Out of Focus

It seems that the quote I posted yesterday from Variety’s print article indicating that the MGM brand would disappear was in fact removed from the website story due to its being inaccurate. In another Variety story today (sub. req’d) laying out some of the questions raised by the deal — such as the status of MGM’s production slate and various producer deals as well as the studio’s year-old tenancy, which will now be vacated in a brand-new Century City office tower — that claim was negated. Instead, it seems that Sony will keep MGM alive, at least for the foreseeable future: “What is known is that MGM and its roaring lion logo will continue to operate as a separate label to produce and distribute roughly three films per year.”

Obviously, I think that’s great news. I know it seems like a small thing, and certainly most people don’t pick movies based on the studio unless it’s something like a Pixar film, but I think it’s important for Hollywood to remember its heritage even if the “town” and the business are quite different.

Another Variety story today (via Yahoo! no sub req’d) surveys reactions of several Hollywood vets who are saddened by MGM’s continued shrinkage but also cognizant that the studio isn’t the important institution it was for the first 70-odd years of the 20th Century. One crucial quote relevant to today’s film business climate comes from former MGM head Alan Ladd Jr.: “It means for the business that there’s one less buyer, but they haven’t been that active a buyer in recent years anyway.” MGM may not have been a huge buyer, but UA was primarily an acquisitions outlet, particularly of foreign and indie films, and if UA does go away, as expected, that would be a major loss.

But at least “Leo” will remain, and to me that’s no small thing. His roar may get nipped into more of a meow, but at least his sleep will be just during some of the movies that follow rather than a permanent one.

The big news in the entertainment this morning was obviously that Sony Corp. has agreed to put-up roughly $5-Billion to buy MGM. MGM had basically been on the block for a while, and as recently as a few weeks ago, Time Warner was thought to be the front-runner. I was looking forward to a Time Warner purchase because that would have meant TCM would then have access to the entire MGM library. (It already retains much of it.) But the price became apparently too high, TW dropped out, and Sony will now fold two other classic Hollywood studios into their Sony Pictures Entertainment banner.

SPE basically evolved out of Sony’s purchase of Columbia and TriStar Pictures. They moved Columbia Studios from its long-time Burbank home (studios side-by-side with Warner Bros.) to Culver City where they took over the lot belonging to … hey, how about that? — MGM. MGM eventually moved out to a brand-spanking-new (at the time) office complex (without lot and production facilities) in Santa Monica. MGM, by the way, had also acquired United Artists, the historic studio that was started by the biggest names in Hollywood of the day in 1919, specifically Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. It was the Dreamworks SKG of its day, except arguably much more influential and important. Today, UA is basically MGM’s “classics” division, releasing indie-style and foreign films, and both studios lack the luster and dominance of the film world they each held during the early and so-called “golden age” of cinema.

According to the story in Variety today (sub. req’d), what will happen to both MGM and UA is up for grabs, but with so much crossover among Columbia, Sony Classics and Screen Gems, not to mention an attempt to revise TriStar (already part of the Sony stable) and MGM and UA, Variety indicates that the two studio brands will simply disappear. (And by the way, watch the LA unemployment numbers take a little jump as soon as this is all finalized.) Interestingly enough, the story on the Variety website is missing a paragraph that can be found in the Daily Variety Gotham print edition which indicates that just like the UA label, the MGM banner may disappear after 2005. Obviously I can’t link to this, but here’s what you’d read on p.17 of today’s Daily Variety Gotham:

“Sources said there will be a transition period to accommodate films in the MGM pipeline, but that by next year MGM films will be released through Sony Pictures, though they still will carry the MGM label.

“After 2005, that label and the roaring Lion will be put to rest.”(Italics added by me.)

Maybe Variety made a mistake, hence that sentence being gone from the story currently online, but if it’s true, that would be a major shame. MGM is possibly the most famous of the early studios, and its roaring lion “Leo” is the one studio card that has basically not changed since its inception. If the Lion disappears, a chunk of Hollywood history says bye-bye with it. To be replaced by what? The boring SPE logo? Or by nothing as Sony just takes hold of the MGM library but all releases continue under the Columbia banner? Either way, it’s a shame, and while it may seem like nothing, it would actually be the death of a major movie institution.

Here’s hoping the Lion is not forced to rest in peace.

