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If you want to know how Slumdog Millionaire is costing writers their jobs at Variety, just look on the trade's website. My first inkling came over the weekend, when ads for The Dark Knight were still running on the Variety.com site. Warner Bros, which was enthusiastically looking forward to an aggressive...
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As Sharon Waxman sets off on rough seas that would likely sink her new venture even if it was more cleverly conceived (more on this later), word that some big names are heading out the door at Variety. Maddy Hammond, one of the town's great networkers and a big part of the Bart support system, was...
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Look... I like a lot of people at Variety... but like some others, they are getting rather pathetic in pretending to have exclusivity or even having created content when they did not. Tonght, there was this Variety.com front-of-site bit... Do you get the impression from this that Darren sat down with...
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In the big cities and in the media in general, we have a hard time avoiding media myopia. I write about studios that spend scores of millions every couple of weeks to release new films, media titans like the TribCo, NYT, and USA Today, and worry about how big that big should be. A year or so ago, I vividly...
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The LA Times did a hit piece on Ben Lyons today... Saturday... two days after Christmas... pretty much a burial... But what really struck me about the mostly cut-n-paste story was that there was not a single full-time critic quoted. Stu van Arsdale came closest to making the point that is basically missed...
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Crazy-Like-A-Buzzard Nikki Finke and her “sources” are at it again . Who has a vested interest in trying to embarrass Focus, Universal, Disney, and Paramount with yesterday’s absurd attack on awards spending? Roll out the usual suspects… especially one who has changed tracks lately. It is always fascinating...
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So... a few years back, when the LA Times lost Manohla Dargis and decided that instead of hiring an experienced film critic, they would used Manohla's "slot" to hire a new editor from NY, they moved Carina Chocano from the recently hired role of television critic to be the new film critic...
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His sad true story wrings you out emotionally because it's concerned with both the deaths of young men… and what happens when the needs of those who survive clash with what society expects and politics demands. Ken Turan In his new film… Clint Eastwood says something new and urgent about... men who...
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In Variety, the top film story this morning is that Variety had a movie screening... And Nikki Finke is dancing on her chain for Brad Grey, selling the notion that Steven Spielberg is now pals with Grey and that he went out of his way to support Ben Button. As is so often the case, the truth is buried...
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What A Mess Of An Academy Story I was drawn to Michael Cieply’s story about membership in The Academy because of Patrick Goldstein’s exaltation of it. Oops. As a writer who has extrapolated millions of words of conceptual ideas from statistical info, the idea of Cieply’s piece is not unfamiliar. My problem...
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I saw, over on Defamer , this bit about what an *** Phillip Seymour Hoffman is because he... ahem... dared to suggest the truth... That it would be IDIOTIC for him to tell journalists what he thought the priest he plays in ths film Doubt did or did not do. And that it would selfish and missing the point...
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There were Gay Marriage protests all over the globe this weekend... undercovered by media… but in Los Angeles, I kind of understand, given the wall-to-wall coverage of fires all over the area. But where is the reporting from the LA Times, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter on what is undeniably a news...
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Why don't you get honest coverage of the film industry very often? Patrick Goldstein writes: "Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman graciously agreed to have lunch with me today at the Fox commissary" So... as so often is the case... a blogger attacks and attacks and attacks for no journalistic reason...
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It's always amusing watching the past rear its ugly little head again and again. This struck me when I notice Anne Thompson running a video embed from The Daily Beast that was nothing more than a direct steal by The Daily Beast of The Onion's online video content. BZZT! The Daily Beast seems...
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I found his blog entry this morning illuminating. As usual, the naked emperor-in-his-own-mind is making pronouncements from his broken down soap box, a blog, about the horrors of "bloggers." "Anyone who doesn't believe that the Oscars haven't been thoroughly hijacked by a gang...