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Oliver's Spooky Forecast

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Sigurd Lunde
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« on: January 21, 2009, 07:35:55 am »

Oliver's Spooky Forecast



Two days ago, just after my story went up about last Saturday's HBO-funded panel discussion about "Making Movies That Matter," which included some incendiary comments from director Oliver Stone, I received a copy of a treatment Stone wrote about five years ago about the threat of domestic terrorism called Blowback.
The story, which Stone wrote, I'm told, sometime in '96 with the memory of the then-recent Oklahoma City bombing in his mind, reads like a typical Oliver piece — dark, complex, hard-charging, intermittently sexual, conspiratorial. It seems to be more or less the basis of the "film about terrorism" that Stone said last Saturday he'd still like to make. What gets me is how eerily prophetic this five-page treatment was about the events of September 11 and what's happened since.

It begins in present-day New York City, and starts with a declaration that "a terrorist explosion destroys one of New York's greatest landmarks" and that the "destruction is catastrophic — hundreds dead, a billion dollars in damage" with the media going "hysterical with sagas of dead relatives, statements of grief, hours of TV analysis. Even more damaging is the air of hysteria and chaos that has permeated the country … [leading to] the president [making] a silly statement that, by any means necessary, justice (a.k.a., revenge) will be had."

Later in the treatment, Stone describes "a chemical attack on St. Paul, Minnesota — devastating the city, murdering close to half a million people" and leaving the country "close to insane with grief and terror." Then comes an explosive attack on a major Washington, D.C. landmark — not the Pentagon (that would be too freaky) but the Lincoln Memorial, which results in "suspended liberties, troops all over the streets, identification cards, no habeas corpus," and so on.

Obviously, many other filmmakers have used domestic terrorism in their action-thriller plots, going all the way back to John Frankenheimer's 1976 Black Sunday. But since the horrors of Sept. 11, I haven't read, heard of or seen anything as oddly prescient as Blowback. Was Stone taking some kind of sixth-sense drug or what? This, I believe, is one reason why he's such a vital, exciting filmmaker. His dramatic imaginings don't just stop at a reflection of some current sociological malaise; he seems to have a knack for sometimes putting elements together that capture the shadows of things to come.

As Stone surmised last Saturday, the story is basically about "a hunt" — a search by a couple of willful investigators, one an Army intelligence guy called Charlie Waters and the other a Vietnamese-American woman named Thuy Anh Nguyen who knows all about physics, high-tech bombs, and chemical warfare. Their investigatory instincts lead them in the direction of a bin Laden-like terrorist mastermind, called Nasdim in the treatment, who's committed to destroying America and its general goal of delivering "order to the masses, and money to the masters."

Their hunt takes them to Karachi, Pakistan — "the new Miami as far as terrorism and arms smuggling is concerned [where] everything, including parts to neutron bombs, the latest in chemical warfare, and anti-space satellite devices, is for sale."

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Sigurd Lunde
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« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2009, 07:36:42 am »

    In a flukey turn, the pair nearly catch up with Nasdim at one point, but he slips from their grasp and then murders their informant. They encounter an elderly Brit who used to be a spy (and perhaps still is) who supplies some back-story about a so-called "great game" strategy on the part of the U.S. and England in the '70s to weaken Russia by arming Afghan fighters in their war with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early '80s, which provided training and equipment for the Afghan terrorist network that exists today.
Their chase eventually leads Rivers and Nguyen back to the States, where Charlie encounters derision from his colleagues for spouting "conspiracy nut" theories but where he also begins to piece together a possible alliance between Middle Eastern terrorists and domestic, right-wing, Timothy McVeigh-styled terrorists. There is also, Charlie discovers, a government spook called "Y" — either "tobacco and firearms or some form of intelligence" — who figures into things. The attacks in St. Paul and then Washington, D.C. occur during this domestic section. The conclusion happens in the streets and sewers of the nation's capital.

Stone wasn't able to raise sufficient enthusiasm about Blowback when he tried pitching it to Hollywood in '96 and, according to one source, also in '97. He tried to get it written into screenplay form. He went on instead to make U-Turn and then Any Given Sunday, with the latter becoming Stone's first big financial hit in years.

