INTELLECTUALS BE BEEFIN, Y'ALL!

Okay, the full email exchange I’m about to post below is a little long, and probably a lot inside baseball, but it’s still an interesting glimpse into how movie studios market themselves during awards season. The exchange was between the New Yorker‘s David Denby and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer Scott Rudin. They’re both pictured above, and go ahead, try to guess which one is the New Yorker film critic and which the movie producer. Hmm, is the New Yorker guy the one with the intellectual glasses and affectatious scarf, or the fat, bald Jewish dude with a five o’clock shadow looking uncomfortable in a suit??? OH I BET YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO GUESS! (Seriously though, these guys could be on flash cards that said “NYC Film Critic” and “Movie Producer”).

Anyway, their beef stems from Denby’s decision to break embargo on his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo review. Basically, when films screen for critics, we generally have to agree not to run our reviews before a certain date as a condition of attending. Denby got to attend an early screening (hosted by the NYFCC, the organization Armond White used to chair), and agreed to an embargo date of December 13th (FYI, I still haven’t gotten my screening invite, but my embargo date will most likely be a full week after that). Denby and the New Yorker decided to break the embargo and run the review early, and Sony and Scott Rudin are reportedly “pissed.” The Playlist was able to get a hold of the ensuing email exchange between Rudin and Denby, and what ensues is an online dork fight of the inhaleriest proportions.

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When the New Yorker’s Twitter account announced that the cast of Arrested Development would be reuniting for 9 to 10 new episodes followed by a movie, I thought it was either the movie blogging equivalent of “MAN LANDS ON MOON” or the most epic troll job in New Yorker history†. After all the times they’ve already convinced us to kick the football, I’m still not sure I believe it, but all signs point to it being real. The short version is that they’re planning nine to ten “where are they now”-style episodes, with Showtime and Netflix negotiating to air them next fall, as a precursor to a film (which still doesn’t have studio backing, as of yet).

Here’s the long version, from Entertainment Weekly:

EW has confirmed that the producers of Arrested Development is in talks [sic] with Showtime and Netflix about airing a limited number of original episodes that will update fans on the Bluth clan.

Hurwitz told attendees at the New Yorker Festival Sunday in New York that he wanted to shoot nine to 10 episodes that would air next fall and catch audiences up on the characters’ lives since the series ended in 2006 on Fox. The episodes would be produced by 20th Century Fox TV, which was responsible for the original single camera series.

Hurwitz’ hope is that the limited series would serve as a walk-up to his long-gestating movie. “I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by there was so much more to the story,” he said at the festival, which was also attended by Development stars Bateman, De Rossi, and Cera, as well as David Cross, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, Tony Hale, and Alia Shawkat. Ron Howard, one of the comedy’s producers, even participated via speakerphone. “In fact, where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story. So, in working on the screenplay I found that even if I just gave five minutes per character to that backstory, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together. And that kinda gave birth to this thing we’ve not been pursuing for a while and we’re kinda going public with it a little bit. We’re trying to do kind of limited run series into the movie.”

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WonderTonic recently put together some memorable moments from the 2006 Neil Labute/Nic Cage classic Wicker Man, and set them to New Yorker cartoons.  I think it goes without saying that this was a pretty incredible idea. 

I would’ve liked to see the Bear-punch scene reenacted in cartoon form, but I suppose it’s hard to recreate the sight gag of Nic Cage dressed as a bear, using only cartoon with a guy laying on his shrink’s couch.  Seriously, how do none of these involve a shrink’s couch?  Every third New Yorker cartoon shows someone on a shrink’s couch.  Or sometimes it’s an animal dressed like a human on the couch.  Those are my favorite.

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With The Social Network playing the New York Film Festival on the 24th and opening wide at the beginning of next month, a New Yorker profile of the real Mark Zuckerberg is ever so timely.  I wanted to find out how the real guy compared to the Aaron Sorkin/David Fincher version, and I’ve done my best to translate the hyper-literate New Yorker piece into ape-like blog grunts and esoteric memes for you.  (*shrieks, bangs laptop with chicken bone*)

Sue me in FEDERAL court, New Yorker:

Sorkin said that creating Zuckerberg’s character was a challenge. He added that the college students were “the youngest people I’ve ever written about.” Sorkin, who is forty-nine, says that he knew very little about social networking, and he professes extreme dislike of the blogosphere and social media. “I’ve heard of Facebook, in the same way I’ve heard of a carburetor,” he told me. “But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn’t know how to find it.”

Time out, you’re telling me a 49-year-old intellectual has a knee-jerk reaction to an online world he doesn’t understand AND doesn’t realize his Cooper Mini is fuel injected?  Please take caution, friends, do not tread on my monocle.  In my surprise it has fallen.

Sorkin insisted that “the movie is not meant as an attack” on Zuckerberg. As he described it, however, Zuckerberg “spends the first one hour and fifty-five minutes as an antihero and the last five minutes as a tragic hero.” He added, “I don’t want to be unfair to this young man whom I don’t know, who’s never done anything to me, who doesn’t deserve a punch in the face. I honestly believe that I have not done that

I told Sorkin that his TV series West Wing was one of Zuckerberg’s favorites. He paused. “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said finally.

Aw, under different circumstances, you two could’ve been friends!  That’s your story!  It’d be just like that Nazi talking about Betty Boop with the Americans in Saving Private Ryan.  …Although they did have to shoot him later…
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(“How do you shoot women and children?”  “EASY, YOU JUST USE SOFTER LIGHTING!”)

A new trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar hits theaters this Friday and a New Yorker profile of Cameron just hit news stands.  It’s a typical New Yorker piece, in that it uses “turbid” in the first sentence, an unnecessarily obscure word that has 10 synonyms that mean the exact same thing.  It also describes the Alien Queen in Aliens as “a T. Rex skeleton exhibit come to life, whose goo-encrusted ovipositor is a Satanic vision of the procreative principle. As an instance of feminist iconography it perhaps leaves something to be desired.“*  Nonetheless, it paints an interesting picture of James Cameron, a hyper intelligent, megalomaniacal director surrounded by yes men and lots and lots of toys.  In short, a nerdy, adult version of Michael Bay.  You should read the whole article, but I did my best to pick out some highlights:

Cameron has mastered every job on set, and has even been known to grab a brush out of a makeup artist’s hand. “I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt,” he says. “It saves so much time.” His evaluations of others’ abilities are colorful riddles. “Hiring you is like firing two good men,” he says, or “Watching him light is like watching two monkeys f-ck a football.”

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