Rushfield Babylon

NOT to see a movie, it is this, in :

Writer-director Crowe and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada”), adapting Benjamin Mee’s autobiograpaphical tale, have fashioned a smart family story comparable in appeal to a film like “Marley and Me,” that should play well across generations.

Translation: Run for your lives!

From today’s LA Times article “Solemn or Silly: These Actors Can Do It All”

“Finding a new way of presenting themselves is what actors thrive on,” said Larry Auerbach, associate dean of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and a former agent at the William Morris Agency. “It’s been that way since the beginning. But it used to be that they went to a different medium to do that — they did plays, they did movies. But TV is growing, and it’s getting easier to show range just by flipping to another network.”

When I was at the LA Times, a friend/colleague used to point out that the formula of every single profile of every single actor that paper (and every other newspaper and magazine) ever ran was “Actor X usually plays this kind of part. But now he’s playing this kind of part.”  Followed by lots of quotes about how much fun it was to play a villan/do comedy/do drama/wear a fake goatee, etc. 

To journalists today who having spent their entire career writing the same thing in the same way, and in the same way that everyone around them does and everyone who came before them did, the notion that someone can do something a little different is nothing short of miraculous.  The idea that you don’t have to show up at work every day and do the same part over and over and over again whether anyone is watching/reading you or not is just breathtaking.  And so they never tire of marveling at these people who manage to use their superpowers to evolve and grow, like something out of a fairy tale.

I have joined the dark legion of Oscar punditry, writing the ongoing Oscar Bait column for the Daily Beast.  You may find my current predictions of who will be nominated and win the big trophies right here on Gold Derby’s experts poll.

The ultimate winners will be, according to me: The Descendants, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Alexander Payne, Christopher Plummer and Shailene Woodley.  

Lest there be misunderstanding, these are my predictions not my preferences.  Not my preferences at all.

Each year at Thanksgiving Rushfield Babylon is proud to pardon two turkeys and save them from entertainment ignominy.  This year, after careful consideration, we are proud to grant the gift of eternal life to the following two undeserving blights on culture:

Friends with Benefits and The Office

To Friends With Benefits: You were overly precocious, had a unworkable premise and a smarmy leading man.  But you tried to make every scene funny.  The dialoge even if it had many clunkers was out there swinging and was more clever than any line in Horrible Bosses.   Mila Kunis is undislikable and you had a great supporting cast.  You didn’t come together in the end but that’s more than enough good things floating to no wish the fires of the abyss upon you.

To The Office: I don’t know why I’m still watching you. I am embarrassed to tell people that I do.  You ran out of steam so many seasons ago…It makes me seethe with rage that you set the show in Scranton but the sun is always shining and it is clearly 80 degree California every time you step outside.  But I waited around, and I have to say, James Spader has been fantastic.  He is a lot of fun and has me looking forward to watching you again.  And besides that in this time of cross-cut, knowing in joke, produced-and-edited-to an inch of their lives, smug affluent hipster sitcoms, your production seems the model of restraint and humility. Single camera you may be, but you don’t feel the need to shove that in our face every three seconds.

To the rest of entertainment’s turkeys who were not on this list: Your appeals have been denied and the gallows await.  Happy Thanksgiving The Killing, Drive and Glee!

There’s a new movie coming out shortly that I can’t say what I’m referring to because it’s still embargoed.  But in conversations about it with those who have seen it, a recurring theme is that it’s more of a HBO movie than a real theatrical film.

I pretty much agree with that assessment of this particular film and don’t even mean that as a slam.  I mostly enjoyed the movie, mildly.  But I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly people mean when they say that.  They don’t mean it as a slam. It’s not like saying “It’s a made for TV movie” but it’s not a compliment either.

Looking at the list of HBO films, a diverse roster from Band of Brothers to Mildred Pierce, one notices the quality has gone way down in recent years. It’s been a long time since they’ve done a series as universally well regarded as Band of Brothers.  More recently, it’s been a lot of critically celebrated, unwatched biofilms like Temple Grandin and the Kevorkian thing.

Closely studying the list, I’ve put my finger on a few things that I think they mean when they call something a HBO movie:

• Meandering.  

• Unfocused

• An intruiging, contemporary topic, like the Loud family, which the film fails to live up to.

• Lots of historical impersonations and period garb.

• Uncinematic.  Talky rather than showy.

• Films that you feel like you know exactly what they will be without even seeing them.  That is to say, they are - from Mildred Pierce to Temple Grandin - high concept pieces dressed up in highbrow garb, that rarely surprise you.

Why should this be?  There’s certainly no reason you can’t make a great movie out of the Kevorkian story or Mildred Pierce?  So why do these films telegraph artistic flabyness miles away?

