The Screengrab : 20th century fox

"Wolverine" Decapitates Fox News Blogger

Phil Nugent — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:30:00 GMT

The whole brouhaha about the on-line leak of an unfinished copy of Wolverine is continuing to mess with minds and inspire bloviation in both the real world and the Internet community, and now it's started denting careers. In the wake of Fox News entertainment blogger Roger Friedman's posting a "review" of the version of the movie that appeared online, News Corp, which is the parent company of both Fox News and 20th Century Fox (which is releasing the movie), has announced that Friedman has been "terminated" as an employee. In his review, which appeared last Thursday (and which included a testimonial to how fast and easily he'd been able to download the contraband entertainment), Friedman wrote that "I am, in fact, amazed about how great Wolverine turned out. It exceeds expectations at every turn." 20th Century Fox was quick to release a statement indicating that they couldn't have cared less whether he'd liked it or not: "We've just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com -- an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox -- watched on the Internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of X-Men Organs: Wolverine. This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically -- whether the review is good or bad." (Please note: the full title of the movie is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That "X-Men Organs" is, for once, not our typo: that's how it appeared in the press release as it was reprinted in Variety. We didn't have the heart to fix it because it seems like a pretty appropriate title anyway.) As Variety pointed out, "Calling Foxnews.com an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox was an interesting choice of words, given that they're sibling companies."

Friedman seems to have fallen victim to one of the perils of being a cog in a modern multi-media conglomerate, where everyone is connected somehow but nobody is sending out hourly memos to make sure that everyone has the synergy strategy straight. Whether or not Friedman thought he was doing the studio a favor by plugging an illegally distributed, incomplete version of their product, he seems to have assumed that Fox News would have his back, and his first reaction to reporters to asked him about news of the firing was to assure them that, in fact, he still had his gig. The blog itself was still chugging along through the weekend--though the offended review disappeared from sight--and Fox News would only say that Friedman's status was "an internal matter" and not for public discussion. Maybe Friedman expected Fox News president Roger Ailes, a notoriously prickly and territorial alpha-male, to save his job as a way of asserting absolute control over his domain. But Monday, after a meeting between Friedman and Fox News executives, it was announced that the company and its blogger had "mutually agreed to part ways immediately."

The whole Wolverine fiasco has really brought out the soul-searching copyright scholar who, it turns out, has been lurking inside many a high-profile film blogger. One of the funniest things about this mess is that it was the corporate shill with at least one well-shod foot in the film industry who chose to play the role of gonzo wild man--albeit a wild man who writes like Peter Travers in full-on blurb whore mode--while all the "independent" bloggers have been urging restraint and caution and denouncing piracy while professing concern for the rights of the filmmakers to have some control over how their work is released. As Scott Von Doviak reported here last week, Korey Coleman's lively site Spill.com also ran a review of the bootleg at the same time that the front of the site was editorializing against piracy. Much as it pains us to mention Spill and Fox News in the same breath, the similarity between the two incidents points up that if there's one thing a major coporation and an online watering hole for termite talents may be likely to have in common, it's that one hand might be up to something that the other hand is barely dimly aware of, which can result in charges of carelessness at best and hypocrisy at worst.

Piracy is an old issue, but the leaking of a first-rate-looking version of a hotly awaited major release movie and making it available to just about any interested party with access to a computer--that's new. Ethical standards are being adjusted and newly minted as events develop, and it may be that some of the bloggers who have come down hardest on the very notion of piracy are expressing their own internal battle over the right way to handle it; people are sometimes most passionate about their convictions when they're trying to convince themselves. Public attention is hard-won on the Internet, and it speaks volumes that someone like Friedman was able to get so caught up in his lust for a high-profile scoop that he couldn't take a breath first and wonder what the ramifications would be for his career. No doubt the debate over how to handle these situations--and no one thinks that this one is going to turn out to be an isolated, once-in-a-lifetime incident--will grow only more intense now that it turns out you can lose your job over it. The next big question is bound to be, can you lose box office over it? 20th Century Fox has already started rehearsing its speech about how the movie, which opens May 1, would have done better in theaters if it hadn't been for the bootleggers. (If the movie does terrific business, don't hold your breath waiting for their speech about how much they owe the thieves for having helped generate interest in it.) And, lest you think that nobody at the FBI takes this seriously, at some point we'll get to discover the answer to the last big question regarding high-profile Internet piracy: how much time do you get for it?