Dodger Theatricals, one of the major New York commercial producing companies, just opened this large five-theater facility called “Dodger Stages” on what is basically the Off-Broadway Theater Row, far west 42nd Street 50th Street between 8th/9th Avenues. (My bad; thought it was somewhere else. Oops. ) The first two shows include Bare: A Pop Opera and the return engagement to New York of what has been a sold-out show everywhere it has gone: Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique. The show takes place in an enormous tank of water

Basil Twist is a puppeteer, but just calling him a puppeteer negates a bit of what critics and audiences have raved about for a few years. He and his company have been touring with this show for a few years, I believe, having started at HERE Arts Center in SoHo. Now if you’ve never seen his show (and I haven’t, but I plan to rectify that in the next couple weeks), you have a chance to check-it-out.

I actually have a slightly different memory of Twist, although he would never remember me because we never actually met. But Twist grew up in San Francisco (like me) and he went to a private high school in the city that one of my best friends also attended. Sometime in 1996 or ’97, Twist starred as Don Quixote in this high school’s production of Man of La Mancha. I went to see the show because my friend was also in it. This is going to sound really stupid, but since I was a big-time theatre-geek in high school, I paid attention to these kinds of things, and at the time, I remember thinking that his performance in this little high school show was really kind of amazing. Between my school’s excellent theater department and his, Twist’s Quixote was one of the best acting jobs I had seen in my four years. Yeah, in the grand scheme of acting, that’s not saying much. And is it really applicable here anyway, what with marionettes and all?

Who cares. Check out the show, and I’ll let you know more after I’ve been.

A couple items caught my eye this afternoon and I thought I’d throw them up here:

• A while ago, I wrote about the horror of Jessica Simpson becoming Daisy Duke on the big screen. Today, there’s much better news from Hazzard County: two “jackasses” have been cast to play Bo and Luke Duke. I actually think Johnny Knoxville and Stifler are potentially great ideas for the obvious campy film this will be. I still think they’re going to run into trouble trying to deliberately out-camp the original series, so at this point a lot depends on attaching a writer and director who each have strong comic skills. Of course, Todd Phillips didn’t help Starsky & Hutch much, and Dukes of Hazzard seems to be heading down the same road.

• Still, I’m more encouraged by that news than by word that Michael Caton-Jones is now attached to direct Basic Instinct 2. I wrote about this awful idea back in July when the movie first got back on track. I don’t mean Caton-Jones is such a terrible thought, but this whole movie should never happen. Nobody cares. But speaking of this director, what the hell happened to him? Around the turn-of-the-’90s, he was making some really interesting films like Scandal, Memphis Belle and This Boy’s Life. Even Doc Hollywood was a pleasant little trifle. But Rob Roy was just bland, and The Jackal was utterly unnecessary, and not very good. I never saw City By the Sea, but that was in large part due to the fact that nobody else did either so it came and went. I wish he could get back to the provocative material of his earlier films; vanity destined-to-be-a-flop crap like Basic Instinct 2 just tells me that he can’t get a good job.

• In what must be a major coup for the show, even if it means there will likely be just one man speaking and very quickly, IFC’s Jon Favreau-hosted series Dinner for Five has been renewed for a new season, and the first episode will be a special from the Lake Placid Film Festival (which happened in June) featuring Martin Scorsese. I’m actually not into IFC’s little chatfest. Every time I turn it on, I get relatively bored pretty quickly, especially since the conversation often has little to do with movies — at least the times I’ve turned it on. That should be especially interesting since I’ve never seen Scorsese talk about anything else. (I’m sure he does in his private life, but on camera?) Of course, I could sit and watch and listen to Scorsese talk about film forever. Between documentaries like Il Mio Viaggio in Italia and actually seeing him speak at various events, I’ve already done so and never failed to leave the experience without learning something. So you better believe I’ll be tuning in when these episodes start airing early next year.

• I don’t know how I didn’t hear about this until today, but thank you Gothamist Arts for giving me the heads-up about the first edition of the NY Musical Theatre Festival which starts Monday. In addition to what should be a glimpse at much of the new musical theatre talent coming-up the ranks, the festival is devoting a few days to musicals on film, including Lars von Trier’s and Bjork’s brilliant but incredibly depressing collaboration in Dancer in the Dark and John Cameron Mitchell’s fantastic adaptation of his own stage show Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Like Gothamist, I am particularly interested in seeing the film festival hit The American Astronaut which had a brief release that I missed a couple years ago and still hasn’t found a DVD distributor. I’m also keen to catch Neil Young’s Greendale, which I also missed during its short release earlier this year. And that’s just the films.

