"Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

"The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be...Read More

If you know Ted Kotcheff's First Blood ('82) and you fancy yourself as any kind of amateur Sylvester Stallone imitator (i.e., the kind that performs at parties in front of their friends), you know that the key line to use in your act is "they drew first blood, not me."

Now, I'm pretty good with this line. (I'm also not bad with my imitation of Stallone reading the Edgar Allen Poe line, "Once upon a midnight dreary..:) The thing to remember in any Stallone imitation is that your upper lip barely works. Half of it...Read More

The Philadephia Inquirer has endorsed Barack Obama for President of the U.S.; the N.Y. Times editorial chieftains -- traitors! home-town capitulators! part of the problem! -- have endorsed Hillary Clinton. Consider their opposing rationales:

"In some respects, Clinton is much better prepared than was her husband, Bill, when he, as Arkansas governor, was elected president in 1992," reads the Inquirer editorial. "The senator from New York could be a strong leader, comparable to Britain's Margaret Thatcher, but with a compassion for children's issues that could glue the nation's focus on its most precious asset.

"But in an election where change is...Read More

The hard-luck Christian Brando, the 49 year-old son of the late Marlon Brando, "died this morning at 1:47 a.m. at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles," according to the N.Y. Post. The poor guy -- never caught a groove or a break, cursed by the neuroses of his parents (his mother was the high-strung, irrrationally-behaved Anna Kashfi), an erratic upbringing and a murder on his conscience.

CB: "Hey, dad." MB: "Christian! You're here! Give me a hug. Wait...what year is it? There are no clocks or calendars in heaven." CB: "2008...January. I'll be...Read More

Julie Christie's visit last night to the Santa Barbara Film Festival was pleasant enough. Cheerful at times. It could have been wonderful if her on-stage chat with Leonard Maltin had upgraded into a Charlie Rose Show-type exchange, but that wasn't in the script. Christie obviously dislikes "campaigning" and being fawned over, but she was a good sport about watching film clips and trading memories. But she clearly has a lot more on her mind. Has she been on Rose's show? If not, it should happen.

Leonard Maltin, Julie Chirstie SBFF director Roger Durling backstage after last night's event

Here's a re-run of a piece I did a little more than two years ago about Heath Ledger's visit to the 2006 Santa Barbara Film Festival, and a q & a he did at the Lobero Theatre with Pete Hammond. The article was called "Measure of Ledger." I was reading it earlier today and was struck by the second paragraph. The last line in particular:

Heath Ledger -- Wednesday, 2.8.06, 8:32 pm.

Heath Ledger submitted to a friendly dog-and-pony show at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last night. It was a nice evening -- pleasant, heartening...Read More

Tomorrow's "It Starts With the Script" screenwriters' panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, a two-hour event set to begin Saturday at 11 am at the Lobero Theatre, has been cancelled because everyone except three writers (two of the loyalists being Enchanted's Bill Kelly and The Great Debater's Robert Eisele) called up and went "waaah, I'm sick" or "waaah, I'm afraid to drive up to Santa Barbara in the rain."

The significant cop-outers were Diablo Cody (Juno), Glenn Gers (Fracture, Mad Money) and Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl). Their reasons, I'm told, were (a) they were suffering from the flu...Read More

In order to boost her chances of winning the Best Actress Oscar for her much-admired performance as a victim of Alzheimer's disease, Away From Her star Julie Christie has, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to submit to a gala tribute by the Santa Barbara Film Festival this evening. It starts three and a half hours from now.

An old-school actress who's not at all comfortable with Oscar campaigning, Christie is said to be reluctant, antsy, intimidated. Her Lionsgate publicists (she has no personal p.r. rep) had to twist her arm to get her to come to Santa Barbara and...Read More

The Daily Mail's Paul Scott has written a standard Daniel Day Lewis hit-job piece. I'm not disputing the accuracy of this or that, but if I wanted to I could write a similar piece on almost any actor or non-actor you could name, and I could make that person seem just as weird and fickle. It's not hard, believe me. You just need the will and the attitude and the rest falls into place.

"Some critics just seem to want to hate the films. If I came in with that attitude I would slit my wrists. Also I am keenly aware when reviewing a film of trying to relate its plusses and minuses to the audience I am writing for.

"I may see some virtue in some 17th century costume drama but I am not so sure the average [young-male] reader would. I will point that out. I don't sit there and say, 'Well I didn't like it so it must be bad.' I try to see what the film...Read More

Responding to a question from Harry Knowles about whether he's looking to shoot a horror film as his next project, Paul Thomas Anderson said "this is news to me. I thought I just made a horror film..."

"I hope you don't mind if I speak about this. I feel very unsettled at the moment. I suppose it's because I only just saw the news about Heath Ledger's death. It seems somehow strange to be talking about anything else. Not that there's anything to say really except to express one's regret and to say from the bottom of one's heart to his family and to this friends that I'm sorry for their troubles.

"I didn't know him. I have an impression, a strong impression, I would have liked him very much as...Read More

In his latest non-fiction comic-strip interview, Mike Russell speaks with Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi.

By calling the next James Bond film Quantum of Solace, the producers are announcing their intention to stay with the dark-flirting, psychological-emotional realism that began with Casino Royale. It will be no big deal at all to write a main credits song for this -- just ignore the title. Who cares if the singer literally belts out the words "quantum of solace"? Better this than something in the vein of Goldeneye or Octopussy or whatever. It's a title that says "if you're looking for a check-your-brain-at-the-door thriller, look elsewhere."

I wasn't sure about who was in the cast of Scott Frank's The Lookout when I first saw it early last year, so when the cute redhead showed up I was initially persuaded I was watching Amy Adams. It was actually Isla Fisher, whom I'd first noticed in '05's The Wedding Crashers.

Amy Adams, Isla Fisher, etc.

