Category: Film

The London Independent reports in tomorrow’s edition that Michael Moore, instead of being a victim of evil, corporate America in the form of the Disney Corporation, instead lied about Disney’s intentions to promote his film as well a an illusion of martyrdom:

Less than 24 hours after accusing the Walt Disney Company of pulling the plug on his latest documentary in a blatant attempt at political censorship, the rabble-rousing film-maker Michael Moore has admitted he knew a year ago that Disney had no intention of distributing it. …
In an indignant letter to his supporters, Moore said he had learnt only on Monday that Disney had put the kibosh on distributing the film, which has been financed by the semi-independent Disney subsidiary Miramax.
But in the CNN interview he said: “Almost a year ago, after we’d started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent he was upset Miramax had made the film and he will not distribute it.”

And so the bloviating filmmaker managed to fool the New York Times into putting his hoax onto its front page, as the article notes, as well as writing a scathing editorial chiding Disney for its lack of commitment to free expression:

Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary. … it is clear that Disney loves its bottom line more than the freedom of political discourse.

The Times editorial notes that Michael Moore “likes to skewer the rich and powerful.” I wonder how they feel now that the Times has become another victim of Moore’s lies.
Via the new aggregate blog Memeorandum, a fine addition to the blogroll.

Michael Moore and Disney subsidiary Miramax found out that the Mouse meant what it said when it earlier told Miramax that it would not allow any Disney companies to distribute Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 911:

Disney executives indicated that they would not budge from their position forbidding Miramax to be the distributor of the film in North America. Overseas rights have been sold to a number of companies, executives said.
“We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax,” said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore’s agent. “That decision stands.”

Typically for Moore’s team, his agent tried to blame the Bush administrations (George and Jeb) for Disney’s decision, claiming that Disney chief Michael Eisner told him that the distribution deal would endanger tax breaks at the federal and state (Florida) level:

“Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn’t mean I listened to him,” [Ari] Emanuel said. “He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that’s why he didn’t want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn’t want a Disney company involved.”

Just the measured commentary we’ve come to expect from the group that regularly puts fiction into its “documentaries”. The Disney explanation makes more sense:

A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax’s distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore’s film is deemed to be against Disney’s interests not because of the company’s business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore’s film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.
“It’s not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle,” this executive said.

What’s at stake is Harvey Weinstein’s cut of the box office and his standing with the Democratic party, as Rutenberg alludes. Moore can now negotiate any distribution deal he likes, but Weinstein had set up a sweetheart deal that allowed he and Moore to lock up the North American profits between themselves, some of which would certainly find its way to party coffers.
This could have been avoided, of course, had Weinstein, Moore, and Emmanuel listened to Disney a year ago when they told them clearly that Disney would never distribute the film. Instead, they calculated that Disney would back down to avoid any negative publicity involved in rejecting Moore’s work and allegations of political bias. However, it demonstrates the compartmentalization in which the Hollywood left lives if they thought that Disney’s refusal to participate in Moore’s work would somehow be more controversial than the opposite. Portraying the Disney corporation as a right-wing tool, given their support of many left-wing causes, will only underscore the radical nature of Hollywood and Moore’s supporters.

Tomorrow’s New York Times features a story on a too-typical example of bureaucratic mountain-making from molehills, as NASA at first gagged its scientists from commenting on an upcoming movie that shows global warming causing a new Ice Age — in five days:

In “The Day After Tomorrow,” a $125 million disaster film that is to open on May 28, global warming from accumulating smokestack and tailpipe gases sets off an instant ice age.
Few climate experts think such a prospect is likely, especially in the near future. But the prospect that moviegoers will be alarmed enough to blame the Bush administration for inattention to climate change has stirred alarm at the space agency, scientists there say.
“No one from NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with” the film, said the April 1 message, which was sent by Goddard’s top press officer. “Any news media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA.”

The e-mail missive found its way to the Times via a very unhappy NASA scientist who resented the gag order. The political appointees running the show seem to fear the questions that may arise once The Day After Tomorrow hits a theater near you. Certainly some people still think that movies depict reality rather than fiction, but the rest of us with more than three functional brain cells will not likely leave the film asking, “What has the Bush administration done to keep massive glaciers moving across the entire continental United States in less than a week?” Lord knows, this question will be so much more important than anything about real security threats, like terrorism.
The Times relates a couple of scenes for their readers to demonstrate the seriousness of the scientific research performed for this film:

The new movie’s script contains a host of politically uncomfortable situations: the president’s motorcade is flash frozen; the vice president, who scoffs at warnings even as chaos erupts, resembles Dick Cheney; the humbled United States has to plead with Mexico to allow masses of American refugees fleeing the ice to cross the border.

