Is anyone unhappy about the Oscars' snub of Michael Moore?

Let's be honest. Is there really anyone who is up in arms over Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" being left off the Academy's 15-title short list for the best feature documentary? In fact, I would argue that when it comes to a snub of a much-ballyhooed film, the Academy has never managed to make more people happier. Let me count the ways: 

Conservatives are positively dancing in the street, with the New York Post's Lou Lumenick leading the way, gloating over the fact that Moore's "paen to socialism" missed the cut. Next to seeing Barack Obama's health care bill fail, it's hard to imagine any other event making everyone's day on the right, which has been hammering away at Moore for years, always looking for a new chink in his armor.

Liberals aren't all that sad either. For many on the left, Moore has been something of a quiet embarassment for years, coming off more like a carny barker than a serious filmmaker as he has made the media rounds, shilling for his latest Big Event documentary. Liberals like filmmakers who fall into the self-effacing category. When it comes to obnoxious self-promotion, Moore is just as shrill as Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck or anyone on the right.

The Academy itself is way too coy to ever take sides on something like this, but I'm betting the vast majority of its membership is pretty delighted by the Moore snub as well. Remember, his breakthrough film, "Roger and Me," wasn't nominated by the Academy either, largely because Academy insiders have always been wary of Moore's overtly personal "the filmmaker as star" style of documentary filmmaking. Lord knows, the Academy has no problem with Moore's politics. But its purists prefer giving the Oscar's seal of approval to more obscure progressive films, as is evidenced by the short-list nods to socially relevant films like "The Cove," "Food, Inc." and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers."

And last but not least, America's ever-dwindling array of movie critics are positively ecstatic. On Metacritic, "Capitalism" earned a 61 score, which is pretty dreary considering that even a mainstream studio programmer like "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" scored five points higher. If you read the reviews, you'll see that many critics view Moore as being far more talented at marketing than at movie making, especially with "Capitalism," which meandered all over the global landscape in search of a common thread for its story.

So, finally, the Academy has gotten something right. They've found just the right filmmaker to snub without ticking anyone off in the process.

RELATED STORY: FRUSTRATION OVER OSCAR'S DOCUMENTARY SHORT LIST

Photo of Michael Moore by Sean Kilpatrick / Associated Press

Universal's new black eye: African American actors disappear from 'Couples Retreat' poster

 It's perfectly normal for a Hollywood studio to revamp its marketing campaign when a film is released overseas. Every culture is a wee bit different, so marketing tweaks happen all the time. But Universal Pictures really goofed in a big way when it released a new poster for the U.K. release of its hit comedy, "Couples Retreat," which stars Vince Vaughn as one half of a couple who join three other couples on a holiday dedicated to improving everyone's marital relationships.

The original U.S. poster was a bit crowded, showing all eight featured actors in the film. So for the film's U.K. release, Universal's marketing wizards decided to simplify the poster by ... cutting out the film's black couple! All six white actors remain in the U.K. poster. But the actors playing the film's African American couple -- Faizon Love and Kali Hawk -- disappeared altogether. The U.K. poster keeps Vince Vaughn front and center -- after all, he's the star -- while moving the supporting white couples up more into the foreground. (You can read London Mail's story about the gaffe here.) 

No one at Universal is talking on the record, at least so far. But it's obvious that the studio wanted to simplify the poster -- the rule of thumb in marketing is the fewer faces on a poster, the better. It's also obvious that the black actors were the least known members of the cast. Still, no one seemed to realize what a PR disaster would unfold if the only actors who were cut were the African American couple. After Universal was swamped by letters of complaint and negative U.K. press coverage, it quickly moved to quell the outrage by agreeing to return to its original poster with the full cast for future international releases. But the damage was done. Vivienne Pattison, director of Media Watch UK, told the Mail: "I think this was an ill-conceived move. We celebrate diversity in Britain and we could have coped with seeing the same poster used in America."