Fox Takes Marvel's Dare

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Adaptations of Marvel Comics have been doing great business at the box office for almost ten years now, from X-Men to Spider-Man to Iron Man. And, just like in the comics, when one creative team doesn't find an audience, the big bosses at Marvel Films have been more than willing to try again with new writers, directors, and stars; Fantastic Four wasn't a critical success, but it made enough money to spawn a sequel; Ang Lee's Hulk was an ambitious letdown, but Marvel handed the property over to Edward Norton for a second chance; and The Punisher is being given another go-round despite two dismal adaptations so far. The one Marvel superhero franchise that hasn't been talked up for a reboot so far has been Daredevil (and its even worse spin-off, Elektra). That's probably because the original -- helmed by a hapless Mark Steven Johnson and starring an out-of-it Ben Affleck -- was such a piece of junk that no one wanted a second try at it.

That may be about to change. 20th Century Fox's co-chair, Tim Rothman, insists that the studio will be pairing with Marvel Films to produce another installment of the adventures of everyone's favorite blind lawyer/costumed vigilante; he's just not saying when. Or who. Or where, how, or perhaps most importantly, why. In a cagey interview with IESB, Rothman says the deed will get done, but fails to name names, and cites a curious precedent: "I think that the thing The Hulk showed...is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance." Exactly what was done right about Norton's Hulk reboot and exactly who gave it a second chance is unclear: the movie was tepidly reviewed, and made almost exactly as much money as Ang Lee's famouse 'failure'. But hey, the spirit is willing even if the facts are weak.

While Rothman goes on to namecheck Christopher Nolan and his approach to the Distinguished Competition's Batman franchise as a possible peek at what the tone of the next Daredevil film might be, it's clearly too early to start talking about personnel. Which, in a way, is too bad: if Daredevil's worth doing, it's worth doing right. As we reported in this space a while back, Frank Miller and Jason Statham have both expressed some interest in a Daredevil movie, and one of the hottest action stars of today combined with the man who wrote some of the best Daredevil stories in comic book history could make for an intriguing film. On the other hand, if all Fox intends to do is find the next Mark Steven Johnson -- well, wake us when X-Men 4 is ready.

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"Babylon" Tanking: Director Kassovitz Blames His Studio for a Sci-Fi Debacle

Phil Nugent — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

If you're among the select group of people who've seen Babylon A.D. --the sci-fi action whatsit that opened last Friday without the benefit of press screenings--its director, Mathieu Kassovitz has a message for both of you: it's not his fault. Kassovitz, who made a splash as a director in 1995 with his international hit La Haine (and who is perhaps best known here for his acting roles, such as the male romantic lead in Amelie and the boyish explosives expert in Munich) feels that 20th Century Fox, the movie's American distributor--it was co-financed by them and the French-based StudioCanal--gutted and mangled his baby, and he's gone public with his complaints via an interview with the website Scifi Scanner. If you only noticed the faint signals of Babylon A.D.'s publicity campaign and were unfamiliar with Kassoviitz's reputation as a filmmaker, you might be startled to learn that the movie, which stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Charlotte Rampling, and Gerard Depardieu ("wearing," according to New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott, "the most superfluous prosthetic nose extension in film history"), and which was originally set to be released back in February, was something that a studio might be able to mishandle. But it turns out that this, once upon a time, was a labor of love. The script, which is credited to Eric Besnard, is based on a novel, Babylon Babies by the French writer Georges Datec, that Kassovitz had wanted to film for years. The director rhapsodizes that "The scope of the original book was quite amazing. The author was very much into geopolitics and how the world is going to evolve. He saw that as wars evolve, it won't be just about territories any more, but money-driven politics. As a director it's something that's very attractive to do." But his efforts to remain true to the material were undercut, he says, by Fox's meddling. "I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience."

" To whatever degree the movie that Kassovitz made resembled what he had in mind, the finished product was further altered when Fox got out the chop-chop scissors before throwing it into theaters over the Labor Day weekend. The official 93-minute release is said to have lost anywhere between fifteen minutes (Kassovitz's best guess) and seventy minutes of footage from the director's version. (Informed of the changes, Vin Diesel, who has spoken of the movie as a comment on "an age where borders are closing," could only ask sardonically, "Am I even in the movie any more?") What's left, Kassovits says, is "pure violence and stupidity...like a bad episode of 24", like the ones where Jack's wife had amnesia. The way he sees i, he wanted to make a movie where "All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters," whereas Fox ""Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie." The end result for him has been a sad lesson in just how superfluous the director of a movie can be made to feel. "I'm ready to go to war against them," he says, "but I can't because they don't give a shit."