The notion that a motorcade could be flash-frozen isn’t politically uncomfortable, it’s scientifically laughable. We live in Minnesota, which gets a hell of a lot colder a hell of a lot quicker than almost anywhere else, and I’ve never heard of a flash freeze, unless it’s when Mitch Berg goes streaking in the wintertime. (Painful, yes; politically uncomfortable, no.) All that the panicky NASA functionaries have to remember are two names: Hollywood and Roland Emmerich.
Emmerich, who wrote and directed this Irwin Allen descendant, also directed Independence Day and The Patriot (the Mel Gibson historical film, not the Steven Seagal chop-socky movie). Independence Day hardly qualifies as a master of scientific knowledge. Numerous violations of the laws of physics occurs throughout the film, such as the climactic spectacular explosion in outer space — a recurring mistake in science-fiction films — instead of a massive and almost instantaneous implosion. Emmerich hardly stands alone in Hollywood on this point. Film after film produced in big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas routinely discard even basic science, such as the truly egregious Armageddon or the worse Volcano. Perhaps the worst example would be the hilarious horror/suspense film Hollow Man by Paul Verhoeven, where so many laws of science are violated that it begins to resemble the UN Oil-For-Food program by the time you make it to the last reel.
Emmerich, however, manages to blow historical research as well as scientific research, as the American Revolution movie The Patriot demonstrated. Emmerich treats us to a Bizarro World where blacks exist as free men in South Carolina, where the nation’s most rabid slavery laws expressly forbid it; provided a happy village, assumably in SC, where whites and blacks lived and frolicked together as equals (don’t we wish); and where the British commit an atrocity by burning down a church full of civilians, when nothing like that ever happened — except in France during WWII, when the Nazis did it.
In short, Hollywood provides the negative to reality’s photograph: if it’s in a movie, it’s almost certainly untrue, especially in large-budget films. And if it’s an Emmerich film, it’s likely to be cheesy as hell on top of all the mistakes (and likely to pull in big box office anyway).
So, quit panicking, you nerveless NASA nabobs, buy some popcorn, and enjoy the comedy. No one with a brain takes this effluvia seriously, and why worry about the rest?

In a statement that has gathered way too much attention already, an anti-smoking activist has challenged Hollywood to consider tobacco use when assigning MPAA ratings:

If Nicolas Cage lights a cigarette in a movie, Hollywood’s ratings board should respond as if he used a profanity, according to authors of a new study that criticizes glamorous images of smoking in movies rated for children under 17.
Nearly 80 percent of movies rated PG-13 feature some form of tobacco use, while 50 percent of G and PG rated films depict smoking, said Stanton Glantz, co-author of the study, which examined 775 U.S. movies over the past five years.
“No one is saying there should never be any smoking in the movies,” Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Tuesday at a press conference at Hollywood High School. “What we’re simply asking for is that smoking be treated by Hollywood as seriously as it treats offensive language.”

Um, yeah. This demonstrates the silliness of the MPAA system: eventually, everyone’s pet peeve will have its impact on the system. Think tobacco is evil? Rate the film R. Don’t like alcohol? Give me an R! Eat too many fatty foods? That’s an R, too, regardless of context. For instance, here’s the list of offending films cited by Dr. Glantz:

Glantz singled out The Walt Disney Co. for smoking in the PG-rated “Holes” and G-rated “102 Dalmatians,” Time Warner for its PG “Secondhand Lions” and “What a Girl Wants” and Sony Pictures Entertainment for its PG “Master of Disguise.”

