I pulled into the Beverly Hilton for the annual Academy Nominees lunch alongside Quentin Tarantino (pictured with Academy president Tom Sherak). At the press table, an Academy staffer asked me turn the handle to spit out a ball telling me where I’d be sitting.
I landed number three: each table mixes a press person with an ex-Academy president or governor—in our case, Walter Mirisch, producer of 100 movies, including Hawaii, Fiddler on the Roof, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape—and a smattering of nominees. Table three included The Hurt Locker producer Greg Shapiro, who fears that with just ten movies under his belt, he will never catch up with Mirisch, and The Cove producer Fisher Stevens, who flew in from New York.
There’s a giddy sense of joy at this event. The nominees are happy to cheer each other on. Women press themselves on Morgan Freeman, who keeps moving. That’s how stars survive—they smile, and continue to push forward. Diminutive Carey Mulligan has gone very blonde. (Typically, Mo’Nique is a no-show.) Director Ed Zwick, an Academy governor, says that he approached cinematographer Eduardo Serra at one of these luncheons and ended up working with him on three movies.
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by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, James Cameron, John Lasseter, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Franchises, Avatar on February 15, 2010 at 7:13pm PST | Permalink | Comments (5)
Something had to give at Disney. But motion picture chief Dick Cook was such a fixture at the studio that despite Disney chairman Robert Iger’s public complaints about the quality of the movies, I figured production chief Oren Aviv would be the target. Disney’s output has been suspect ever since Aviv replaced Nina Jacobson at the studio. Cook, who over 38 years rose up through the ranks to run distribution before he took over running movies, was clearly comfortable with Aviv, who came from the marketing side, but had written the high-concept hit, National Treasure. So Cook and Aviv were both strong marketers, but hit a rough box office patch in the last year.
The studio came in fifth in 2009 market share; recent box office disappointments were Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert Experience ($23 million worldwide), rom-com Confessions of a Shopaholic ($108 million worldwide) and the remake Race to Witch Mountain ($106 million worldwide). (UPDATE: Here’s Kim Masters and the LAT on Cook’s unceremonious ouster.)
It makes sense that Iger would want some fresh blood. But it’s surprising that he didn’t give Cook some kind of face-saving job at Disney. The guy was a loyal company man, a lifer. Not that he’s walking away with nothing. He’s a wealthy man. But Cook lived and breathed Disney, he’s an institution there, and a well-liked figure around town. It feels wrong, somehow.
Who will Iger pick to replace him?
[Photo: From left, Disney’s Robert Iger, Dick Cook and John Lasseter with Ratatouille director Brad Bird.]
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Bob Zemeckis, John Lasseter, Genres, Animation, Hollywood, Studios, Disney/Miramax on September 20, 2009 at 1:48pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (2)
In the fall season, as hundreds of movies are launched and weighed at film festivals, critics come into their own. They don’t hold much sway with audiences in the summer. But in the fall, suddenly, what they think does matter.
Going into Telluride and Toronto, I am reminded that I am a strange hybrid. While I know far too much about movies and studied film at NYU, I never adopted the mantle of film critic. (I married David Chute instead.) I’ve worked at film mags and written about film my entire career, but always from the perspective of an industry insider. The blog encourages opinion and analysis, but I tend to keep my reviews short, as blogs demand. And while I like smart-house movies, I tend to be less highbrow than most critics, and more in tune with popular taste. My single father raised me on westerns, war movies and James Bond; I love epics and action as well as intimate relationship films. Like Roger Ebert, I want to like movies. And one of my missions for this blog is to rail in support of what makes movies better, and against what makes them worse.
My pet peeve since college is obscurantism. Just as I resist semioticians who make their arguments as difficult to parse as possible, I balk at movies that leave me out and fail to satisfy. I prefer filmmakers who seek to reach an audience and pull them into their movie, who don’t stare at their own navel. Quentin Tarantino, for one, knows exactly who his fans are. While his films are as intellectual, referential and narratively unconventional as the next Cannes Palme d’Or competitor, they are utterly accessible. (His surprising Inglourious Basterds box office proves that point.)