Studios make dumb decisions all the time. But I've talked to enough frustrated black filmmakers over the years to know the real underlying issue behind these kinds of gaffes. The decision-makers at studios are virtually all white, so they don't see potential racial slights in the same light as they would if they had someone -- anyone! -- of color in the executive suite. When I asked a Universal executive who its highest ranking African American marketing executive would be, he gave an honest answer, saying the studio would pull a zero. So, to be fair, would most other Hollywood studios. 

As always, the real solution to this kind of issue would be for Hollywood to find a way to hire a decent sampling of African American executives so its decision-making wouldn't look so clueless and out of touch with the diversity in the rest of our culture. Studio reps always tell me they are involved in all sorts of affirmative action campaigns. So maybe they're trying to do better, but I'm still waiting to see some concrete results.

Images: Top, the U.S. poster; below, the altered version for the U.K. 

'Oldboy' revisited: Are Hollywood remakes always a bad thing?

When I wrote a post recently about the collapse of negotiations between Mandate and DreamWorks over a deal that could have led to a Steven Spielberg-directed remake of the Korean cult thriller "Oldboy," I expected to get feedback from Spielberg detractors and "Oldboy" partisans. But what really surprised me was the huge outpouring of vitriol toward American remakes in general. It was nearly unanimous: If you let Hollywood remake a movie, they'll only mess it up.

Jack Meoph (btw, nice user name -- who do you think I am ... Bill O'Reilly?) seemed to sum up Hollywood loathing the best when he wrote: "Please keep away from this film Hollywood, you will only ruin it with your homogenized group think."

STWSR chimed in: "Why would you take a seemingly brilliant almost perfect film and RUIN IT!"

And Mike added: "Name one Hollywood remake that was even marginally better than the original?"

Well, actually, I could name a few. Let's start with Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven," which is light years better than the hapless '60s original. I'd defy anyone to say that James Cameron's "True Lies" wasn't far more involving than Claude Zidi's original "La Totale!" And while the original Norwegian version of "Insomnia" is a well-made film, it would be hard to argue that it's any better than Chris Nolan's 2002 remake. The original "Infernal Affairs" is a really good movie, but Martin Scorsese's remake, "The Departed," completely stands on its own as a terrific thriller.

In fact, I'd argue that John Carpenter's 1982 version of "The Thing" is a classic, clearly far more ambitious and fully realized than the Christian Nyby original from 1951. So I'm wondering -- isn't this something of an unfair knee-jerk reaction against the obvious Hollywood stinkers that have often poisoned the well for remakes?

If anyone wants to make a more in-depth case against remakes, I'd happy to hear about it. But does Hollywood really have to keep its mitts off all films from other cultures, especially if a talented filmmaker wants to take a shot at reimagining the film in a new setting? I mean, not every remake has to turn out like "Vanilla Sky," does it?  

An embarrassment for Universal: Fabricated news stories

This is the time of year when movie studios do their part to support America's economically challenged journalistic institutions -- at least publications like the L.A. Times, Variety and the New York Times -- by buying big chunks of Oscar ads to promote the season's leading awards contenders. But Universal Pictures has outdone all its rivals. The studio just paid $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club as part of a settlement with several Alaska newspapers after the studio, in the course of promoting its current release, "The Fourth Kind," created an elaborate series of online news stories that professed to be from real Alaska news publications.

The film claims to be a true story about an outbreak of alien abduction occurring a decade ago in Nome, Alaska. As Fairbanks' Daily News-Miner reports:

"To bolster that claim, articles were posted that professed to be from real Alaska publications, but were actually created to bolster the movie's storyline. The articles included an obituary and news story about the death of a character in the movie, Dr. William Tyler, that supposedly were from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Neither the story nor the obituary ever appeared in the newspaper. Fake articles were listed from other newspapers in Alaska, including the Nome Nugget, alongside authentic news stories. Part of the settlement requires Universal to remove the fake 'news articles' promoting the movie from the Internet."

An attorney representing the Alaskan newspapers said the fake stories undermine newspaper credibility, since "if people can't rely on the fact that when they look at a news article on the Web that it's from the newspaper it appears to be ... it erodes confidence in the world of journalism." The good news is that Universal's $20,000 immediately doubled the Alaska Press Club's annual revenues (I'm not joking).

