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...
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...
Sex sells movies. Well, sometimes. Actually, it's more like a balancing act, since the right amount can work but other times...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
F. Scott Fitzgerald said there was no second act in American life. He was wrong (just look at the political career of Richard Nixon). Likewise, Thomas Wolfe poetically warned us that we can't go home again. He was half right, but he never imagined the...