Cinema Hype

Do you find that you just can’t get enough CH goodness in your life? When it comes to movie news, are your eyes not cutting the mustard? For all you CH junkies out there–that would be you, Mom–I’ve got great news!

CH has been featured on the NPR show The Takeaway–you can hear it here, either by clicking “Listen” (a mishmash of all the featured reviews, heavily edited; I’m the first voice after they mention specific problems with the story), or by using the little player to listen to the whole thing. (If you click the link, you’ll find yourself…here.) For the truly obsessed, you can even download it as an mp3, but if you do that, I’m not sure I want to know about it.

Happy listening!

Update: It appears that the streaming audio may not be working (on a Mac, anyway). Avid listeners may need to download.

The Cinema Hype News Network (that would be CHNN) reports today that director Sydney Pollack has passed away at the age of 73. Pollack was one a heavy hitter for decades, directing his first film in 1965 (The Slender Thread) and making his final appearance onscreen in last month’s Made of Honor. In between, he made high-profile films with high-profile stars, was nominated for Academy Awards for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Tootsie, and winning for Out of Africa. Pollack was known for being one of the first post-studio-system directors to forge the way for future generations, and for making movies that walked the fine line between art and commerce–although his relationship with critics was spotty, his movies were generally considered thoughtful, even as they tended to do well commercially. The film-going (and presumably film-making) community will miss him and his work deeply, though his influence will surely live on. R.I.P, Sydney.

Sydney Pollack

It’s been a long, reality-TV-ridden road, but it looks like the writing staffs that make Hollywood go are about to go back to work. The Writers’ Guild of America has tentatively accepted a deal offered by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers; if a vote on Tuesday goes well—and it seems that it will—the writers will return to work on Wednesday. The strike continues on an official basis until then.

The contract guarantees writers a flat rate of pay for content streamed online for the first two years of the contract; in the third year, the rate goes up to 2% of the revenues earned by the networks and studios.

It seems like everyone’s breathing a sigh of relief: the writers get their jobs back, everyone ese in Hollywood gets their jobs back, the producers get new content, Jon Stewart gets to have writers and actual actors present when he hosts the Oscars, and viewers have something to watch besides back-to-back episodes of The Biggest Loser. Even next year’s Oscar folks should be thanking their lucky stars: a continued writers’ strike would surely have made a dent in the crop of award-worthy movies for 2008. As it is, things should pick up quickly.

In the mean time, we’ll be here, waiting for American Gladiator to end.

writers’ strike, wga, amptp, wga strike, academy awards, oscars, jon stewart

Wow. Now here’s a particularly shocking piece of news:

Heath Ledger found dead in his SoHo apartment.

Ledger was considered one of the most promising young actors in Hollywood, having been nominated for an Academy Award for Brokeback Mountain (which he might actually have won, had Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Capote performance not been in the race as well) and cast as the Joker in this summer’s Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

Sad. He’ll be missed.

Heath Ledger, celebrity death

This just in from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Hello! Hola! Bonjour! Konichiwa! Merhaba! We realize that the winter solstice holidays have yet to arrive and that the real awards-film race is really a January affair. But we are the Hollywood foreign press! We interpret the goings and comings of the Hollywoodites for the benefit of the avid reading public back home! Or we cover the affairs of Vancouver (the Hollywood of the north) and Riga (the Hollywood of the Baltics) for the avid reading public in the Hollywood hills! You decide!

But…continuing on. We know that you, the American public, have not yet feasted from the table of fine filmic fare slated for the winter of 2008, and we are sympathetic to your plight. But we feel compelled to remind you: WE HAVE, thanks to the joy of early press screenings! NYAH, NYAH, NYAH. For the likes of our scritch-scratching pens and clip-clapping typewriters, no press junket is too exclusive, no screening too far ahead of the release date. For the rest of you, well…sorry. We have heard the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin’s Charlie Wilson’s War screenplay with our own ears. We have experienced Johnny Depp’s singing voice–like a waterfall of honey flowing over a cliff of diamonds–in stereo! And yes, we have witnessed the glory of your all-time favorite comic actors collaborating on Juno. We have, and you’ll just have to wait until it comes to the local cineplex. HA! (Not to rub it in your face, or anything. It’s just that we have to report to all the folks back home. You understand.)

As for Michael Clayton…yeah, we didn’t see that either.

For a full list of the nominations (and don’t worry; you haven’t heard the last of CH Golden Globe chatter), see here.

If you can’t wait, see here.

Golden Globes, Golden Globe nominations, HFPA, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Aaron Sorkin, Charlie Wilson’s War, Sweeney Todd, Johnny Depp, Juno, Michael Clayton, George Clooney

Contrary to popular belief, we at CHHQ have not been on a sympathy strike; we’ve just been taking a little time off for the sake of sanity (insert obvious joke here).

And what a time to take off: I go on vacation, and 12,000 of my favorite writers walk out! (Someone should have warned me. I could have postponed if they really needed me. Jeez.) So far, the media coverage is mostly TV-centric, because that’s where the industry (and the audiences) will feel the pinch first. As soon as the networks run out of produced episodes, they’re stuck with a whole lot of reality programming and not much else. We know this.

But fast-forward to next year’s Oscar season. The Writers’ Guild of America isn’t just the TV writers’ union; they support all the working writers in Hollywood. And when they say, “pencils down,” they mean “pencils down”–according to the strike rules, even spec scripts, or un-contracted work, has to be returned to the people who submitted it. Nobody’s writing. Before long, the actors won’t have roles, the directors won’t have shots to perfect, and audiences won’t have any reason to go to the theater. It’s a longer-term problem than the immediate lack of The Office on my screen every Thursday night, but a long strike might have Americans everywhere rummaging around for something to read (or new episodes of Dancing with the Stars, but we won’t talk about that). Heavens!