Although the scam is something of a black eye for Universal, I'd be hard pressed to call it a threat against the future of journalism. If the movie had simply used fictional newspapers instead of real ones, no one would have ever raised a fuss. But in today's Hollywood, where people often float preposterous claims about movie budgets or test screenings, no one seems to notice the difference between reality and make believe. Studios also routinely use all sorts of questionable stealth Web marketing tactics to create viral buzz for their movies. It was just this July that the Wall Street Journal exposed 20th Century Fox for paying a high school valedictorian to plug the studio's "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in her valedictory address, which the studio promptly put up on YouTube, attempting to pass it off as an authentic homemade video.

Still, it's always embarrassing to be caught, even if the stunt seems more clumsy than conspiratorial. Clearly chagrined, a Universal spokesperson e-mailed me the following statement, which if nothing else  makes it clear that the studio should hire a good reporter so its apologies wouldn't sound so stilted and awkward. Here's what Universal has to say:

 "An early element of the online promotional campaign for 'The Fourth Kind' used stories published by some news outlets without permission and inaccurately attributed other stories to papers that were not their origin. When Universal Pictures came to recognize this tactic as overzealous, it immediately removed these stories from the Internet well before the film's release and entered into a mutually satisfactory resolution with the outlets. The film itself challenges conventional beliefs by presenting cases of alien abduction and asking viewers to make up their own minds about its content. Universal regrets that this isolated element of the marketing for the film took this speculation a step too far."

RELATED:

FOX NABBED BY ITS OWN NEWSPAPER IN LAME 'BETH COOPER' VIRAL SCAM:

Oscar watch: Going crazy over 'Crazy Heart'

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to having a serious bout of trepidation when I headed off the other night to see "Crazy Heart," the new Fox Searchlight film that stars Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake, a hard-drinking, faded country star relegated to one-night gigs at bowling alleys and dingy saloons. After all, if there's ever a subject that been mined deeply in movies, it's the saga of the self-destructive country music singer. With so many real-life role models, from Hank Williams to George Jones to Waylon Jennings to Steve Earle (and about 100 others), it's a trajectory that's hard to avoid.

And after you've seen Robert Duvall as the broken-down Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies," you know that it's a hard act to follow. But I'm here to say that "Crazy Heart" is the real deal. It's a beautifully told story (by first-time writer-director Scott Cooper) made even better by a terrific performance by Bridges, who does a wonderful job of showing us a good man who's hit bottom, having run through five or so wives and boozed away all the money he made when he was riding high. If Cooper was worried about any comparisons with "Tender Mercies," he doesn't show it, especially since he cast Duvall in a nice small role as a bar owner who doubles as Bridges' fishing buddy. Maggie Gyllenhaal costars as a vivacious small-town reporter who wheedles the skittish Blake into giving her a series of interviews, which turn into a surprisingly affecting relationship.

I'll leave the serious reviews to the critics, but as a country music fan, I was especially impressed by the film's attention to musical detail. It's pretty obvious that Bridges' performance will catapult him into the best actor Oscar race, but it's also the kind of performance that will impress musicians with the way it captures the idleness of life on the road as well as the angst of a performer who sees how his core audience has blithely deserted him, opting for a new kind of air-brushed, "American Idol" style of country over the rough-edged grit of Bad Blake's era.

Bridges' Blake is full of echoes of a host of old country icons. When I was a young rock writer, I spent a lot of time in smoky clubs, interviewing some of the unadorned original C&W luminaries. Once, preparing to interview Jerry Lee Lewis at a club in Memphis in the 1980s, I put my tape recorder on the table. Glistening with sweat from the pills and alcohol in his system, Jerry Lee said, "Son, a tape recorder is a dangerous weapon," reached around behind his back and pulled out a pistol, which he set lightly on the table, explaining "Now we're even." 