I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this, but they're both redheads, they both project that bubbly-chirpy thing, they're roughly the same age (Adams was born in '74, Fisher...Read More

I got the hell out of Dodge -- i.e., Park City -- yesterday afternoon at 5:30 pm, slept a few hours, piddled around and then drove early this afternoon to rain-soaked Santa Barbara. Cats and dogs, cats and dogs...and I didn't bring an umbrella. Flu gone, cough lingering...and the solution to all woes and precipitations is to hike eight or nine blocks in this scatalogical downpour from the Santa Barbara Hotel upto the Arlington theatre for the SBFF's opening-night presentation: Adam Brooks' Definitely, Maybe (Universal, 2.14).

Snapped somewhere within Santa Barbara's city limits

Maybe but Most Likely Not...Read More

Manohla Dargis's N.Y. Times review of Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is one of the best she's ever written. I haven't been this gob-smacked by Dargis since she wrote three and half years ago about Michael Mann's Collateral:

4 Months director Cristian Mungiu, star Anamaria Marinca.

"In 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a ferocious, unsentimental, often brilliantly directed film about a young woman who helps a friend secure an abortion, the camera doesn't follow the action, it expresses consciousness itself. This consciousness -- alert to the world and insistently alive...Read More

Cody: "In my opinion? The best thing you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly who you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what-have-you...the right person will still think that the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with."

Wells: "You want it straight, Juno, or fluffy? Let's try straight. The very best thing you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly who you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what-have-you...the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's...Read More

"Everyone knows life is cruel and unfair. But it shouldn't be this cruel and unfair." -- "Renaissance Blogger" posting on N.Y. Times "City Room" page on the death of Heath Ledger.

But we all suspect that anyone truly committed to life, health and longevity doesn't end up dead at age 28 with prescription pills found near his naked body. Ledger didn't die because a tree fell on him. His death, accidental or otherwise, almost certainly came from somewhere in his own head -- his back pages, his behavior, his struggles, and perhaps his failure to pay...Read More

"I'm at Sundance right now, and after seven years of covering the festival for various outlets, I'm still taken by surprise whenever I hear the public perception of the Sundance Film Festival, as it's so alien to the reality of actually being here," writes San Francisco Chronicle columnist/blogger James Rocchi.

"I asked a friend of mine, as a Rorschach test, to say the first thing she thought of when she heard the words 'Sundance Film Festival,' and her reply was as swift as it was blunt: 'boring and pretentious.' And yes, when you mention Sundance, most people do think of the sort...Read More

Only a few hours after the passing of Heath Ledger, an enterprising Best Buy store manager in San Diego's Mission Valley had this display up. I'll wager that hundreds of video store managers across the country did the same thing yesterday. Any sightings? There used to be an idea that you should wait a few days after the death of a celebrity to reap the commercial benefits, but no longer. How long did record stores wait to exploit the death of Elvis in '77? (Thanks to Best Week Ever's Michelle Collins.)

Fox Searchlight has paid $5 million for most of the world rights to Clark Gregg's Choke, adapted by Gregg from Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name. Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston costar. Coming to theatres in...August? September? Early '09?

With the death of Heath Ledger, director Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is in a tight spot, to put it mildly. Ledger is/was the star of Gilliam's fantasy film, which shot exterior scenes in London last month but, according to a Wikipedia summary, has more shooting to do in Vancouver.

Heath Ledger during last month's London filming of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

Parnassus is set in London, so the Vancouver scenes will presumably be interiors, which usually constitute the bulk of any film unless you're shooting Lawrence of Arabia. If Ledger's planned...Read More

The Sundance Film Festival is a 10-day event, but it's always over as of Wednesday morning, or five and a half days after the opening-night festivities on Thursday night. The voltage turns down, there are fewer people on Main Street, all the presumably hot titles (i.e., name casts, advance-hyped) have been screened. I was going to stay until Friday but with this virus in my system and the general enervation and lack of excitement I'm figuring "screw it." I'm on the phone to Southwest right now, get myself on a plane tomorrow morning.

Sundance '08 wasn't bad but it sure wasn't great. There...Read More

The life and career of Heath Ledger, a deeply talented guy who sometimes played romantic heroes and at other times quirky loner roles that worked against his dashing good looks, is over. The brooding 28 year-old was found dead in a Manhattan Broome Street apartment earlier this afternoon.

A CNN report says "a possible drug overdose was suspected" but a city desk N.Y. Times story says "signs pointed to a suicide."

This is not a cause for weeping as much as a cause for anger and indignation. Brilliant, Heath! I knew him to say...Read More

I have a virus-fever in my system and it aches, it's exhausting and it's slowing me down with the postings. An hour ago I leaned over on the bench at the Star Hotel breakfast table and went to sleep. So we're lookiing at a Sundance shut-down today and perhaps also tomorrow. Staying indoors, drinking liquids, sleeping (if I can). I'll try and get into more stuff when I wake up.

Listen to this Patti Smith stage rant called "Declaration", which is heard in Patti Smith: Dream of Life. Her monumental rage and phrasings are electric, breathtaking...especially during the last half. Smith told me she re-records and re-posts it on her website every year.

Not quite the full remainder of this morning's Oscar nominations, with predictions and quips:

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Beaufort, Israel; The Counterfeiters, Austria; Katyn, Poland; Mongol, Kazakhstan; and 12, Russia. The year's finest foreign language film is 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The people who excluded it are morons and need to be identified and divested of power. What Will Win?: Nobody cares. The whole category has been soiled by the 4 Months brouhaha.

BEST ANIMATED FILM: Persepolis, Ratatouille and Surf's Up. What Will Win?: Ratatouille.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Juno, Lars & the Real Girl, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille, The Savages. Who/What...Read More

Just for the record, this morning's Academy nominations plus predictions and scattered reactions:

BEST PICTURE: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. (Juno doesn't belong with the other four -- in a better world, being "really likable" and making lots of money wouldn't translate into a Best Picture nom, especially with masterpieces like Zodiac and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford being cold-shouldered, and with a much more affecting spiritual delight like Once also getting the shaft.) What Will Win?: No Country for Old Men....I think.