There’s something about these movies, I think, that is too in love with itself, too impressed with itself for being HBO and having the courage to make a movie about Temple Grandin, or to remake Mildred Pierce.  Everyone who works at HBO must really be in love with HBO and feel like they are saving the world.  And part of that is giving artists a free hand…So perhaps there is no one in the room willing to be the jackass who says, Do we really need this scene?  Do we really need these ten scenes?  Is there some way we can make these points without having the lead make yet another speech?  Is there maybe some visual cue for this?   Even if the jackass didn’t get his way he’d make the filmmaker think.  

Anyhow this new movie is very much a HBO movie: an intriguing concept, great art design, some fine actors that somehow doesn’t come together as anything special or present any compelling reason why it should be up on a big screen.

And the “TV is better than film” today people need to think about why when what is essentially a TV movie is projected on a big screen it just doesn’t quite cut it.

Was thinking today about what career advice I would give the young folk today; what - economic collapse aside - have been the keys to succes that have sustained the people I know who have had long terms, happy stable careers. 

In the end, if you want to rise to the top of any field, and to stay at the top, the successful people know to stick to stick to three very simple principles.  Do these and you will retire extremely wealthy:

1. Decide what you want to be.

2. Look the part.

3. Don’t say anything.

History will always point to those few who rose to the top of the world by doing something brilliant.  On closer examination, history would find that there are only about two of those people in any field in any decade, and if they lived long enough, even they would come to rue their brilliance and be punished for it. Sitting around them however, in the board rooms and spitballing were people who practiced the three rules and had very fulfilling lives as a result.

If you can look the part - dress right and carry yourself accordingly, you’re 80 percent of the way there.  Just keep your mouth shut after that and you’re home free.

It’s been a quiet time here at NikkiLeaks HQ, which has been a good thing for the staff, letting them get caught up on the backlog of crazy that’s been sitting in our in basket for years now.  However, we are never ones to shirk our duty to entertainment “journalism” and have remained ready, laptops set to stun, to spring into action at the first major outburst. But sadly for some of the more hotheaded troops left cooling their heels in the lunch room, it has been a remarkably, eerily, quiet month or so from La Belle Dame de Penske’s Attic.   She all but sat out the last week’s Ratnerfest. Well, perhaps expecting a word of criticism (or support?) for a giant like Ratner (and/or his then Academy bosses, now playing nice with Nikkala) is too much too ask even of a one hundred percent certifiable “fearless” “journalist” like she.

We wondered what she had been up to in the hiatus?  Was she hard at work, night and day, on that “upcoming expanded behind-the-scenes biz report about Prometheus and The Hollywood Reporter” she promised us way back on October 3?  Or has it gotten to the point where there are just so many assistants that need to be intimidated and bullied in Hollywood that one hardly even has time for the day job?  

Or can it be that in fact she has been extremely busy with “journalism”? That she has been working day and night not reporting stories?  This is something we should’ve expected.  As any good reporter knows, hard as it is to report a story, it’s even harder to not report one. What with all the calls you have to make to let people know the favor you are doing them, what with the need to let everyone know that just because you’re not writing about something, doesn’t mean you’re not the best informed person on Earth about it.  Seriously, it’s work!  So much easier just to write the damn thing, but if you are Nikki Finke when you put pen to paper it’s not only yourself you think about; the fate of Hollywood rests on your every word. That is power that must be used mercifully, tenderly, cautiously and with loving compassion for all agencies, their clients and all existing power arrangements.  And no one knows better than the team at NikkiLeaks HQ, such is the stuff La Finke is made of.  

And if we didn’t know it,  Nikki is happy to remind us.  As she did today in a paragraph that instantly rockets to the top of this year’s Air Quotes Journalism Awards nominations.  Writing about backstage troubles at ICM she tells us:

I’ve known about this warring for months (as far back as April) but hesitated to make it public because a) I hoped the two guys would work things out, and b) it’s so damaging to a Hollywood agency — and an article about it even more so. Clients especially hate hearing about discord inside their tenpercenteries. And no doubt rival agencies will use the news of ICM’s internal strife to try to poach the most profitable talent. I only posted this now because other showbiz media are finally sniffing around this story. So I have no choice but to run with what I know.

One wonders what god Hollywood pleased to earn itself such a good and caring fearless muckraker.  And honestly, given this graph, why would anyone at all think that Nikki Finke is just a mouthpiece for the industry’s powers rather than a voice of her own?  

It is a rare thing to find a “journalist” who knows everything about a story, but then is willing to hold it back because she just hopes the guys work it out..I mean, we in “journalism” are all just here to root for the guys aren’t we?  In our hands we have the power to totally mess things up, but being “so damaging to a Hollywood agency,” isn’t that actually against the law?  Isn’t making clients feel nervous about their agency a national security risk, one tiny step short of treason?  A crime need I remind you, punishable by death.

Well if it’s not it should be and thank God we have a journalist who knows well when not to report, and knows well when to brag about how she didn’t report. She Untoldja!