Entries by Oz

Okay, so right now it's nothing more than six hours of quite awesome sountrack tunes on a loop, mixed in with some robotic station IDs and movie quotes, but that certainly puts Hollywood Bitchslap Radio ahead of your average morning zoo.

We've got everything from Rushmore to Royal Tenenbaums, Virgin Suicides to Garden State, Boogie Nights to American Beauty and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...

So take a listen and tell us what you think!

Who honestly thought this wouldn't happen? Blockbuster, despite making their big push for liquidity dependent on the concept of the abolition of all late fees, has announced that a third of their US stores are quietly reinstating late fees.

The 'no late fees' credo has been popular with the customers, depsite the ever-so-sneaky back-door trap of charging customers' credit cards for the purchase price of any film returned a little too late, but anyone who has walked into a Blockbuster store over the past few weeks has in all likelihood noticed three things:

1. There are no movies on the shelves.

2. On weekends, the place is shoulder-to-shoulder busy.

3. During the early to mid-week, the stores are all but empty.

Of course, in hindsight, all of the above makes perfect sense. After all, if you don't HAVE TO go to a Blockbuster store on a Monday night, why would you? Then again, if it's a rainy weekend and the kids are bored, hey, that'd be a good time to go return those movies you've had for a week and a half.

Remember when the DVD format first came out and the studios weren't really sure if it would catch on? Remember how some embraced the technology, and others kind of dribbled out product without much thought about its possibilities?

Welcome to the new world order. Hot on the heels of Disney claming that they were considering releasing films on DVD and in theaters simultaneously, comes the news that the 40-Year-Old Virgin, a film that was definitely successful in theaters considering its genre, has sold TWO MILLION COPIES on its first day on DVD.

Now, think about that for a second - two million DVDs in one day. Let's imagine that Universal makes only $7 per disc (a conservative estimate when they can sell for $25 or more in some stores), that comes out at a $14m opening day - or 50% more than the box office on the opening day big screen release of Peter Jackson's King Kong!

Is it any wonder that the studios are abandoning the big screen in favor of the take-home option when the payday on a middle of the road movie on disc can be larger than the big screen blockbuster of the season?

The DVD contains bonus features including deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage, commentary by the filmmakers and cast, and extra "you know how I know you're gay?" dialogue. There's also an unrated version, which has an extra 17 minutes of the film, specifically shot for the DVD release.

Eat it up, people, but take my word for it - if the studios actually do make DVD releases simultaneous with theatrical releases, successes like the 40-Year-Old Virgin won't happen. Think about it, the reason this film is selling so hugely on DVD is BECAUSE the theatrical release was so well received. People have been waiting for this film to hit DVD, and if you take away that anticipation, you take away the chance for an explosive debut like this.

Just about any college student, hippy, self-help guru and aging renaissance man has read Paolo Coehlo's The Alchemist, and most likely commited it to memory. Call it an international version of Jack Kerouac if you will, but it's widely considered to be a phenomenal book, about a boy who decides he needs to travel to figure out what life is all about, and in doing so realizes that the biggest treasure of all is sometimes right under your nose. Legions of men and women, lost in the everyday blah of life, have found meaning in the pages of this book... but it's one of those tomes that very much fit into the category of "this shit would be impossible to put to film."

Enter Laurence Fishburne, who wants to not only star in it, he wants to direct as well, according to Production Weekly. Jinkies!

Hey, I'll give the guy a chance to prove me wrong, but I can't see a seasoned director doing this book justice, let alone an inexperienced actor-turned-director, who will be too busy acting to concentrate on helming the shoot. I predict disaster.

The flick is due to be shot in Dubai and Jordan in 2006. Good luck!

When Kirby dick decided to investigate the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system by doing a documentary about it, part of him must have known that if he dug up anything worth exposing, the MPAA would rate his film into the toilet. And shock, horror - it's done just that.

"This Film is Not Yet Rated" has been rated NC-17 for "some graphic sexual content." An appeal is underway, and you can bet the cameras will be rolling as that appeal is heard.

Kirby, who was nominated for best documentary for his film "Twist of Faith", spent a year investigating what goes on behind the secretive doors of the MPAA, and his decision to include clips from movies that have been rated NC-17 was apparently what led to his own film being kyboshed.

The filmmaker told Reuters, "We encountered what many indie filmmakers encounter [...] There are a great many inequities and inconsistencies in the rating system, in part because it is so secret. The ratings board is reluctant to be specific, which can be maddening."

An NC-17 rating is generally considered to be a kiss of death for a feature film in the US. Films with that rating are effectively (and often contractually) banned from many mall-based cineplexes, they don't end up on the shelves at Blockbuster, and they end up unseen in 75% of US towns.

Irrespective of what rating the film ends up getting, rest assured, this site will lead the charge in telling people to go see the thing anyway, should IFC Films decide to release it with rating intact.

"I'll have the Tom Delay Corruption-Burger, and chase that with an Intelligent Design shake, thanks!"

Morgan Spurlock, who we all dig mightily at HollywoodBitchslap.com because we knew him back before he got all famous, and because his film caused several of us to lose serious weight, has announced that his next documentary project is going to be based on Chris Mooney's best-selling non-fiction book, the Republican War on Science.

