Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Ray Pride
Patricia Vidal

Recent Writings

Trying to Bring Big-Media Ideas Into the World of Art Theaters
July 19, 2004. Mr. Wagner and Mr. Cuban plan to bring big-media ideas of vertical integration to the art house world. The new owners are importing digital technology to Landmark's 204 screens by equipping each of the 57 theaters in 21 markets with high-definition digital projection by year's end, Mr. Wagner said in a later telephone interview from his office in Dallas. He envisions producing low-budget digital movies through his HDNet Films, releasing them through his specialty-film distributor, Magnolia Pictures, projecting them on Landmark screens, selling them on DVD in Landmark theaters and broadcasting them on HDNet Movies, one of two high-definition television networks run by Mr. Cuban.

Hollywood Flashes Its Literary License
July 4, 2004. This year, you don't have to wait for the fall -- or go to the beach -- to Get Lit. The 2004 summer movie lineup is packed with book titles. That's because studios believe they can grab moviegoers' scattered attention with the film version of an established hardbound hit, be it Homer's classic "The Iliad" (with "Troy") or Nicholas Sparks's weepie "The Notebook."

In the World of 'Tomorrow,' Creating New Recipes for Disaster
May 30, 2004. Emmerich wanted something more than computer graphics: He wanted photo realism. Buildings, water, fur and human skin are the toughest things to replicate in the computer. This movie had all of them, in spades, 416 effects shots in total. " 'Spider-Man' has buildings," Goulekas says. "But it's a comic book. The moviegoer sees a red and blue man flying around on a web. It's not going to matter if it doesn't look real."

L.A. Diaries: Ogres, Docs & The 3-D King Of The World
May 30, 2004. Shrek 2 's success gives DreamWorks crucial ammunition for going forward with another launch: a public stock offering of its animation division, just as 3-D animation is hot. The new trend in the super-heated feature documentary market is Xtreme docs. And the favourite guessing game in Hollywood these days is: just how is James Cameron going to spend his next $200 million?

L.A. Diaries: Summer 2004 - Who Will Get Burnt?
May 9, 2004. Somehow, over the past decade or so, the studios have managed to get away without taking a serious financial beating on flops. Either they shared the risk with financial partners, or the companies were sold and the losses buried, or some ancillary market such as Japan or home video bailed them out. This summer, everything could change. With DVDs and the global movie market booming, studios have been ratcheting up the budgets on their summer event movies. Disappointments like 1998's Godzilla and last summer's The Hulk managed to scrape by without terrible losses, but this summer a dozen movies carry $100m-plus price-tags. Some studio is going to lose big in this Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Risky Business: Playing Rough
Spring, 2004. There was shoving and name-calling in the hallways in Park City, Utah, this year, but this time Harvey Weinstein wasn’t in town. A new generation of buyers lined up before each new premiere screening like vultures hovering over their quarry. Call them Harvey’s children. They chased down filmmakers, ready to land deals at any cost. Harvey would have been proud

'Alamo' Is Latest Casualty In Disney's Losing Battle
April 19, 2004. Eisner probably wishes he had never heard the word "western." "The Alamo" may be yet another indication of a dying Hollywood genre. Clearly, the western has done well on television, from "Lonesome Dove" more than a decade ago to more recent TNT original movies that have starred Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott to HBO's current hard-boiled hit "Deadwood."

James Cameron, in Mysterious Waters
March 28, 2004. Six years after "Titanic" took the all-time global box office crown ($1.8 billion), the 49-year-old self-proclaimed "king of the world" is taking a break from TV and movie producing ("Dark Angel," "Solaris") and deep-sea documentaries (his second 3-D underwater IMAX film, "Extreme Life," is due later this year) to return to the helm of a big-budget studio picture.