When Film Comment’s Amy Taubin and the NYT’s Manohla Dargis praised Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales at Cannes a few years back, my jaw dropped. Did they see the same meandering, meaningless mess that I did? After John Huston’s head-scratcher Beat the Devil, Humphrey Bogart said, “Only the phonies think it’s funny. It’s a mess.”
At Cannes this year, I was taken aback when Taubin, a critic I have respected since I first started reading her in the early 80s, told me she was angry at me for using the word “artsy” in a blog post on Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control. I actually used the word “arty” to describe his music and visuals, and later went on to describe the film itself as “maddeningly indulgent” and a “travelogue.” (In a comment, Glenn Kenny, who loves the film, also objected to the word “arty,” preferring “artful.”)
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Coens, James Cameron, John Lasseter, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Reviews, Writers, Critics, Roger Ebert on August 31, 2009 at 1:58pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (12)
I am happy to announce the debut of a weekly Friday kudo-podcast with In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. Here’s the first Oscar Talk. We discuss the awards hopefuls so far and likely contenders coming out of upcoming fests; Meryl Streep’s remarkable emergence as a 60-year-old movie star; how the ten best picture slots could effect the Oscar race; new indie distribs Overture, Summit and Apparition; changing trends in Oscar campaigns; Paramount pushing Shutter Island to 2010; how Avatar Day went; and a Toronto preview.
(This is a tad longer than the ones we’ll do in future through festival and Oscar season. And we’ll get better at it.)
by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Box Office, Summer, Directors, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron, John Lasseter, Michael Moore, Quentin Tarantino, Festivals, Telluride, Toronto, Headliners, Meryl Streep on August 28, 2009 at 11:22am PDT | Permalink | Comments (6)
In Indie news, despite Inglourious Basterds’ rousing start, the Weinsteins aren’t out of the woods. They weren’t taking any chances. They upped their media spend by several millions in the week before the opening, targeting their weakest link, women. It worked. The WSJ explains why the Weinsteins face a long road ahead.
Michael Fassbender popped in The Hunger and Inglourious Basterds. But wait until you see Fish Tank. That’s the sexy role that will break him out with women. Here’s IFC’s interview.
Taking up some of the slack from the departing Senator, Sony Worldwide Acquisitions Group is cementing their already close relationship with Bob Berney and Bill Pohlad’s new distrib outfit Apparition by giving them Sundance and Seattle hit Black Dynamite, a blaxploitation comedy, to release this October.
Check out Strongbad’s amusing cartoon about the difference between indie and independent.
Over at Disney, as far as I’m concerned, the more we can all listen to John Lasseter describe what it is that Pixar does so well, the better. Here he answers a fan’s question about how the script for Up was written.
And this fall Disney is mounting a new Comic-Con style expo.
The New York Times has devised a nifty but confusing-to-read chart showing the differing box office patterns of summer and holiday releases vs. longer slower fall runs. The chart shows that:
Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the Oscars tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time.
Time posts Barack Obama’s vacation reading list. Tom Friedman, David McCullough, Richard Price, Kent Haruf and George Pelecanos are very happy.
Recent production news: Gus Van Sant is lining up his next, Restless, for Columbia and Imagine.
Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s Facebook movie The Social Network is a go, reports CHUD. Here’s Sorkin video on how he got roped into taking on the adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires.
On the Awards circuit, after some confusion about conflicting dates for the announcement of the nominations for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild’s SAG Awards, the Globes announcement is now scheduled for December 15 and SAG for December 17, 2009.
Kris Tapley hears Oscar buzz around Michelle Monaghan’s role in James Mottern’s long-on-the-shelf indie flick Trucker, which debuted at Tribeca in 2008. I’m not sure Monterey Media and Plum Pictures are in a position to launch a proper Oscar campaign.