The character that smoked in 101 Dalmations and 102 Dalmations was Cruella DeVille — the villain! In fact, the use of tobacco through the cigarette holder identifies her as a rich, evil person, something that Dr. Glantz should be happy to see in a children’s film. I haven’t seen any of the other films, but insisting that giving them R ratings (which would require parents to attend the movie with the child) almost qualifies as satire. When does it stop?
It should stop with the elimination of the current MPAA rating system. If ratings are necessary at all, they should only address parental supervision and nothing else. Set objective thresholds for requiring the exclusion of underage viewers unaccompanied by an adult. The thresholds for supervision could be as simple as realistic bodily harm, full-frontal nudity or realistic sexual encounters, and excessive use of profanity. It’s still a judgment call, but at least we won’t be fooling around with silly letter grades that mean exactly nothing.
Once a picture is released with or without a requirement for supervision, publish the various possible objections as is done on pay channels such as HBO, Showtime, and the like. That way, parents can make their own decisions on what they wish their children to see, filmmakers won’t have to dance around with the MPAA board to get a PG-13 rating when no one really knows what the requirements are for it, and national scolds like Dr. Glantz can publish the lists of films that offend their particular sensibilities to their hearts’ content.
Given the facts, parents can reach their own conclusions, but the amorphous and arbitrary nature of the current system helps no one, and single-issue nannies like Dr. Glantz will only make problems worse.
(link via Oh, That Liberal Media, which also skewers this piece from another angle)

I will be live-blogging the Academy Awards tonight, and it appears that this will be a long, long night — the Academy has removed speech restrictions for the Oscar winners for the first time in recent memory. Odd, don’t you think, or perhaps the Presidential election has something to do with it?
7:25 – Catching the pre-awards show, and it’s as lame as ever. I felt sorry for Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger, who were cursed to sit on either side of Billy Bush and forced to respond to his inane non-question commentary. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then re-enacted the “Uma-Oprah” debacle from several years back. I’m sure that the Academy appreciates that walk down Memory Lane …
7:35 – The opening sequence rocked! Loved the elephant stepping on Michael Moore as he protested the Battle of Gondor, and Jack Nicholson made a great Gandalf. Seriously. Somehow, though, I feel it will be downhill from here …
7:44 – All right, the opening songs were terrific, too. [Dammit, I liked Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon!] …
7:50 – The first award was announced at the 20 minute mark. And you wonder why this show takes so doggone long? Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins, who seems a bit rattled to have won; normally he’s a better speaker, even if his material stinks. Nothing political, just a good plea for abuse victims to seek counseling…
7:59 – Angelina Jolie onstage to “Wild Thing”. Okay … First Oscar to Lord of the Rings: Art Direction.
8:05 – Finding Nemo for Best Amimated Feature — coooooool. Sweet moment in the speech, too, although I think his wife was embarassed. (Hi, Linda!) …
8:12 – 2nd Oscar for Lord of the Rings: Best Costumes …
8:20 – No surprise: Renee Zellweger wins Best Supporting Actress for Cold Mountain. She was terrific, and of course she was expected to win this one…
8:27 – A very nice tribute to Bob Hope and his Oscar presentation career. It would have been nice to show how his work on screen, where his legendary approach to comedy could be appreciated by a new audience … Mickey Rooney’s still with us! I agree with Linda — it’s good to see him …
8:34 – I guess there IS a time limit on speeches tonight, and even that brown-nosing didn’t give the Best Live-Action Short winner a break …
8:58 – Bily Crystal has it working tonight. Great little bit about what’s going through people’s minds! Lord of the Rings wins #3 for Visual Effects, the second year in a row they won …
9:03 – For such an accomplished comedian, Jim Carrey has lousy timing tonight … Linda notes Carrey’s huge ears, which his shaved head highlights. I’d have said something first, but my ears are just as bad, which is why I don’t shave my head …
9:07 – Funny wheelchair gag. I didn’t see that coming! …
9:14 – Make sure you visit Linda’s terrific blog. Great design and use of color, and Linda writes well …
9:18 – Lord of the Rings wins #4: Makeup. Scarlett Johanssen needs to get a cup of coffee and wake the hell up …
9:22 – Lord of the Rings wins #5, Sound Mixing, and the comedy definitely suffers whenever Billy Crystal isn’t involved. John Travolta did well, but Sandra Bullock’s portion was a dud. The audience is starting to look uncomfortable during these sketches. Who’s writing these — Saturday Night Live? …
9:43 – Errol Morris makes the first political speech of the night, but his claim of “millions died” could also be said of our departure from Southeast Asia as well …
9:52 – Great commercial take-off on Caddyshack, with Tiger Woods in the Bill Murray role. Why didn’t American Express use that during the Super Bowl?? …
9:57 – Lord of the Rings #6 – Best Score. Looks like a Rings night to me …
10:00 – LotR #7: Film Editing. New Line Cinema brings you the Academy Awards — not that I’m complaining, mind you! …
10:07 – I’m going to predict that “A Kiss At The End of The Rainbow” wins the Best Song Oscar, but I liked “Belleville Rendezvous” the best …
10:14 – I’ve changed my mind — the Oscar should go to “You’re Boring”, by Jack Black and Will Farrell, who sang it beautifully! One the best moments of the night. Instead, it went to LotR — #8 — for Into the West. Lesson for the night: Don’t bet against the Rings juggernaut …
10:21 – Thanking the Academy for not making LotR eligible for the Foreign Language category was the highlight of acceptance speeches thus far …
10:30 – LotR #9, Best Adapted Screenplay, and if there was one nomination that had to be a lock for LotR, this one was it. First appearance of Peter Jackson on the stage, and hopefully not the last …
10:33 – Is Susan Sarandon having a wardrobe malfunction? And welcome to Ian of Pinwheels and Orange Peels, another great blog. Sofia Coppola won her first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She’s more animated than she was in the entirety of Godfather III …
10:39 – If you’re not in the Twin Cities, you’re probably not seeing an exceedingly lame ad for Eyewitness News starring Ed Asner as Lou Grant. I mean, how pathetic is that? Three decades later and he’s using that persona to shill for a local news show. Just remember that Ted Baxter used to be his anchorman …
10:42 – LotR #10, Peter Jackson, for Best Director, and he gets a (very) chaste kiss from Liv Tyler. Is it too late to go to film school? Dang …
10:48 – I knew Charlize Theron would win, but I loved Adrien Brody’s breath freshener …
10:54 – I’m predicting that Bill Murray wins in an upset for Best Actor, while Ian wonders why Diane Keaton keeps dressing like she’s nominated for that category …
11:00 – This is why I don’t gamble in Vegas. Sean Penn won for Best Actor, made a dumb WMD reference, and then gave a gracious speech about the quality of the work from everyone that was and wasn’t nominated, followed by the thank-yous. Probably the last opportunity for political speechifying, and it seems like there just won’t be much this year. Anyone taking bets for Best Picture? …
11:05 – LotR #11 and a “clean sweep,” as Steven Spielberg exclaimed as he announced the Best Picture award. 11 Oscars ties Lord of the Rings with Ben-Hur and Titanic, and also marks the first time a fantasy movie has won the top prize. A very funny moment during the acceptance speeches, when producer Barrie M. Osborne revealed that he had once dated Billy Crystal’s cousin, apparently to Crystal’s surprise.
Great finish — and the show wrapped up at three hours, 39 minutes. Not too bad, and a relatively entertaining experience, if short on stars embarassing themselves politically. My film won all of its nominations, so how can I complain?
Thanks to Linda and Ian and everyone else who checked in tonight. Don’t forget the caption contest and come back soon!