Mel's New Testament Profits
March 18, 2004. "The Passion" is unusual because a movie star paid for it with his own money. Gibson earns in the neighborhood of $25 million a picture, against a share of the proceeds, as an actor. Coming off two enormous hits, "What Women Want" and "Signs," he had the ability to bankroll and direct his unflinching vision of Jesus's crucifixion, and to pay for the movie's distribution. In bypassing the studio system, and orchestrating an unorthodox release plan, Gibson took all the considerable media heat squarely in the face. While he insists he did not seek the intense level of controversy, it did generate a huge want-to-see fervor for the movie.

His Week: "Passion" And The Oscar Hopefuls
February 24, 2004. Mr. Berney is in the throes of releasing Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" on 4,000 screens on Wednesday ‹ Ash Wednesday. He is also in the final stretch of managing two rival best actress Oscar campaigns, for Charlize Theron ("Monster") and Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider"). His two actresses and their entourages are now back here for the final week before the Oscars, which just happens to be the same week that "The Passion" opens.

Sundance By The Dozen
January 25, 2004. There's no question, though, that despite false starts and hesitations, the Sundance Institute and Film Festival have changed the movie business for the better. The talent that has moved through the Sundance system - Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers - is undeniable. This year, I predict a dozen breakthrough successes.

Anything Goes At The Oscars
January 25, 2004. Heaven help us Oscar prognosticators this year. Too many weird forces are at play. Is this Oscar race going to be about merit or popularity? Seeing movies on film or videotape? Or is it about revenge against the studios' anti-piracy crusade? On Tuesday, three weeks earlier than usual, the Oscar nominations will provide an answer in one of the most unpredictable seasons ever.

Two Men, a Mountain and an Unfillable 'Void'
January 19, 2004. "The emotion you see me expressing is when I think about how lonely and frightened and weak and destroyed I felt. When you're going through it, you can't be highly emotional. You've got to be very pragmatic. You're in deep [expletive], and if you lose it, it's only going to get worse. At the time, I just had to do it. I didn't have a choice."

It was a four-day walk to Siula Grande from the camp for the five-member film crew, seven climbers and 70 donkeys laden with equipment. Even at the base camp's altitude of 18,000 feet, "it was hard to walk or sleep," recalls Macdonald, who filmed there for 21/2 weeks. "We had to drink endlessly. My nails started to bleed and my teeth to crack. It was unpleasant. I've never been more focused.

With Father-Son Movies, a Zanuck Knows All About That
December 23, 2003. The producer Richard D. Zanuck, 68, knows something about the relationship between fathers and sons. He tussled for many years with his father, the legendary cigar-chomping movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, who virtually brought his son up on the lot of the 20th Century Fox studio.

Off To The Races
December 8, 2003. Could this be the year that the studios take back the Oscars? The majors have gone to war with spendthrift abandon and appear to be in their strongest position since 1991 to keep all five Best Picture nominations out of the hands of the upstart independents who’ve been stealing the show

Risky Business: The Good Fight
Winter, 2004. This may or may not be the year the studios take back the ground they ceded to the independents in the Oscar wars. If so, though, it is because the independents showed the studios what they should be doing in the first place. The independents are a vital link in the Hollywood food chain. They supply energy, vitality, talent, creativity and excitement. They will not be ignored.

In Turnaround
November 23, 2003. Hollywood insiders have long known Roth’s dark secret: His reputation is better than his track record. At 55, Roth suddenly finds himself in the awkward position of having to prove himself yet again. The future of his three-year-old venture, Revolution Studios, is riding on the success of its next three movies

A High-Risk Film on the High Seas
November 13, 2003. Every once in a while a Hollywood studio throws out the hit-formula playbook and bets that smart moviegoers will go along for the ride. "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," which opens Friday, is that rare case. "It's a $135 million art film," said Russell Crowe, who is winning praise for his robust portrayal of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring hero, the captain of H.M.S. Surprise, Jack Aubrey. "I'm confident the audience exists."

10 Films Looking For Oscar Glory
November 9, 2003. Here are 10 currently screening movies (listed in alphabetical order) that are must-sees for Oscar voters. Five will grab the lion's share of nominations, including a Best Picture slot. Others will wind up with nothing.

