Can you make a summertime movie that gives audiences excitement, adventure and real drama -- and still have it flop? Are Hancock's reviews missing the big picture? And does the success of Sex and the City mean that the niches of movie marketing are going to get even more narrow? Joining us this week to talk about all these topics and more is David Poland, editor-in-chief of Movie City News and author of The Hot Blog. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

A number of people who've seen There Will Be Blood have commented on the fact that women don't seem to figure into lead character Daniel Plainview's life at all. As one commenter on David Poland's blog recently put it, "There's never a single woman in sight of him. Not when he becomes successful. Not even when he's older. Not even whores. There's no explicit point of this made, so much as it's just de facto." This is part of the commenter's argument that Plainview is a repressed homosexual. Another commenter pegs Plainview as simply a-sexual, noting that "his only love and appetite was for more money as a means to an end." But is that really what's going on? I recently sat down and read the script for There Will Be Blood and noticed something that I don't remember being included at all in the film. Since it's only one line I could have just missed it, but I don't think I did, and if I'm right it might go a long way towards explaining things.

On page 80 of the script, Daniel and Henry (a drifter who may be his brother) are sitting in a mess hall drinking and talking and Daniel tells Henry that H.W., who he's been passing off as his son, is "not even my son." "What do you mean?" Henry asks. At this point, the script says that 'Daniel begins to break down, holds his crotch' and then says to Henry "He's not my son. My c**k doesn't even work. How am I gonna make a kid? Does yours work Henry?" So that kind of sheds a new light on things, doesn't it? His half-hearted attempts at finding male companions -- his adopted son and Henry, in addition to his manservant -- are his only option, really.

It's been awhile since we've had a little film blog group hugging action around here. Today it's cold and snowing here, so what better way to put off cleaning house and baking lasagna for our Boxing Day party than to cozy up under a quilt with a cup of hot tea and some of my favorite film bloggers? As 2007 wanes away and Sundance looms near, I thought I'd pop by some of my favorite film blogs to see who's doing any writing this holiday weekend.

Before taking a well-deserved break for the holidays, hard-working film blogger Karina Longworth at Spout Blog put up this thought-provoking piece on whether Disney wants to turn your daughter into a whore. As Karina points out, Barbara Ehrenreich's recycled rant on the evils of all things Disney is well past-due. I was getting into arguments about Disney back when I was doing time in mom's clubs when I did the stay-at-home-mom gig for a few years; the "We're raising our kids gender-neutral," granola-crunching, feminist hippy mamas in Seattle and parts elsewhere have had Disney in their crosshairs for years.

My favorite line from Ehrenreich's piece: "One's sexual inclinations--straightforward or kinky, active or passive, heterosexual or homosexual--should be free to develop without adult intervention or manipulation. " Riiiiiiiiight. If you raise your kids in a bubble unexposed to any society whatsover, perhaps. Kids are products of their social communities whether they grow up in the favelas of Brazil or in a high-rise overlooking Central Park, and trying to mold their little minds with the androgyny of gender-neutrality is no less manipulative than allowing your daughter to dress up like a pretty princess. Bratz, though, is another story. I hate those damn dolls with a passion previously reserved for Barney. If anyone's trying to shallow-fy and whore out our daughters, it's the evil geniuses behind those Bratz dolls. At least the Disney Princesses don't have lips that look like they had an unfortunate experience with a silicone injection. Anyhow.

More group hugs after the jump ...

I haven't been following the strike issue nearly as close as I'd like, but I'm starting to get increasingly interested as it looks like there's less and less chance of a deal being cut to spare the Golden Globes and Academy Awards from the wrath of the writers. David Poland's blog is the place for some entertaining commentary on this issue. Like everyone else, he doesn't care about whether or not the Globes goes on, but he's absolutely enraged at the thought of Oscar being put in the crosshairs next. "There is a world of difference between f*cking with 100 'foreigners' with the collective journalistic weight of a sitcom sidekick's blog and taking on 6,000 of the town's most powerful people," he writes. He goes on to explain how the Oscar ceremony is a critical income generator for the AMPAS and attempting to derail it is tantamount to a declaration of war. "If the union tries to shut down Oscar, they will be messing with something more than money. WGA would really be tapping into the mass ego of the industry," he writes, before blasting off into an extended hyperbole that ends with -- I'm not kidding -- a picture of Moe Green about to get shot in the eye.

And what does Nikki Finke think about this line of argument? Not much. Her position is that the WGA simply has them over a barrel, and it's their own fault, although she does confine most of her argument to the Globes issue -- she hasn't said very much about Oscar specifically yet, but you can see where she's headed. "For the AMPTP to expect a groundswell of Internet anger aimed at the WGA for threatening the Golden Globes or the Academy Awards is naive not to mention downright laughable. The ratings for these shows keep going down almost every year so the public doesn't much care."