Would Stone have any better luck today with Blowback, or would Hollywood dodge again? "Making a film that deals with a political subject is going to be 10 times harder now [in the wake of the September 11 tragedy]," said former Universal Pictures chairman Tom Pollock at Saturday's discussion. "Not just because they're afraid of it, but because they don't understand how they can make money on it."

Let me help the studio guys with that one. The answer is, give Oliver the money to make Blowback (in whatever version it may exist today) and I'll pay to see it, and so will hundreds of thousands of others.

Good thrillers have always meant good box-office, and there's an intense curiosity about Middle Eastern terrorists right now. Think of what Americans did the weekend after the September 11 attacks, according to the Los Angeles Times — they went out to Blockbuster and rented movies about terrorism! I would love to see and support a Battle of Algiers-type film about this subject. Smell the coffee, Hollywood. American moviegoers are looking for more than just anesthetics.


 
  Spiffed-up War Classic

 
    In his review of Pearl Harbor last May, New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote, "The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II has inspired a splendid movie, full of vivid performances and unforgettable scenes, a movie that uses the coming of war as a backdrop for individual stories of love, ambition, heroism, and betrayal. The name of that movie is From Here to Eternity."
There are probably tens of thousands of mostly younger movie lovers who sat through Pearl Harbor last summer but haven't seen Fred Zinnemann's 1953 classic, which won eight Oscars, including one for Best Picture. Now there's an excellent new reason to, with the October 23 arrival of a newly remastered Eternity DVD, courtesy of Columbia TriStar Home Video.

The black-and-white photography by Burnett Guffey and the uncredited Floyd Crosby (who also shot Zinnemann's High Noon) looks better than it ever did on laser disc or, God forbid, VHS. The detail is more particular, and the overall tonal range is far richer, with deep, inky blacks and lots of silvery, shimmering grays. It doesn't quite look awesome, since most of the original negative was destroyed in the early '70s, but it looks pretty damn slick and specific.

I'm enjoying Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr's famous love scene on the beach a bit more these days, having last summer visited the actual cove where the scene was shot during my coverage of the Honolulu Pearl Harbor junket. This scene is included in the one original negative reel; the visual clarity and tone here are definitely two or three cuts above any version I've seen before.

The featurette is a quickie throwaway, the only saving grace being a few seconds of 16mm color footage of the shoot, apparently taken by an assistant of Fred Zinnemann's. Why didn't they just run as much of Zinnemann's color footage as possible and let it go at that? For some nonsensical reason, the featurette is narrated by a woman with a kind of silky, romantic tone in her voice.

 
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Sigurd Lunde
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« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2009, 07:37:02 am »

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Sigurd Lunde
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« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2009, 07:37:29 am »

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« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2009, 07:37:37 am »

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« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2009, 07:38:02 am »

The audio narration tracks, recorded by Zinnemann's son, Tim, and screenwriter Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People, Straight Time, Anywhere but Here), could have used some more energy and research. I never knew this, but Sargent played a bit part in Eternity. He has two scenes in Act Three. He's the guy on weed detail who's just gotten out of the stockade who tells Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) how Maggio (Frank Sinatra) is faring under the sadistic Sgt. "Fatso" Judson (Ernest Borgnine). He's also the shouting, excitable guy who gets machine-gunned by a Japanese fighter plane on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.
There are two or three narration gaffes by Zinnemann. He keeps pronouncing the name of legendary Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn as "Harry Cohen." As we're looking at a shot of Deborah Kerr during the famous love scene that was obviously an indoor process shot, you can hear Zinnemann say, "They must have shot that at the end of the day." At a later point, Zinnemann starts talking about Clift's occasionally self-destructive behavior off-screen, which he'd witnessed first-hand. Then he suddenly decides he's not going to talk about this (is there anyone on the planet who doesn't know Clift had a serious drinking problem?), only to segue into some blah comment about how well Eternity stands up today due to superb acting, writing, etc. What a snore.