Writing in today’s LA Times, William Kowinski decries the existence of separate acting awards at the Oscars based on gender:

After all, there is no award for the best screenplay by a woman. Sofia Coppola wasn’t nominated as best female director. There’s no award for a best picture by a woman producer. Why are there separate acting awards divided by gender?
There doesn’t appear to be anything about acting skill that is gender-specific. In fact, many women insist on being called actors and bristle at the designation of “actress” because they believe it to be demeaning, like the term “authoress.”
A writer is a writer, and an actor is an actor. Aren’t these gender-designated categories just relics of a less-enlightened time? There are no separate categories based on race, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual preference or any other element of diversity. Why not best performance by a Latino in a leading role?

Kowinski, after having defined the pressing issue that is so important that the Times gives him space in its Op-Ed section during an election year, then describes the grassroots demand that’s, uh … not forthcoming:

It’s worth noting that women haven’t been burning their SAG cards to protest gender-specific awards categories. … Having their own categories means that more women are more likely to get more attention, which helps all women actors. …
But the Oscars have gender-specific acting awards today because these awards have always been there, because the press and public like them and because nobody seems to want it any other way.

Let’s recap. The Oscars have been given out for over 70 years with gender-specific categories. This structure helps women, makes the award shows more interesting, the press and public like them, and no one wants to change them. So what reason does Kowinski have in wasting time writing this column, and why does the LA Times bother printing it? Just to shoot blanks in the gender wars? Kowinski complains about unnecessary awards, but either he’s a fabulous ironist or he’s completely clueless about the absurd nature of his complaint.

Lovers of classic 1970s films, especially sports films, may need extra blood-pressure medicine after reading this item on Adam Sandler’s latest project:

Adam Sandler will star in a remake of the 1974 Burt Reynolds comedy “The Longest Yard,” the story of a former football player turned convict who challenges prison guards to a game.

