I really hope that the new trailer for I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is playing ahead of prints of Julie & Julia this weekend. After all, they’re both about bloggers-turned-authors-turned movie characters. The one problem might be that the audience for a foodie chick flick has less than 1% crossover with the audience for a lewd and misogynistic dude comedy. Of course, the only other appropriate placement for this spot is ahead of the similarly themed The Hangover, but that would surely just make this thing look even worse than it is.
Based on Tucker Max’s book of the same name, or at least one story from it, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell will without a doubt be to Julie & Julia what How to Lose Friends and Alienate People was to The Devil Wears Prada. But at least How to Lose Friends featured Megan Fox, and it still couldn’t draw a crowd. So is there any hope for this? Considering how popular the trailer is on the web today, there may actually be some interest. Though we’re going to guess that after everyone has actually seen the trailer they’re not going to want to see the movie, even if they’re fans of Max’s “gonzo” tales of debauchery.
Check out other film blog responses after the jump:
…Read more
Variety published three separate but similar “Top Stories” Sunday (one - two - three) on the topic of blogs and how certain bloggers (mainly Nikki Finke, pictured) exhibit questionable journalistic practices. What seemed at first to be an excessive, behind-the-times and otherwise forgettable trio of articles has today (and initially last night) become a topic of discussion for many film bloggers, including some who were mentioned in these Variety pieces who felt the need to respond.
My personal response is primarily, as I said, one of disregard. But here’s a quick commentary: I enjoy Finke and others as I might have appreciated Louella Parsons or Hedda Hopper decades ago — with a grain of salt. The fact that some bloggers are taken more seriously for their rumors and faulty reporting styles than, say, any one of the hundred other fanboy movie blog sites out there is the problem of the reader (especially the one who’s a Hollywood player), not the writer.
Though the timeliness of Variety’s blogger-hating trilogy comes on the heel of recent errors and conflicts involving Finke and others, there’s no more necessity in such articles as there would be for a trio of stories about the trustworthiness of Fox News. Don’t read the blog, don’t watch the channel, don’t read the trade magazine if you don’t like their content.
Anyway, I’ve given my two cents; read what others have to say after the jump:
…Read more
Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE is asking “filmmakers, critics, publicists and other festival organizers” to weigh in on a new rule instituted by the Tribeca Film Festival press office. Here’s the text, as it appears on the Festival’s credential application:
“Embargo” regulation for world premieres
Reviews of films that celebrate their world premiere at the Festival may only be published after the official premiere. All journalists seeking accreditation to the Festival declare their acceptance of this “embargo.”
When I applied for credentials, I saw this text and rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t really surprised. In my experience with the Tribeca Film Festival press office, it’s always seemed like they prioritize coverage of red carpets and parties far above reviews or any sort of serious consideration of the films themselves; every year, much of the program seems to be about courting the attention of Access Hollywood, rather than cementing Tribeca’s reputation as a venue for quality films. But sniping aside: really, Tribeca demanding that journalists refrain from writing about World Premieres before they screen for the public will not end in a materially different result than what happens at Sundance, where all press screenings take place either during or after World Premieres, and as press the only way to see a film before ticket buyers is to obtain a screener from a sales agent, publicist or distributor.
So I’m not exactly outraged by the embargo, but it certainly will change the type and quantity of coverage that I’ll be able to do of the festival. …Read more
In a recent post titled “Something Not Worth Seeing,” KY lubricant spokesman Perez Hilton, with his usual wit, class and delicacy, declared that Oliver Stone’s yet-to-shoot George W. Bush was was not his cup of tea. “We’d rather go see the Rachael Ray life story….on Lifetime!” was how the blogger put it, writing in the second person presumably based on the assumption that he speaks for an entire nation. To punctuate his assessment of the unmade Stone film’s quality, Mr. Hilton playfully altered a photograph of the actress cast as Laura Bush by painting a disembodied, semen-spewing penis over her lips.
Not content to leave the matter at that bit of MS Paint protest, when the next casting announcement for Stone’s film hit the wires, Hilton once again saw fit to inform his public that W does not bear the coveted Perez Hilton seal of approval. “We still don’t think we’ll spend money to watch it,” Hilton sniffed at the news that James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn had been cast as the Bush parents. “We wouldn’t watch even if it were free.”