• For some inexplicable reason, CNBC has renewed Dennis Miller’s talk show which, according to Variety (sub req’d), averages a whopping 213,000 viewers a night. Yet the Variety story also quotes CNBC execs as saying the show “is the cornerstone of its redesigned lineup.” I guess considering that the networks McEnroe has twice registered a zero rating, Miller’s show deserves to be “the cornerstone.”

• And last but oh so definitely not least: This just in, Michael Eisner announces he’ll step-down as head of Disney when his contract ends in 2006. This comes on the heels of the news that Eisner thinks Robert Iger should be his succesor to head the monolithic entertainment conglomerate. That would be a brilliant idea because as I wrote back in April, Iger, more than anyone, is really responsible for the tremendous long-term slide and bottom-feeding of the major networks in which ABC currently finds itself. I have always been amazed at his dramatic rise from ABC programming head, to head of network to #2 man at Disney, but here it is? Disney stockholders, take note: sell!

This is the time of year when film releases often take a bit of a break. Post-Labor Day doldrums, and all, mixed with the pending start of the traditional TV season. But with IFC needing to fill the Ultimate Film Fanatic slot, and with a new series moving into repertory at Film Forum, at least us New Yorkers have more than one film-related options this weekend.

• I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen F.W. Murnau’s classic 1927 film Sunrise. I’m often thanking the Walter Reade Theater and Turner Classic Movies, but Film Forum deserves a chunk of my gratitude as well. Starting today and running until Sept. 20, the downtown revival Mecca is showing 13 of Murnau’s films starting with Sunrise this weekend. You bet your ass I’ll be there, possibly this afternoon. Personally, I’m also interested in next weekend’s double-feature of what some still consider the ultimate vampire movie Nosferatu together with The Last Laugh as well as the one on 9/20 featuring his versions of Faust and Tartuffe.

• Tonight IFC premieres their first attempt at a reality show: Film School. OK, so they’re calling it “An Original Docu-Series,” but those of us who have watched TV for more than an hour in the last three years know that’s just fancy-talk for “reality show.” I’m a bit troubled by what the web site calls the four NYU grad student participants “1 Goal: To direct an award-winning student film and launch their careers.” Now if by “award-winning” they mean the IFC’s Film School winner, i.e., just among these four, I don’t think any filmmaker’s goal should be to win awards. Plenty of award-winning films are crap, and even more non-award winners are brilliant, and I mean Oscar on down. The true goal of any film student should be to successfully make the film he or she envisioned, make it well, and have it be well-received. Anything else is just gravy. But in this era of competitive reality shows, this one seems like it’s going to be more about attitude, pretension and beating your competitor than any true film school experience. Ahh well … I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll withhold judgment, but I’m not that optimistic. Depending on how much I irrationally get riled up by this episode, you may or may not find me recapping — i.e., complaining about — the entire series.

• Opening in theaters this week is … well, a lot of crap probably. Resident Evil:Apocalypse? Was there really the need for a sequel? Cellular is basically Speed meets Phone Booth, by the writer of the latter, and that just can’t be good. When Will I Be Loved is the next entry into the consistently hyped but usually underwhelming resume of writer-director James Toback, and from the trailer, it simply looks like a twisted take on Indecent Proposal.

  Criminal could be good, but then again, it’s just an American remake of what was a great Argentinian thriller a couple years ago called Nine Queens. Criminal has a phenomenal cast, but these english language remakes are often iffy, and even with the acting talent at hand, I’d be very surprised if the film is as good as the original. But if I was picking something new, this is the one that would get my $10.25. Chances are, though, after Sunrise and trying to get to The Ramones doc End of the Century, I’ll be trying to clear my DiVo in prep for the new TV season which is sneaking up on us as I type.

• Besides, are you ready for some football? I’m actually not. Especially since my team is likely going to suck worse than they have since I was about 8 years old. Nevertheless, that’s why we have sports bars. So while your team is losing, you can drown your sorrows in the sweet debilitating liquid of the gods. Or beer.

I always loved the scene in The Jerk where Steve Martin goes crazy over the arrival of the new phonebook. I love the whole movie — for my money, it’s easily Carl Reiner’s best directing effort — but that scene in particular always sticks out. And every year, I usually have a similar moment of excitement due to a certain publication arriving in the mail.