Assessing a Film That Lost Momentum
November 4, 2003. "The Human Stain" had all the right ingredients, or so it seemed. It had a cast with three top-tier actors: Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and, most lustrously of all, Nicole Kidman, fresh from her Academy Award-winning performance in "The Hours." It had an Oscar-winning director in Robert Benton. And it had a much-praised literary source in the Philip Roth novel of the same name. What happened?

One Director to Be Paid Like a Top Movie Star
October 28, 2003. When Universal Pictures ushered the "Lord of the Rings" auteur Peter Jackson and his team into Hollywood's elite 20/20 club - $20 million in guaranteed up-front salary against 20 percent of the gross receipts - the action underscored a major Hollywood shift: event-movie directors are becoming as valuable as stars like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson.

You Don't Know Jack
October 12, 2003. When the drastic anti-piracy initiative backfired, it exposed just how out of touch Jack Valenti—the 82-year-old veteran who has ably run the MPAA since 1966—is with the complex realities of the industry today. Unlike the era when a Lew Wasserman could lay down the law, this time, when push came to shove, the talent refused to bow to the bosses

Losing Nemo
September 15, 2003. Disney Studio Chairman Dick Cook could make the deal with Pixar tomorrow; his problem is persuading his boss to make it. “There’s no acrimony,” Cook insists. “There’s bound to be this kind of tension. We’re talking about the future and a lot of movies.”

Eisner and Jobs dislike each other so much that despite the obvious pluses in the Disney alliance, Jobs is threatening to walk away and start afresh after he delivers the last two movies on his 1997 Disney deal, The Incredibles and Cars.

The 2004 Toronto Film Festival
September, 2004. MArk Urman was underwhelmed by the American independent features in Toronto. "Maybe we don't need another American indie film about hip people needing too much love," he says. "It's a cliché. The festival hit was a wacky movie about a camel in Mongolia. The most special films of all are the most fresh, unusual and arresting."

Dear Harrison Ford
Sunday July 27, 2003. You turned 61 this month. As you have pointed out, if Sean Connery can still play your father at 73, you have at least a dozen years left. But the truth is, most of the time, studios and foreign financiers don't want to pay $25m for a movie star to do anything new and different. Look at the fate of stars who follow the money: remember Steven Seagal, Wesley Snipes and Kevin Costner?

Sly Fox
July 21, 2003. Fox Searchlight is, improbably, batting 1.000. Since Peter Rice, 36, came aboard as president three and a half years ago, all eighteen movies released on his watch have been profitable. With a modest staff of 43 (a tenth of Miramax/Dimension's roster), Searchlight scored its best year ever in 2002 with seven films collectively grossing over $135 million: One Hour Photo, Kissing Jessica Stein, Brown Sugar, Super Troopers, The Banger Sisters, The Good Girl, and Antwone Fisher. None made it to the Oscar ball. But they all made money.

Separating The Digital Pirates From The Paying Customers
Fighting online downloads through a “Just Say No” campaign seems downright delusional. What might be threatened is the current fat-cat Hollywood system, which spends money like water and churns out more crap than quality. The studios are already battling piracy by opening more movies on the same date all over the world. But they must also be willing to make movies available for download, at a competitive fee, much sooner.

Anne Goes To Indiewood For Premiere
How should the directors and producers choose the right home for their labor of love? They can take Oscar-savvy Miramax's money, but then they risk winding up on the shelf. Or they can go to Fox Searchlight, which buys fewer films but is currently batting a thousand with moviegoers around the country. Or they can stick with the less-is-more reliables at United Artists or Sony Pictures Classics. There's a myriad of distribution choices. Just remember: Bigger is not always better, and “independent” can be a relative term.

Anne Observes The Oscars...

Before...
The Show Will Run And Run
March 23, 2003. As the bombs fell on Iraq, the debate went on. To hold the Oscars or not to hold the Oscars? Some welcomed a diversion. Others thought going forward was in bad taste. When the annual global ritual celebrating the movie industry is held, it will be clouded by controversy.