Bridges has a little bit of that edge in his performance too. In fact, there were times when he seemed to be channeling a big chunk of the outlaw country vibe from the 1970s and '80s. To see him on stage singing, sweat dripping off his beard and seeping through his open-neck shirt, is to see someone who's a dead ringer for the ghost of Waylon Jennings, whose own personal life -- booze, cocaine and lots of wives -- isn't that far from the character Bridges plays in the film.

The music in the film is killer old-school country, written by T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, a Texas musician who died earlier this year after spending nearly 40 years playing with Kris Kristofferson (who many will say Bridges resembles at times in the film as well). And as if acknowledging its debt to Jennings, the film has a scene scored to Jennings' own "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way."

The film opens in New York and L.A. in mid-December for an Oscar-qualifying run before going wider after the first of the year. The highest praise I can offer is that "Crazy Heart's" music wonderfully embodies the spirit of the film and the film itself captures the bittersweet, soulful life force of country music.

Photo of Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Crazy Heart" from Fox Searchlight

Rudy Ray Moore: The original king of blaxploitation movies

When I was in high school, one of my pals was considered the coolest kid in our circle, largely because he had a cache of Redd Foxx and Rudy Ray Moore party records. If you've never heard these comedy records -- recorded "live," usually in front of a group of friends at someone's house -- by two of the most influential black comics of their time, they're a revelation. And not just because they're deliriously dirty, full of all sorts of inspired slurs, insults and cuss words so foul that they could peel the paint off a car.

As teenagers, we were transfixed by the sheer raunchiness of it all, as if we'd been allowed to imagine what it might be like to sit next to a great piano player in a whorehouse. In his later years, Foxx ended up crossing over to polite white society with his own TV show, "Sanford and Son." Moore remained a cult figure, always on the fringes, though hugely influential in the African American artistic community, until his death last year at 81. 

Moore made a few movies along the way, two of which are playing tonight at 7:30 pm, presented by the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater. The tribute was put together by Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriter (with Scott Alexander) behind such oddball originals as "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Man on the Moon," a biopic about the late Andy Kaufman.

Karaszewski and Alexander are preparing to write and direct "Big Eyes," which would star Kate Hudson as painter Margaret Keane, the creator of the garish drawings of wide-eyed women and children, who allowed her husband, Walter, to take all the credit for the paintings until the couple had a messy divorce.

I asked Larry to explain why he fell in love with Moore's work, as well as why Moore was such a distinctive figure for so many rappers and filmmakers. He also has assembled a great group of Moore collaborators and admirers for tonight's screening. Here's what Larry had to say:

Will Hollywood's 'Oldboy' remake ever take off?

When it comes to cult classics, few movies can hold a candle to "Oldboy," the deliriously strange and unsettling 2003 Korean thriller directed by Chan-wook Park that is beloved by critics and fanboys alike, having won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The second installment in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," the film chronicles the saga of a man who, after being imprisoned for 15 years, sets out on a methodical search hoping to explain the secret of his captivity.

It's a violent, oddly soulful film that essentially defies description (Roger Ebert takes a crack at it here). Being captivated myself, I can understand why it has so many passionate fans. Martin Scorsese, who knows a good movie when he sees one, was so impressed by the film that he immediately set up a meeting in New York with Park. 

Hollywood has been attempting to mount an English-language remake of the film for some years, an effort that has just hit another speed bump, with news surfacing that prolonged negotiations between DreamWorks and Mandate Pictures to produce the film together have fallen apart. DreamWorks was interested in acquiring the film for Steven Spielberg to direct, a deal that could have involved Will Smith stepping up to star in the remake. But the proposed deal has collapsed, just days after "I Am Legend" screenwriter Mark Protosevich turned in a 25-page outline with a proposed story line for the new film.

As always in these kinds of matters, no one agrees on exactly what happened. The DreamWorks camp says it walked away from the deal, frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations. But other sources say that Mandate, which optioned the remake rights last year, pulled the plug after DreamWorks insisted on having sole ownership of the remake even if Spielberg didn't end up directing the project. Mandate wanted to retain ownership if someone other than Spielberg ended up directing the film.