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, There...Read More

With a Best Picture nomination under its belt, I guess it's not appropriate to use "poor" as an Atonement adjective any more. The fact that Joe Wright didn't get a Best Director nomination means the Academy voters liked it mainly for "soft" reasons -- Brideshead Revisited vibe, moving love story, period sets and costumes. But Atonement nonetheless received three prestige-level nominations -- Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan) and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The four "soft" Atonement nominations are for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best Costume Design.

As noted elsewhere, No Country for Old Men and There Will...Read More

Sundance rigors have made me sick -- bod feels enervated, head feels virusy -- but in my limited capacity I'm seeing at least one surprise among the just-announced Oscar nominees: Tommy Lee Jones being nommed as Best Actor for his performance in In The Valley of Elah. I called it for Jones in the Oscar Balloon all along, but I'm not aware of many other Oscar handicappers who did the same. This seems to me like a back-pat for the movie, for director-writer Paul Haggis...and a little bit of a slapdown for all the Elah dissers.

And you'd have to call Johnny Depp's...Read More

I could run a final Oscar nomination prediction list (like Nathaniel at thefilmexperience.net has done), but I think I'll just let it happen tomorrow morning and react at will. We've been over and over and over this, and Sundance is a demanding taskmaster. What will be will be. Part of me wants poor Atonement to get a Best Picture nomination, but that's all I'll say.

Steven Sebring's Patti Smith: Dream of Life is an authentic spiritual adventure film -- a mostly black-and-white exploration of Smith's life, loves, history, poetry, music, alliances, relationships, etc. It feels at times like a companion piece to D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (the monochrome classic about Bob Dylan touring England in the mid '60s), at other times like a patchwork meditation, a home movie, a concert film, a fashion show. It's about music, heroes, rants, chants, parents, deaths, declarations and determinations.

For me, the authenticity is in the way Sebring has captured (or emulated) the...Read More

A cell-phone image posted by dlpreviews ("a peer-reviewed entertainment review blog -- A Doctor, A Lawyer and A Priest") on 1.20. Taken at the AMC 24 Stonebriar in Frisco, Texas (a Dallas suburb) on the evening of Saturday, 1.19.

"You don't need creativity to describe Park City this week," the Salt Lake Tribune's Robert Kirby wrote this morning. Meaning that for sheer entertainment value, all he had to do last Saturday was cruise the streets and observe the after-chaos with Park City Police Sgt. Annette Ellis.

"The sun was up, but Friday night wasn't over. Cops were still cleaning up the mess caused when the power on Main Street went out just as the bars loosed several thousand drunks. Also, some idiot stealing a flat screen TV from the Main Street Mall fell off the roof.

"Around 10...Read More

A battle over Lance Hammer's Ballast is apparently brewing between Variety's Robert Koehler, who championed the film in a 1.19 review, and Screengrab's Mike D'Angelo, as indicated here.

I almost offered to have a bare-knuckled fist-fight with D'Angelo last summer over In The Valley of Elah. "Almost" means I was into the divine providence notion that if my support of Elah was fundamentally right and true (that Annie Lennox song excepted), God would help me defeat D'Angelo, and if D'Angelo was right I would be the loser. But I wasn't entirely serious because getting into a fight would mean swollen...Read More

Premiere.com's Glenn Kenny reported yesterday afternoon about an ugly racial incident that happened to Sleep Dealer director Alex Rivera and his two stars, Luis Fernando Perla and Leonor Varela. The setting was one of the Main Street photo shoot/swag houses. Accompanied by Falco Ink's Steve Beeman, they had an hour to kill after posing for photographs and decided to visit the upstairs swag suite. Perla and Varela were ushered in but Rivera was blocked at the door. "No directors," he was told.

Beeman, understandably offended, told the swag girls that the Sleep Dealer trio "can buy their own t-shirts, they're merely...Read More

Arizona-based film journalist Henry Cabot Beck informs that last weekend in Pheonix "a sign was posted on each of the box-office windows of the AMC chain theaters warning people that they might get sick watching Cloverfield. When I asked the ticket seller, he told me there had been some upchucking and retching and like that. Next thing will be barf bags handed out with the tickets. William Castle would have made a mint with a gimmick like this."

I've almost never felt queasy from jiggly, hand-held photography (I eat films like Dancer in the Dark for breakfast), although I'll admit that Cloverfield has...Read More

Patti Smith: Dream of Life director Steven Sebring and legendary poet-rocker Patti Smith following this evening's screening of the film (rich, layered, beautiful) at the Holiday Cinemas. Smith and her band will be performing a concert tomorrow evening at 6 pm.

Tipsters have been telling me to see Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which I managed to catch this morning at 9:30. It's a quirky coming-of-age dramedy about a Jewish teenaged pot dealer (Josh Peck) falling for the lah-dee-dah step-daughter (Olivia Thirlby) of his marginally unhinged therapist (Ben Kingsley) whom he simultaneously develops a close friendship with. It was wildly cheered after this morning's Eccles screening, but I was yes and no about it.

The story, which director-writer Levine apparently based on his own adolescent wanderings, is well told but the basic points seem familiar as hell in...Read More

First-time filmmaker Lance Hammer's Ballast, which I'll try to catch at the Monday noon Eccles screening, has gotten more "you need to see this" buzz than any other Sundance film thus far. Consider this excerpt from Robert Koehler's 1.19.08 Variety review.

"A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer. Though his name would be better suited to sign high-octane action movies, Hammer quickly establishes himself with the only film he's ever made as a...Read More

Scrounging around for tickets at last night's What Just Happened? screening at the Eccles felt vaguely humiliating. No, it was vaguely humiliating. The film, a mildly perverse inside-Hollywood drama directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, Michael Wincott, Robin Wright Penn and Catherine Keener, didn't feel like a big audience score from where I was sitting. It's an in and out thing -- sometimes amusing, sometimes okay, nothing really "knockout."

I'll get into it later today. I have to leave for a 9:30 Eccles screening of The Wackness. More feeling like a beggar in Calcutta....can;t wait!...Read More

I got thrown out a screening of Nanette Burstein's American Teen at the Library after seeing about 15 minutes' worth. The heave-ho happened about 80 minutes ago. I had a ticket and everything, but because I got there late (due to my own laziness plus misplaced faith in the Park City transit system) there were no seats at all, and the woman running the Sundance volunteers insisted over the mike that no one could stand in the back. You're in a seat or you're out, she said.

