The Hot Button
Reverse Overanalysis
by David Poland

Reverse Overanalysis is the process of attempting to discover the technical principles of the film world through analysis of the structure, function and operation of certain occurrences in the film business. In Reverse Engineering, this analysis is usually done with the intention to construct a new device or program that does the same thing without actually copying anything from the original. In R.O., it is usually done with the intention of explaining something irritating and to offer a construction that will be less irritating, even exhilarating.
Part I
Part II
Part III

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Gross Behavior
The ShoWest Must Go On ..
by Leonard Klady

Last year, NATO's John Fithian attempted to make lemonade from the fact that frequent film goers - people that went to the multiplex at least once a month - were going even more often. He also made mention that respondents in their poll that characterized themselves as "nevers" or "rarelys" were also on the rise. While the media generally bit hard on his spin, exhibitors were distressed that their audience was shrinking in numbers and there was a potential manifest destiny that favored younger viewers and that was alienating older customers.

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MCN DVD Wrap-Up
Walk The Line

June Carter and Johnny Cash led a far more complicated life than James Mangold's biopic would lead casual fans to believe, and their next 30 years together would supply more than enough material for a sequel … More >

MCN Review by David Poland: It is a movie about a princess and a prince, both of whom were also frogs and who could only become King and Queen by kissing one another.

MCN Review by Ray Pride: Cash poises his finger over the teeth of the blade of a table saw, a life on a string, soon to draw taut.

Plus: Ballykissangel, Bleak House, Dog Day Afternoon, Domino, Drew Carey Show, The Ice Harvest, Howl's Moving Castle, Jarhead, Lady & The Tramp, The Memory of a Killer, Network, Police Woman, Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization, Pride and Prejudice, Prime, , Where the Truth Lies, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

The Ultimate DVD Geek
Harry Potter
& The Goblet of Fire
by Doug Pratt

It should be borne in mind that the Harry Potter movies are leading to something, just as the books are. They are not freestanding movies but installments in a greater narrative, and while the structure of each movie tends to be mildly repetitive, the development of the characters and the complexity of the fantasies is significantly advanced from one movie to the next. If the producers are actually able to complete the series with most of the cast intact, it will be a remarkable legacy, an epic metaphor for the adolescent development cycle that is a great deal more cogent than the Andy Hardy movies and such.

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It's Oscartown, Jake
Curtain Call
by Kristopher Tapley

2005 has been a curious year from the start. Politically and socially conscious filmmaking dominated the scene. It was the first topic I wrote about here at Movie City News back in September. The critical consensus bled into the Oscar nominations announcement in January, leaving a slate of Best Picture nominees that reflected the theme of the year, and now a seemingly sewn up race burst wide open the last month of competition, paving the way for a truly surprising turn of events that a few predicted, but most did not.

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The Hot Button
What Broke Mountain's Back?
by David Poland

In the end, Brokeback Mountain was very much in the same boat as Sideways was last year. It needed all the attention to assure box office and awards, but all the early attention gave people plenty of time to fall out of love and to find another. BBM's box office success in December gave it awards life. But as Focus clearly understood, they had milked their best cows before the first of the year and everything that would be national/non-urban would pale in comparison. But first and last, they maximized business for the film. Well done.

As it turned out, The Gurus were right in all but 4 categories... Score, Original Song, Doc Short, and Animated Short... Oh Yes... And #5, Best Picture! The Charts Last Week's Closing Ballots

Gross Behavior
All That Glitters ...
by Leonard Klady

The motto of the fictitious Miracle Pictures ("If It's a Good Picture, It's a Miracle") seems all too apt. The contemporary studio miracles occur by happenstance, blackmail or unbelievable endurance and that's shameful. And the trickle down effect can be seen among acting nominees. Only two of this year's 20 hopefuls can be considered movie stars and in those instances roles were taken for the challenge and scale plus ten percent.

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20 Weeks To Oscar
One More For The Road
by David Poland

The Oscars are not a science… they aren't brain surgery… they aren't The Truth. They are a very large variation on a kid's sporting event. Everyone who is on the team gets to play. You can root for your kid, but don't stick your leg out into the field of play to trip an opposing player or curse at the other kids on your child's team for not playing hard enough. It would be naïve not to recognize that there is a whole industry built up around this event. God knows MCN benefits from it. But the spirit gets lost too easily and too often. Discourse has become dis' coarse… and that is a loss for everyone.

Updated throughout the day
Updated: 6:51 pm

Annie Proulx Offers Anyone Who Voted For Something Other Than Brokeback Mountain A Free Pass On Guilt... And Forces Anyone Who Did To Reconsider Who They Were Throwing Their Kit In WIth
The Ugliest Oscar Speech Ever?

Will Studios Sell DVD Quality Downloads On Amazon.com?

"Brokeback is a holy grail now."
Advocate Op-Ed Discounts Homophobia As Source Of Brokeback Mountain Oscar Loss, Points The Finger At Gay America For Not Being Militant Enough About Defending The Film From Parody

ThinkFilm Tries An In-Theater Premiere Event For The Beastie Boys Doc

The Calgarians Take A Look At The Future Action Heroes

Oscar Nominated As A Short, Cashback Grows Into A Real, Live Movie

It's Hard Out There For A Blond
"How can a short, blond actor with the rough face of a professional boxer and a penchant for playing killers, cranks, cads and gigolos pull off the role of a tall, dark, handsome and suave secret agent?"

