Everyone goes into Toronto with a schedule of films to watch. And that list changes with buzz. Some movies fall off due to bad WOM, while others become must-sees. IndieWIRE’s in-progress critics’ poll of 34 films is indicative of the movies that everyone went to see—and the ones that nobody did.

I checked out Scott Hicks’ The Boys Are Back Tuesday night because it’s Miramax’s big fall release starring Clive Owen. Miramax has the North American piece of the BBC/Screen Australia co-production, which is impeccably made. Adapted by Brit Allan Cubitt (Prime Suspect 2) from sports writer Simon Carr’s memoir about raising two boys Down Under after the death of his wife, the movie rings true. My little brother and I were also raised by a writer single father who didn’t care about housekeeping and liked to drink. And as a parent, I could relate too.

But Miramax has its work cut out. So far, Owen has not proved a marquee draw at the box office, nor is he an Oscar perennial (he was nominated once, for supporting actor for Closer). He’s charming here as a free-wheeling clueless ex-workaholic who loves his kids and tries to become a responsible parent. But while the movie played for the Toronto crowd, the endearing PG-13 family film defines the word “soft.” Even if it earns rave reviews, the marketing trick for Miramax will be convincing adult audiences to sample the movie (which opens September 25): no mean feat these days.

[Photo: Newcomer Nicholas McAnulty at Miramax’s The Boys Are Back dinner at Toronto’s Bymark restaurant.]

[The trailer is on the jump]

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by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Festivals, Toronto, Genres, Drama, Headliners, Clive Owen, Reviews, Studios, Disney/Miramax on September 16, 2009 at 7:23am PDT | Permalink | Comments (3)

Guest Blogger

Letter to the Studios: How Not to Market Adult Dramas

Here’s the first of a series of pieces (which do not necessarily reflect my POV) by guest bloggers on various aspects of the entertainment industry. Now based in Nampa, Idaho, Mike Kaplan is a veteran filmmaker (Never Apologize) and marketer who has managed campaigns for Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Robert Altman (Short Cuts) among others. More recently, please note, Kaplan helped to introduce Clive Owen to American audiences with the sleeper hit Croupier and You’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Here’s his argument for how the studios are killing adult dramas—through misguided marketing. Kaplan came up in a film industry that made producing and marketing films for grown-ups its first priority. That is no longer the case.

In the past two years, there have been worrying signs of systemic change in the film business toward anything that smacked of quality, a power play to minimize the influence of art. After Paramount Vantage produced three of the best American films in one year – Oscar-winners No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood (both released with Miramax Films) and Into the Wild, Paramount gutted the specialty division because too much money was spent on the films – marketing costs above all. Instead of reconfiguring future spends, the baby was thrown out with the bath water.
Then Warner Bros. shuttered its two specialty divisions – Warner Independent and Picturehouse, the latter headed by Bob Berney, one of the most innovative architects of specialty film distribution (Memento, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Passion of the Christ , My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the Oscar wins of Charlize Theron and Marion Cotillard).
Warner Independent was also the original distributor/co-financier of Slumdog Millionaire, which was headed for DVD-land when big Warners shrewdly placed it with Fox Searchlight, keeping a share of the profits. However, in signing a new deal with a British company, Slumdog producer Christian Colson acknowledged the increasing difficulty of getting smaller films financed and hoped that “riskier projects would still be backed.”
In reading this year’s Oscar postmortems, the prevalent attitude was that the nominations and awards –aside from Slumdog – had little major boxoffice impact, from Frost/Nixon to Milk and The Reader. Along with the regular carp that the most popular films (in this case, The Dark Knight, Iron Man) weren’t getting their due, the Oscars – never an elite barometer but the most influential tribute to the movies – were now less important.