Those are the Park City fire regulations, yes, although we've all stood in the back...Read More

The fools...the mad fools. I'm fuming, weeping, sputtering. The thought of all of those over 40, not-very-well-educated women voting for Hillary Clinton (she's just won the Nevada primary, beating Barack Obama 50 to 45) because of gender allegiance and (don't tell me this isn't a factor) race. Yeesh.

No mind to the fact that she's chilly and menacing, or the fact that she inspires loathing like few other politicians in U.S. history (especially among males), or that the threat of Tracy Flick in the Oval Office will, if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, prompt tens of millions of Democrats and...Read More

Update: Buck Guilt Update: Seven or eight people shared various muted enthusiasms about The Great Buck Howard yesterday afternoon. No one hated it; one guy (a major critic) was very pleased. There was general agreement about a rich, near-great performance by John Malkovich as a second-tier illusionist. An okay, somewhat less stellar performance from Colin Hanks, I heard from two or three viewers. Mixed-positive.

Yesterday: Two slivers of information about The Great Buck Howard, the Tom Hanks-produced, Sean McGinly-directed relationship drama that will screen at 3:30 this afternoon at the Eccles theatre. I don't have it in...Read More

Three or four anecdotes/observations stand out in Michael Ceiply's 1.19 N.Y. Times piece about Writers Guild president Patric Verrone and his lieutenant David Young, and altogether they indicate that as far as these two and the WGA strike siutation is concerned, particularly in the wake of the just-announced Directors Guild deal, the name of the game is "move it or lose it."

WGA president Patric Verrone

Verrone and Young are described as as currently "stuck deliberating a question that may bode ill for both: Is their writers’ rebellion over?" They are called an "odd couple, not invested...Read More

When I came out of last night's Holiday Village screening of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, who do I see jabbering on his cell phone over in the corner but Harvey Weinstein? I waved; he waved back. A few minutes later he was standing outside in the cold air, coatless and still jabbering away, when I left for the Bottle Shock screening at the Library.

Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired director Marina Zenovich at Friday night's after-party at the MIcrosoft House.

Just before this morning's 9 am screening of Perros Come Perros, a...Read More

Everything is piling on and I'm dropping balls and starting to fall behind, filing-wise. I'm on my first coffee and today's first film, Carlos Moreno's Perro Come Perro (a.k.a. Dog Eat Dog), starts in less than an hour. I'll try and elaborate on a couple of things later this morning. Probably. Most likely. Maybe not.

At 6:15 pm last night I saw Marina Zenovich's finely studied, exquisitely sculpted Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which doesn't take Roman's side of the mid '70s unlawful sex with a minor scandal that led to his leaving this country as much as it slams the judge who...Read More

I spotted Dan Rather walking around the Park City Marriott a couple of hours ago. I should have cornered him, asked what's doing, taken his picture...but I'm a notorious wimp when it comes to such opportunities. Unlike Rather, I presume. Let's face it -- in the old days Rather would have looked down his nose at covering this festival and schlepping around like the rest of us. We're living in a new world.

My only Sundance screening today (so far) has been Gonzalo Arijon's Stranded, the doc about the Uruguyan plane-crash survivors who were forced to resort to cannibalism after landing in the snow-covered Andes mountains in October 1972 and being stuck there for 72 days.

Stranded is partly a first-hand, looking-back, talking-heads doc, partly a revisiting of the crash scene and partly a grainy, dialogue-free re-enactment. It's touching from the start, and holds you all through its 122-minute length. (The Sundance program notes are incorrect in saying it's 113 minutes long.)

This famous saga, dramatized in Frank Marshall's...Read More

A view of Cloverfield that is probably a tad more representative of general gorilla sentiments than this review by N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. As if.

What happened to those Cloverfield projections in the mid 20s? Smashed on the rocks. Fantasy Moguls Steve Mason is reporting that over the 4-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend J.J. Abrams' hand-held monster film "will likely finish in the $39 million to $42 million range. 27 Dresses starring Katherine Heigl appears to be headed for a solid $17 million to $20 million while Mad Money, the first film from Overture, will probably finish with less than $10 million.

Martin McDonagh's In Bruges (Focus Features, 2.8) is a much, much better film than the trailer suggests. It's a classic "surprise" package -- looks like nothing but fastballs, is actually about curves, sliders and change-ups. As bright and fully considered as a good play (no surprise) with affecting portions of heart, compassion and symmetry. And laughs -- it's a very funny piece.

I've just come from the opening-night screening of this fascinating, above- average intellectual crime romp at Park City's Eccles Theatre, and I'm waiting for the after-party to start at 10 pm.

The In...Read More

This afternoon's announcement of a "tentative" three-year deal between the Directors Guild and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers means the heat is really on the Writers Guild negotiators to arrive at some kind of similar agreement with the AMPTP. On strike since 11.5, the WGA apparently hasn't even had back-channel talks going on with the AMPTP since talks collapsed on 12.7 over producer demands that the guild abandon six of its proposals.

If the WGA guys have any balls at all, they'll disparage the DGA deal and get out their shovels and dig deeper foxholes and lob fresh...Read More

All is not lost, Joe Wright! Venerated critic David Thomson is standing by you, stating that the [Best Director] Oscar will go to Atonement in a 1.16 Guardian piece. He calls it, however, "a film that reeks of class and moral uplift and which matches the terrible state of our culture in one way only: its spuriousness.

"I am certain that Wright will be nominated for directing Atonement, and just about as sure that in fifty years he will be written off," he declares. "The key to the direction of Atonement is its Dunkirk shot -- immense, detailed, a long tracking shot...Read More

In a 1.15 Huffington Post-ing, MSNBC movie columnist Eric Lundegaard laments that Best Picture Oscar nominees have become, box-office-wise, a smaller niche market than horror films or urban comedies. Which underscores, he says, that we have no "national cinema," which is to say quality-level but highly popular movies that "we're all aware of and can enjoy and reference."

