Victory! on the beaches of Cannes

By Aaron 9/2/2007

 

The boys burst into Cannes and are immediately approached by Yahir, the shady businessman from Dubai who was in the original running to produce Medelin. As usual Yahir wants Vince badly and pushes hard to see the movie before everyone else. Rubenstein flips out when Ari is lukewarm on Yahir’s enthusiasm. E wants to sell the movie early and Billy suddenly wants big-studio distribution. In the mean time, the Chase brothers do their best to crimp Ari’s bargaining power and Rubenstein tries hard to complicate things.

The Drama storyline, while new, provided lots of laughs. Drama starts out taking a lot of abuse and even Billy knocks Drama – “if you can’t find anyone to fuck in LA how can you do it in Paris?” and emasculating him with “what is Viking Quest?” and finally conceding “even Jerry Lewis gets pussy here.” Meanwhile Drama dresses like Miami Vice but hot French female Tarvold fans swarm him anyways. Drama fails to seal then deal when his room gets bumped and his small room inferiority complex causes him to focus on the room instead of his adoring fan. Finally, a love crossed Drama takes it back to basics – and more than you can ever believe.

Other funny points include Rubenstein being unable to go to Cannes because his ankle monitor keeps him under house arrest. Rubenstein enjoys pleasant distractions though, including a pointless lesbian scene. Over in Cannes Yahir’s bumping party blares the Macarena and no one can figure out how to introduce E.

I was afraid the ending was going to leaves a little to be desired but then we were treated to some Medlin footage and it smoothed itself out. At the showing, Vince and Billy love the movie. But as usual E is right and they need a deux ex machina to save the day.

The plotline I was most interested in – Anna Farris – saw no screen time and a new Drama storyline ate up a large portion of the episode. Just as I predicted last week, the only “resolution” the finale offers is for Vince’s career – Drama’s show, E’s new client/relationship, and Lloyd’s position in the agency do not even receive a passing mention. The story’s end – for Medlin could go either way – how much will E influence the course of the movie’s success or failure?

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.