It would have been great if the DVD producers had gotten the film's Oscar-winning screenwriter, Daniel Taradash, to record some commentary. He's 89 but still kicking, and it would've been especially nice to hear from a major Eternity creator, since all the rest of the principals are dead. (Co-stars Jack Warden and Borgnine are still around.) Turns out Taradash was asked to record a narration track by the DVD's producers, but he refused unless he was paid a sum they weren't able to provide. (Nobody does narration tracks for money; they're for posterity and to set the record straight.)

Otherwise, it's a great film to watch and watch again. I've never mentioned how much I love George Duning's score, which does a beautiful job of underlining the emotional moments and somehow makes them seem grander and more touching. And I've always loved the way his music fades out at the beginning of the opening title sequence to allow the real-life sounds of Army troops drilling at Schofield Barracks to punch through.


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« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2009, 07:38:58 am »

The Towers Will Stay

 



Yes, the World Trade Center towers appeared in Steven Spielberg's A.I. — twice, as matter of fact. There's a photo in the current issue of Cinefex. And no, they won't be CGI'd out of the DVD version of the film, which will probably be released sometime in the spring or summer of '02.
Spielberg spokesperson Marvin Levy and DreamWorks DVD publicist Missy Davy both said there are no plans to erase the towers. Levy said that the issue came up just after the September 11 attacks on the buildings, and that a decision to keep them was made quickly after this. Besides, says Levy, "They're seen 2,000 years into the future. Who knows what will be built in the future?" (A.I. was released theatrically by Warner Bros., but DreamWorks has the domestic DVD rights.)

"Why should a futuristic vision be altered once it no longer resembles reality?" Sterling Hedgpeth, a reader, wrote Wednesday. "2001 and Blade Runner make references to many companies that went out of business; do we change them, too, to make them more accurate? I'm pretty sure The Fifth Element has the WTC in it. Do we change that? What about sci-fi films that make reference to the (former) Soviet Union as a country that still exists decades from now? Where does it stop? And who's to say that the towers won't be rebuilt?

"It seems this whole thing's a huge slippery slope," he concluded. "Now that we're living in the year of Kubrick's 1968 classic, we should know not to expect art to predict the future, but to reflect our values, hopes, and fears. At the time A.I. opened, that involved a world where the WTC meant something different than it does now. Let's leave it like that."

(Speaking of 2001, remember how one of the commercial ventures that are part of the revolving space station is called "Howard Johnson's Earthlight Room"? Isn't the Howard Johnsons empire pretty much kaput these days? By the standards of the pro-WTC removers, the name "Howard Johnson" should be erased and changed to Radisson or Marriott.)

"Since when do we remove things from futuristic sci-fi films when they aren't congruous with the present state of the world?" reader Jill Switzer wrote. "What if a hurricane destroys the Statue of Liberty next year? Do we go back and remove it from every film that's shown it intact in 'the future'? What if L.A. in 2019 looks nothing like what Blade Runner depicted it as? Do we go and modify the film to reflect the real L.A.? Give me a break."


 
  Being Snubbed

 
    Variety's Claude Brodesser reported Monday that a group of screenwriters were convened last week by the U.S. Army to get a brainstorming session going about possible terrorist scenarios that might possibly occur in this country.
But who did the Army, or more specifically Brigadier General Kenneth Berquist, ask to meet with? Writers and directors who've been wading through the action-movie trenches in recent years? Not really. Oliver Stone, who seems to own some kind of crystal ball regarding these issues? Nope. Or top-ranked action scribe Jonathan Hensleigh (Armageddon, The Rock), perhaps? Nope again.

With the exception of action screenwriter Stephen de Souza (Die Hard, Hudson Hawk) and directors Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) or David Fincher (Fight Club), both of whom have delved into scary and/or weird realms over the past few years, the list of invitees was pretty damn strange.

What would In Crowd helmer Mary Lambert be presumed to know about terrorism? Or Grease director Randal Kleiser? Are we also to believe that the U.S. Army values the terrorist-divining imaginations of TV writer David Engelbach (MacGyver), Rocketeer scribes Paul De Meo and Danny Bilson, or director Joseph Zito, known for his helming of schlock Chuck Norris pics like Invasion U.S.A. and Missing in Action?

