Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

Hollywood Boulevard  (1976)

• Was George Clooney’s decision to go “fi-core” over the WGA’s decision to deny him a writing credit on Leatherheads akin to using “a chainsaw to operate on a papercut”? David Poland thinks so. “The guy who took out an ad in the trades telling SAG to move faster seems like just the kind of guy who belongs leading the way inside the WGA, trying to improve the arbitration process, rather than walking away in a huff.”
• “It’s as if the PR people said, “so, Mr. Don R. Lewis didn’t like our comedic gem? Let’s see how he likes THIS!” Cut cut…snip snip.” Don Lewis tells us what it feels like to be blurbed on the DVD cover for a film he negatively reviewed.
• “The New Beverly has scored probably its greatest coup yet in terms of presenting filmmakers and the movies they love to eager audiences,” writes Dennis Cozzalio. He’s talking about Dante’s Inferno, a two-week program of films made and selected by Joe Dante. Dennis has a special fondness for the one Dante film that will be shown in a non-midnight slot, Hollywood Boulevard.
• I wish I was at Full Frame, the doc fest that’s taking place this weekend in Durham, NC, but alas, The Cinetrix’s dispatches for GreenCine Daily will have to suffice. So far she’s been “blown away” by Forbidden Lie$, which was the best film I saw last month at True/False.

I don’t have much to say about the latest film criticism obit, this time from Anne Thompson at Variety. Well, okay…I have a couple of things to say.

Number one: Although I love Pajiba, I don’t see them fulfilling the role of champion for under-the-radar new releases. A champion for forgotten/overlooked/misunderstood catalog titles, yes, and deflater of misbegotten studio marketing-fueled wannabe blockbusters, for sure. But scroll down their front page right now, and the “smallest” film you’ll see reviewed is Flawless, a Magnolia release starring Demi Moore which Dustin Rowles compared to the experience of a former smoker lighting up for the first time in five years: “the first few puffs are exhilarating, but then the headache sets in, and then you wish you’d quit puffing away before the tobacco left a taste of ass in your mouth that you still taste the next morning.”

Pajiba reliably gives each release they cover the treatment it deserves, but they don’t have a mandate to cover everything. They’re an indie site with limited resources, and they’ve chosen not to devote those resources to panning for untapped art house new release gold. Which is understandable––seeking out and heralding worthy festival films and smaller releases can be an arduous process and in terms of traffic, it’s often totally thankless––but when I think of sites that could realistically fill the void created by an absence of adventurous print critics, dedicated to, as Thompson puts it, “influenc[ing] readers to seek out small releases,” I think of Reverse Shot or The House Next Door long before I think of the site that devotes 800+ words to why David Zucker “should crawl up into the fetal position and abort himself for allowing Superhero Movie to see the light of day.”

And then there’s David Ansen.

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• With his retro football rom-com Leatherheads is expected to top the weekend box office, George Clooney is finally speaking out about the fact that the WGA’s decision to exclude him from screenplay credit on the film pushed the actor/director to go financial core, or give up his rights as a voting member in order to pay fewer dues. The complexities of the story, outlined here, offer a pretty interesting glimpse into the intricacies of WGA policy.
• Are you ready for designer, non-disposable 3D glasses? Are we sure this didn’t already happen in the 80s, or am I once again conflating the events of Back to the Future 2 with the events of recent cultural history?
• Speaking of the relics of two-decade-old futurism, Bob Weinstein has bought the remake rights to Short Circuit.