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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, October 27th, 2007 - 8 Comments »

20 Weeks/T-Minus 19 – Whning While Mining

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8 Comments »

8 Responses to “20 Weeks/T-Minus 19 – Whning While Mining”

  1. seanwithaw says:
    October 27, 2007 at 9:54 am

    hilarious. you think hairspray will be nominated for best picture.
    even more funny is the John Travolta best supporting actor. but Dave, I think you chose the wrong movie he’ll be nominated for. His Wild Hogs role was meatier.
    of course i’m being completely sarcastic. Both roles are absolutely horrible.

  2. David Poland says:
    October 27, 2007 at 2:44 pm

    To think it doesn’t have a chance is rather narrow-minded. It didn’t make all that money because people didn’t like it or because it was driven by a gay audience.
    And as for Travolta, you should try seeing the film with an non-critics audience that has an opinion about the performance.
    I don’t think it is a lock or anything like that. But I do think there will be one lighter picture and I think that the two other significant candidates to be that picture – Juno and Lars – have issues. Sweeney could block Hairspray too… but we’ll have to see it to know. Or, of course, there could simply be no “light” entry… or Charlie Wilson’s War could be seen as “light” or something else. This is why I have weekly charts. I am not a clairvoyant… i just read where things are each week for 20.

  3. seanwithaw says:
    October 27, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    Wild Hogs was light and made a lot more money than Hairspray. So I think it also has Best picture potential as well.

  4. David Poland says:
    October 27, 2007 at 5:52 pm

    Yes… and when Disney thinks so, I will consider it.
    Oscar is not a vacuum and not about whether you or I liked a movie.

  5. jeffmcm says:
    October 27, 2007 at 6:14 pm

    Yes, but you’ve been pushing Hairspray more than anyone.

  6. Crow T Robot says:
    October 27, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    Oh lighten up, gang. Poland is the Sisyphus of Oscar bloggers… cursed to push a Broadway musical adaptation up Academy Awards Hill year after year, only to have it roll down come nomination time.

  7. seanwithaw says:
    October 28, 2007 at 8:35 am

    oh i only tease. if hairspray is nominated. john waters will be happy. so that’s good.

  8. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    October 28, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    Travolta being nominated is more than possible. I can’t say for the industry, but a lot of people love him in that movie. I mean, I lot of people also love Amanda Bynes and she ain’t getting nominated, but when you have someone as perrenially popular as Travolta in a hit film doing a major dose of stunt casting then you have GOT to consider it.

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“I don’t really think, Sean, that you need to know about my various sexual liaisons. Or that anyone else needs to. I did write about them. I filled a hundred pages of Moleskine notebooks with my one-night stands, my affairs. But I decided they didn’t belong in a professional memoir. First of all, these are real people we’re talking about. Many of them were enjoyable. Some were abject failures. My wife said to me when she read the pages, ‘Of what purpose is this in a memoir? Of what purpose is this other than to titillate?’ The point is, I never see them. It’s because I have nothing in common with them, frankly. And probably didn’t at the time. I could not provide a sensible reason why I married these women. The thing is, in the case of my marriages, it takes two people to fuck up a marriage. It wasn’t simply the fault of these women that I lost interest in them and realised they were insignificant relationships. Which is how I look at them right now–as being insignificant. I see them as blips.”
~ William Friedkin On Cutting Interviewers Off At The Sass

“I have to imagine from Mr. Spielberg’s point of view, the paradigm shift in the 1970s was just the new “normal,” a “halcyon era” from which we are straying in the 21st century–because theatrical exhibition is tenuous (as it has been since the 1940s), the home video market has dried up and people are watching pirated movies on their phone. Spielberg’s coming-of-age era was for him the halcyon period that the 21st century “implosion” will cause to go “crashing into the ground.” But he is wrong. The market for movies is actually diverse and highly segmented–although from the top-down movie industry vantage point and media punditry you would not think this to be true.  Would we really mourn for Mr. Spielberg or ourselves if Lincoln would have been made for cable or had played on public television?  Is it bad for humanity that cable television is creating wonderful, resonant stories in long-form series that people want to watch at home on TV (or streamed onto their computer)? I don’t think so, but it is a paradigm shift and it might affect people’s theatrical moviegoing habits. Televisions in people’s homes have had that effect for seven decades–it is not a new phenomenon. As Art House cinema impresarios we need to focus on what WE can do at our theaters and in our communities. It is not productive for us to fret over what pundits say or about what well-meaning filmmakers like the Stevens–Spielberg and Soderbergh–say. We should fret about what we can do in our communities. What we can do to support filmmakers.”
~ From A Response By Russ Collins, CEO, Michigan Theater–Ann Arbor And Director, Art House Convergence, To Mr. Spielberg