And After...
Hollywood Throws Out The Script...
March 30, 2003. Strange days at the Oscars last week. The rowdiest, most celebrity-jammed parties were held on Saturday, the day before the ceremony, away from the media glare. One party was so secret that no one knew the address. Thrown by Leo DiCaprio's manager Rick Yorn, DreamWorks executive Michael DeLuca and agent Patrick Whitesell, the party was hidden in the Hollywood Hills. Guests on the list got to collect the address at a church widely used for AA meetings.

 

Harvey, Wallbanger
February 24, 2003. It's easy to suggest that money makes the world go round at Oscar time. But while you must be willing to plunk down millions to get to the Oscar table, it's not just a matter of buying trade ads and mailing lists. Both the movie and the campaign have to be good. "You're talking to people who know movies," says Sony Pictures Classics' Tom Bernard. "You have to show them the craft."

 

Make it big, The Colin Farrell Way!
February 23, 2003. Colin Farrell is a lucky product of the law of supply and demand. There aren't enough movie stars, and the few larger-than-life powerhouses who can open a film around the world cost $20 million. Hollywood is constantly on the prowl for potential star material. But Farrell, 26, whose asking price is already $8m-$10m, won't remain a bargain for long.

 

Swag & Swagger - Sundance 2003
February 10, 2003. One person unimpressed with the festival madness was dyspeptic comic-book writer Harvey Pekar, who was nevertheless delighted with the film about his life, American Splendor. The Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner is an inventive mix of documentary, fiction, and animation directed by rookies Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. “Everything clicked,” Pekar says, adding, “A lot of movies suck.” As HBO closed a deal with Newmarket to release the movie, Pekar prepared to return home to Cleveland: His swag? “I picked up some free cans of Campbell’s soup.”

Spike's Game
December 23, 2002. Movies about African-Americans, including famous ones -- even revered ones -- don't play overseas. Malcolm X, at $48 million his highest-grossing studio film, didn't establish him as either a blockbuster cookie-cutter or a big-name auteur with a global following. Still, after seventeen years and sixteen movies, Lee has the reputation, chops, and magnetism to make whatever film he wants -- if he wants it enough to play the studio game a little. It's a choice he almost always declines to make. His most recent feature, the daring digital-video blackface satire Bamboozled, belly-flopped at $2.2 million. He needs a hit.

Man With a Mission: Get the Film Made
December 22, 2002. "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," the film version of Mr. Barris's book, finally opens on Dec. 31 in New York and Los Angeles. And it isn't because a big star was persuaded to play the leading role. It isn't because the current popularity of "reality" television has burnished Mr. Barris's reputation. It's because Mr. Clooney decided to direct it, and to stock it with enough other big names to make its quirky story viable in the marketplace.

A Tale of Two Leos
December 22, 2002. The American press has found the Leo vs Leo competition irresistible. As DiCaprio makes the media rounds, one suspects that while he is proud of both movies, Gangs of New York reveals Leo as he wants to be, all manly swagger, while Catch Me If You Can gives women the Leo they crave - boyishly adorable. With these two films, DiCaprio can reclaim his international stardom.

 

Gangs of Tinseltown
December 2, 2002. What has really changed is that although the studio chiefs used to take pride in winning statuettes for their most lavish productions, no big company will make a period extravaganza like Bugsy anymore. Today, the only ones with the chops and the cash to produce multiple Oscar winners are DreamWorks, New Line, and Miramax. The other studios usually manage to come up with a fluke contender or two -- mainly because powerful players push forward risky projects like Paramount's Forrest Gump, Universal/Imagine's A Beautiful Mind, or Michael Mann's Ali (Sony).

