Author Archives: Dennis Toth

There are various ways of guessing the future. In ancient Greece, the Oracle of Delphi is believed to have sniffed fumes from a crack in the earth. In other practices, people “read” the entrails of a goat or chicken. The prophecies could be pretty thin, but dinner was a sure thing. The legendary Nostradamus used ... Read more

OK, maybe the studio master plan isn’t exactly playing out as they had hoped. According to an e-mail report from Boxoffice.com, movie ticket sales for 2010 are running 5.3 percent behind those of 2009. Since this 5.3 percent basically represents total cash (rather than actual ticket sells) and is undoubtedly not adjusted for the various ... Read more

In Hamlet, the moody Dane with an attitude problem observes, “O, woe is me, To have seen what I what I have seen, see what I see!” Obviously the poor chap had just been to the movies. Or maybe he had attended the recent Produced by Conference held by the Producers Guild of America. By ... Read more

Sex sells movies. Well, sometimes. Actually, it’s more like a balancing act, since the right amount can work but other times… oh crap, it use to be a lot simpler figuring out how to tease the audience. If you don’t believe me, just ask the folks who made the movie I Love You Phillip Morris. ... Read more

Writing a screenplay is a lonely pursuit. Just the writer and a blank screen trying to conjure something magical from various loose strings of words and ideas. But the first-time screenwriter no longer needs to be alone. A vast army of people are just waiting to be your friends, for the right price. That’s the ... Read more

Nobody can pick a winner. That is the age-old wisdom of Hollywood, which is odd coming from a bunch of folks who also insist that they are the only people who can successfully do the one thing they claim can’t be done. The sheer absurdity of this point may help to explain the current dismal ... Read more

You can’t spend more than two weeks dealing with movies without hearing numerous references to the infamous William Goldman quote concerning Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.” Goldman was referring to the level of ignorance that he found in the Hollywood system. Or at least that’s what I always thought. It now seems that Goldman was merely ... Read more

Roger Ebert says we should hate 3-D. He says so in a subtle essay slyly entitled Why I Hate 3-D. Ebert blames the process for everything from medical aliments to a disruption in the spatial/dimensional field of the universe (or was that in an episode of Dr. Who?). But mostly, we all hate 3-D for ... Read more

You are a young, first-time filmmaker. By hook or by crook, you actually managed to finish your movie. It’s in the can and ready to roll. And suddenly, you sound like Robert Redford at the end of The Candidate as you enter your very own “What do we do now?” moment. Good question. In a ... Read more

Summer movies don’t really exist any more. After all, the summer schedule actually started last November with the release of Avatar. So it’s really summer all year round, with enough tent pole movies to supply the world’s largest circus. Unfortunately, there are no tents, just tent poles. Which may be the visual symbol for this ... Read more