The "Oldboy" remake has something of a tortured history. In January 2004, even before Park's film debuted at Cannes, Roy Lee's Vertigo Entertainment, a company that specializes in packaging Hollywood remakes of Asian films, having been involved with remakes of  "The Ring" and "Infernal Affairs," brought the remake rights for "Oldboy" to Universal Pictures. The studio brass loved the film, especially Chairman Stacey Snider and Vice Chairman Mary Parent. But its development progress was slow, especially after Parent took a producing gig and Snider left to run DreamWorks.

With the new studio administration having other priorities, Universal put the project in turnaround. Mandate, which has been involved with a number of adventuresome projects, including "Juno" and "The Grudge," optioned "Oldboy's" remake rights last year, eager to produce the picture with Vertigo. When DreamWorks heard that Universal was no longer involved, the studio approached Mandate about teaming up on the project. Snider, a longtime fan, encouraged Spielberg to see the film. Impressed, Spielberg was soon talking about "Oldboy" as a potential directorial project, which led to interest from Smith as a potential star.

However, Spielberg often has a large constellation of film projects on hand as candidates for him to direct. And DreamWorks' desire to have ownership of the project, even if Spielberg didn't end up directing it, seems to have been a sticking point in the protracted negotiations. So now "Oldboy" is back in Mandate's court. Will the remake ever happen? Mandate is looking to move ahead with the project. But many fanboys in the blogosphere have been expressing delight that the project has hit a roadblock, the general consensus being that Spielberg's taste was far too tame and conventional for a project as daring as "Oldboy." 

I'm still hoping that someone will take a crack at the film, since it feels far more challenging than most of the projects making the studio rounds these days. I could think of plenty of filmmakers, starting with David Fincher (if I were a producer, my wish list would always start with David Fincher), "Wanted's" Timur Bekmambetov, "District 9's" Neil Blomkamp, Guillermo del Toro and Tarsem Singh, to name a few.

If anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to share. Until Mandate makes the next move, we'll just have to content ourselves by watching Park's mesmerizing original one more time. 

Photo: (top) Choi Min-sik in "Oldboy." Credit: Tartan Films; photo: Steven Spielberg by Francois Mori / Associated Press.

'The Box': The movie audiences truly love to hate

It's no secret that "The Box" is a flop. The Cameron Diaz-starring horror thriller, released by Warner Bros. last weekend, barely eked out $7.5 million at the box office, which alone ensures that it only has one way to go (down) in terms of its box-office future.

But the real shocker is the grade it received from CinemaScore, the Las Vegas-based market research company that compiles Friday-night audience reaction to all of Hollywood's big new movie releases. The CinemaScore grade matters, since it's culled not from a bunch of snooty critics but from real paying moviegoers. Even more importantly, there's a very strong correlation between the grade a film gets and its future commercial prospects. An A signals a long happy life while even a C is pretty much of a death sentence.

Even though "The Box" got a not entirely embarrassing 48 from Rotten Tomatoes, the film has gone where few movies have ever gone before -- it earned a big fat F from CinemaScore. In fact, of the 33 demographic categories measured by the service, "The Box" got an F in 29 of the 33 -- and earned a D-minus in three of the four others. Males and females under 18 gave it an F as did 25-and-up males and 35-and-up females and virtually everyone in between. Its only demographic "sweet spot" was with 25-34 and 35-49 men, who gave it a D-minus.  

I called up Ed Mintz, who runs CinemaScore, to ask if he's ever seen a movie get such bad grades. "Not in a while," he says. "People really thought this was a stinker." The only three movies he could recall that scored as many Fs were all basically horror thrillers: "The Bug," a 2006 Ashley Judd horror film; "Wolf Creek," a 2005 backpackers-in-peril thriller; and "Darkness," a 2002 haunted house scarefest.

Since Mintz actually saw the film, I asked him why audiences hated it so much. Simple, he said. They hated the ending. It turns out that the film's ostensible storyline -- a married couple are given a box containing a button that, if pushed, will bring you a million dollars but simultaneously take a stranger's life -- was just the beginning when it came to the film's assortment of horrible moral choices. Since thousands of unhappy people have already Twittered about the movie's bizarre finale, I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets to say that Diaz -- who should begin a serious reappraisal of her career choices right now -- doesn't make it to the end of the film.