The Oscar Races: Ranking the Field at the First Furlong

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The London Observer - Letter from LA
November 17, 2002The Oscar race has just shifted into high gear. Members of the 13 branches of the 6,000-member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are starting to flock to special screenings. The studios are now mailing members stacks of videos and DVDs, and 'for your consideration' ads start fattening the pages of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. 2002's very first 'reminder ad' crammed with quoted praise - for Maggie Gyllenhaal as Best Actress in Secretary - ran on 6 November.

New York Magazine – The Id Couple
November 4, 2002 - Like powerful magnets that attract and repulse with equal force, film producer Scott Rudin and Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein keep coming back together to make movies -- no matter how many terrible things they've said about each other.

Films With War Themes Are Victims of Bad Timing
October 17, 2002. A cataclysmic event can change the fate of a movie. After Sept. 11 the wait was significantly longer for several independent films than for studio releases. Among the independents in limbo were "The Quiet American" and the dark military comedy "Buffalo Soldiers." Their already provocative themes became even more so after the attacks and the war in Afghanistan, and distributors fretted that audiences would hardly be in the mood for such sobering offerings.

The London Observer – Letter from LA
October 13, 2002 - Sad to say, there aren't many talented women directors in Hollywood. Many commercial forces are working against them, even at a time when women are running three of the major studios. The most successfulof them - Nora Ephron, Penny Marshall and Betty Thomas - are still relegated to romantic comedies and family flicks. Only Kathryn Bigelow (K-19: The Widowmaker) and Mimi Leder (Direct Impact) have cracked the action-adventure genre.

HOLLYWOOD - New York Magazine
September 15, 2002 - Oversaturation is always a risk -- and even Sony, in its zeal to break its 1997 $1.26 billion record, released one summer movie too many. Stuart Little 2 cost $120 million but is likely to gross little more than half that. Either the second installment should have taken the less costly straight-to-video route, or Sony should have waited for Christmas, when the original fared better.

Soderbergh Q&A – Full Frontal
September 2002 - Stephen Soderbergh talks a lot about Julia, a little about Jules and offers the complete insider's guide to Full Frontal ..

The Year in Boxoffice
United they sat. Post–September 11, moviegoers continued to scarf up escapist fare the way they had during the summer, and 2001’s box office soared past 2000’s record take of $7.6 billion. The cynical part of the story is what they went to see—slickly packaged pictures with well-hyped openings that dropped off the charts after a couple of weeks.

A Nearly Beautiful Mind
Love conquers schizophrenia--that was the crux of the matter for director Ron Howard. When a young man with a brilliant career succumbs to paranoid madness, the love of the person closest to him saves him from life in a mental ward. Although it sounds familiar, that story never made it to the screen.

Bevan & Fellner - 2001
March 2001 - If you’ve never heard of Bevan and Fellner, credit their English reserve. While they nab plenty of ink on their side of the pond (Bevan is raising his eight-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, Joely Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave), they’re horrified at the idea of grabbing the spotlight like, say, their American counterpart, Miramax Films’ larger-than-life Harvey Weinstein.

Chick Flick Revolution
What Women Want … Say goodbye to the traditional chick flick—a new breed of fun and daring films is rolling into town.

Aronofsky & Stone – 2001
Feb 2001 - Two incendiary moviemakers of different generations weigh in on ratings, dream projects, and how not to let the system grind you down.

2000
January 2001 - And that, in many ways, was the story of the box office in the year 2000. Instead of replicating the commercial and critical successes of 1999, even the studios’ best efforts often fell flat.

Cameron 2000
James Cameron wants to go where no director has gone before Ever since he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at age 14, James Cameron has been in love with film, space, and technology. Like that of the late Stanley Kubrick, Cameron’s moviemaking has been notable for its tech nological innovations, from the morphing shots in The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day to the computer-generated passengers on board the Titanic.

Soderbergh – Dec 2000
December 2000 - It’s hard to imagine that this bespectacled egghead was once a Little League pitching ace who threw no-hitters and hit .500. (“I was in the zone,” he says.) Now he’s in an equally rarefied zone: that of Hollywood’s A-list directors.

