attached to it. This is a bona fide cautionary tale about the human race losing touch with its priorities and allowing its overall intelligence to get flushed down the toilet. And even though it takes place 500 years from now, there are certain elements that are not that far off from what we see in our day and age.
Look at what we have to watch on television these days. To para-phrase Patton Oswalt, we go through our days working with "dickheads and morons" just so we can get home and watch "dickheads and morons." Two of the highest rated shows deal with amateur singers (with the highest rated episodes focusing on all the people who CAN'T SING) and B-level celebrities learning how to dance! I don't think there will be a problem gathering material for them while the WGA strike is going on.
Hell, I'm just as guilty as everyone else who watches American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. I went through a whole season of Rock of Love. I know who New York is. I've even gone through several episodes of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. And there are times when I just want to slap the crap out of myself for getting sucked into these shows.
The people who made the decision to put no hype behind Idiocracy need to realize that, even though our tastes in television may be a bit off lately, the American public is not as stupid as they think. When reality television tried to infect our movie screens with The Real Cancun, it bombed. The people didn't want to waste their money on that bullshit. This means that they're ready for a movie like this to be shown to them, and hopefully they'll be able to take as much from it as I did.
And that's a wrap for Chapter 40 of The UBS Evening News. I'm George H. Sirois, and I'll see you next week!