Because -- shocking disclosure! -- we've become two moviegoing nations sharing a common land mass. The good movies are supported (most of the time) by the educated quality-seekers, film geeks and the elites, and the "popular" movies are sometimes enjoyed by same (thank...Read More

You have to hike through 15 paragraphs in David Halbfinger's 1.17 N.Y. Times profile of producer Michael London and his production company, Groundswell Prods., before you arrive at paragraph #16 and the reason why the piece is running at the start of Sundance '08 -- i.e., because London has three films showing here.

London set up Groundswell in 2006 with $55 million from two sets of investors, the article states. He "started small with three movies, each costing less than $10 million. In a coup, all three are being shown at Sundance." And in a follow-up...Read More

I don't want to be the scolding guy, but there's an error in David Carr's 1.17 start-of-Sundance piece in the N.Y. Times. In paragraph #13 he writes that "last year [at Sundance] Once was bought for a song -- about $150,000 -- and went on to earn $10 million and counting for Fox Searchlight." As I heard it over and over, Once was made for about $150,000 U.S. and sold for somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000. I got the production budget figure from director John Carney ("a little over 100,000 euros" is how he put it) and exec producer David Collins.

Barry Levinson and Art Linson's What Just Happened?, a Hollywood dramedy based on what Linson's same-titled book that tells what he went through when he produced The Edge (i.e., the "bear movie" with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin), is hunting for a distributor in Park City. It screens at the Eccles on Saturday, 1.19, at 6:15 pm, and at Prospector Square on Sunday at 8:30 am. A guy who gets around believes "it will be the biggest festival sale by far, unless it totally sucks and/or is just too expensive."

A simulation of a Cannes Film...

In his annual Sundance-is-about-to-begin article, L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan said yesterday that Christine Jeff's Sunshine Cleaning, which will have its first festival screening tomorrow (i.e., Friday) night at the Racquet Club, features "a vibrant performance by Amy Adams that not even the work she's done in Enchanted and Junebug prepares you for."

Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning

In other words, he's seen it. And in other words, one gathers, Adams is playing another open-hearted emotional innocent facing each day with a plucky smile, determined to see and respond to only the good in people, and...Read More

Echoing my belief that the threatening thing you can't see is ten times scarier than one you can, Variety's Todd McCarthy says the following in his Cloverfield review: "At long last, a lingering full-on shot of the monster is served up, and it's not a friendly sight. All the same, a strong argument could be made for not showing the creature at all. The film's initial hints at offering a new kind of horror eventually devolve into something essentially familiar, provoking idle thoughts that, in the vein of the '50s sci-fier Forbidden Planet, it could have been more effective with an invisible...Read More

Nobody's here. That I recognize. Empty streets, idle merchants, half-filled restaurants...the last quiet that Park City will know for 10 or 11 days. It all cranks up starting tomorrow. I shared a $34 dollar airport shuttle into town with Hollywood Reporter guy Gregg Goldstein -- that's the single most noteworthy thing that's happened over the last eight or nine hours. It's now about 3 or 4 degrees outside. Ice crystals in my nostrils. A big storm is coming on Sunday, the shuttle driver said.

Egyptian theatre, upper Main Street, Park City

Wasatch...

The Oscar statuette in this just-released poster looks like he's made from liquid metal, the stuff that the T-1000 was composed of in James Cameron's T2: Judgment Day. In other words, subject to melting or shattering and (given the reported contingency plan to televise an "alternate" Oscar show if the strike isn't settled) given to shape-shifting. Of all the years to use this visual metaphor...wow. As if the Oscar fathers decided to deliberately convey the ongoing anxiety. (Thanks to Awards Daily for posting the art.)

As the uproar over the exclusion of Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days from the foreign-language "short list" continues to smolder, a thought comes to mind. Instead of ignoring the oversight and stressing the awards and lavish praise that this film has gathered since last May, what if IFC Films, the film's distributor, were to make the Academy committee's diss the focus of a new campaign?

What if IFC Films sought out the hundreds of "name"-level industry people who are mortified at what happened and asked them to sign their names to a petition that would run in...Read More

Due to Sundance packing, air travel and general frenzy, the usual postings will be on hold starting now and continuing until sometime this evening.

The BAFTA nominations mean nothing in terms of Atonement Oscar odds. Joe Wright's film is still dead as far as its Best Pictures prospects are concerned. The British simply stood up for a hometown film, is all. Made in England, produced by Brits, based on book by British author, British actors, about England during World War II...hats in the air and 14 nominations! That said, it still is and will continue to be an exceptional, high-grade film. That no one really loves.

Update due to talkbackers claiming the film is loved by many, etc.: Of course it's liked, loved and selling...Read More

"This is a lesson all the failed Iraq films of '07 have learned -- allegory works much better than brutal fact." For whatever reason, this comment from HE reader "Howling Man" has parted the curtains and explained the failure of the Iraq War flicks in a way that, for the first time, doesn't piss me off. I've been fuming for months about people's refusal to see In The Valley of Elah and the others (poor Stop Loss -- doomed before it even gets out of the gate) and I imagine I'll continue to have this reaction regardless, but now I have a place...Read More

As predicted, Cloverfield's definite interest and first-choice tracking levels have gone up, and the expected weekend gross is now somewhere north of $20 million. It could nudge its way into the mid 20s...who knows? The general first-choice percentage is 17 and the first-choice rating among young males is in the 30s. The older male definite interest is in the 20s while female definite interest is around 5 or 6. Strictly being seen as a guy movie...although it's much more interesting than what that label connotes.

"In a way, what Cloverfield does is put a name on the unthinkable," director Matt Reeves tells L.A. Times guy Mark Olsen in a piece posted yesterday afternoon. He's alluding to the 9.11 echoes -- collapsing skyscrapers, mass evacuations across the Brooklyn Bridge, travelling dustclouds engulfing downtown streets -- that makes the film "a repository for the collective unease felt in the wake of a national tragedy," as Olsen puts it.