De Souza says, "It was nice to be consulted, but I think this session was more about flattery and winning the hearts and minds of the Hollywood villagers. It was like soldiers coming to a village in Vietnam and declaring, 'You, the residents of the village of Bok Wai, are important in the battle against terrorism.'"

I'm told that the talk among a group of screenwriters and producers interviewed earlier this week at the Chateau Marmont by Los Angeles Times writer Rachel Abramowitz was tinged with a certain subdued jealousy about their not having been asked to participate in the Army's round-table session. The passed-over group included John Ridley (U-Turn), Gary Ross (Pleasantville), Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show), Ed Solomon (Men in Black), and producer Dean Devlin (Independence Day).

Abramowitz's article, which is about how Hollywood has been dealing with the September 11 disaster, will run in the Times' Calendar section next Monday.


 
  More Oliver

 
   "Sounds like the most sensible person at last Saturday's NYFF forum was Tom Pollock, who recognized that the primary agenda of the media oligopoly isn't to stifle dissent but to make money, and that its leaders are averse to jeopardizing that mission by taking risks, whether by releasing controversial movies or by paying directors with poor recent commercial track records (like Oliver Stone) more than their market value.
"Shaye's comment that the studios get paid last is disingenuous, and his 'tyranny of talent' remark, while it might apply to A-list actors (certainly not writers or directors) who earn eight figures a picture, still discounts the studios' ability to set the market; Mel Gibson wouldn't earn $25 million if there weren't at least one studio willing to pay him that much.

"But Stone is kidding himself if he thinks it's impossible to make overtly political movies in America; look at John Sayles, or, within the system, Spike Lee. Besides, Stone is confusing 'political' with 'controversial,' which his movies (with the notable exception of JFK) are not. Born on the Fourth of July was political, but who on the right or left could argue with its premise, that some young men went to Vietnam without malicious motives felt betrayed by their country, and turned against the war? Natural Born Killers? Also not controversial, since everyone was in agreement as to how specious and hypocritical it was for Stone to condemn the media for sensationalizing violence by doing the same thing himself.

"The politics of every Stone movie can be reduced to 'It's all a scam!' That's just cynicism masquerading as wounded idealism or left-wing populism. I'd guess that what's really bugging Stone is his own flagging career; he used to make a movie every year or two, but he's made only two in the last six years, neither of them a huge hit or a film with the kind of overtly political subject matter that used to charge his imagination. I would be interested in seeing what Stone would do with the subject of foreign-sponsored terrorism, but I fear that the director wouldn't be the Stone who made Salvador but the Stone who made U-Turn and Any Given Sunday." — Gary Susman, Entertainment Weekly Online

Wells to Susman: And what was so bad about Any Given Sunday? I feel it captured the heart and spirituality of football. Al Pacino's "inches" speech in the locker room near the finale is a thing of rare beauty, if you ask me. And Sunday made a decent profit, by the way. It topped out around $75 million domestically, but combined with other revenues (foreign, video, etc.) I'm told it ended up in the black.

"I'm amazed to see how a great number of your readers are condemning Oliver Stone because he made the mistake of saying the 'Arabs' have a point. Of course they do! (We are talking about fanatics, remember, and not the entire Muslim community). Is it a good point? Doesn't matter because even if it was, they lost their credibility by killing thousands of people. But we would be very stupid not to at least consider their complaints. We are not going to eliminate terror by dropping bombs on civilians or putting guns on the hands of our enemy's enemy. That's exactly what USA did in the late '70s and '80s, giving funds to Osama bin Laden's army … and look what happened!

"But I digress. The point is: Stone is absolutely right about Hollywood not trying to produce 'important' movies nowadays. I'm through with Fast and Furious-type films, and I would trade a hundred Tomb Raiders for just one JFK. Movies are about entertainment, of course, but that shouldn't be all. Movies should make us think, too. And Oliver Stone is a master of preaching through movies. It's a risk, of course — especially if you are preaching to an audience zombified by idiotic blockbusters like The Mummy. I just bought the Collector's Edition of JFK on DVD and watching the movie for the third time, I was just amazed by his skills. Bravo, Mr. Stone!" — Pablo Villaça, Brazil

"I think many of Stone's points on corporate control are quite legitimate. It's just plain fact that most of the world's media production, distribution, and viewing platforms are controlled by a handful of people. That is way more scary than any horror movie I've seen in the past few years, including The Others. Stone talks about wanting to make a movie on terrorism, but the real challenge, and, I think, ultimately the more far-reaching movie, would be one on the very subjects he was debating about — the decay of modern culture and political awareness through media control, desensitization, target marketing, and the consumer culture so rampant in today's Western society.