A History Of Violence, And Viggo Mortensen, Open Up Down Under

Oscar Winner Dion Beebe Signs Up To Shoot... For His Wife

Pevere Looks At The Still Sassy SXSW

Whipp Rounds Up Lionsgate Less Than Oscar Seeking Cash Cows To Slaughter

Why Won't Screenvision Sell Ad Space To Phillips To Save Movie Audiences From Too Many Commercials?

Anne Thompson's Risky Women's Business Bleeds Red (Carpet) For Oscar Winning Producer Cathy Schulman

USA Today Rescues Bond In the Bahamas

Oscar Winner Tsotsi Make Some Waves At Home

Worth1000 Miscasts Movies... Like Mother Theresa In Sin City

This, If Real, Would Indeed Be A Homophobic Reaction To Brokeback Mountain

The Real Question Is... Is Screenvision Killing Off A New Model Of Sponsored Screenings And Should NATO Be Forcing The Issue?
Phillips Electronics Tries To Buy Movie Theater Ad Time To Build Customer Loyalty By Not Showing A Commercial... Screenvision Says, "Sod Off!"

MPAA Gives A Pre-ShoWest Look At The 2005 Numbers

Exclusive Preview Of Brett Ratner's R-Rated Cut Of X-Men 3, With Chris Tucker As Juggernaut

Former OJRer Mark Glaser Shifts To PBS With A Wide Digital Purview

Washington Still Sniffing Around Hollywood's Crotch

PR Week's Public Relations Award Seem a Bit More, Well, NY Than The Publicist's Guild

The Three Journals Of Knud Rasmussen Opens The Toronto Film Festival In September

The Perennial Anjelica Huston
"People screaming your name in the streets, quite honestly, isn't an audience I'm desperate to capture."

Pride In The Name Of Night

Keri Putnam Takes Production Chair At Miramax (Which Just Won Its First Post-Harvey Oscar, While The Weinstein Co Won Zero)... Now If Only They Had A Marketing Chief

La Woza First Looks Cars

MGM Back to Releasing.. Kinda
And - More Depth To The Murk... But Still Murk

Toback-o Road

A QT Look At Mark Romanek

Paul Mazursky Goes Back To Work
"Pedophile, double murderer and wife killer. That's all you need to say. Those are the magic words."

"For me, 'Brokeback' isn't rebellious at all. It's a very ordinary movie. People call it groundbreaking or what not. But I didn't feel this way. This is the way gays are."

Putting The Military Into The Actor
"They began to understand that the sun didn't revolve around their a****."

It Took Colin Farrell To Bring Fante To The Screen

Lauren Bacall, Living Legend

Getting Into The US For Your Movie Screening... Priceless
Visas Denied For Mexican Women Featured In SXSW Feature Doc

The Context Is Oscar... The Reality Is Window Shrinkage
George Lucas Sees Drastic Reduction Of The Amount Spent On Production

Who's the film director... That's a sex machine to all the chicks? PARKS! Ya damn right!
The Great Gordon Parks Passes Away

Ebert On The Crash-Lash
And - Jim Emerson Rounds Up Many Of The Opinions About "What Happened"

Superman's Widow, Dana Reeve, Dies At 44

18 Oscar Nominations, 0 Wins

Using A Greenwald Doc To Try To Unseat A Big Time Congressman In Texas

Trailer Du Jour
XMen 3: The Last Stand

Ron Grover Scoops Weinstein Co/MGM Cable Slotting Partnership

USA Today Scouts The Backstage Buzz

An Aussie View Of Oscar Night, From Dion Beebe's Win To The Box Office For The Films In Contention
And - The View From Canada

Peter Guber On The Producers Battles Of Crash

Time.com Previews Mel's Oscar Appearance

The Night In Quotes

USA Today Answers The Question, "What's Next For The Oscar Winners?"

How Bad Was The Oscar Telecast?

Ken Turan Knows What Should Have Won, Blaming Fear Instead Of The Possibility Everyone Doesn't Agree With Him
And - Corliss On What Did Win And The Possibility It Was About Being A Company Town
Plus - Ken Turan Embarrasses Himself With Opinion Presened As Fact

Crash Wins Best Picture... Brokeback Mountain Takes Director... Four Films Tie For Biggest Haul With 3 (The other 2 Are Memoirs Of A Geisha & King Kong)
The Oscar Winners
By Category | By Film

It Ain't Movies, But It Might Be Fun
Salon Offers The Liberal Intellectual Version Of Joan Rivers & Daughter... Camile Paglia & Cintra Wilson

Phyllis Huffman, Casting Director For Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven & Many Other Eastwood Films And For WB Television, Passes Away At 61

As Expected, Brokeback Mountain, Crash, And Capote Big At Indie Spirits

The Guardian Offers A Cranky Neil Gaiman Followed By A Cranky JG Ballard

The Man, Sadly, Puts Her Money Down On That Classic Critics' Sucker Bet Of Using Oscar And Box Office To Mirror The State Of The Art

The Paper Of Record Takes A Shot At Walk The Line... Eve Without An Oscar Angle

The Ambition Of Mr Mudd Malkovich

Arriving At The Red Carpet In A Green Hybrid

Trying To Interview Sarah Silverman Before She Hosts The Indie Spirits Can Be Hard On Your Balls

John Travolta Follows In Harvey Fierstein's Footsteps As Hairspray's Edna Turnblad