On Tuesday, TV Guide’s Fall Preview delivered. Coincidentally, and I can’t remember this happening before, Entertainment Weekly’s Fall Preview issue arrived the same day. Usually, I’ll devour both of those magazines as soon as they come, and even though TV Guide has become possibly one of the worst magazines, even as they keep making “improvements” to it, I still love their thorough coverage of the new and returning shows.

But this year, the damn Fall season is sneaking up on me, and between work and other commitments, I haven’t found the time to dedicate myself to the important task of absorbing everything that’s about to be thrown at us. As it is, on my DiVo I have recorded the first Father of the Pride, the first Hawaii, and last night’s premiere of The Apprentice which I haven’t had a chance to watch forcing me to be extra careful when traveling through the blogosphere today since I’m sure there will be plenty of chatter.

I will get through those issues this weekend, but I did take the time to catch the premiere of Joey, and to say I was disappointed would imply that I was expecting something good. However, I never imagined that the people behind this spin-off would so utterly lack any imagination in creating a first episode. What aired tonight was stock sit-com fodder, with embarrassing amounts of laugh-track because 9 out of 10 jokes (which were thrown out in fast and furious fashion) would land with a resounding THUNK!

I’ll withhold final judgment on Joey for at least two more episodes. The coming attractions actually looked like a potentially cute and clever show, doing for Joey something not so different from what was done for Frasier when his character left Boston for Seattle. The idea of Joey acting as mentor, especially in dealing with women, for his brainy but slightly uncool 20 year old nephew has potential, but that was barely hinted at tonight. Granted, this was a pilot episode, having to establish the new characters and the environment and how everyone will interact, but maybe they might have made it funny. Drea de Matteo is fine as Joey’s sister, but she’s also just a stereotype write now, and not a funny one. The normally hysterical Jennifer Coolidge is utterly wasted as Joey’s new agent with an absolutely awful scene that simply begged for laughs but didn’t deserve any.

There’s plenty to criticize about this show, especially it’s extremely unrealistic portrayal of the development of a television show. Within the period of a week, Joey somehow gets the lead in a cop show, shoots the pilot, has the show cancelled and discovers the show he passed on just weeks ago has become a big hit. But Joey obviously isn’t going for realism; I know that. Still, the degree of absurdity in the basic plot of this first episode contributes to the lack of any comedy in this sit-com.

And just so you know, I’m a fan of Joey Tribiani. I know people are sick of his character, but during the last year or two of Friends when I found myself watching the show more out of habit than anything else, Joey somehow still managed to make me laugh at once an episode. And to be fair, there were at least two specific Joey-moments in this episode that caused at least a chuckle in me. But the rest of it? Zzzzzzzz.

My bad feeling about Joey started not because of the buzz since the up-fronts but due to the crappy marketing campaign. There’s a poster for the show on a phone booth near my apartment. The tagline says, “New City, Still Lost.” Do you know how many people work in marketing for NBC? Do you have any idea how many phrases they probably ran through before settling on that one? The damn thing doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, I understand what they’re going for, but it’s not funny because it makes no damn sense. You could be the smartest person in the world; you move to a new city, chances are you’ll be lost. If Joey wasn’t moving anywhere and it said, “Same City, Still Lost,” that would make sense. That would be slightly clever. But what’s funny about a loveable but dumb guy being lost in a place he doesn’t know? Yes, the lost refers to his intelligence not being geographically challenged, but if it doesn’t allude to both, then the pun doesn’t work.

Well, that’s a perfect mini-example of what’s wrong with the entire show based on this one episode. A lot of Joey moments, some Joey moments coming from his sister, but very little to balance them so far, and none of it funny.

Maybe the future episodes are dramatically better. NBC certainly must hope so. If Joey stays the same or gets worse while paired with the why-the-hell-is-it-still-popular Will & Grace in the eight o’clock hour, I don’t care how popular The Apprentice is, Thursday on NBC definitely will no longer be must-see.

Go to this link, scroll down to the third photo and look out the window. No, not your window; the window in the photo.

I wonder if they come with the house.

UPDATE: Characteristic of this blog, I’m a bit behind. Lindsay posted a link to the same photo, albeit here post is more cryptic than mine, a couple weeks ago. Her link doesn’t seem to work anymore, but the above one does.

