In Saturday's NYT, hack auteur nonpareil Brett Ratner admits that he didn't really know what he was doing with the just-released "one last heist" flick After the Sunset until he got into the editing room. Still, he managed to fool at least one cast member into thinking he wasn't totally lost:
A gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines story...an actor badly in need of a hit and a change of pace. They might even get the Peterson story out of the MOW ghetto and into the theaters with Affleck above the title. Patrick Whitesell's phone at Endeavor must be ringing off the hook.
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin reports in Wired on some of the anti-piracy technologies that might soon come to your local theater. In keeping with the MPAA's subtle tactics, one of the new "solutions" is unironically named PirateEye and looks "looks like a mechanical replica of Darth Vader's head" watching movie patrons. Did a Hannibal Lecter mask fail in focus groups as too on the nose? The CEO of the company that makes PirateEye explains that antipiracy measure could be worse:
Since recently-appointed MPAA head/pirate-hunter Dan Glickman is still new on the job, he's going to have to endure months of inevitable "He's no Jack Valenti" profiles like the one in today's NYT, which begins with "He's about as bland as Jack Valenti is colorful. A navy blue blazer and a comb-over. A long face with puffy eyelids that have yet to feel the sharp edge of Beverly Hills' finest technicians." Eventually, the piece heats up a little when News Corp president Peter Chernin seemingly hints that although Glickman's clearly no dapper Jack, he might draw some interest from a certain faction of Hollywood power players when he's not occupied with suing movie downloaders:
When we heard yesterday that Miramax might be planning another round of layoffs just in time for Thanksgiving, we mused that Harvey Weinstein might need to hire temps to have the necessary warm bodies to toss out of the nearest open window. Now we've discovered that Miramax has posted a job listing at Monster.com. It's an assistant level position (is "Assistant" Max-speak for "pinkslip fodder"?), so if you're a risk-taker looking to get abused for a week or two before before getting laid off, send over a resume.
The Defamer correspondent on Meg Ryan fixations files this report speculating about whether a certain A-lister is in danger of being forcibly molded into America's New Sweetheart by a nostalgic filmmaker:
After yesterday's memo informing their employees that their end-of-year vacations were going to be a lot less merry, you'd think Miramax would be done crushing the holiday spirit. Unfortunately, there are now rumors circulating within the Max that Harvey Weinstein wants to ruin Thanksgiving as well, with another possible round of layoffs rolling through before the turkeys are in the oven. Is there anyone left to fire, or are they going to need to fill empty cubes with temps before marching through the office and handing out pinkslips smeared in cranberry sauce? Please, someone go and white-out all of the holidays on Harvey's calendar before he figures out a way to fuck with Boxing Day.
According to Variety, DreamWorks has shelled out seven figures to obtain the rights for a feature film version of Baywatch, which it's fastracking for a summer 2006 release. While intellectually we understand that much of the world can't quench its thirst for David Hasselhoff's chest-thicket or Pamela Anderson's rack struggling against the confines of of red one-piece, our visceral reaction was to immediately soil our Speedos. If you suffered a similar reaction, we promise everything's going to be OK. Once you clean up, the thoughts of suicide from despair over the state of the entertainment industry quickly recede. Well, at least until the movie deal for Baywatch Nights is announced.
Hey, remember this morning, when everyone was talking about what a cool party Miramax threw at the American Film Market? Well, the Miramax Left Behind (the "lucky" ones who escaped the layoffs) have had any fond party memories (whether firsthand or vicarious) erased by the latest in a barrage of morale-downsizing memoranda. This time, Miramax changed its holiday vacation time policy on the fly, eliminating the end-of-year paid holidays and forcing what's left of their workforce to take the time as vacation days—long after most have already made their plans. There are rumblings that this new policy came straight from Harvey Weinstein's Grinch cave, complete with Scroogian cackle. [Ed.note—Are there any other holiday bad guys left to squeeze in that sentence?] Employees are so happy about the news that they're all out following every dogwalker in Tribeca, "shopping" for Weinstein's holiday gift with plastic baggies. The memo follows after the jump.
From Variety's VPage coverage of Beyond the Sea's opening night screening at AFI Fest: Kevin Spacey tires of the indelible image of him deep-throating a microphone representing his cinematic labor of love, and finally enlists two friends to give us a new tableaux to consider.
[Photo: Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images]
A reader at the LA.comfidential blog reports from Miramax's American Film Market party at Akwa. The Max might be lean and mean these days after laying off just about everyone whose name doesn't begin in "Wein" and end in "ein," but they know their core business is still sucking up to talent at parties and convincing them to work cheaply.
The MPAA, the rabid lobbyists who ensure that Shall We Dance? can never be viewed without proper respect to copyrights, are finally ready to start suing broadband-enabled movie pirates back into the days of the Commodore 64. New MPAA Head Pirate Hunter in Charge Dan Glickman will announce the opening volley of lawsuits later today. Quick, everyone uninstall BitTorrent and throw your computers into the nearest body of water to avoid their wrath! At least Glickman seems to be paying lip-service to a somewhat less bloodthirsty approach than his predecessor, Jack Valenti.
· FX seems to be banking on a prolonged presence in Iraq, ordering on-the-front-lines war drama Over
There from Steven Bochco. [THR]
· Expensive NBC CGI disaster Father of the Pride is "temporarily" shelved for November sweeps, but the network promises unaired episodes "will be back" in December. Either that or Jeff Zucker will instead light two million dollars in cash on fire in front of NBC's offices in memory of each unseen show. Variety, sub. req'd.]
The LAT reports that Sherry Lansing, chairwoman of risk-averse remake factory Paramount Pictures, will step down after her contract expires at the end of next year. Like all studio lame ducks who want to watch every last contractual dollar transfer into their bank accounts, Lansing will hang around the lot long enough to help look for a successor. But it won't be so easy to fill the "pioneer" Lansing's coon-skin cap, as Columbia head Amy Pascal notes that "She's been a pioneer … making movies that nobody else would make. She always listened to her inner voice." These days that inner voice was telling the trailblazer to go around planting her flag in other people's old movies, like The Stepford Wives and The Manchurian Candidate. And maybe it's time for us to completely beat this metaphor into the ground by saying it's a good thing she's getting off the wagon train before the new corporate Injuns scalped her.
Naomi Gyllenhaal, the screenwriter who brought us Running on Empty and the Hollywood mom who brought us dreamy-eyed star Jake and sister Maggie, suddenly finds herself in that rarest of positions: in the midst of a middle-age writing career resurgence. (Though not, of course, due to the the heat on her kids. Perish the thought!) And even though the Gyllenhaal clan finds L.A. lacking in the kind of the intellectual refinement that only the writer of Losing Isaiah can adequately appreciate, you know, they'll keep cashing those studio sharecropping checks:
The KESQ 3 News website says that The Insider is reporting that Pat O'Brien's best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Lindsay Lohan pass out at 31 Flavors Thursday night that she's now hospitalized somewhere in L.A.with a "high fever." We're sure that O'Brien is tending to Lohan at her bedside, waiting for that moment when her hospital gown slips down juuust enough for him to get a true insider's look at her goodies. We wish Lindsay a speedy recovery in hopes that she can return to her fine work on the set of Herbie:Fully Loaded.
Since we posted about Brandon "Unknown Superman" Routh's Friendster profile yesterday, several of you noticed this seemingly prophetic testimonial from one of Routh's buddies. We thought we saw one that mentioned Routh's prescient habit of wearing underwear on the outside of his spandex bodysuit and going to Ralphs in a cape, but that was probably just a trick of memory.
