The 2001 run of Anti-Trust, Blow Dry, Josie & The Pussycats, and Texas Rangers kind of ended the sense of inevitability that many had pegged this young actress with when she was a darling of the indie circuit. The run went from from The House of Yes in 1997 (at 18 years old) until She’s All That and an arc on Dawson’s Creek killed her street cred at 20.
I don’t know this woman. I don’t know what she wanted. I don’t know how she saw her work or how she behaved on sets or in meetings. All I do know is that it kinda ended with that studio run in 2001.
So when I put an indie from Anchor Bay called Bob Funk, due for a brief theatrical release before DVD, into the DVD player… and her name, not a male name, was on top… I wondered what that was all about. And indeed, she is not the star of the film, but with Amy Ryan in a small role, she was the closest thing to a commodity they had.
And then I wondered… when is she going to turn up in the movie? And then I realized… she had. She’s blond (obviously a pliable condition), but more so, she is no longer a waif. She is a woman (30 in October) and she now has the curves of a woman. He face has filled out into a somewhat less pixie-ish shape, but she is still quite beautiful (if not terribly well photographed in this film). And she has a personality! One could see this there in Josie & The Pussycats, but that, it seems, is not what people wanted to hire her to do in films.
She really struck me – and the movie is indie okay… really a highlight reel for the star and the writer/director… feels like a stage play full of hard talk converted on a whim – as someone ready for the next round of their career to begin. It is very easy, now, to imagine her carrying a sitcom, taking a strong role on a good hour-long, or even crafting a career as a chick flick star. She is beautiful, but accessible… she is funny, but not showy… she seems daring, but not precious… really interesting.
It is easy to imagine her going into meetings and the execs or producers being surprised by who walked into their office. She doesn’t read as that girl we once saw in those movies. But if they can get over their youthful excitement about who she was, I think there is a real chance that she could have a better career as who she might be. Really interesting…
(CORRECTIONS Thurs, 12:55p – Apparently, Magnolia is distributing the film, Bob Funk, and Anchor Bay has another film I watched very late last night, The Education of Charlie Banks (with shockingly solid directorial work by Fred Durst) with their name is all over the screener. And Ms. Cook’s name was short an “a,” which I have now corrected.)

Interesting spin on pricing on the new Batman Anthology, which is the post-TV/pre-Nolan Batman features… now in Blu-Ray.
For one thing, only Batman itself is available as a standalone DVD so far. But more interesting is that WB is offering the package at $79.96 (down from list price of $99.95) on its WBshop.com site. And Amazon, which usually has as low a price as anyone, is at $88.99, down from what they say is $129.95 list.
This is the first time that I have seen Blu-ray prices on the WB site that are cheaper than Amazon… which suggests, again, a real effort to make the studio home sales page the site you want to buy from.

One of the pleasures of traveling is reading the actual newspapers.
There was this remarkable image of the fence against Mexico in the NY Times today…

And there was this kind of wonderful odd obit page report from The Times of London… though it had this poorly reproduced, but much more dramatic picture with it in the actual paper.

A service of thanksgiving

Literally outside my window as I woke up this morning in Bermuda…

And in front of the City Hall here… by way of Harvard…

This seems to be the footage that the Chinese government has shut down access to YouTube in the country in order to quash… as presented by Reuters.

Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland both creep me out and make me think it could be spectacular… both at the same time?
It’s just so… God… so close to being satire on the face of it.
Marion Cotillard really lost herself in Piaf, another way-over-the-top drama queen, for La Vie en Rose. But Cotillard was pretty much an American unknown and Piaf, as a person beyond a couple of records, as well. Ben Kingsley as Gandhi.
Even Johnny Depp as Dillinger in Public Enemies isn’t fighting an icon that we have a strong visual and aural take on already.
But Hathaway is a well-known person herself. And the fact that she actually does have some of the same skin tone and slightly exaggerated, but beautiful, but odd kind of looks as Garland… I don’t know… is that good or bad?
Judy Davis went there in 2001, for TV, to great acclaim. But again, not an icon (though I am a huge Judy Davis fan) playing the icon. And not young enough to even attempt to play her “young.” (Tammy Blanchard did that.)
I don’t know… truly in the category of truly great or truly disastrous, it seems to me. I hope it’s the former.

