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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Thursday, January 31st, 2008 - 39 Comments »

BYOB – Jan 31

It’s yet another travel day… here is some room to roam…

39 Comments »

39 Responses to “BYOB – Jan 31”

  1. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    January 31, 2008 at 6:51 am

    Just a completely random thought. I wish that whoever is in charge of putting profile images up on IMDb would do a major overhaul.
    Not only are a lot of them incredibly bad, but well-known actors don’t even have one! I mean, it’s the IMDb! That place should be right on the money. And if it’s these actors publicists who need to get their act together then so be it, but Ewan McGregor having his profile image still as Obi Wan Kenobi is a tad ridiculous, no?
    Also, why doesn’t Linda Cardellini have a career?

  2. JBM... says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:04 am

    I know DP head-over-heels about Tony Gilroy at the moment, so I’ll mention that I had the chance to read two drafts of his next film, Duplicity. Let’s just say Gilroy better hope that A) the strike’s sewn up soon or B) Universal offers him Bourne Four.

  3. Chucky in Jersey says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:05 am

    OMG there’s gonna be a sequel to “Cloverfield”. Get out the barf bags!

  4. brack says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:50 am

    [i]Also, why doesn’t Linda Cardellini have a career?[/i]
    She’s a regular on the television show ER.

  5. brack says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:52 am

    I guess those tags don’t work here?, huh.

  6. JBM... says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:54 am

    You have to do it HTML style, angles instead of brackets…

  7. hendhogan says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:55 am

    kami,
    imdb charges for placement of photos on their site. i guess famous people don’t see the point as everyone knows what they look like anyway.

  8. brack says:
    January 31, 2008 at 10:17 am

    ah, thanks JBM.

  9. Hopscotch says:
    January 31, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Cloverfield could very well be on the short list of most polarizing movies of the decade.
    I’ve heard two opinions on it (I haven’t seen it)
    a) Lots of fun! or
    b) I @#$%*&! hated it!
    Of all the top 6 Academy Awards categories, I say there is one Wild Card: Best Supporting Actress, and the rest I think are pretty much figured out.
    My pic for it: the girl from Atonment who’s name I can’t pronounce correctly.

  10. RoyBatty says:
    January 31, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Since you bring it up, Hopscotch (and “pic” is only short for “picture”) it does seem that it has become a toss-up for Best Supporting Actor in a female role since Ruby Dee came out of fucking nowhere. Poor Ryan, on track to get the one award the pretty consistently avoids the urge to star fuck except when it does (and always does badly).
    Too bad you can’t get a drunk Sean Young in the front row for that win to yell out: “Lifetime Achievement Award!” and “Hey, it’s a gold Oscar for a dead Ossie!”
    That was a horrible scene in AMERICAN GANGSTER, when if felt like Denzel Washington had accidentally wandered onto the set of a USA movie.

  11. RoyBatty says:
    January 31, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    ABOUT THAT DOWNLOADING STORY:
    Funny that it took them to admit they were wrong when media herd failed back in 2005 to ask the most fundamental question for all such things: how the fuck did you get that number? There is almost never any methodology listed.
    It’s like when they do a story about anything involving illegal activity – bet your last dollar that the number is inflated at least 100%. That load of pot is supposed to have “a street value” of $6M? It ain’t a dime over one million. Hollywood loses $5 billion a year from bootleg DVDs? More like $20M.

  12. LYT says:
    January 31, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Why does David think the Michel Gondry “Sweded” trailer is “Craptastic”? Watching it made me think Gondry could be a pretty funny character actor if he wanted to be.

  13. IOIOIOI says:
    January 31, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    Cloverfield 2 should be titled CLOVERFIELD TWO: WE STILL CANT KILL THAT OBLIVIOUS BITCH OF A MONSTER! What a stupid bloody film. Good lord. The balls of Mahooney that flick. Nevertheless, Camel, you love Paris and may have not seen Freaks and Geeks. That may answer your question.

  14. jeffmcm says:
    January 31, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    ‘The Balls of Mahooney’?
    My question is, will Cloverfield 2 be the adventures of a second group of video-camera-wielding morons in New York, or will they move the monster to Washington to have it face off against an all-new creature a la the Godzilla movies? Rip out the Washington Monument to use as a club?
    It’s a rare movie that would be improved by a worse director.

  15. doug r says:
    January 31, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    Cloverfield 2 will be directed by James Cameron and will feature multiple monsters and make tons of money and be one of the best action pictures ever.
    Hey, it’s what he does.

  16. David Poland says:
    January 31, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    Why does Luke assume DP wrote that headline?

  17. brack says:
    January 31, 2008 at 8:05 pm

    I’ll definitely check out a sequel to Cloverfield. I loved it.

  18. IOIOIOI says:
    January 31, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Brack — WE KNOW ALREADY :D ! Jeff; the monster was successfully killed. Of course you have to visit the cloverfield site to notice the pictures of a smoldering hunk of Cloverfield flesh to know it die. Yet they killed the fucker off in New York. This leaves me to assume Cloverfield 2 would be about more people in the city surviving the monster’s attack, or maybe an even more insulting movie towards the military. Which seems more likely than more idjits runnin around with a 100,000 dollar HD camera.

  19. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    January 31, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    IO, you’re an arsehole, so just shut the fuck up and don’t direct messages towards me, okay? I’m sick of you.
    Dave, one question about your new Oscar column:
    How do you figure “So if the inevitability of No Country is said enough, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.”? Do we not remeber Brokeback Mountain?