It's intended, in other words, "to explore the very real and obvious fears we are all living with everyday, to let the audience have...Read More

This is going to sound crabby, but honestly -- honestly -- the second I saw this photo on Anne Thompson's blog I knew that the only adjective that allows for the appearance of these huge, almost rope-like cobwebs is "Spielbergian."

TMZ is reporting that Brad Renfro, 25, was found dead at his Los Angeles home this morning. No cause determined, but it's well known that the poor guy had grappled with drug problems (smack being one of the substances) for a long while. The report says Renfro "had been working valiantly to stay clean, especially since [last] summer."

Renfro had recently completed filming The Informers, a Gregor Jordan film based on a Brett Easton Ellis novel set in the '80s. His costars were/are Winona Ryder, Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Brandon Routh.

Renfro...Read More

"Tuesday, January 15, 2008 -- a date that shall live in Academy Awards infamy," writes L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas in a piece titled "How Do You Say 'Oscar Scandal' in Romanian?" He's referring to the shafting earlier today of Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by the Academy's foreign-language committee.

"I've had better days," producer and Foreign Language nominating committee chairman Mark Johnson told Foundas late this afternoon. Referring to a recently instituted two-phase nominating process, Johnson said, "I thought we had made big strides last year, but apparently not...Read More

The BAFTA nominations will be announced tomorrow morning -- Wednesday, 1.16 -- at 7:40 am London time, or 11:40 pm tonight in Los Angeles. Some kind of announcement ceremony in the vein of the Oscar noms. They'll be online at www.bafta.org after the lah-dee-dah is finished.

If you're going to link to a piece in which an EW guest columnist (Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody) complains about what she feels is an unflattering drawing, as Red Carpet District's Kris Tapley did this morning, shouldn't you show readers what she's on about?

"Direct your gaze, if you will, to the illustration (or 'illo,' as they say in the publishing game) in the center of this page," she writes. "That black-lipped, beady-eyed ghoul is supposed to be me!

"Now, I'm hardly the cutest columnist to occupy this space, but I had no idea...Read More

The thing that got me right away about the new El Cid DVD (which looks pretty good, by the way -- certainly better than the old Criterion laser disc) was the main-title music by Miklos Rozsa. Rozsa's scores always seemed to carry more punch and soul on their own terms than the films they were meant to enhance. (Here's a faster-loading mp3 version.)

"R.I.P, dear Sweeney," writes The Envelope's Tom O'Neil, having finally accepted that Tim Burton's film will not be a Best Picture nominee. "Put your razor away. You reaped your revenge on screen and history will hail Burton's genius in future years, as many film critics and filmgoers appreciate it now ($41 million so far -- $2 million more than Michael Clayton).

"Who knew that the cutthroat Hollywood crowd would turn away so squeamishly from a little cartoonish blood when they spill so much more of the real stuff down studio halls every day? You will have ultimate revenge again, my friend.

I hate the obnoxious soundtrack to this little here's-how-it's-done video -- just turn off the sound entirely. But it shows again how just a few guys with the right digital software can make a big Saving Private Ryan/Longest Day-type movie for a lot less money. Just three actors played hundreds of soldiers, and the digi-vid tools were all consumer-grade.

I prefer organic reality. I can usually smell digital manipulation and the odor, for me, isn't appealing. But this video does makes you believe that more and more indie...Read More

If a deal between the Director Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Televison Producers is indeed "imminent" -- a term used in a 1.15 story by Hollywood Reporter's Carl DiOrio, and perhaps referring to next week, which is when the next negotiating session is set to take place -- will the Writers Guild negotiators take this deal also, which will bring the strike to an end?

DiOrio wrote that "Hollywood has the collective sense that the DGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) will quickly hammer out a new contract to replace the pact set to...Read More

Yesterday at the Macworld Expo Apple honcho Steve Jobs announced a decision to jump into online movie rentals with Apple TV. All six major distributors will provide flicks to service subscribers, sending them via high-speed internet right into the the living-room tube. The films won't be downloadable, however, until 30 days after they're released on DVD.

"With Apple TV, you don’t need a computer to rent digital movies -- you rent them directly from your TV," the website reads. "The completely redesigned Apple TV interface makes it easy to browse, rent, and watch movies...Read More

One of the biggest outrages in the history of the Academy's foreign film committee -- a scandal fed by deficient taste and myopic, mule-like obstinacy -- has just happened with the release of the nine-film short list that doesn't include Cristian Mungiu's widely hailed 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. The people who pushed for this decision need to be identified and, with all charity and compassion, expelled from this group for life. What will it take? Torches and pitchforks at the corner of Wilshire and La Peer at 8 pm this evening?

4 Months, 3 Weeks &...

Hollywood Interrupted's Mark Ebner talking to Rush & Molloy about the Tom Cruise Scientology recruitment video that was up for a while on Sunday and early Monday before it was yanked. Again -- it's not what Cruise believes or how he expresses himself that gets me. It's that insane narrator. He sounds just like the guy who narrated the opening of the '50s Superman TV series with George Reeves. That strident tone of barking machismo...whew.

Hitler isn't jiving about Paramount. The word for the last week or so is that it's only a matter of time before they capitulate to Blu-Ray. A brilliant piece. "Blades of Glory?...are you fucking kidding me?"

Asked by New York's Boris Kachka about Hillary Clinton's "tearful turnaround" in New Hampshire, November playwright David Mamet says, "Well, I only heard something on the radio. I don't think I'm misquoting her. She said, 'I have so many opportunities for America.' [Long pause.] That's kind of wonderfully revelatory. It's not that there are so many opportunities for America, but she has so many opportunities for America."

A footnote in the piece adds that "while this quotation was attributed to Clinton, it was later reported that she said, "I have so many opportunities from this...

"It's better to have the camel inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." -- a fundamental rule of political alliance and accommodation, but originally spoken by whom about whom? I've been repeating the conventional wisdom that it was Lyndon Johnson explaining why he appointed J. Edgar Hoover head of the FBI for life in the mid '60s, but a friend says some other politician or essayist said this first in the 1920s.