"I think he'd be the perfect director to pull it off. He's passionate about the subject matter, he's technically and stylistically proficient, and knows how to bring a broad-ranging subject into tight focus with sufficient dramatic impact. After the September 11 tragedy, it will be harder than ever to make any type of non-escapist, politically charged movie. Sure, you can make stuff with DV and show it to local film-fest-goers, etc., but does anyone in greater America see it? Probably not. That's a shame, because mainstream viewers are the very demo who need to ingest more intellectually and politically challenging material." — Brent Mottley

"If a small miracle were to happen and Oliver's Blowback project were to be funded, I'm not sure I'd want Stone helming it. His recent work has been big, bloated, and all over the map. Nixon is a perfect example. A great story got way too big, with way too many small details clouding up the story. And why was that Natural Born Killers style of mixed media used in Nixon? Stone has always had a gift for writing controversial, political work, but his directing has gotten out of hand. Something like Blowback would require a helmer who could convey a studied, objective tone — maybe Soderbergh (like he did with Traffic) or Michael Mann (in the way he shot The Insider). That would be a movie I'd pay to see right now." — Mike Shea, Richmond, Virginia


 
  Role Playing

 
   E.J. Howard, a strategist for MP Worldwide Direct Marketing Interactive in Manhattan, was first to identify Wednesday's cast. They appeared together in Risky Business (1983), which was written and directed by Paul Brickman. The missing leads are Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay.
Today's cast: Robert Prosky, Robert Duvall, Edward Hardwicke, Dana Ivey, Sheldon Peters, Gary Oldman, Amy Wright, and an unnamed lead actress.


 
  What's That Line?

 
   Suzanne Carter was first to identify Wednesday's dialogue. It's from James L. Brooks' As Good as It Gets (1997), directed by Brooks and written by Brooks and Mark Andrus. The actors in the scene are Jack Nicholson (the patient) and Lawrence Kasdan (the therapist).
A young businessman of sorts is speaking with a potential client about a transaction.

Businessman: I take it this is not a social call.
Client: I need a favor.
Businessman: A favor? Wow. I didn't know we were such good friends, [name]. Because if we were, you'd know I give head before I give favors. I don't even give my best friends head, so the chances of your getting a favor are pretty f**king slim.

Name the film, the year of release, the director, the screenwriter(s), and the actors in the scene.


 
 

 
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Want more Hollywood Confidential? Check out our archive. 
 

 
   
 
 