  20. David Poland says:
    January 31, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    Brokeback was always a problem movie, even if the studio was in denial. I ate a lot of shit for saying it, but there was always a large group – and it grew – who simply didn’t feel the way about the film that so many passionate people did.
    Brokeback was always vulnerable and the only movie that fought for the win was Crash, which won.
    In this case, No Country is not being arrogant or assuming. They are just plowing along. This strategy hasn’t always worked, but the circumstances of this season seem to be going its way.

  21. PetalumaFilms says:
    January 31, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Huh huh…you ate shit?

  22. jeffmcm says:
    February 1, 2008 at 2:02 am

    IOI, if it wasn’t in the movie, it didn’t happen. They can put whatever they want on the website and they cna change their minds a week later.
    To be fair to DP, Brokeback was the frontrunner in a way that No Country isn’t right now. It’s not a social-issue message movie that people can rally around or be repelled by, and it’s not a simplistic, easy-to-digest message movie that others can coalesce around.

  23. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    February 1, 2008 at 4:10 am

    Well then he should’ve worded it differently. I thought it was that inevitibility that was what lead to it’s loss. Or, at least, partly.

  24. Chucky in Jersey says:
    February 1, 2008 at 8:56 am

    Latest sign of the Apocalypse: “Over Her Dead Body” opens today with print ads that reference a picture nominated for Razzies.

  25. David Poland says:
    February 1, 2008 at 9:23 am

    There is no question that Brokeback is in a different position than No Country. But what I keep telling you and everyone else is that the perception of Brokeback’s front-runner status was ALWAYS greater in the media than in reality. Always… especially after people started actually seeing the movie in December.
    And Brokeback was neither a simplistic message movie or just a social issue movie. Crash was. But I’m not sure what your point is.

  26. IOIOIOI says:
    February 1, 2008 at 9:47 am

    Camel, I’m an asshole for pointing out how fucking bogus and lame it is to bag on Linda Cardellini when you love a no-talent gism bucket. Keep your pikey nonsense to yourself.
    That aside, Jeff, the website can be as canon as the flick. Again it’s not like the military would not figure out after about 12 hours how the freakin monster could be killed. So the next flick could be about a regular family dealing with surviving the monster’s attack.

  27. storymark says:
    February 1, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Sure a website “can” be as canon as the film. But it can also be tantamount to fan-fic. If they don’t want the moster dead in a sequel, no one will give a second thought to contradicting a website.

  28. jeffmcm says:
    February 1, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    Chucky: so that means we should all see it then, right? That’s the corollary of your standard ‘if it references an Oscar campaign it’s crap’ theme, right?
    DP: You got my point mostly right; Crash was the simplistic message movie, Brokeback became the social issue movie as touted in the media which meant that people could fall into pro- and anti- camps relatively easily. No Country is neither of those things and therefore isn’t as polarizing, except for maybe the ending.
    Re: Cloverfield, Storymark hit my point. Also, IOI, was your family killed by monsters or aliens?

  29. IOIOIOI says:
    February 1, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Awww. Jeff tried to make a funny. Awwwww.

  30. jeffmcm says:
    February 1, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    No, not really. I’m trying to understand why you go bugshit on apocalyptic attack movies.

  31. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:
    February 1, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    Jeff, it’s best not to question anything IO says. Because he is right. He is always right and everybody who disagrees with him (or who he misunderstands for that matter) is clearly wrong and is a worthless pathetic human being.
    Geez, Jeff! What were you thinking?

  32. jeffmcm says:
    February 1, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    HE’S NOT MY DANCING MONKEY!!!

  33. doug r says:
    February 1, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Jeff, he’s referencing “The Host”.

  34. jeffmcm says:
    February 1, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    And I’m referencing Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

  35. jeffmcm says:
    February 2, 2008 at 2:38 am

    If Stella’s Boy is out there: Saw Rambo tonight. It’s your basic orgy of violence, justified by a white man’s burden pretext of war crimes in Burma. Pretty much what you would expect. Anybody who says they hate torture porn movies but liked it is a hypocrite.

  36. movieman says:
    February 2, 2008 at 6:50 am

    “NCFOM”‘s front-runner status reminds me of the “inevitability” of “The Departed” last year. It’s a solid, artfully crafted genre film by industry veterans (the Coens/Scorsese) who have never won the big kahuna. They’re overdue–just like Scorsese was–and the consensus seems to be, just like it was in 2007, that it’s finally time to honor them.
    Can’t say that any of the other nominated best pictures have that sort of heat going for them. If “Michael Clayton” somehow manages to sneak in (which I don’t think it will), it’ll be like the “Chariots of Fire” upset in 1982 when “Reds” and “On Golden Pond” looked like the presumed favorites.
    Until the backlash started, I actually thought that “Juno” had a legitimate shot at being the spoiler. Now I’m not even so sure about Cody Diablo winning for original screenplay: that could be the crumb tossed to “MC” if “NCFOM” does what seems preordained.

  37. Stella's Boy says:
    February 2, 2008 at 8:44 am

    Thanks Jeff. I figured as much.

  38. Chucky in Jersey says:
    February 2, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Jeff, stop being so goddam literal. You know with the Razzies you can’t buy the award — you’ve got to earn it.
    Maybe Mrs. Longoria Parker will get a Razzie nomination next year.

  39. jeffmcm says:
    February 2, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    You’re the guy who insists on judging a movie by its ad campaign and you’re calling _me_ literal?

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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