Here’s the trailer:
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by Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Summer, Directors, John Lasseter, Quentin Tarantino, Independents, Weinsteins, Marketing, Studios, Disney/Miramax on August 25, 2009 at 9:00am PDT | Permalink | Comments (2)
I’ve been spending a lot of time with John Lasseter lately. In May, the Disney/Pixar animation chief brought Up to open the Cannes Film Fest, where animator Pete Docter got the full auteur treatment. Then Lasseter brought Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, who he says had a huge influence on Up, to do a U.S. tour to support his latest, Ponyo, from closing night June 28 of the Los Angeles Film Festival and accepting an award at Berkeley to July’s Comic-Con and a full-scale Academy tribute.
As Lasseter has been called America’s new Walt Disney, so is Miyazaki known as the Disney of Japan.
The two men are mutual fans and friends, going back to Miyazaki’s visit in the 80s to the U.S. around the time of My Neighbor Totoro. When that film first showed here, I took young Nora, and like Lasseter’s kids, she grew up on the magic anime of Miyazaki, from Kiki’s Delivery Service to Princess Mononoke. Only once in my life have I ever called a critic and yelled at him for a wrong-headed review. I still get steamed thinking about the Variety critic who didn’t think Miyazaki’s Totoro was good animation.
Miyazaki and Lasseter share something rare: they are filmmakers in charge of animation giants in their respective countries, Studio Ghibli and Disney Animation/Pixar. Where Lasseter has developed a strong collaborative ethic at Pixar, he reveres Miyazki, I think, for dreaming up his stories and drawing much of the storyboards and characters himself. At Comic-Con, Miyazaki told the crowd the secret behind his artistry. “My process is thinking, thinking and thinking, thinking about my stories for a long time,” he said with a smile. “If you have a better way, let me know.”
When Lasseter interviewed Miyazaki in front of 6500 fans in Hall H, the Disney/Pixar chief praised him for running a “filmmaker-led studio dedicated to making great movies. That’s what it’s all about.” Backstage, Lasseter said that you could watch the films in Japanese with no subtitles and still figure out what was going on. The language only adds subtlety and depth. “I love the positive messages in all the films,” he said. “Miyazaki is inspirational. He celebrates quiet moments.”
The evening at the Academy was Lasseter’s tribute to Miyazaki, complete with his commentary on his favorite Miyazaki clips, including a rousing helicopter rescue operation in Castle in the Sky, a bar scene with pig-faced aviator Porco Rosso, the scary magic of Spirited Away, and the dreamlike catbus scene from Totoro, as the giant furry creature waits with two little girls in the dark rain at a bus stop. Miyazaki, who studied politics and worked his way up as an animator while always wanting to write manga comics, admits that he never wanted to make Totoro’s origins or powers clear. He was thinking about the images in that film for ten years, he said. He doesn’t like spending time drawing villains, so he doesn’t do it much.
His latest Ponyo is also sublime; it whisks you into another world. And it’s old-fashioned, hand-drawn 2-D (not an ounce of CG in it), stylized animation. Miyazaki has always been able to capture the forces of nature and the great outdoors, in this case, the ocean that menaces the Japanese coast in the form of a tsunami. The movie lacks violence or anything urban: nature provides the story’s threat and drama. Don’t miss this one.
While Lasseter’s Disney animation division and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have supervised the English-language dub of Miyazaki‘s Ponyo—already a hit overseas—the film retains its magic and Japanese identity. Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and Betty White are among the voice talent. Lasseter is banking that the movie will break out to family audiences in a way none of Miyazaki’s imports ever have, even with one Oscar nomination (Howl’s Moving Castle) and one win (Spirited Away). Lasseter is putting all the clout of the Disney studio behind giving this film a proper wide release. The poor performance of the other Miyazaki films in the U.S. comes down to the number of theaters they were in, he says. “Now we’re in 800 theaters.”