Just how strange are the Golden Globes? Is Atonement a sure-fire, dead-lock Best Picture winner, or has it stumbled with the Academy before the race was even begun? Did Francis Ford Coppola "cut his own throat" with the release strategy for Youth Without Youth? And, speaking of cutting throats, will Sweeney Todd seduce the Academy, or have its hopes been washed away with the arterial spray? Joining James this week is David Poland, the critic, blogger and raconteur behind Movie City News as well as the wildly contentious, always insightful The Hot Blog. Listen in this week as James and David talk about the BFCA nominations from the inside, discuss the tarnished-yet-telegenic schizophrenia of the Golden Globes, and much more! And finally -- new this week on for The Rocchi Review -- you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Several people who have attended the first critic's screenings of Sweeney Todd -- a.k.a., not me -- are declaring themselves totally wowed, although they're all bending over backwards to respect an embargo. Jeff Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere was so impressed by the film that he declared Tim Burton's decade-long decline to be now officially reversed. He also speculated that Sweeney Todd may be Burton's best film since 1988's Beetlejuice -- high praise, indeed. Wells even goes a little overboard, stating that "at times it melted me like a candle. I was lifted, moved. I was never not aroused." Okay, we get it Jeff -- the movie better live up to that embarrassing hyperbole.

Tom O'Neil at The Envelope starts his review thusly -- "'Sweeney Todd' is the best pic of 2007" -- pretty straightforward, no? "Everybody whose opinion I pooled after the screening tonight said they thought the movie and Johnny Depp were brilliant," he goes on to say. But like Wells, he thinks the film may see its Best Picture hopes held up by a childishly heavy focus on gore. There are apparently rivers of blood in this film, to the point that even some who enjoyed the film tremendously claimed to be turned off by that aspect.

David Poland joins the chorus of cheers, predicting that Depp will win the Best Actor award for his performance as the demon barber and saying that the film demands multiple viewings just to take it all in. Okay, you've twisted my arm -- I'll go see it.

It's a hot and steamy weekend here, and I'm feeling way to lazy to go outside for a power walk, so instead I thought I'd do a weekend check-in on some of my fave film sites around the web. As always, if you have a film blog (or even a film blog that you read and like, that you haven't seen me point to in a Group Hug), send me a link at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com. I'm always on the lookout for film sites to add to my already-lengthy list of daily reads ... hey, a girl just can't get too much film talk, right? Besides, the more film sites I'm forced to read, the longer I can put off that power walk ...

This one isn't particularly "indie," but it's one of the most fascinating pieces I've read all week, so I just had to include it. Over at the LA Weekly, Scott Foundas has a really interesting (and LONG -- seven pages, so read it with a fresh cup of coffee) feature piece up on Brett Ratner. What makes it such a fun read is that Foundas, whose writing I like and respect, goes way against the expected grain here, asserting of Popcorn King Ratner: "Which brings me to the other reason I've wanted to write about Ratner. It is an idea that may initially strike you as radical or preposterous, and which could jeopardize my standing in the film-criticism community. And yet, here goes: Brett Ratner is a talented filmmaker who deserves to be taken seriously."

Wow. No doubt Foundas has taken a lot of ribbing for this piece, but it's very well-written -- I can think of a few folks who write up set visits who could take a lesson from how Foundas puts you inside Ratner's set with his writing here -- and, moreover, by the end of it, I actually had kind of a newfound respect for Ratner -- at least for the work he puts into his films, if not the films themselves.

Just over a year ago, Jim Emerson started this very cool Opening Shots Project, wherein he kicked things off by writing about some of his favorite opening shots in a film, and then invited others to write about theirs. Emerson asserts that the opening shot is the most important moment in a film, that it sets the tone of the film and tells you what it's going to be about; after I started reading the Opening Shots pieces, I became even more aware of the importance of opening shots and started paying closer attention to them with every film I watch. So I was pleased to see [via a link on Daily Green Cine, who always have lots of good stuff] that there's a new Opening Shots entry up: Andy Horbal analyzes the opening shot of Army of Shadows. Check it out.

In the aftermath of the same-day deaths of directing greats Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, Movie City Indie's Ray Pride ponders, "Who are the oldest living film directors?" with a comprehensive listing of directors that starts with the current oldest, Manoel de Oliveira (born in 1908), and works its way down to Stuart Gordon (born in 1947). Great minds thinking alike, David Poland, on The Hot Blog, points over to a post on Joe Leydon's MovingPictureBlog that asks: Who are the heirs to Bergman and Antonioni? Pop on over to both sites, read what they have to say, and chime in with your own thoughts.

If you're a geek for technical details, you'll dig this post Josh Oakhurst has up answering questions from readers about just how he shot a couple of stop-mo spots, in which he explains in detail, among other things, why he didn't shoot in RAW. If you're interested in shooting stop-mo yourself -- or even if, like me, your just a sucker for all things film-geeky, you'll want to delve into this post.

