The Hot Blog

Yes, I Will Be Commenting On Globes

But not until Hot Button tomorrow... don't want to spoil it for west coasters and heading to parties at 8...

Kinda Funny

A Surprise, A Car Wreck & A Horse Of Two Stripes

For the second straight weekend, there is a pleasant surprise (at least for the distributor) at the top of the box office charts.   This weekend, it’s  Paramount's Coach Carter, which looks to pass the $20 million mark, just as White Noise did last weekend.  It may even challenge Save The Last Dance’s $24.4 million as the best January opening ever for Paramount. Funny how things get better when an administration seems to be headed out the door…

On the other hand, Elektra and Racing Stripes are both looking at under-$15 million starts… which is probably more of a problem for Elektra than for Racing Stripes, which could build a loyal pre-teen audience that returns to the film repeatedly over the next two months.  Even with Disney/ABC spending insane amounts of money on TV spots and an outdoor campaign for Jennifer Garner and Alias that comes just short of a direct offer of kinky sex, Elektra hasn’t found an audience any bigger that the core of geeks that show up no matter what they read on Ain’t It Cool News.  One wonders whether they would at least have stirred a greater interest in the public if the film was darker and R rated. 

It’s hard to figure out what’s going on with The Aviator.  The film feels like it’s playing out.  1867 screens is not a terribly wide release.  But how much milk is there in the next 1000 screens?  A $4 million weekend will take the film close to $50 million.  But whether an Oscar nomination is going to be the kind of accelerant that Miramax needs to get the film to $100 million… I don’t know…

Spanglish is still drawing some folks and will pass $40 million sometime in the next week or so.  Surprisingly, it has held up better than Closer, which has found its way into the low $30 millions and should top out under $40 million.

Sideways passed Finding Neverland in daily gross late in the week despite being on one-third of the screens.  The strategy of continuing to hold and even reduce screen count for Sideways, even after three months in the marketplace, is going to prove itself to be genius or an oops in two more weeks.  Million Dollar Baby added 15 whole screens this weekend.  Again, an expansion in two weeks.

When Good People Do Bad Things To Old Movies

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 8:00 PM
HIGH NOON replaces THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

• Due to the upcoming release of Steven Spielberg's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, the 1953 print is no longer available for public exhibition. A ticket purchased for THE WAR OF THE WORLDS can be redeemed for the HIGH NOON screening or any other of the AFI at ArcLight 2005 AFI's 100 Years… 100 Movies screenings. A refund will also be awarded by ArcLight either the night of or by contacting Linda Thompson at 323.464.1465 x109. If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact Erin Anderson at 323.856.7771 or by e-mail at eanderson@AFI.com.

Gunner Aims At MPAA

The Gunner Palace vs MPAA Press Release

I love Gunner Palace.

I think the world of Mike Tucker.

I will make my 15 year old nephew and 13 year old neice watch the film.

It should be rated R.  There is nothing about this movie that is PG-13. 

M*A*S*H* was rated R.  Three Kings was rated R. 

Kids should see this movie.  But it should be rated R... and it should be happy to be rated R... more kids will see it that way.

Ted Hope Rambles With Passion

Here's his piece in this week's Village Voice

What I get is that the indie theatrical exhibition business is very stratified and Ted is feeling the heat.  But is it really fair to call the villagers to the square and blame them for the problem? 

Does Ted really think that The Passion of The Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 changed the exhibition world?  I would make the argument than if an analagous film turned up tomorrow, every studio would turn that one down too.  There is a real problem underlying that and it isn't political... a couple hundred million in profit doesn't efffect the conglomerate bottom line that much and the hassle does.  Sure, a desperate player might step up to the plate for a controversial title that at least plays well in the "home" constituency.  But Sherry Lansing and Jon Dolgen passed on both of these films... so did MGM...

I would argue that the future of what we have called indie film is in new distribution modes.  Unless Hotel Rwanda gets a Best Picture nod, more people will probably see Sometimes In April on HBO than see Rwanda.  Yes, it is not theatrical.  But isn't the embrace of all media part of the artistic experience? 

Just last year, the big battle was to Free The Screeners!  The point of keeping that avenue open?  Access to Oscar nominations.  Isn't the obsession with Oscar nominations for indies a major part of the distribution stratification that Hope is so upset about? 

That is my big problem with the very smart, very committed Mr. Hope.  He fights his battles, it seems to me, in isolation and like a bad studio movie, never bothers to connect the dots.  The rebel millionaire who helped turn a decision not to put massive numbers of high-quality, easily pirateable screeners into the world so that awards voters could skip a trip to the theater so that his "indie" film, financed by a division of a major, could (theoretically) get Oscar nominations into the "indie cause of 2003/2004" is now complaining that distributors are too concerned about chasing Oscars and... in a breathtaking moment of show biz blindness... money!

He is, in many ways, right that there is a problem out there for the independant filmmaker.  But it is not a moral issue.  It is an issue of finding solutions to make opportunities viable for this class of film.  And that discussion does not seem to be Mr. Hope's priority... at least not in this piece. 

What do you make of it?

Top Ten Insanity!

A Look At The Top Ten Lists

What do y'all think?

What SAG Says...

In the last five year, the following people have received Best Actor Oscar Nominations without having received a SAG nomination:

2003:  Jude Law, COLD MOUNTAIN

2002:  Michael Caine, THE QUIET AMERICAN

2001:  Will Smith, ALI

2000:  Javier Bardem, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

            Ed Harris, POLLOCK

1999:  Richard Farnsworth, THE STRAIGHT STORY

            Sean Penn, SWEET AND LOWDOWN

They've missed every year, at least once. And five of the eight performances are from indie films, with The Straight Story, although released by Disney, very much in the same vein. 

Yet SAG has been a much better predictor in the Best Actress category, missing only three Academy nods in the last five years... two last year.

2003:  Samantha Morton, IN AMERICA

           Keisha Castle-Hughes, WHALE RIDER

2001:  Nicole Kidman, MOULIN ROUGE

Two indies and three foreigners.

The closest SAG got to a low-profile indie nominee this year was Catalina Sandino Moreno.

And by the way... the track record of SAG winners winning The Oscar... much worse.  That said, none of the Oscar winners in that five years have failed to grab a SGA nod first.

Agreed.

David Thomson writes...

"After the dark and the size of the screen, nothing is more important to an audience than not knowing anything about the story they are about to see. And all too often these days, the critics and the public have a bored way of knowing in advance."

More On The 1/6 Rule

As a very bright person pointed out, not every ballot that The Academy sends out comes back.   There is a hum out there that as many as 20% of the ballots never come, which seems like a lot. But if you look at the results from last night's BFCA Critics Choice Awards, which is a lot easier to vote for, requiring only an e-mail response, had a 19 percent no-vote rate.

If the return rate is 80% for The Academy, that means a film needs 775 votes to get an Oscar nomination... which brings the 'Myth of 700" back a bit... albeit, without the argument that the number is lower for any reason other than return rate.