Here’s backstage interview footage from Comic-Con of Lasseter talking about making the English-language version of Ponyo:
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And a brief snippet of Miyazaki himself:
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More, and the Ponyo trailer on the jump:
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Summer, Directors, John Lasseter, Genres, Animation, Studios, Disney/Miramax, Video, Interviews, Trailers on August 14, 2009 at 3:30pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (4)
Steven Spielberg is directing a remake of the UniversalMGM/Broadway classic Harvey; he’s seeking a star like Tom Hanks or Will Smith to star. Fox is partnering with DreamWorks/Reliance to produce the movie about a six-foot, invisible rabbit.
Rob Marshall is “circling” the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.
Ridley Scott is ramping up an Alien prequel.
Ron Howard is directing a Robert Ludlum novel, The Parsifal Mosaic.
Robert Downey Jr. is starring as Sherlock Holmes. Russell Crowe is Robin Hood. Warners is rebooting Captain Blood as a space odyssey. Universal has remakes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Wolf Man in the works. Every studio is desperately seeking franchises, tentpoles, remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels. Original is a dirty word. It means having to start something from scratch with no safety zone.
We know that books, plays, tv shows, videogames, theme park rides, comics and graphic novels are easier to make than anything original. (The Independent rounds up some of the studios’ recent franchise-chasing activity.) But these are Hollywood’s best and brightest, the directors who can usually get anything made. But not if the studios don’t give them the money. These are what the studios consider to be the most commercial projects. Handing Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland is a no-brainer. And I want to see Downey as Sherlock Holmes, too. But Rob Marshall directing a Pirates sequel tells me the guy is chasing the bucks. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has visual taste. But Marshall considering Pirates makes me wonder how Nine turned out. A gifted musical director, Marshall flubbed the period drama Memoirs of a Geisha . He’s not a big-budget VFX action maven.
If you want to go original at a studio, you’d better be the Coen brothers (A Serious Man), James Cameron (Avatar) or Peter Jackson (producer of District 9). Pixar/Disney’s John Lasseter and Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo) have been making originals their entire careers. They believe in it. And it works. You just have to fly by the seat of your pants and make strong judgement calls about actually delivering a satisfying movie that isn’t pre-digested, already proven. It’s about fear of failure. In today’s Hollywood, it takes guts to be original.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, James Cameron, John Lasseter, Peter Jackson, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Studios on August 2, 2009 at 7:47pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (10)
Who came out ahead and behind on their Cannes jaunt this year?
Disney
The studio won big by using Cannes as the European launch for Pixar’s Up. John Lasseter and Pete Docter had the time of their lives being treated seriously by the most prestigious festival in the world, which gave them some auteur cred they wouldn’t get any other way. At Disney’s after-party on the Carlton pier, Lasseter got misty-eyed. “It’s one of the greatest things to happen in our careers,” he said. The often stuffy festival stepped up to the times, passing out 3-D glasses to the opening night black-tie glitterati at the Palais.
Disney also took advantage of the global media to introduce the motion capture pic Christmas Carol, bringing director Bob Zemeckis and Jim Carrey to the Croisette for a snowy photo opportunity. (I remember meeting Carrey for the first time when he came to Cannes to promo The Mask.)
Miramax
On the other hand, it’s utterly depressing that Disney may be putting its specialty subsidiary Miramax on the block. Studio boss Robert Iger wants to stick to his family-movie brand/theme park mandate, and Miramax doesn’t fit with its other businesses. While the studio denies the unit is for sale, their asking price is said to be $1.2 billion; buyers are interested, especially in the Tiffany library built by the Weinsteins, but are waiting for the price to come down.
Miramax topper Daniel Battsek has done a solid if not spectacular job, including Oscar winners Tsotsi and No Country for Old Men. But many projects were too pricey to turn a profit in the tough specialty market. Battsek kept a low profile on the Croisette this year, with no buys announced. As Harvey and Bob Weinstein struggle in a sour economy to keep their company afloat, the irony is that if they had not only raised but made some money, they might have been able to afford to buy their company back.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, John Lasseter, Quentin Tarantino, Festivals, Cannes, Headliners, Brad Pitt, Independents, Weinsteins, Studios, Disney/Miramax, Universal/Focus Features on May 31, 2009 at 8:02am PDT | Permalink | Comments (0)
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