"Buyers [coming to Sundance '08] say they are looking carefully at three star-packed films aimed at young audiences: Hamlet 2 (with Steve Coogan and Elisabeth Shue), about a high-school drama course that puts on a musical sequel to Shakespeare's play; The Wackness (with Mary-Kate Olsen), about a high-school kid growing up in New York who pays his therapist with marijuana; and Assassination of a High School President (with Mischa Barton), about a newspaper nerd and popular girl at a Catholic high school who investigate stolen SAT exams." -- from a 1.12.08 Wall Street Journal piece by Lauren A.E. Schuker.

A publicist friend just said to me, "I don't know if Barack Obama is prepared to be president." And I said, "And Bush 43 was? An intellectually challenged frontman for vested oil and other military- industrial interests, and a putty-like pawn of his father's right-wing friends? Abraham Lincoln, a jack-legged legislator from Illinois with a knack for plain talk and "reading" people and political accommodation, was prepared? JFK had gone to U.S. Presidents School and was fully prepared? Bill Clinton hit the ground running? Jimmy Carter's training as Georgia's governor was adequate preparation, and he used that background to form a brilliant political...Read More

"There are signs of resistance to another Clinton administration," according to a N.Y. Times story by Robin Toner and Marjorie Connelly about a recent N.Y. Times/CBS News poll. "Thirty-eight percent said they thought it was bad for two families -- the Bushes and the Clintons -- to hold the presidency for so long." Really? People don't think it'll be kinda cool for the same two families to be running things for (if Hillary Clinton wins and gets two terms) a total of 28 years?

If I was inhabiting the mind and body of Warner Bros. honcho Jeff Robinov, I'd say "of course!" to those urging that the film version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows be made into two films. That way I'd double the grosses and include the dozens of plot details in the 776-page book that would otherwise have to be sacrificed. And I'd get Guillermo del Toro to direct them both.

Now...that doesn't mean I would necessarily sit through these films. (This is Hollywood Elsewhere inside the body of Robinov, remember.) Naturally, the prospect of having to endure yet another Harry...Read More

After seeing There Will be Blood and relishing the now-legendary "I drink your milkshake!" scene, it occured to the Toronto Star's Peter Howell (and perhaps a few hundred others) that the "milkshake" line might be an anachronism, since the scene in which it's spoken is set in 1927 or '29 or somewhere in there. Howell was under the impression that milkshakes had been invented sometime in the early to mid 1930s.

But he checked Wikipedia's milkshake page and "lo and behold, not only were they invented but they were a fast-growing fad. On top of which it's quite plausible...Read More

Atonement is dead again. The nominations for the Producers Guild of America feature film award are The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The winner will be announced during a ceremony that will be somewhat ignored when it happens on February 2nd at the Beverly Hilton. Nobody wants to get too excited about anything to do with producers, i.e., the bad guys who won't give even a little bit in strike negotiations with the WGA.

L.A. Times-er Monica Corcoran has written one of the dozens of pre-Sundance, gearing-up-for-Park-City articles that are flooding the web right now, although hers has an unusual focus -- the necessity of sharing accommodations.

Carol Rixey's Star Hotel

"Come Thursday, about 45,000 parka-wearing people will flock to this tiny, former mining town nestled in the Wasatch mountains. But according to the visitors bureau, there are only 23,000 pillows for all those well-coiffed heads. And these lopsided lodging logistics cause more confusion and headaches than the altitude sickness."

For journalists, Sundance is pretty much synonymous with tight accomodations...Read More

I agree with The Envelope's Tom O'Neil that Golden Globe award winners tend to get a bump, yes, but mainly -- at least in the acting categories -- by delivering a great acceptance speech. Or they can hurt themselves by delivering a bad or uncharming one.

(I seem to recall that Eddie Murphy's remarks after winning the Best Supporting Actor GG award for his Dreamgirls performance included mispronouncing a producer's name, or something along those lines. I definitely remember thinking after hearing his acceptance speech, "Uh-oh...that's not going to help.")

So without any kind of presence at all last night...Read More

The surreal nothingness of last night's Golden Globes announcements stirred "a philosophical question," writes L.A. Times Mary McNamara. "If a winner is announced to the absence of applause, does anyone hear it?

Somewhat less concisely, Variety's Timothy Gray wrote that "it raises a philosophical question. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? Similarly, if you win an award in Hollywood, but there is no red carpet, no kiss from the presenter, no acceptance speech and no interviews backstage, did you really win?"

Gray's...Read More

Terrible news concerning Beowulf producer-cowriter Roger Avary, with whom I just spoke a couple of days ago. I'd let it alone but it's all over the news services and it may as well be acknowledged. Strength, faith, prayers. I'm so sorry.

Okay, I made the mistake of watching NBC's "fake" time-delayed, Stepford Showbiz News presentation of the Golden Globe Award winners. If I had watched CNN or whomever else, the announcements would have been revealed to me earlier. I should have known that NBC would drag things out to make a full-hour show out of it. It was my mistake, but HE is hereby delivering a resounding thumbs-down to NBC's decision to play games.

Atonement is back in the game, having won the Golden Globe award for Best Drama. With Joel and Ethan Coen having lost the Best Director award besides and No Country having fallen to Atonement, the question is to what degree are these two No Country losses indicative of general Academy sentiment...if at all? In any event, Joe Wright's admirable period romance has gotten a reprieve. It was thought to be a dead duck, and now it doesn't seem to be. Again -- how widely shared is this liking? And to what extent is this decision an anti-No Country vote (possibly due to "that...Read More

Best Actress, Drama is expected to go to Away From Her's Julie Christie, but it'll be cool if it goes to A Mighty Heart's Angelina Jolie...but it's gone to Julie Christie, and that's fine. A very fine performance, no quibbles...and won without a lot of campaigning.

And There Will Be Blood's Daniel Day Lewis has won for Best Actor (Drama).