Remember that game "telephone" we used to play at Girl Scouts (yeah, I was a Girl Scout -- hah!) and summer camp? You'd sit in a big circle, the first person would whisper a message to the second person, and they would pass it on, and so on, and at the end everyone would get a big laugh over how the message had changed, and you were supposed to learn an Important Lesson about the power of communication or world peace or something. Whatever. Over at Burbanked, Alan has a much more fun idea: Blogophone! It's pretty simple: he starts with a movie-related post, then tosses it to the next person in the game, who creatively changes it and tosses it to the next person, etc. The first one got pretty amusing, so he's started a second round. He tossed it to Ray over at The Rec Show, but don't let that stop you from nosing in on the fun ...

If you read online film writing regularly, you've probably heard about (if not bookmarked) the sites of David Poland and Jeffrey Wells. Poland runs Movie City News, but shares his personal views on film-related happenings over at The Hot Blog. Wells's one-man site Hollywood Elsewhere includes a range of movie topics, from reviews to thoughts about Nikki Finke to discussions of studio politics.

The two writers are notorious for feuding with one another on anything and everything, which helps boost interest in their sites (and likewise, traffic). It's always a bit of a shock when they actually agree on something, and when one goes so far as to promote the other's writing, it certainly draws your attention to the issue under scrutiny.

The issue in question concerns press/preview screenings, embargoes on film reviews and, specifically, problems in these areas that Chicago critics encountered with Twentieth Century Fox movies. If you're not a film critic, you might wonder why this matters, but it does affect the timeliness of movie reviews. If I don't see a movie until the night before it is released, either my review will appear late or it will be hastily written, and that's not helpful if you like to read reviews before deciding whether you want to see a film. On the other hand, studios are worried that if I review the movie too early, any negativity could impact box-office, and it might spoil some of their marketing strategies.

Time once again for our weekly Indie Film Blog Group Hug, wherein we check in with other film blogs around the internet to see what other folks are writing about. One of these days, I want to throw a big party at my house and have all the other film bloggers from around the world converge in my living room to wax eloquent about all things film-related over chips and salsa, taquitos and icy-cold margaritas. Wouldn't that be a blast? In the meantime, the Group Hug will have to suffice ...

Oh, and by the way, fellow cinephiles, if you have a film blog I don't know about (or even if you've previously submitted your blog and I haven't covered it in a while), drop me a line at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com to point me your way.

• Over on The Hot Blog, David Poland writes about whether it means anything that Fox pulled out of Comic-Con, and ponders the whole sticky-wicket issues of which critics get into sceenings when, which leads to a discussion of embargoes, which then gets into the whole kerfuffle surrounding the Baltimore Sun and NYT breaking embargo on the lastest (and last) Harry Potter tome. And somehow, he manages to tie it all together in a way that actually makes sense ...
• ... Meanwhile over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Poland's sometime-rival Jeff Wells commentates nicely (I think) on Poland's piece and offers up his own take on the whole Fox-pulls-out-of-Comic-Con-Does-That-Mean-The-Simpsons-Movie-sucks thing.
• Apparently everyone the Baltimore Sun and NYT have everyone thinking about all things Potter this week, as both Anne Thompson, Matt Dentler, and Karina Longworth ** (great minds thinking alike) have posts up about the Harry Potter embargo-breaking, too.
• Strange Culture is already thinking Oscars ... in July! That's right, RC is already positing that Roger Deakins will be nominated for an Oscar for cinematography -- and that's probably a pretty good guess. Any early bets on other Oscar noms?
• Indie Film Nation, which runs some nifty podcasts about all things indie, has a fascinating interview up with Richard Moore, the director of the Melbourne International Film Festival. Good stuff. While you're already over there, check out last week's interview with Goetz Weber, CEO and co-founder of inDPlay.
• Checking out what's going down over at Twitch, Kurt has a little post up {via just about everyone on the planet, so this is obviously old news to everyone but me -- figures) about the possibility that one of my favorite films ever, John Carpenter's They Live, might -- that's might -- be made into a series for the Sci-Fi channel. They live is great political satire wrapped up as a fun horror flick, and I agree with Kurt -- it's never been more relevant than it is now. Keep your fingers crossed -- if it does ever get made, that's one series that's getting set to record on my DVR, baby. Don't forget your special sunglasses ...

**Karina does indeed have a great mind, but that particular post was about Fox and Comic-Con, not Harry Potter. It's still a good post and worth reading, though. The moral of this story? Don't read 40 different film blogs while simultaneously writing a post and getting four kids ready to get out the door for swim lessons without double-checking that you've got it all right. Thanks for setting it straight, Karina. It's good to still have you around to keep us on our toes.

Who's a critic? Who's a journalist? Do people really use multimedia content? How much does gossip matter? In this second edition of Cinematical's new podcast, The Rocchi Review, our bi-weekly look at the online film community, our guest is Movie City News editor and columnist David Poland. Poland's a veteran of online film journalism -- and the driving force being a terrific News site, a column and his own off-the cuff blog. David and I talk about all the topics above -- and much more. You can download the entire podcast right here -- and we hope you enjoy.