Sherry Lansing Profile
November 2000 - “My days are all about getting movies made, making sure while they’re shooting that they’re realizing everything we want, then [overseeing] their marketing and distribution.”

Bill Mechanic Q&A
September 2000 - After he announced his departure, many employees actually cried. One left a note on his parking space. "We love you, Bill," it read.

John Woo
June, 2000 - As leader of the Hong Kong invasion of Hollywood, Woo has inspired a raft of émigré talent-including directors Stanley Tong, Kirk Wong, and Peter Chan, and such stars as Chow Yun-Fat, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh-who are recharging and expanding the lexicon of American moviemaking.

Woo: Wow Factor
Take a 2,000-foot cliff, a daredevil action star, and a world-class director with vertigo, and you'll either get a kickass opener for a $100 million summer sequel — or a disaster. The cliff was Utah's Dead Horse Point. The star was Tom Cruise. And the director was John Woo, who's so afraid of heights he could barely bring himself to approach the edge of cliff.

Idol Chatter - Terrance Stamp
1999 - In Steven Soderbergh's new film, The Limey, Stamp revels in a custom-made starring role as a relentless ex-con in search of revenge, inspired by Lee Marvin's turn in the 1967 classic Point Blank.

Cameron At The Millennium
1999 Interview - James Cameron is a filmmaker who seems to take the word impossible as a challenge—one that simply requires the unleashing of extraordinary effort, talent, ingenuity, and funds. Now, looking at the future of Hollywood with his usual Titanic bravado and visionary insight, he maps out . . . The Territory Ahead.

Lucas Q&A – Episode One
May 1999 - Star Wars was a low-budget leap into the unknown. Sci-fi pictures weren't proven moneymakers at the time, and two studios in town had passed on the movie. But Lucas turned that pessimism into an empire. He cut his directing fee by $500,000 in exchange for ownership of the film's merchandising and all sequel rights, which Fox gladly gave him- an oversight that would cost them billions of dollars. Lucas had traded a short-term payday for long-lasting autonomy.

Ricki Lake TV
June 19, 1996 - In her frantic New York talk-show-host mode, Ricki Lake is getting ready to tape two shows back-to-back at the Ricki Lake studio on East 37th Street in Manhattan. She listens to the Now and Then soundtrack in the hair and makeup room as she gets a quick trim of her mod third-season bubble cut. A publicist announces, ''The Dutch are here.''

Larry McMurtry & Gus McCrae
May 10, 1996 - Larry McMurtry can thank crusty old coot Gus McCrae for making him a household name. The Texas novelist's 1985 Western novel Lonesome Dove -- the story of McCrae and partner Woodrow Call -- won McMurtry the Pulitzer Prize, has nearly 5 million copies in print, and became the highest-rated miniseries of the last decade. ''Before that I was getting $20,000 a book,'' says the author, 59. ''No book sold more than 5,000 copies. They're all selling much better now.''

James & The Giant Peach
April 26, 1996 - Steven Spielberg wanted it. So did Danny DeVito. But when the family of one of the world's best-selling children's book authors, Roald Dahl, finally put his 1961 classic, James and the Giant Peach, on the movie market in the summer of 1992, they picked the director they thought could realize Dahl's vision -- Henry Selick.

Inside Toy Story
December 8, 1995 - It almost didn't happen. It almost fell apart on Nov. 19, 1993 -- a date that the makers of Toy Story refer to as Black Friday. That was the day a creative team from Pixar Animation Studios brought to their bosses at Disney, who had already agreed to back the Toy Story project, a collection of story reels -- filmed storyboards edited into a photoplay over a rough soundtrack

Tim Roth
August, 1995 - Easing into a booth at a Los Feliz, Calif., supper club, nuevo Angeleno Tim Roth -- aka. Mr. Orange, aka. Pumpkin, aka the man Quentin Tarantino can't cast enough -- swigs on an Amstel Light and fires up a Camel.

