harvey weinstein Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Here's a curious story we missed when it was first posted by the New York Times last week. So thanks to Simon Dang at The Playlist, who likely himself caught the article late via yesterday's correction. Apparently there are two competing documentaries in the works about the independent film king Harvey Weinstein. And one of them is to be made by Quentin Tarantino.

The main focus of the Times piece is on the other film, which is being developed by Barry Avrich. He's the director of the 2005 doc The Last Mogul, about agent-turned-studio head Lew Wasserman, and he's reportedly just received funding for his $1 million-budgeted expose, currently titled Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project.

And sure, that project sounds plenty interesting, particularly as it's being planned as an uncensored look at a "a brilliant, feared, charming and yet loathsome character," who is completely unsupportive of Avrich's topic of choice, regardless of how the former Miramax and present Weinstein Company head will be portrayed. But the Tarantino business is what we're all really intrigued about, right?

On the drive home from my Oscar party this evening I was reminded on the radio of a red carpet interview that Meg Tilly gave back in 1985. She had been nominated for Agnes of God and when asked what the nomination and/or win would do for her career, she said bluntly that she was more likely to be an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. That is very much how the 82nd Academy Awards probably felt to a lot of viewers. While we can all rejoice in a new movie-themed edition of the board game that will ask "who was the first female to win a Best Director Oscar?", what else will we really remember? Will anyone beyond the Oscar reporters and prognosticators remember who won all the acting awards, who was snubbed and why we were all so angry during award season 2010? Maybe not, but in the moment we can take heart in David beating Goliath and vent some frustration away until we start this all over again.

In a glorious turn of events, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker exceeded even my expectations by winning six Oscars (over my predicted four). Mark Boal grabbing Original Screenplay early in the evening was a siren that Avatar might be in some trouble. But it was the sweep of the two "sound" Oscars away from Dances With Smurfs that signaled it was going to be a good night. Just not for James Cameron or Harvey Weinstein.

The case of The Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier's leaked email asking people to vote for Locker is another great reminder that nothing is private in the digital age. It's not only a faux pas, it's against the rules of the Academy. What will the repercussions be for The Hurt Locker, the excellent and edgy indie underdog underdog so many are rooting for? (Well, edgy and indie when it comes to Oscar, I guess.) I'm not a professional Oscar-watcher, so I can't pretend to know what this will mean in the long run for the movie - perhaps only Chartier will be slapped on the wrist by the Academy. I can't imagine that a ton of Oscar nominees don't do the same thing on the downlow, despite it being a clear breach of the rules; perhaps it just so happened that Chartier got caught. (Have you ever accidentally CC'd people instead of BCC'd? So embarrassing!)

It would be very disappointing if this affected The Hurt Locker's chances in the Oscar race in any form, but wouldn't we be irate if, say, James Cameron was caught doing the same thing for Avatar? We'd be storming the castle with pitchforks and torches, right?

This also comes at the same time as a flurry of articles about how "a number of military veterans and bomb-defusing specialists alleged that Locker's treatment of life in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit was not only inaccurate but disrespectful" were published, according to Movieline.

Hmmm... Coincidence? Shenanigans? Harvey Weinstein hacking Chartier's email and leaking it to the media? Or is that just my cold medicine talking? Do you think Chartier was merely out of line and kind of tacky or should he be kicked out of the Academy, spanked soundly, and run out of Los Angeles? Do you think this will hurt Locker's chances on the big night, or or are all the Oscars going to The Blind Side anyway?

Check out last night's 60 Minutes profile of Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker after the jump

Well, so much for that. Right on the heels of the Deadline news that the Weinsteins wanted their Miramax back, The Wrap reports that the studio is closing. The New York and Los Angeles offices are being shut down, eighty people are losing their jobs, and there's no buyout in sight. It seems Disney didn't respond to buyout options, although Bob Iger said he would sell the studio outright for the oh-so-reasonable price of $1.5 billion.

Harvey said of the news: "I'm feeling very nostalgic right now. I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."

More than a name is dead. There are six movies waiting for distribution, three of which we've noted before.

Miramax Films was born in the late '70s, the child of Harvey and Bob Weinstein. The brothers, chilling in Buffalo, had produced a number of rock concerts over the years, and in 1979 (using their parents' names Miriam and Max) they used their cash to create Miramax Films and feed their love of cinema. The projects that would follow included The Thin Blue Line, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Pulp Fiction, and Clerks. In 1993, they sold the company to Disney, and in 2005, they left their fully grown company to create a new shingle -- The Weinstein Company. Now they want their baby back?

