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The Film Habit #25 - October 22, 2004 I’m feeling lethargic about this thing. Does anyone read it? Does anyone care? Usually I get a little feedback via email. The past couple weeks have been pretty bare. Send me your emails to tell me what you think of The Film Habit and I’ll run them next week. Love it or hate it, I won’t hold anyone back.
Use this to respond to my obvious play for attention. We Don’t Need No Education One of the most difficult things in running a not very profitable film site is finding great people to work with you. Let’s face it, even if I worked every second of every day, there’s no way in hell I could do everything myself. There’s just too many movies to see, too many news stories to report. The problem is, since our dental plan is total garbage, it’s hard to keep good people once you find them. This week we say adios to long time contributor and extreme Western lover Bryce Wilson who you might remember for his unnatural love of the Evil Dead movies. Bryce moves on because he needs to do this crazy thing called “school” which personally I don’t put much stock in, but I hear going to college is a great way to get out of the draft… if they ever have one. So maybe it’s just a pre-emptive move on his part, in case whoever gets elected decides to finally get off their ass and invade Greenland. I’m sick of those smart ass penguins! Always stealing our women. Wilson will still be around on the boards from time to time (he’s every bit addicted as the rest of us), so drop around there and wish him well. He filed 42 reviews with CB, in his own angry, ranting, passionate reviewing style, the last of which was The Machinist. Those of you with a fear of profanity will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief! Click here for a little Bryce Wilson nostalgia. Drop in and talk to Wilson in The CB Forum. Nitpicking the Mexicans  A lot of the time entertainment journalism is nothing more than a pissing match. Who scooped who, which large red-headed guy gets credit for stealing something, which one doesn’t. Our site has more anonymous scoopers than yours, that sort of thing. It’s a pretty sad and tired game, one that more often that not wears me the heck out. But maybe that’s because I don’t have a stable of anonymous scoopers to call my own.
This week saw some of the worst examples of movie news bitch fighting in a wave of big Superman movie stories that sort of washed across the internet and made it into the main stream media. It started with the great guys a Latino Review, who though I often refer to them as “the Mexicans” do a damn good job. I say that even though I still don’t understand why Latino’s specifically need a generic movie news site all their own. It’s not like the entertainment news gets more Latin just because you slap that name on your site. I don’t see them covering Cuban cinema over there. But I digress. The Latino Review is actually pretty great, and it just so happens that they were the FIRST to break the story that Superman will be played by Brandon Routh… Ruth, Roth? One of those. Great! Good for them. We ran the story here at CinemaBlend.com and gave them credit. They deserved it.  Apparently not everyone thinks so. Unhappy with not being the first to break a Superman story for once, Harry Knowles over at AICN did his damndest to find a way to steal all their credit. He hinted around that perhaps he knew this all along, and then proceeded to nitpick the Latino Review’s great article, by pointing out problems and inaccuracies with it that frankly… just weren’t there.
Generally, I really respect AICN, despite the arrows everyone else throws at them. Face it, they’re the big kids on the movie news block, and they’ve gotten there by doing great work. They aren’t always right but then they don’t promise to be. They simply report everything that comes across their desk, rumor or fact. But in this case… frankly it makes me sick. They’re the big power house when it comes to internet movie news. Those sorts of cheap glory hogging tricks should be beneath them. The Latino Review is a significantly smaller, and hard ass working site. Why can’t we all just give each other credit? We’re all in competition, but that doesn’t mean that the big guys have to play dirty.  But it isn’t just the internet that lacks integrity. Major news outlets all over the country have been reporting for months now that Jim Caviezel is absolutely playing Superman. I heard it jus the other day… on the very same day we all found out it was Brandon Routh. They don’t bother to research, they take a bunch of things reported as rumor and spit them back out as fact.
Heck, if you want an example of bad reporting in mainstream media, look no further than Entertainment Tonight. Check out the Fantastic Four footage we’ve posted from them in BNN. They did a story on FF because their lead reporter is in the movie! They got special access because the big boobed ditz they have on staff got a role as a lame ass girlfriend. Anyone else think that’s the only reason the movie’s producers hired her? I do.  Then again, we’re reporting on MOVIES here. How important is it really that we’re all honest, accurate, and unbiased? Most of us are just the internet equivalent of “The Daily Show”, minus a tendency to have on boring political authors as guests. Smart reporting, that’s not what we do. Cinema Blend is all about opinions, crazy, stupid, or flat out wrong though those may sometimes be. I can live with not being a beacon of credibility. Then again, we’re not “Entertainment Tonight”. Perhaps they should have higher standards. Either way, it might not hurt if all of us doing the “reporting” took a step back and gave each other a pat on the back, instead of playing let’s see who can get the most credit or pissing on the little guy for forgetting to use spell check. Being competitors doesn’t mean we have to be assholes. Yes, I'm aware that by writing this I"m doing exactly what I am complaining about others doing. Ironic isn't it?
me to tell us how much you like Harry Knowles on that show “Lost”. What to Watch New movies come out each week. I don’t see all of them, but still feel qualified to tell you which movie you should watch. Feed your film habit from my picks. I can’t wait for October to be over. Dear god please end it soon. Bring me The Incredibles, bring me Alfie! This weekend, we have none of that. The Grudge Instead, we have a remake of another crappy Japanese horror movie, this time The Grudge starring Sara Michelle Gellar. Honestly, horror isn’t my thing. But GREAT horror can easily win me over. Next week for instance, Saw premieres. It looks flat out jaw dropping. The Grudge on the other hand is just old horror garbage that someone finally remembered to take out. I’ll pass. Surviving Christmas  The real travesty this week is that the only new movies really worth seeing are only opening in extremely limited, LA/NY release. If you’re in one of those cities, you can run out and see Christian Bale not eat in The Machinist or watch Paul Giamattie bitch about wine in Sideways. If like most of the world you’re not, you’re stuck with Surviving Christmas… and that’s just not fair. What have we all done to be forced to watch Ben Affleck? Scratch that, Affleck isn’t so bad, it’s James Gandolfini that really stinks. I know the guy is supposed to be so great on “The Sopranos”, but his movie career is little better than the comedy act of Carrot Top. As a theatrical figure, the guy is crap. I don’t care what movie he’s in or what kind of character he’s playing. Being forced to watch Surviving Christmas is bad enough, but do we have to watch it in October??? Were it actually Christmas, even a bad Christmas movie can be kind of fun. Tis the season to be forgiving and all that. Well right now tis the season to egg people’s houses. If you can find the home of Surviving Christmas director Mike Mitchell have at it, because this week I’m stuck recommending his flick. The wise among you will absolutely ignore me and do some repeat viewing on the unjustly overshadowed by badshark movies Team America. Those puppets deserve it.
Hey! Do you like working for free? Are you over 18? Do you secretly wish you could live the wild and exciting life of Michael Brody? You’re in luck. CinemaBlend.com is looking for writers, specifically the type interested in slogging it out on DVD’s or those with a flair for internet news stories. If you think you can capture the signature Cinema Blend style as a DVD critic and/or BNN reporter send me an with a few samples and we’ll talk. |
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