Michael Ovitz Enters Disney
August 25, 1995. Surprised but delighted, Hollywood and Wall Street called Eisner's decision to hand over the Disney presidency to Ovitz -- his buddy of more than 20 years -- a masterstroke. ''It's a business and social relationship,'' says Bernie Brillstein, whose company manages the likes of Brad Pitt. ''Why bring someone on board you don't know well?''

Bridges of Madison County
June 16, 1995 - ''I've been that guy a little bit,'' Eastwood says, ''going off by myself years ago in a pickup truck into Nevada, scouting locations for High Plains Drifter. But I didn't stop off with any housewives while doing that.'' Coproducer Kathleen Kennedy thinks Eastwood ''is much more like Kincaid than the [movie] persona he's created over the years. He's really a very gentle soul.''

 

Joe Roth Enters Disney
January 20, 1995 - As he poses for a photo beside a Donald Duck picture, the man newly responsible for Disney's live-action films looks as uncomfortable as if someone had slapped a pair of mouse ears on his head. ''I used to pose with Julia Roberts,'' sighs the producer of I Love Trouble and former Twentieth Century Fox studio chief. ''Now it's a duck.''

Tarantino
November 4, 1994 - ''Is there a doctor in the house?'' cried a voice from the audience. It was opening night at the New York Film Festival, and less than an hour into Pulp Fiction, pulp fact made a sudden impact: Just as Uma Thurman's drug-addled moll took one humongous hypodermic to the heart on screen, a man passed out in the crowd.

Summer Box Office 1994
Summer, 1994 - Life really is like a boxa choclits-so goes the Gumpian mantra sweeping Hollywood at the close of the summer-movie season. Four months ago, studio chiefs were bemoaning a gloomy spring, when the two biggest hits came from a TV comic (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and a foreign country (Four Weddings and a Funeral). But in May, moviegoers swarmed back to the cineplex.

Jim Cameron – True Lies
July 29, 1994 - The voices of stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis were pitched too low, while the usually frenetic Tom Arnold was talking at normal speed. ''Nobody else noticed because they don't know the film the way I do,'' the director said the next day, a week before True Lies opened on 2,368 screens. ''They all thought I was hallucinating. I had to leave the theater.''

Wyatt Earp Box Office
July 15, 1994 - In a summer that has already seen its share of flops-Beverly Hills Cop III, City Slickers II, Renaissance Man, and The Cowboy Way-none is bigger or more surprising than Kevin Costner and director Lawrence Kasdan's ambitious Western Wyatt Earp. Since the $60 million film opened on June 24, it has grossed a tepid $15.6 million and serves as the most stinging reminder yet that when Hollywood pours its resources into two similar projects, the second one tends to open in the shadow of the first.

Four Weddings & A Funeral
May 6, 1994 - This is no Classics Illustrated love story: In one scene, Grant, who has slept twice with his unrequited love, blurts out his feelings as she shops for the dress she'll be wearing when she marries another man: ''In the words of David Cassidy...while he was still with the Partridge Family, I think I love you.''

Making Schindler’s List
January 21, 1994 - The cold could snap bones. And for the actors filming the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp scenes during their first weeks on location in Poland, the work itself was a chilling business that tore them out of their own place and time and engulfed them in nightmarish history. In one horrific scene, 300 naked actresses in shorn wigs crowded into an Auschwitz shower and were told to stare up at the menacing nozzles. As Jewish prisoners just transferred into the death camp, they were supposed to appear unsure if the fixtures would produce water or gas-if they were meant for cleansing or for killing. Their tears were real. Israeli actress Miri Fabian held a young girl close. She herself had been born in a concentration camp and had not yet told her mother that she had taken the role. The tension was unbearable.

Making Tombstone
December 24, 1993 - It had come to this last August in the 110-in-the-shade heat of the Arizona desert: The director had been sent packing. The cinematographer had already quit three times, and his days still seemed numbered. The producer was trying to wrestle the script under control. The star was serving as a surrogate director while the new director struggled to get his bearings and avoid fainting again. And two of the film's prime movers, their tempers boiling over, had crashed their golf carts into each other and had it out at top volume.