Why doth Perez protest so much? He can’t be a closet Bush protector––in the second post, he refered to our Commander in Chief as “arguably America’s worst president ever. And dumbest!” So I wonder: does Hilton know something about Stone’s not-yet-existent film that we don’t know? Perhaps in addition to his skills at cock-drawing and self-promotion, Perez Hilton has been gifted with clairvoyance?
We made the most recent entry to our Sundance deal chart late Sunday, and since then, there just hasn’t been anything firm to report. In fact, from Sunday to Tuesday, I think there have been more “why aren’t movies selling” think pieces in places like Variety and the New York Times than their have been actual deals throughout the course of the festival. Of course, nobody really knows what the problem is, but everyone’s willing to hazard a guess.
In her writeup for Variety proper, Anne Thompson said buyers are holding out for “that magic combo of an easy-to-market movie that will earn great reviews”; on her blog, she said buyers “are looking for love. And some may not have found it yet.” David M. Halbfinger’s NYT piece suggests that buyers are holding out in the hopes that prices wold drop. He also manages to find a way to blame bloggers for the sluggishness, with a quote from Sony’s Tom Bernard:
…Read more
If you’re on the East Coast or time zones further down the clock, you may have been already out the door by the time the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC finally, officially conceded their mutual defeat: there will be no Golden Globes, there will only be Golden Globe winners, announced at a one-hour press conference telecasted by––gulp––NBC News. It took several hours for the film and entertainment blog worlds to chew up this news and thoroughly spit it out. Here then, a timeline, culled from my RSS reader, of the blogosphere’s coming to terms with The Fall of Globes, without a doubt the greatest tragedy of our…week. So far.
6:02 PM EST––The Cold Hard Facts: “The mechanics of the one-hour announcement itself are muddled. The original idea was that at some point during the parties the HFPA would stop the proceedings and make the declaration of the winners. Cameras would be poised on the nominees at the different parties, so that there would be reaction from Atonement’s Keira Knightley, for example, at the Universal/Focus party. This concept was scratched by the WGA.” — Anne Thompson
7:21 PM––Let’s Focus On What’s Really Important: “Who aren’t you wearing?! … Sorta hard to have a ceremony when no stars are gonna show … we’re just sayin’.” — TMZ
…Read more
“At the age of 15 or 16, same as some kids discover pot, I discovered Martin Scorsese and David Lynch.” Jamie Stuart sent an email pointing to FilmInFocus, an advertorial portal newly launched by Focus Features, in partnership with Faber and Faber and FILMMAKER Magazine. Stuart has produced three new short films for the site. My favorite of the three is called “Jamie Stuart analyzes Atonement,” but that seems like a slight misnomer–it’s really an analysis of the inspirations and influences of Atonement’s director, Joe Wright, who’s literally on the couch and under the microscope.
Another FilmInFocus feature that may be of interest: Behind the Blog, an (apparently) running series of interviews with film bloggers, including Friends of Spout David Hudson and Andrew Grant.
Your faithful blogger will likely be out for the afternoon working on a podcast. So here’s a batch of links to get you through the rest of the day:
- “I do know that at this particular juncture in film history and film criticism, we who write about and care about films allow ourselves to be borne back ceaselessly into the past do so at our own peril.” Glenn Kenny questions his colleagues’ near-universal worship of Pauline Kael. Come for Kenny’s eye-rolling, stay for the unexpected Sonic Youth reference.
- The Reeler has compiled the entries thus far in the Totally Unrelated Blogathon. My favorite so far: John Lichman’s story of working for Chris Matthews, for whom he once made “a delicious, chocolate cake with vanilla icing.”
- Join Peter Knegt in saying Happy 36th Birthday to “the accidental beard of [his] boyhood,” Winona Ryder.
- Girish has convinced me to buy and read Michel Marie’s The French New Wave: An Artistic School with his post on the “bloggable” ideas contained within.
Do adults actually take President’s Day off? The studios, assuming *someone* isn’t going to work or school today, opened their movies on Thursday night and are going to keep 
The New York Film Critics Circle chose No Country For Old Men as their 
The only wide release this weekend is New Line’s 
While I was out, AJ Schnack wrote a couple of 
