Odds & Ends
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
This Isn't My Site
Short Version The longer posts that have occasionally appeared on this page (meaning the Rumours and Ruminations blog) will generally be appearing in the main body of the website from now on (usually on the revamped In Depth page), leaving this page devoted to the more bloggy and inconsequential. I just thought I'd let people know, because this page has become sort of an unintended alternative front-end to Cinephobia since I started it. You should always check the main page if you're interested in seeing the latest things I've written. Specifically, today I have posted an essay on Pauline Kael that probably would have been posted here in months gone past. Long Version This part of my page has kind of a tortured history, and I realise that the organisation of my website has gotten a little confusing and diluted as a result, so I'd thought I'd rethink and restate how the whole Rumours and Rumination page fits into Cinephobia generally. When I originally started the Rumours and Ruminations subsection of my page, it was a intended just to carry occasional musings on film news and rumours, and was just another part of my regular site. I hardly wrote anything for it, and I didn't do so regularly until I decided that the perfect way to set up this corner of the site was as a blog. While I wasn't terribly keen on blogs per se, they seemed a natural fit for the kind of content I envisaged for this part of the page. I soon found the format liberating - it was a fun, easy way to post not only the short newsy pieces that had always been the intention of the R&R column, but more general internet finds and throwaway bits. As a result, I started posting R&R stuff much more often. After a few months, I got an approach from Luke Buckmaster over at In Film to start carrying the column on his site: because his site is much more widely read than mine, it seemed an ideal way to reach a larger audience. The side-effect, though, was it encouraged me to post more of my longer articles through the blog, because that's what Luke carried: as a result, the content of my page skewed so that the blog started to become the main game, with most of my stuff appearing on it, and the main page carrying only reviews and archived copies of my blog pieces (when I got around to it). My suspicion that this was confusing the focus of the site has been confirmed by the fact that some of those on the net who link to me link here, rather than the main page. While I appreciate the inbound links, I think this reflects the fact that the blog had wavered a bit form my original intention, and was becoming too much of a separate identity. A couple of things have led me to try to redress this. In the end, the main pieces Luke was interested in carrying were the longer ones anyway: so from late last year, he's just been carrying them as feature articles and has dropped the whole idea of R&R as a separate column. Meanwhile, over the last few weeks I've revamped the whole part of my main site that was devoted to longer articles, archiving a lot of the longer pieces there. From now on, starting with my Pauline Kael piece, this is where that sort of thing will be appearing. This will leave this page as something closer to what I originally intended: an occasional pseudo-blog, rather than a separate front door to my page. It will focus more on news and the more scattershot opinion pieces, leaving the meatier stuff on the main page. Just wanted to clear that up. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 29.3.06 - 0 comments  
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Get This to the Boys in Marketing
This is old news, around on the net for ages, but Ain't it Cool just ran a link to a pseudo-trailer for Samuel L. Jackson's upcoming thriller, and I just had to mention it, because this film may have the best title ever. (Even better than Werner Herzog's Even Dwarves Started Small).  The concept of the film is that an assassin lets loose hundreds of snakes on a plane to kill a witness in a trial, causing the usual disaster movie thriller havoc. The title? Wait for it...  The studio, apparently, nearly chickened out, opting instead for Pacific Air 121(see here), but it was changed back to the elegantly forthright insanity of Snakes on a Plane. Samuel L Jackson may have played some role in this decision: he told an interviewer who queried the Pacifc Air title "we're totally changing that back. That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title." Meanwhile, folks on the internet have been inspired by the title to help the studio out with their marketing, coming up with appropriately themed Snakes on a Plane promotional material, such as this poster:  But of course, Snakes on a Plane sells itself really. Labels: rumours Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 18.3.06 - 0 comments
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Oscars
Some quick, unstructured thoughts on the Oscars and the broadcast (somewhat belatedly - stupid day job)... - I was barracking for Brokeback and am disappointed that it didn't win. However, I can't really comment on the justice of the surprise decision, as Crash was the only one of the nominees I hadn't seen. I didn't think there was any point: while I made a point of seeing Capote last weekend, I wasn't that fussed about getting a DVD of Crash out, as I assumed it wasn't a real chance. Quite apart from anything else, when was the last time a film from that early in the year won the award? The main impression I had of it going into the awards was one of puzzlement that its makers thought it was okay to name their film Crash only nine years after David Cronenberg's film of the same title. - I love Oscar montages, and particularly enjoyed the one this year on "issue pictures." But I just want to make one thing clear: no matter what the montage editor - or Roland Emmerich, for that matter - thinks, The Day After Tomorrow does not count as an issue picture. This is a movie about climate change in which the climate change chases people down hallways. This is raising the awareness of climate change to about the same extent that Psycho raises awareness of a crisis in aged care. - The win for best animated feature by Curse of the Were Rabbit caps off a remarkable record for the Wallace and Gromit series. Nick Park has directed four Wallace and Gromit films, three of which won an Oscar. The only one that didn't win was A Grand Day Out - and for that, Park was beaten by his own film (Creature Comforts).Who has a better record than that? - Some random stats from Wikipedia: "The awards were unusually divided; for the first time in 58 years, no film won more than three awards, with Brokeback Mountain, Crash, King Kong, and Memoirs of a Geisha each receiving that many. Crash was the first Best Picture winner since Rocky 29 years earlier to win only three awards; it was also the first Best Picture winner since Chariots of Fire 24 years earlier to not win either for its directing or for any of its performances. For the first time in 49 years, the awards for Best Picture, Best Director and the four acting categories went to six different films; also, for the first time in 44 years, each of the acting winners was a first-time nominee. Paul Haggis was the evening's only multiple winner, with awards for producing and writing Crash." - What was with playing the music when people started their speech? It's as if the winners of the awards aren't welcome at all any more. Next year, perhaps they should just throw the statuettes forcibly at the winners as they try to walk up on stage. - Jon Stewart was the best host for ages, and I hope they get him back. I suspect they will: unlike previous left-field choices (like Chris Rock and David Letterman) he seemed to go over well. And there is good precedent for a host with basically no link to the movies, in five-time host Johnny Carson. I was therefore amused to see the comments from The Age's clueless TV reviewer, Ross Warneke, who claimed that "within 10 minutes of the opening, the people in my house were as one: 'Bring back Billy Crystal!' "Perhaps this is just me, but when Warneke writes something like this, I can't help but think of Grandpa Simpson screaming "Bring back Matlock!" - I don't really agree with the contention over on eFilmCritic (here), that the surprise win of Crash was possible because of some lack of quality in the films. They suggest that Brokeback may well seem "quaint" in years to come. I doubt it, because as I argued in my review of it, Brokeback doesn't make a big deal of its gay theme: what will seem quaint is that it caused such a fuss. I'm still inclined to agree with those who thought this was a pretty good field: I wasn't a huge fan of Good Night and Good Luck, but if I give Crash the benefit of the doubt and assume Clooney's film was the weakest of the five, it's a pretty good bottom level. Cast your eyes across the list of pevious nominees here: it's amazing some of the films that have made up the Best Picture numbers. I mean, c'mon, The Full Monty? The Fugitive? Ghost? Fatal Attraction? Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 12.3.06 - 1 comments
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