"It's like a horror movie version of 'Sophie's Choice,' " Mintz says. "I have to admit that I was sitting there, going 'That's the choice? They're going to kill off a movie star? Who'd want to pay $10 to see that?' I'd love to hear how they thought they were going to get good word-of-mouth from that ending. But that's the reason why the movie got an F. The public acted in vengeance. They got angry about where the story went and the grade definitely reflects that anger."

RELATED:

CinemaScore's box-office swami

Photo of James Marsden and Cameron Diaz in "The Box" by Dale Robinette / Warner Bros.

Variety on '2012': A preposterous joke

OK, I can't say that I'm shocked -- or for that matter, even a little surprised -- that the first big review that has surfaced on "2012" says that Roland Emmerich's kitschy disaster movie is, well, a kitschy disaster movie. According to Variety's Todd McCarthy, the best thing that can be said of the movie is that John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who play two of the leading roles, "convey above-the-norm intelligence for characters in this sort of fare," which I guess means that the rest of the big-name cast (i.e. Danny Glover, Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet) register pretty low on the IQ scale.

McCarthy even finds a sneaky way to work a reference to "Casablanca" into his review. Here's how he describes what goes wrong with the movie as it lumbers into its third act:

"Let it be said that '2012' plummets from reasonably distracting spectacle to sheerest silliness when, in the pointlessly protracted final reels, it tries to maintain interest in the (confusingly staged) jeopardy of a handful of characters when much of the world's population has already been wiped out or is about to be. Never has Rick's observation in 'Casablanca' been more true, that the problems of a few little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."  

McCarthy ends up calling the film a joke "for the simple reason that it has no point of view; the film offers no philosophical, metaphysical, intellectual and certainly no religious perspective on the cataclysm, just the physical frenzy of it all." I bet that last line gets a hearty laugh from Emmerich, who can only be wagging his head, wondering: "These crazy critics -- after all these years, they still can't tell the difference between me and Lars Von Trier!" 

Photo of John Cusack and Morgan Lily in "2012" by Joe Lederer/Columbia Pictures.

Jim Cameron's 'Avatar' price tag: How about a cool $500 million?

You'd have to say that the New York Times' Michael Cieply is a pretty crafty reporter. He knew that the best way to get us to read a sober, intricately detailed financial analysis of 20th Century Fox's economic involvement in "Avatar" was to stick something in the lede that would grab our attention -- like the news that the movie's price tag was approaching $500 million.

How did he get that number, you may wonder. According to his story, the Jim Cameron-masterminded film (due out next month and still under lock and key) has a reported production budget of $230 million, but Cieply says that the price tag "would be higher if the financial contribution of Mr. Cameron and others were included." He says that when you toss in the cost of global marketing for the film -- he says Fox itself is planning to spend $150 million around the world -- the film would cost its various backers $500 million.

Cieply's story makes a compelling point about modern-day studio economics. When it comes to a mega-blockbuster like "Avatar," studios like Fox don't just hedge their bets. They involve a wide variety of partners who provide financial and marketing support for the studio's behemoth. According to the piece, a pair of private equity partners -- Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media -- are picking up 60% of the film's budget. But Fox also has built-in protections from Cameron himself. If the film's final production costs topped $300 million, for example, Cameron would "effectively defer much of his payout until the studio and others were compensated."

Cieply says the film also qualified for tax rebates in New Zealand, since much of its digital work was done there. It also benefits from $25 million worth of technological and marketing aid from Panasonic, which pitched in to help the film in return for assistance from Cameron on Panasonic's upcoming 3-D home video systems.

It just goes to show that when you're in the blockbuster business these days, you can always count on a little help from your friends, who are all hoping to make a little money -- or enjoy some reflected benefits -- from a mega-event that casts a giant shadow over the entire Hollywood landscape.