Take Five: Arizona

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:15:00 GMT

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer gets its limited-release debut this Friday, after two years of lingering on the festival circuit without a distributor. Although some critics have praised its good-natured look at sexuality and overall sunny demeanor, it's likely that the real reason Georgina Riedel's feature-length debut is finally seeing the light of day is the newfound TV stardom of its lead actress, America Ferrara. Still, the reason I want to see it is simple: it's set in Arizona. I was born and raised in Phoenix, at a time when everyone from there was from somewhere else, and while I don't really miss the place, I still have that hokey boosterism that makes me raise an eyebrow whenever I hear a movie or television show is set there or filming there. During the early days of Hollywood, the movie business was obsessed with the 48th state -- largely because it had only recently become a state. It was the last of the frontier, the final remnant of the proud plains and deserts of the New West, and while the vast majority of the western shoot-'em-ups set in Arizona were really made on a back lot five blocks from La Cienega Boulevard, there's still plenty of movies out there claiming Arizonan provenance. As the state has morphed into Southern California's bedroom annex, with all the strip malls and chain stores that implies, there's continued to be a few standout films that use the Grand Canyon State as their setting; here's five of them.

IN OLD ARIZONA (1929)

The filming of this early classic western didn't get within 300 miles of Arizona, but like a lot of early cowboy pictures, it's set there. In Old Arizona has a lot of the corny qualities that modern audiences associate with this era of filmmaking, but it's worth seeing -- and historically significant -- for a number of reasons. The first full-length talkie ever released by 20th Century Fox, it was also the first talking picture to be filmed outdoors. Director Raoul Walsh was set to play the lead himself, but a car accident robbed him of the chance, and cost him an eye, leading to the eyepatch that became his tradmark in later years; his replacement was Warner Baxter, who won only the second Best Actor Oscar in history for his performance as the Cisco Kid. Finally, the movie has a memorable twist ending that sets it apart -- courtesy of the original story, by O. Henry.

3:10 TO YUMA (1957)

We'd love to include the remake here, but it was filmed entirely in New Mexico, Arizona's glory-hogging next door neighbor. But the original is just as good in many ways; it's based on the same wildly popular pulp novella (by a young Elmore Leonard!) that spawned the reboot 50 years later, and the overall look, feel, and plot are the same. There's also a handful of swell performances, especially by leads Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, both playing against type. Often compared to its superior contemporary High Noon, 3:10 to Yuma simply isn't in that class, but it's still a tight, claustrophobic little western thriller, worth seeing until it sort of falls apart at the end. It's also about all the big-screen fame that Yuma, AZ -- a dodgy little town on the California border, best known for its ungodly temperatures in the summer -- would ever get.

PSYCHO (1960)

Very little of Alfred Hitchcock's slasher masterpiece was actually filmed in Phoenix, Arizona -- mostly just a few establishing shots and street scenes. But for some moviegoers, seeing the name of the town at the tail end of the movie's memorable opening credits would be their first recognizable experience of Arizona even existing outside of old-time westerns, and their first clue that the state capitol was actually a bustling modern city, not a frontier outpost constantly besieged by bands of Apache. (Even in the '70s, when I was growing up, people from out of state would ask me if living in Phoenix was like growing up in a Western.) The action shifts pretty early on to California, the home of the Bates Motel, but really, I just included it on this list to test my theory that no matter what 'best movie featuring _____' theme you come up with, you can fit Psycho into it.

REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks' first full-length film as a director is absolutely fantastic. It establishes his winning comedic persona as a shallow, self-centered Hollywood phony; it satirizes reality television a good twenty years before anyone else was doing it; it features one of Charles Grodin's finest big-screen performances, and a hilarious relief role for That Guy! J.A. Preston; and it's probably the funniest and most successful film that Brooks ever did. But for me, there was an extra kick: it was set, and partially filmed, in my hometown of Phoenix, and it's the very first time I can consciously remember seeing places in a movie that I'd actually been to in real life. When I first saw, at age 10, local newscaster Carlos Jurado removed from my living room TV and being featured on the silver screen, I gained an understanding of the power of movies I'd never really had before.

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Although the entirety of the Coen Brothers' first comic masterpiece was filmed in various locations around central Arizona, you wouldn't know it from the script. The place names are gibberish, the filming locations don't synch up with the places mentioned on screen, and the entire movie seems set less in any recognizable version of the Grand Canyon State than it is in some kind of rural fantasia that's half Wild West and half Appalachian hillbilly country. Roger Ebert actually got really bent out of shape about this, giving the film a disapproving review because of the ridiculous quasi-southern accents everyone sported and the nebulous redneck paradise it seemed to be set in, but Rog was really missing the point. I still lived in Arizona when this came out, and everyone I knew there loved it; it's not like we were expecting social realism out of the thing. The Coens are perfectly capable of verisimilitude when they want to be (see Fargo and The Big Lebowski for examples); here, Arizona was just a hook on which to hang the film's lunatic comedic sensibilities, with no more need for accuracy than Freedonia in Duck Soup.