The Golden Globe Best Director award goes to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly...what? Everyone had called this for No Country's Joel and Ethan Coen. What happened? Does this mean something? Did anyone at all predict this?

Sweeney Todd's Johnny Depp has won the Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical award...deserved, not muchy of a surprise, good call.

The Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture Comedy/Musical goes not to Juno but Sweeney Todd! With Ellen Page having lost the Best Comedy/Musical actress award to Marion Cotillard, this amounts to a double Juno shut-down. I don't get it -- didn't...Read More

Best Supporting Actor award is sure to go to No Country's Javier Bardem, and the winner is....uhm, Javier Bardem. Great performance, total shoo-in, locked for the Oscars.

Golden Globe winner for Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille. No surprise, excellent film, deserving winner. Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical winner: La Vie en Rose's Marion Cotillard, which I called a few minutes ago. Big cheers for Cotillard, director Oliver Dahan, Picturehouse's Bob Berney...yay, team! Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky and Juno's Ellen Page...shut-down!

Access Hollywood's Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell are hosting NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards press conference annoucements...and the winner of the Best Supporting Actress award is I'm Not There's Cate Blanchett!! The Amy Ryan blitzkreig has been stopped in its tracks! Temporarily, at least. Good vibrations.

HE's final Golden Globes predictions with only minutes to spare. Best Picture, Drama: No Country for Old Men...duhhh. Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen. Best Comedy or Musical: Juno...because money talks. Best Actor, Drama: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will be Blood. Best Actress, Drama: Julie Christie, Away From Her. Best Actress, Musical or Comedy: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose...giving great perk shouldn't be enough to give it to Ellen Page. Best Actor, Musical or Comedy: Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd. Best Actress, Supporting: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone...I offer this prediction under protest and duress -- the winner should be I'm Not There's...Read More

Hollywood Interrupted's Mark Ebner sent along a URL with a group of what appear to be Scientology-produced video propaganda spots, four of which feature Tom Cruise. Most entertainment journalists look the other way at the whole Cruise/Scientology thing, and I suppose I'm one of them. But watch these spots and tell me what kind of vibe you get from them. Tell me they don't creep you out.

The site's password is 2004event

There is an unmistakably robotic and strident tone to these pieces. Particularly in the copy read by the narrator, whose belligerent huckster voice makes him sound like a fiend...Read More

I'll be back by 5 pm to riff on the pre-show chit-chat that will begin prior to the Golden Globes press conference, which goes on at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern. NBC, E!, CNN and the TV Guide channel will be airing it. There's also the option of clicking on TheEnvelope.com right after the announcements for a Golden Globes discussion between Tom O'Neil, Elizabeth Snead and Pete Hammond.

Snapped earlier this afternoon at the Beverly Hilton hotel. (Pic stolen from Tom O'Neil's Gold Derby column.)

The narrator in the Focus Features trailer for In Bruges pronounces the city as "Brugerh" (another pheonetical spelling would be "Brugge", which is an anagram of bugger). Other sources and dictionaries seem to favor "Broozh." Which is it?

"'It's kind of a black comedy about despair, [but] I don't think they're going to put that on the poster." -- Martin McDonagh speaking about In Bruges (Focus, 2.8), which he wrote and directed, to N.Y. Times writer Sylviane Gold.

What is this strange Dave Karger belief in Atonement's shot at a Best Picture nomination? Isn't it dead? Is there anyone who sincerely believes otherwise? And if they do, based on what? It's a very sad and strong film that fell on deaf ears. It's the light that failed. I knew it was in trouble when my ex-wife saw it last month and said she really didn't like it. "Whaat?" I replied, more than a little startled. "But, but..."

In a sidebar called "Blogger's Choice" in their 1.18.08 issue, Entertainment Weekly is running counterviews and tea-leaf readings from seven of "the film industry's top bloggers," including predictions about the 2.24 Oscar Awards broadcast. I'm the only one who is flat-out skeptical about the Oscars even happening. Everyone else -- David Carr, Pete Hammond,. Tom O'Neil, David Poland, Sasha Stone and Anne Thompson -- is predicting that a deal or a waiver will allow the show to broadcast.

Pages 44 and 45 of Entertainment Weekly's 1.18.08 issue, #974

I know this much: the AMPTP is sensing...Read More

I'd been thinking all along that Sylvester Stallone's Rambo (Lionsgate, 1.25) would be called Rambo IV, but the Lionsgate marketers obviously figured it's been 19 years since the last one so who cares? The legend begins anew! When I look at the stills I can't help but observe that, yes, Stallone seems in good shape, but being 60-something he's naturally a little chunkier than he was 25 years ago in First Blood, the only truly decent Rambo film.

So I think of this film as Bulky Rambo or AARP Rambo or something along those...Read More

Watch John Cooper's welcome-to-Sundance video piece on http://www.sundance.org/festival -- it starts automatically when to go to the site. Nothing special, but a nice little primer for anyone who's never been.,

By tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest, Juno -- now at $71,250,000 (according to boxofficemojo) -- will become Fox Searchlight's highest grossing movie ever, surpassing the final domestic Sideways tally of $71,502,303 (according to the IMDB). You can check the numbers here also.

"What's wrong with the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. can't be fixed by making members sign waivers or by banning parties during balloting," Sharon Waxman wrote two days ago in the Los Angeles Times.

"The group needs, finally, to open its membership to a far broader pool, to encourage membership of bona fide journalists and critics -- maybe even domestic ones.

"With the timeout provided by the strike, NBC Universal president and chief executive Jeff Zucker can make this happen. He should fix the Golden Globes or take them off the air for good." And forego the potential of raking on $20 million...Read More

Bill Maher said something noteworthy about the WGA strike on last night's Real Time with Bill Maher: "We're very narcissistic out here in Hollywood, and I don't think [the WGA strike is] the most important issue. But writers are important to me. As Paul McCartney once said, I'd rather have a band [to play with] than a Rolls Royce, and I'd rather have my writers than a Rolls Royce. And for sure, corporations are taking over everything and strangling this country and strangling little men. We do need unions more than ever but...