The Three Musketeers (1993)
November 12, 1993 - Rapier in hand, sweating through his blue cape and tight brown breeches, Kiefer Sutherland feints and parries with athletic precision. In the marbled throne room of Vienna's majestic Hofburg Palace, a Steadicam swoops around the actor and his foe, Michael Wincott. As Wincott's black-eye-patched Count de Rochefort lunges forward, he skewers Sutherland's Athos in the shoulder, and Sutherland, on cue, falls to the floor and utters his line of dialogue, as follows: ''Aaargh.'

Sam Neill
July 23, 1993 - Sam Neill may spend most of Jurassic Park shifting from wide-eyed wonder to wide-eyed terror as paleontologist Alan Grant, but privately the New Zealander with newfound star status considers Jurassic a terrific comedy. ''The death of the lawyer is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on film,'' he says.

Film Festivals

Cannes 1991
''Cannes hasn't seen anything like this since Brigitte Bardot in 1963.'' And there definitely was an overheated sense that history was being made at the film festival. Madonna had arrived, and the whole world seemed to go hog-wild.

Cannes 1992
Call it bad timing. France's Cannes Film Festival got under way last week with the memory of the Los Angeles riots still fresh. At the same time, a number of American movies-including Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel, David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the Quentin Tarantino- directed Reservoir Dogs, and Basic Instinct, which opened the festival-tended to be hyper-violent.

Cannes 1993
Descending upon the Cote d'Azur because they like to watch-the scene, that is- the film industry wheeled and dealed its way through the 46th Cannes Film Festival. Opening with a larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger balloon worthy of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the fest ended with a shared Palme d'Or for Jane Campion's The Piano set in New Zealand and Chen Kaige's Farewell to My Concubine from China.

Cannes 1994
If this year's Cannes Film Festival had been rated, it would have pulled an NC-17. At the start of what promised to be a very sedate festival, the two contenders for the coveted Palme d'Or seemed to be Kryzystof Kieslowski's cerebral Red and Zhang Yimou's tragic saga of the Cultural Revolution, To Live.

Cannes 1995
While press wags dubbed the Pillow director ''Penis'' Greenaway, it was David Cronenberg's Crash that caused the biggest fuss, as it was designed to do. A sex-filled story of damaged souls who live for car smashups and coitus, Crash was booed at its debut on May 17.

Sundance 1994
A decade ago the birth of Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival was heralded by just 400 die-hard independent-film fans who showed up in Park City, Utah, to watch fare that included Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise. This year the cellular phones alone took up more space, as Park City's Main Street was thronged with filmmakers, distributors, agents, lawyers, journalists, actors, and, quaint as it sounds, a few civilian moviegoers.

Sundance 1995
Sure, Park City, Utah (pop. 6,000) doesn't look much like an International Film Mecca-but then again, L.A. was once an underdeveloped desert town. Today, 16 years after its founding, Park City's Sundance Film Festival has become big business under the guidance of Robert Redford.

Sundance 1996
Dollhouse typified this year's crop of competitors in its small-scale, gentle approach, which eschewed the high-style violence of last year's Tarantino-inspired entries in favor of emotional melodrama and humanistic character studies -- many written by, directed by, or starring women.

Quoted

March 11, 2002 - Publicity & Russell Crowe
February 15, 2002 - Another Beautiful Mind
June 25, 2001 - Animation
February 13, 2001 - Chocolat & Oscars
February 12, 2001 - The Numbers
November 22, 2000 - Oscar Buzz
September 29, 2000 - Theatre Closings
February 2, 1999 - Previews & Trailers
August 11, 1998 - The Avengers
March 9, 1998 - Forces to be Reckoned
December, 1997 - Oscars
December 12, 1996 – Mars Attacks!
NY Post – Big Budgets, Big Risks

Oscar Picks 2001

Oscar Picks 2001

About Anne

By Rodrigo Dorfman