Adam Sandler — remaking one of the icons of men’s films? I ask you, how many of you can see Sandler as even an adequate replacement for Burt Reynolds? Sandler must be hallucinating, which would explain his Mr. Deeds remake, too. I don’t believe that someone can ruin a classic movie by remaking it poorly — after all, the original movie still remains — but you can certainly insult its standing by making stupid casting decisions. One could hardly get more foolish than by casting Sandler as a hardened and corrupt NFL quarterback who stands up to an even more corrupt prison system. I don’t know about you, but when I put the concepts of prison and Sandler together, it doesn’t equate in my mind with “cynical tough guy,” but more with the common name for a female dog, if you dig my drift.
Here’s Sandler’s partner on the concept:

“Although we plan to update quite a few things, the overall story will remain intact,” said Jack Giarraputo, who co-owns the Happy Madison production company with Sandler. “We want to keep the same blend of comedy and grit that made the first one a classic.”

Why does this sound like a pitch for The Waterboy II: Bobby Behind Bars?

Now onto the real election news — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has snagged 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director:

Along with best picture and director, the nominations for “Return of the King” included original score and song, visual effects, film editing and adapted screenplay for the script based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic. “Return of the King” led last weekend’s Golden Globes with four wins, including best dramatic picture and director, and its broad critical and fan support give the film the inside track at the Oscars.

No word on acting nominations as yet. To no one’s surprise, however, Renee Zellweger received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her terrific performance in Cold Mountain, one that likely will be rewarded with a win.
UPDATE: No acting nominations, despite great performances in supporting roles. I guess a picture gets to be considered one of the five best of the year with no notable acting performances.

Hugh Hewitt posts a lengthy review of the new and controversial Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ (no permalink yet). Hugh’s enthusiasm for this film is evident in this review, as it was in his radio show on Friday night:

The Passion of the Christ is a phenomenal work of art; a moving and inspiring film that will certainly be shown again and again for generations to come. Though I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I do not believe that one needs to be a believer in the divinity of Christ to appreciate the majesty of the movie and its extraordinary commitment to authenticity and an objective recounting of the story of the passion and death of Christ as relayed through the Gospels.

I have wondered how well Gibson would adhere to history in the Passion story. After all, his previous efforts at historical cinema fell somewhat short of the mark. In Braveheart, for instance, Gibson took an oral history with plenty of historical vagueness and managed to get a good deal of the known facts incorrect:
1. Wallace was no reluctant warrior; before his lover was murdered, he had already built a fearful reputation for killing Englishmen in Scotland. His lover’s murder occurs late in his career.
2. William Wallace actually co-ruled an independent Scotland for a few months (there are treaties signed by Wallace) between the battles of Stirling Bridge and Falkirk.
3. Robert the Bruce was not about to be named a puppet King of Scotland on the fields of Bannockburn, as shown in the final scenes of the movie. He had already declared himself an independent king and Edward II’s army was there to engage and destroy him. Outnumbered 2-1, Robert destroyed the English army at Bannockburn in 1314, creating a de facto independent Scotland that was confirmed by treaty in 1328.
4. Edward II did not marry until after Wallace was dead, so the whole ridiculous subplot with Sophie Marceau could not possibly have been true. It doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The historical character she played would have been 13 years old at the time of Wallace’s death (1305) and didn’t marry Edward II until 1308.
In his later epic The Patriot, Gibson took even more dramatic licence with history, this time with the American Revolution. Among the more egregious errors Gibson allowed were a fictional account of the British burning down a church full of civilians as a reprisal for his character’s commando raids on the British. Not only is this libelous to the British, who on the whole conducted themselves honorably during the Revolution, but it steals an actual Nazi atrocity from WWII. Also, slavery seemed to be miraculously scrubbed from The Patriot; the African-American characters are freed men in South Carolina, where freed Negroes were illegal right through to the Civil War. While the film was entertaining, its history was appallingly bad — a great example of how Hollywood can’t be trusted with truth.
Which brings us to Gibson’s latest effort. I trust Hugh, as he is a well-read man with extensive historical knowledge, so I am greatly relieved to hear that Gibson’s depiction of the Gospels improves on his track record. However, I do not blame people for being nervous about possible anti-Semitic biases or departures from the Gospels, given that track record. It demonstrates the wisdom of actually seeing a film before attacking it — or defending it.