 That rumor about Miramax changing its mind and thinking about releasing Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York this year after all with a one-week Oscar qualifying run is unlikely, I've been told by a studio source. I personally would love to see Marty and Harvey Weinstein change their minds and push it out regardless; it would make for a much more interesting December. 
Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio may or may not be bad-mouthing Gangs, as that MSNBC item reported a few days go, but the story about his agent trying to renegotiate his deal so he would get a lump-sum payment rather than a percentage of the profits sounds routine to me. Monies earned from a heavily hyped Christmas release would naturally be larger than monies from a March or April release, which is now the expectation, so any percentage deal would naturally be subject to renegotiation. 
A decision to re-record a line of dialogue for the upcoming 20th anniversary re-release of Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is hands down the lamest and stupidest censorship decision to come down in Hollywood since the September 11 disaster. 
Dee Wallace-Stone, who plays the mother in the film, has said that a lighthearted comment about a Halloween costume making a kid look like a terrorist was deemed to be too offensive for the reissued film. "There was some reference to one of the Halloween characters in the film looking like a terrorist, so we're going in to reloop that line," she told gossip columnist Marilyn Beck. This is it — this is the pinnacle. Congratulations to whomever made the call. 
In The Royal Tenenbaums, Gene Hackman's character derives apparent comfort from being called "kind of a son of a ****" rather than "an a**hole." At the Tenenbaum press conference held after the press screening last week, director Wes Anderson was asked to explain the difference between the two. My recollection is that Wes either declined to answer the question or gave an incomplete answer. 
Allow me, then, to explain the difference. It comes down to self-knowledge and confidence. An a**hole is usually someone who acts like an a**hole while being in denial about his or her behavior, or who feigns ignorance or makes excuses by blaming circumstances or others. A son of a **** accepts that he is one, and is more or less content with this. No excuses, no rationales, no blaming others. 
What … again? A story in yesterday's New York Daily News said that [INSIDE], the online publication covering the entertainment media, "may be forced to close down 'within weeks' as a result of financial woes facing its owner, Steve Brill, and his partner, Primedia." In a Wednesday memo to staffers, Brill said he's "hopeful of an outcome that will enable us to continue providing the kind of journalism that has brought all of us here in the first place." Uh-oh … words of death. 
Ahh, for the days when [INSIDE] was fully staffed and sometimes beating Variety to stories! Since Brill got rid of most of the Hollywood team several months ago, [INSIDE] has been charging for stories, and I've been happy to go along with this. But while they've delivered an occasional scoop, there haven't been very many of them. In fairness, it's been hard for the org's only major Hollywood staffer, Andrew Hindes, to keep pace like he used to. He's a good man, in any event. Here's hoping he lands somewhere safe and solvent soon. 
American Beauty director Sam Mendes, who's now working on The Road to Perdition, called in early October to clarify an item I ran last week. It said that DreamWorks staffers had seen a cut of Perdition, which he said was true, and that star Tom Hanks wasn't especially interested in slogging through another Best Actor Oscar campaign, should his performance in the film be deemed worthy. 
The item didn't say that Hanks had seen the film, but Mendes wants it clearly under stood that he hasn't. So there you have it, straight from the top. Mendes says Hanks has never said anything to him about not wanting to do another Oscar campaign, but I trust the guy who told me. As for the release date, Mendes says that the "likelihood" is that Perdition, which isn't yet finished, will be released in the spring. 
I'm hearing that a well-known Hollywood producer has been telling friends and colleagues he's afraid to fly, given recent events, and is determined to avoid doing so if he can. It's a typical attitude, stemming from the overall sense of shock and withdrawal that many of us are feeling these days. Nobody wants to do anything now. New York hotels are empty; ditto Broadway theaters and air terminals everywhere. 
On the other hand, our friends in Israel, Ireland, London, and many other cities and countries have had to live with this kind of terrible menace for a long time. Many columnists and politicians have used the word "cowardly" to describe the perpetrators of last week's horror. I can think of many adjectives to describe them — fanatical, dastardly, monstrous — but between a rich, pampered producer who's afraid to fly and several deranged fiends who willingly destroyed themselves for a cause, which of these two would you say conveys a stronger impression of intestinal fortitude? 
Exhibitors have been advised to expect Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Warner Bros., Nov.16) to run 142 minutes, not counting beginning or end credits. (Figure another eight to ten minutes with.) This information has come straight from WB distribution. A studio spokesperson says the length hasn't been finally determined 
When was the last time there was a family film of this length? There are at least two ways to process this. One, the story may have demanded this length so it could be told fully and clearly. Or two, director Chris Columbus' ambitions have become grandiose. The exhibitor friend who told me the news says that a longer, fatter Potter "could well be fantastic." Length has never been an issue with me, but I'm willing to make an exception in this instance. Less Columbus is preferable to more. 
I guess all that complaining about the full-screen Willy Wonka DVD did some good. WB Family Entertainment has announced that a widescreen DVD (and VHS) edition will hit stores on 11/30, with all the extras that the currently available full-screen version has. 
Warner Video VP Ewa Martinoff says the company is "thrilled" to be offering this widescreen version. So why didn't they offer it in the first place? Trust me, some bigwig at WB Family Entertainment argued passionately against initially issuing a widescreen version. It was a very unusual call, and probably motivated by the lure of WB being able to save some money. Ewa is fooling no one. 
 
 
 
   

 
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« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2009, 07:39:22 am »


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