And speaking of actors and directors, the writers aren’t the only ones with their eyes on the “new media” (i.e. the internet): SAG and the DGA are scheduled to go into talks with the studios next July, and the WGA agreement is widely known to be the “pattern” for their negotians (…good choice? Guys?) If the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers wants to pick a fight–especially if the writers are still out–they may find themselves with a whole lot of empty studio lots. Things are ugly now, but they could get even uglier for everyone, including the bored, entertainment-starved masses. There may be tar. Also, feathers.

For basic information on the WGA strike, try here, here, or here.

For one affected writer’s personal account, check out media critic, novelist, TV writer, and generally awesome person Pamela Ribon’s blog.

No good, folks. No good.

WGA strike, writers strike

Not since John Edwards announcing his candidacy for President on The Daily Show has a potentially exciting announcement been made in such a non-auspicious (or, in Edwards’s case, a faux-non-auspicious place). Sunday night, Shia Laboeuf and his scary little mustache announced the official title of the new Indiana Jones movie at tonight’s MTV Video Music Awards. Finally! According to Laboeuf (and, presumably, Paramount Pictures), the long-awaited Indy–though not exactly indie–movie will be called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Other titles in the running included:

Indiana Jones and the Temple of DOOOOOOOOM!!!!1!!
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, No Really, We Mean It This Time
Indiana Jones and the Isn’t He Too Old?
Indiana Jones and the Mysteriously Elusive Title
Indiana Jones and the Deathly Hallows

Only history will tell us how the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull holds up compared to these fine choices.

We at CHHQ apologize (a little) for the constant Harry Potter chatter around these parts–we’d planned a Hairspray-themed post for today, if you must know–but this is just too good to pass up.

Turns out that despite the studio’s desire to maintain an all-British cast for the Harry Potter films, they’ve made an exception in the name of awesomeness: news broke today that Naomi Watts (born British but generally considered Australian) has signed on to play Narcissa Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now that’s making up for Helena Bonham Carter.

The big question remains: Will Watts’s Malfoy upstage Nicole Kidman’s Mrs. Coulter in the Battle of the Evil Blondes? We’ll see.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Narcissa Malfoy, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman, Mrs. Coulter, The Golden Compass, Evil Blondes

This weekend’s financial showing for Spider-Man 3 seems to prove–as if we didn’t already know it–that audiences basically disregard the opinions of major reviewers and tend to see big movies, no matter what. Critics’ impressions of Spider-Man 3 have been tepid, but the film had a record $54 million opening day on Friday, and according to Box Office Guru, grossed $148 million by the end of the weekend, the largest opening weekend ever (to be fair, the record was set just last summer, by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest). As Box Office Guru also pointed out, the Spider-Man victory wasn’t just big, it was also ridiculously lopsided: the film took in 80% of all filmgoers’ money this weekend. And as anybody who’s tried to see a good movie in the theater lately knows, that’s not so surprising. There simply isn’t much out there these days.

But Spider-Man 3 is a good harbinger for a summer of big, loud, extravagant movies, and we can’t argue with that.

Torture film billboard:
off-putting, or unfit for
public consumption?

Billboards for the new movie Captivity went up last week in New York and L.A., only to be taken down again when the studio that made the movie began receiving calls from irate citizens. The billboards show actress Elisha Cuthbert, the star of the movie, being kidnapped, caged, tortured, and ostensibly murdered (which, it must be said, pretty much weeds out potential audience members just looking for a pleasant afternoon at the movies). According to studio spokespeople, the billboards were a mistake: the production company received the wrong files and didn’t get any kind of greenlighting from the studio. This begs questions of why the images existed in any billboard-able form in the first place and why nobody at Lionsgate is checking their ad proofs these days–i.e. I’m not sure I believe them–but it still brings up some interesting points. What makes a film ad “too much”? What brings a violent image from “unpleasant” to “unacceptable”? Is the American public especially sensitive to images of torture these days (i.e. would this poster be less offensive to us in a different national context)? How could the studio have put together an effective but less offensive ad?

Readers? What do you think?

Captivity, Captivity billboard, Elisha Cuthbert, censorship

Looks like the Lasso of Truth is going to have to find something else to do for a while: everybody’s favorite writer of feisty female booty-kicking hilarity, Joss Whedon, has backed out of writing the Wonder Woman script.

What does this mean for Wonder Woman? A couple of things, probably. First, it’s going to be delayed, but since this production has been bouncing around Hollywood practically since Lynda Carter’s high-cut undies were in style the first time, that’s basically par for the course. Second, and more importantly, it probably won’t be as awesome as it would have been under Whedon. Wonder Woman is, in my opinion, possibly the hardest superhero to update and adapt for 21st-century viewers–the cultural moment that produced Wonder Woman and her Amazon sisters has passed, and we’ve been left with a pair of tall boots, and invisible plane, and a show that officially became hilarious somewhere around 1990. A really successful Wonder Woman would have to acknowledge the humor of the situation without undermining the message (i.e. reverting to pure camp): Wonder Woman is, after all, awesome. And who in this world better understands the marriage of humor and feminine strength than Whedon, who’s created a litany of strong and witty women? Whedon’s not just about making the funny, sexy girls win; he actually thinks about what he’s writing. He’s the nerds’ favorite nerd, probably the Hollywood writer with the most academic papers written about him. And I, for one, was looking forward to his thoughtful, subtle, and totally entertaining take on the Braless One.

Girl heroes everywhere weep.

Wonder Woman, Joss Whedon