According to Deadline Hollywood, London sources have told the site that Harvey wants to buy Miramax back from Disney, and is already working towards that goal. Since Disney isn't doing anything with it, assumption suggests that this should be able to move forward. Harvey has already grabbed Miramax executives Peter Lawson and Lucas Webb, which is certainly a step towards the goal.

The original break from Disney was due to feuds with Michael Eisner, who left the company himself in 2005. No Eisner, no fued ... Will the Weinsteins be successful? And if they do, would moving back to the world of Miramax renew their fame and success like The Weinstein Company failed to do? Is there that much in a name, even if it's named after one's parents?

Letters come in so many shapes and forms... When Peter Hall first alerted you to the website Letters of Note at the end of last year, he talked about The Birth of North by Northwest. The letter was an interesting and revealing communique -- and so is this latest installment ... for vastly different reasons.

The latest Letter of Note was sent to filmmaker Errol Morris by Harvey Weinstein back in the Miramax days of 1988. Morris went on NPR to promote his film The Thin Blue Line, and Harvey wasn't quite satisfied with his, erm, performance. Refusing to sugar-coat, the Miramax head started his complaint in the very first sentence: "Heard your NPR interview and you were boring." Weinstein continued: "You couldn't have dragged me to see The Thin Blue Line if my life depended on it."

Harvey wasn't complaining for the film -- which went on to win some pretty solid acclaim -- but rather the way Morris talked about it, "in short one sentence answers." Weinstein argued, pretty rightly so, that it should be discussed "from an emotional point of view." If Morris couldn't do as Harvey asked, he would "hire an actor in New York to pretend." (Can you imagine?!)

I'm including the transcript after the jump, but you can check out the scan on Miramax letterhead over at Letters of Note.

Last night at an all-media screening for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, audience members – both fans who had lined up for blocks to get in to see the stars and director of this long-awaited sequel and journalists – were treated to a colorful Q&A session with the director of Boondock, Troy Duffy, and its stars Billy Connolly, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Norman Reedus.

After Duffy told the audience where the afterparty would be held, a journalist asked why there was so much time between movies. Duffy was somewhat discreet, replying, "There was a rather serious bit of litigation. We sued the people who financed Boondock I and a bunch of people that distributed it, as the movie was extremely financially successful and myself, the producers, and none of the actors saw a cent of that so me and CB [producer Chris Brinker] went after them."

He went on to add, "When you're writing for a sequel and there's a movie that's been deemed sacred ground by the fanbase that's the predecessor, you cannot do anything to tread on that, so it's a bit trickier than just being able to sit down and write something."

If you've been arguing with your friends and family about the arrest and detainment of Roman Polanski in Switzerland last week, don't feel bad -- you're not the only one with an opinion. There's a debate brewing in Hollywood over the acclaimed director and his current legal predicament, and everyone has jumped into the fray. Polanski fled from the US after a conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor back in 1978, and with his recent arrest some of the biggest names in Hollywood have been publicly showing support. Recently, filmmakers like Michael Mann, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, and Woody Allen (ahem, yes, even Woody Allen) signed a petition demanding the filmmaker's release from a Zurich jail. On the other hand, there is a very real possibility that not everybody is on board the love train, and the problem is that those people aren't talking.

Hollywood is a business, and just like in any other business, reputation can be everything. If you think of Hollywood as the world's biggest high school, then you can see how nobody wants to be excluded from the 'cool table' -- and it doesn't help that the pro-Polanski faction has Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, and the opposition has Sherri Shepherd and 'Nellie Olsen'. In a piece for the LA Times, writer/blogger Melissa Silverstein said, "I think people are afraid to talk in Hollywood. They are afraid about their next job." Sure, that might sound slightly paranoid, but power players like Harvey Weinstein are writing op-eds in support of the director, so maybe she's not completely off the mark.

After the jump: making excuses and Hollywood vs. Middle America...

I've been keeping my eye on this whole Inglourious Basterds mishegoss, because I'm a fan of Tarantino's, and of Nazi movies, and of movies where Nazis are killed in spectacularly violent ways, even though the atrociously spelled title is enough to give a copy editor or any responsible writer an aneurysm.

When I read that Harvey Weinstein spectacularly dissed the movie in an interview with GQ, I was a little confused. According to WENN, Weinstein told GQ, "It isn't funny; it isn't exciting; it isn't a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn't emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that. Brad Pitt gives the worst performance of his life, with a permanent smirk as if he's had the left side of his jaw injected with cement, and which he must uncomfortably maintain for long scenes on camera without dialogue."