Look at the vast influence I wield now. Just yesterday, I post something about the atrocities in Sudan and about a soon-to-be-released album to support the refugees in Darfur, and today, the Bush Administration actually comes out and does what many have been asking it to do for some time, calling the acts of the Sudanese government “genocide.”

See, now they get on board with the UN, asking them to investigate further. Amazing how these pieces of news are released. What happened today to make the government issue such an important and dramatic statement — there’s not much a government can say about another government that’s worse than calling their actions “genocide.” The only thing I can think of is that suddenly there’s a renewed scandal surrounding Bush’s National Guard service. The fires were kindled by a report on 60 Minutes last night as well as by a new group calling themselves “Texans for Truth” who are basically doing to Bush what “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” have been trying to do to Kelly. A bunch of guys who served in Bush’s unit of the National Guard are claiming they never saw him there.

I don’t hate that I’m cynical, but I hate the fact that I’ve become so cynical that I believe absolutely every statement from this administration is motivated by politics, but there’s no other rational explanation for the timing of almost every announcement made to the news media. Joshua Micah Marshall gave a great example of the “coincidences” involved in bad news being followed by some administration announcement to deflect it a couple days ago on Talking Points Memo.

Meanwhile, on a tangental note, I have a memo for Al Franken: Your little Sundance show? Utterly unwatchable. Your Air America Radio show is fine. Uneven, but fine. It’s a good counterpoint to all the right wingers out there dominating talk radio and you’ve gotten better since it started. What makes you think that it’s entertaining in the least for us to watch you and Katherine Lanpher sitting there reading sheets of paper for an hour. Your little sketches lost all the humor they may have had because we can see you guys acting, and while Lanpher is a good radio journalist, she’s an awful wide-eyed actress. When your old writing partner Tom Davis came in and did a bit (with all of you reading the whole thing), we can see it’s Tom Davis before you say, Oh no, just kidding folks. It’s my old friend Tom Davis. When you have a fake Republican stripper come in to “debate” a Boston Globe columnist and Lanpher mocks horror at her being there, it’s not all that great to see the fake stripper turning the pages of her script.

Howard Stern’s E! Show works when there is actually stuff happening in the studio. The studio is also set up as a performance space, unlike your long closet with some banners and folding tables. There’s nothing wrong with being a radio show that does well on the radio, and I do understand that you’re trying to reach an audience that maybe doesn’t get Air America locally or know how to stream audio via the web. But is Sundance the right spot? I love the channel, but it’s not like they have such a huge audience.

Your current format does not make interesting television, and I don’t think you should change things to do so. I don’t know how long you, Sundance and Air America plan to keep this going, but the only thing you’ve managed to do so far is make Imus on MSNBC seem slightly less sleep-inducing. I support your goals, but this show … ugh.

This should be making Bunsen’s day:

“Has Ken Jennings Jeopardy! Run Ended?”

75 wins and $2.5 Million? That should teach Jeopardy! to not change their rules again and reinstate the original five-wins-and-your-out limitation. If this is true, can you imagine being the guy who beat him? Do you think that took so much mental effort and concentration that the Jennings-destroyer lost in the very next game? Ooh, the mystery of it all.

Go kick his ass now, Bunsen.

This is great news.

What is it about these heavily sarcastic yet wickedly clever “failed” Fox series that come back and finally receive their just due. First was Family Guy which it seemed like nobody but I watched when the episodes first premiered on Fox years ago, but since has achieved such a devoted following thanks to DVD and Cartoon Network that Fox has “uncancelled” it with new episodes arriving in early 2005.

I was also a big fan of Greg the Bunny, a hysterical show mixing people and puppets that was killed-off before its time. Now, IFC is sort of giving the show a chance to prove that it can pick-up a following as well by producing a half-hour special which reintroduces us to our favorite little bunny two years after the cancellation of his non-hit series.

According to The Hollywood Reporter story, Greg will go visit his friends Warren the Ape and Count Blah in Las Vegas. I hope Tardy the Turtle makes an appearance too. But here’s hoping that IFC, in what I just yesterday called it’s seemingly relatively new leaning toward entertainment-based original programming, thinks highly enough of this special to bring the show to series, and then maybe a year or two down the line, Fox can “uncancel” Greg too. Or he can keep hopping on IFC. Either way, I’d be happy.