THE SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES arrives in semi-rural Idaho by mail, so it was with extra anticipation that I turned to the Arts & Leisure section last March, eager to find the first large quote ad for Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity. I wanted to see what quote and layout choices would be made for one of the few films from a studio’s major division that was a smart, adult entertainment and not a tentpole sequel or a science fiction/action oriented/special effects extravaganza aimed at the audience whose movie choices rarely go further than opening weekend need-to-see.
Unlike the usual, empty afternoon seats at Edwards Cinema Complex in Nampa, there were actually people at the 2:00 PM first day matinee, a good sign. They were not talking to each other nor rushing out for popcorn refills. They were enjoying the film, which on one level is a clever, time shifting, beautifully-crafted corporate spy caper, and on the other, a re-imagined screwball comedy with two attractive stars, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, who create a romantic chemistry that hasn’t been seen since the golden pairings of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray. This was a big-budget, glamorous, witty, surprising movie that couldn’t fail.
So what would the ad look like? Would the quotes only come from the major raves – A.O.Scott in The New York Times (“The most elegantly pleasurable movie to come around in a very long time”), Kenneth Turan in The Los Angeles Times (“Sleek, dizzying entertainment. Sophisticated amusement that needs to be experienced”), David Denby’s later-breaking New Yorker (“Enormously enjoyable. The stars’ bantering rhythm is so natural and easy that it’s already an early stage of sex.”) Or would they be peppered with less covered but equally important sources…Todd McCarthy in Variety (“This is as good as Hollywood gets”), Leah Rozen in People (“Deftly written and directed. Roberts exudes an edgy world –weariness and Owen, well, he’s pure sex on a stick”). And would someone have spotted the rarely achieved 4 Stars in The Week, the influential newsweekly compilation?

[Photo of Mike Kaplan, Sally Kellerman and Malcolm McDowell by Jeffrey Wells]

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by Mike Kaplan, posted to Headliners, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Hollywood, Marketing, Studios, Universal/Focus Features on August 5, 2009 at 2:34pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (15)

Reviews

Duplicity: Gilroy Directs Roberts and Owen

While Duplicity isn’t as good as Michael Clayton, you can tell that it comes from the mind of Tony Gilroy. According to his recent profile in The New Yorker, he’s a man who likes to surprise. Gilroy reminds me of Steven Soderbergh: he’s trying to outsmart audience expectations so much that he sometimes outsmarts himself. (It makes sense that he wrote the Bourne series.) Clayton was warmed up by the charisma of George Clooney, as well as the whip-cracking brilliance of British actor Tom Wilkinson, who goes up against the great Paul Giamatti in Duplicity. The plot of this gorgeous and sexy character-based heist thriller twists and turns—revealing new information via two time-frames—at a globe-trotting clip. This film is colder, brainier, and more schematic than Clayton, and less than romantic, which may disappoint women starved for mature relationship movies. Here’s Variety’s review.

Clive Owen is at the top of his game: virile, vulnerable, sexy, yearning, distrustful, clearly in love with fellow spy Julia Roberts. But like Trouble in Paradise or Prizzi’s Honor, there is no honor among thieves.

Roberts is at an interesting career juncture. She’s aging. At 41 she’s gorgeous, skinny, with a full head of long red hair, still a magnetic movie star. But her cheeks are hollower. She’s morphing into a mature woman who is more than a sex object: she holds her own with Owen, even dominates him, in a way that we are not used to seeing in movies (strong women are a staple on television). Her mature authority is slightly strident. Having taken five years off to raise her three kids, people are asking, is Roberts still a movie star? I object to Newsweek’s suggestion that Roberts should be out playing the celebrity game.

I’d love to see Duplicity open huge just to prove that maintaining some distance, that elusive star mystery—which has worked for another 40ish mom, Jodie Foster, barring her misstep as a gun-toting vigilante in The Brave One—is an effective strategy. Simply put, audiences will welcome Roberts in a role that they want to see her play. Whether this movie delivers that is another question.

It’s tricky. A patently fake studio concoction which makes no pretense at portraying the real world, Duplicity probes not only ruthless business competition at any price (part of what got us into our current mess) but male/female power dynamics. It’s a smart, entertaining movie that doesn’t entirely satisfy.

originally posted on Variety.com

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by Anne Thompson, posted to Genres, Headliners, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts on March 16, 2009 at 1:54pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (0)