Will have to wait until I see it next week.
Yes, Virginia, I have been relegated by the very confident WB to seeing their mega-smash in what will surely be an overbooked all-media next week. When I spoke to the responsible on the film, not asking for a screening time, but actually trying to confirm a negative story floating around about the film (I still haven’t mentioned a word about it… oh, that journalistic responsibility!), she told me she'd call me back... and never did.
To be clear, I have never asked anyone there to get me into any screening. My history with the studio has been that I am invited early and often. Not this time. I have never broken an embargo with Warners and feel no need to do so here. I don’t generally have to push the studio for screenings… and feel no need to do so here. It is just a frickin' movie. If they are too scared to show their film to someone who is not in the tank (and you'd be amazed to know how many "friends of the family" still haven't been shown the film), then I am just fine with waiting. (Nasty responses from some of you to follow… don’t bother… I know you aren’t all in the tank… just being smug... but you know that, don’t you?)
As I have pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they are right not to show the film to people they think will draw attention to some of the R-rated issue and get play in the Traditional Media with those observations. It has issues and the longer they can wait for those issues to become public somewhere other than on geek sites, the better the opening weekend. It's the right call. It's a bit chicken ***... especially if the film is 70% as good as Harry & Drew would have you believe - but it is the right call because they need to open the movie and critics will do nothing to help or hurt… but the big blue *** and the extreme violence and the sex scene might. Duh. Not keeping me up at night.
The only reason I am running this is that people seem to be surprisingly interested in whether or not I have actually seen the film. I am being asked multiple times every day. So now you know. I’m sure that if I don’t LOVE the film, some will use this as an excuse to claim personal bias. Those people will be wrong and a little bit pathetic. But so it goes. Frankly, a *** seat at an all-media will be more problematic to my enjoyment of the film than seeing it 3 days before opening (an event I predicted to a WB exec 6 weeks ago and was laughed at for suggesting) or weeks after 2nd and 3rd screenings for others.
I just want to be able to do my job. And when a studio goes out of their way to make it harder for me, I go out of my way to avoid responding to that paranoid tap dancing. So in the end, it usually means a kinder review… not that I am encouraging others to start acting like nervous ninnies.
I still hope the movie is great. And a hit. Because more jobs are at stake. If you want to know who is watching the Watchmen most closely, the answer is, “the accountants.”
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/02/review_watchmen.html