I’m going to bed, so I will keep this missive as short as I can.
Nikki Finke decided to slap back at Variety today. And as Kim Masters noted earlier… she’s got a fairly easy target.
The simple reality remains, Nikki counts on fear to keep studio executives who are not using her to spin stories they way they want them spun from telling the truth about her tactics and lack of interest in the facts… truths that, if those who think she is a straight player knew, they would turn away from her, even though they still might LOVE reading her Perez Hilton act.
From this side, the side of a working journalist, to tell the truths is to expose the tellers of the true tales… stories that are embarrassing enough to the tellers that there is little motive to lie.
Nikki’s reign of terror over other journalists started early. The first time I ever heard from the woman was when she was screaming about a story that she still doesn’t understand was dead wrong on the facts and which got her fired from one of her jobs. She has managed to intimidate outlets much too big to be intimidated… but much too uninterested in listening to her screaming to bother keeping up their journalistic standards.
I would love for Reed to buy Nikki, because it would be the end of her. There would be a major lawsuit within six months and that would be the end of that.
No major journalism entity, doing due diligence, will ever buy or hire Nikki… because the exposure is just too great. If she had an editor, very little would ever run. If she worked for a company that actually worked as journalists, she would be forced to follow up gossip with reporting before posting and scoop even less than she actually does now.
And the moment of truth – actual truth – is coming. Some think I am jealous – always a lame excuse, as there are many others who have things in this world, unlike Nikki, that I actually covet… and you never see me attacking them. The truth is that lying, double dealing, failing to source her stories past the person who gave them to her, ignoring the responses she often gets from the subjects of her stories, failing to edit honestly and changing stories to fit new information she previously had wrong, trading gossip she hears for future favors, harassing studio executives, threatening studio executives, etc, etc, etc, is the way Nikki does business every single day… even while preparing for her father’s funeral.
If all that and more is okay by you, then you should love Nikki and embrace all she does. If not, you should not.
The fight for “first” or in this case, eventual “toldjas,” is the worst of what has happened to the media in the internet age. Nikki, in this industry, has been the first to have no editor AND no shame. She makes Jeffrey Wells look like a pre-teen still learning how to be harsh to people. People – including some very smart people – mistake this for hard-charging reporting. But it is not. It is gossip of the lowest order.
And again, if that’s good by you… so be it. It makes me want to vomit every time I get an eyeful of it. If that’s the future, please count me out. But I don’t think it is the future. I don’t think it’s what people really want. And when the industry stops using her and/or being afraid of her – in equal measures – then it will end and end quickly.
All I know is… I speak out so I can look in the mirror each day. I know what Nikki is. And I know what I am. And, for that matter, I know what Peter Bart and Patrick Goldstein and Anne Thompson and Kim Masters are. They are all scared to death. And they all smirked as Nikki smacked around people who deserved smacking… until she started smacking them… and making it less viable to hold standards in this business… and made them all wonder whether they would have to do all the things that Nikki does to keep earning a living. And in that group… I don’t think any of them really know just how ugly it is. But they looked the other way… just as Sharon Waxman did, thinking that Nikki was ready to play nice and to share the turf… because Nikki told her she would… and then the Nikki carpet bombing started when they were put in competition with each other by a journalist… and then it was the truth coming out.
Nikki only cares about Nikki and feeding her emotional Grand Canyon.
People need to stand up.
I know many readers or bored to death with this conversation. But until others stand with me, I will keep giving it voice. Because it is the truth. And the truth must be the first standard, in the shadow only of honor to those who help you see that truth.
Good night.

Over the weekend, a Brooks Barnes story