The flick, according to the London Guardian, will investigate the Bush administration's efforts to railroad science and scientists for political objectives, from refuting the idea that global warming exists, to refusing to approve the morning after pill for over the counter use, to attacking the concept of evolution and forcing schools to teach creationism dressed up as 'intelligent design'.

And what's more, we'll each be buying a ticket. So there.

The Golden Globe nominations for 2005 are out, and the list is, how we say in French, le fucked up. In the Best Drama category, there's no sign of Syriana, Munich, North Country, King Kong, Capote or Memoirs of a Geisha. The Constant Gardener, which is good but not great, gets a nod, as does the largely floppish A History of Violence. Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck and Matchpoint round out the category.

Despite Brokeback Mountain scooping much of the pool on nominations this year, Jake Gyllenhaal has been overlooked in the Best Supporting Actor category (George Clooney, Matt Dillon, Will Ferrell, Paul Giamatti and Bob Hoskins took the five available spots), and also disappointing is the fact that, apparently, the Hollywood Foreign Press don't watch Arrested Development. Bastards.

The full list of nominations follows the fold.

The opening weekend numbers for Brokeback Mountain have been awesome - $109,000 per screen in NYC, LA and San Francisco. As you can see at Box Office Mojo, that puts Brokeback Mountain in the position of having the highest grossing per screen average box office for a non-animated film - ever. Who did it beat? Evita ($97k), Memoirs of a Geisha ($84k - big weekend!), and Moulin Rouge ($83k).

It's been a big year for 'huge openers on a small number of screens' - Syriana, Corpse Bride, and The Aristocrats have all found great opening weekend success on a tiny number of screens, but none have exploded (at least not yet) across the landscape with any sort of huge impact.

So how does that bode for Brokeback Mountain? Are the early numbers indicative of something huge to come, or is this a case of a film finding its major audience all in the first weekend? Clearly, NYC, LA and San Francisco are primo locations to open a film about homosexual romance between cowboys, and the directorship of Ang Lee is no small deal in such parts of the country, but can an Ang Lee 'gay movie' push into the national consciousness the way My Big Fat Greek Wedding did? Will the distributors get pushy with exhibitors and 'force' the film into cineplexes, or will the major movie houses wait for a hard money return to be evident, like they did with Fahrenheit 9/11? Or will it fade into obscurity like My Own Private Idaho?

Fans of TV's greatest show, Arrested Development, know full well why Fox is choosing to end the life of the show. Put simply, Fox are fucktards of the highest order, who have killed more great shows than most networks have aired. Family Guy, Futurama, The Tick (shut up, it was great), Firefly, the list rolls on like Kirstie Alley on a Stairmaster. And if you wanna know why, I found a great explanation of it, right here.

If you don't want to bother reading, because you're mentally 'tarded or have to rush off for the latest episode of CSI: Peoria, allow David Cross to sum it up for you:

Or maybe you can be guided by the words of AD creator, Mitchell Hurwitz, when he told the audience as he accepted yet another Emmy for the show:


I'll say it right now - whichever cable station or network picks up this show gets my undying loyalty. I'll watch every fucking show on their schedule at least once, just out of thanks for saving the best show on TV.

And Fox? You don't get my business anymore. Season four of '24' is dead to me. Dead.

Back in the early days of HollywoodBitchslap, we were basically a bunch of kids who liked movies and wanted a forum to say which ones sucked and which ones didn't. That meant the quality of our reviews was, well, mostly questionable - at best.

But one review from those early days has stood the test of time, as a genuinely ground-breaking, elegant piece of cinema criticism that gave us all something to aspire to was the one and only review written by an individual known only as Never Fucking Shuts Up Bob. NFSUB reviewed the Forest Whitaker-directed film, Hope Floats, and his words have echoed throughout the years as the high benchmark in film criticism.

For those who have never read these historic words, I present them to you today: CLICK HERE.

Sure, Rob Marshall may have won some cred for his direction on Chicago (which was uninspired dreck, but that's just me), but you just knew it was going to go to his head quickly enough. Enter his next gig, Memoirs of a Geisha, which has caused a furore in Japan because Marshall has filled the Japan-set film with Chinese cast members.

Hey, it's not like the important people fill be able to tell the difference, right Rob?

You know, this stuff really jacks my ass. Can you imagine if a Japanese director came to America to shoot Grapes of Wrath and decided to fill the cast with Australians and Englishmen? Can you just see the outrage on the faces of morons like Bill O'Reilly if anyone dared take Glory and do a remake featuring Russian actors?

It's just moronic, and even if the film is great, I'm going to be playing "spot the cultural and physical differences between the Japanese extras and Chinese leads" through the whole damn thing.

Bah, humbug.

Like that was news. But what might be news to many people is that Jessica Simpson and her ex-husband not only recently filed for divorce but they also BET MONEY ON IT and cashed in on their insider knowledge.

Yes, in this day and age where everyone can bet on anything, where nuns and pre-schoolers battle each other on online Texas Hold'em tables as mommy watches Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, a bookmaking company recently had to stop taking bets on the divorce date of Jessica Simpson and her husband Nick Lachey, because of the sheer number of bets coming from their hometown, all on the same day.


And lo and behold, the divorce was announced on exactly that day.