The Couch Potato Report - May 25th, 2005
This week The Couch Potato Report features the film that was supposed to win Martin Scorsese an Oscar.
Some of the greatest directors of all time have never won an Academy Award for BEST DIRECTOR.
The list includes Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, D. W. Griffith, Brian De Palma, Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Tim Burton, Blake Edwards, Arthur Penn, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Peter Weir, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Sam Peckinpah, and Martin Scorsese.
The last name on the list had been nominated in 1980 for RAGING BULL and again in 1991 for GOODFELLAS and Martin Scorsese should have won both times.
Earlier this year many thought that Scorsese's fifth nomination for his work on the film THE AVIATOR would finally bring him Oscar gold.
At the end of the night THE AVIATOR went away with five Oscars, but Scorsese went home empty handed and is now 0-for-5 in the directing category.
Even though I regard Scorsese as one of the greatest directors of my generation, I am not that upset that he lost the Oscar this year. Clint Eastwood's MILLION DOLLAR BABY is just a better film than THE AVIATOR.
And there is no shame in losing to something - or someone - who's work is better.
Since Eastwood's MILLION DOLLAR BABY doesn't debut on video and DVD until July 12th, and THE AVIATOR is in store now, let me focus on Scorsese's work.
THE AVIATOR is the story of Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire aviation pioneer, industrialist and Hollywood film mogul.
In his day and age Hughes was famous for romancing some of the world's most beautiful women, including Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn.
In this day and age Hughes is just as well known because by the time of his death in 1976 he had become a mentally ill recluse.
His mental illness is touched upon in THE AVIATOR, but the film primarily recounts the years of Hughes life from the late 1920s through the 1940s. This was a time when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies and test flying innovative aircrafts he designed and created.
Leonardo DiCaprio does a great job playing Hughes and his superb supporting cast includes Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Kate Beckinsale and Cate Blanchett, who won an Oscar for her work in the picture as Katharine Hepburn.
The film has a great cast, but that cast is the second best thing in THE AVIATOR.
It is Scorsese's work that allows us to actually feel as if we are back in Hollywood's legendary heyday, and in the experimental test planes as Hughes attempts to tame the skies.
Now even with all that praise, and everything the film has going for it, ultimately THE AVIATOR is only a good film. It is very good, but it isn't great.
I know this film is from a different Scorsese that made RAGING BULL, TAXI DRIVER and GOODFELLAS, but it is just missing that little extra bit of flair that he used to bring to his films. I suppose that we can't expect a masterpiece every time from him, but I thought there would be more than just a few flashed of Scorsese's brilliance.
Don't misunderstand me, THE AVIATOR comes highly recommended, especially to those who are curious about Howard Hughes or the era in which he lived and worked.
But if you are looking for the movie to be something special simply because of Scorsese's involvement, you will probably also arrive at the resolution that I did: THE AVIATOR is good, but not great.
However, Scorsese's good is often much better than some other director's best
THE AVIATOR might now have won Scorsese an Oscar for best director, but it is available now on video and DVD.
COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT
The first seasons from three popular 1980s TV series are now available on DVD, and so is season one of a popular show that is still on the air right now .
Bruce Willis and Cybil Sheppard starred in MOONLIGHTING. This series is debuting on DVD with a six-disc box set that includes Seasons 1 and 2.
Tom Selleck is MAGNUM, P.I. and THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON of his show has all 18 episodes from the 1980-81 season plus four bonus episodes - the two "Simon & Simon" crossover shows and two 1984 episodes guest starring Sharon Stone.
And KNIGHT RIDER - SEASON ONE is a four-disc box set with all 22 episodes from the 1982-83 season.
Those shows are all from the 1980s, but LAS VEGAS is the show that is currently on TV. If you are a fan, for whatever the reason, the three-disc SEASON ONE UNCUT AND UNCENSORED DVD set features all 23 episodes from the 2003-04 season, several with unseen footage.
I'm Dan Reynish and I will have more on LAS VEGAS, KNIGHT RIDER, MAGNUM, P.I., MOONLIGHTING, and some other releases in seven days.
For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next week on The Couch!
Hawaii houses the secrets of 'Lost'
MOKULEIA, Hawaii (AP) — As a band of jittery plane crash survivors huddle on an island hillside listening to a distress call that has looped through the airwaves for 16 years, one of them asks, "Where ARE we?"
The answer: The Hawaiian island of Oahu.
The actors on the hit ABC show Lost, which wraps up its debut season Wednesday, are of course free to enjoy Oahu. Their characters are miserably unaware of the civilization just off frame. But the fans know better — particularly the ones who live on Oahu and proudly blurt out the true locations of flashback scenes set around the globe.
Sydney Airport? That's really the Honolulu Convention Center.
Korean strongman's daughter Sun met her soon-to-be husband Jin at the beautiful Byodo-in Temple in Kaneohe.
And, if you're looking for the spot somewhere in the Mideast where former Republican Guard member Sayid mooned over the imprisoned Nadia, look inside one of the World War II bunkers at the popular tourist spot of Diamond Head, within view of famous Waikiki Beach.
Watching the show each week, fan David Morgan often tells himself, "Hey, I know where that is!" That's because many of the settings are at his lovely, family owned Kualoa Ranch up against the sharp peaks of Koolau Range on the lush windward side of the island.
The 4,000-acre working cattle ranch has a long history of hosting film crews, dating back to the 1965 film In Harm's Way and including the more recent Godzilla,Jurassic Park, and 50 First Dates.
The ranch provides tours of filming highlights — as well as horse and all-terrain vehicle rides — and is a must-see stop for die-hard fans jonesing for the Lost experience while the show goes into repeats after Wednesday's finale.
Jin reunited with his father at his native Korean fishing village set along the shore of a tranquil, 800-year-old Hawaiian fish pond at the edge of the ranch. Ill-fated lottery winner Hurley set up a golf course to entertain the beleaguered castaways on a flat spot currently littered with cowpies. And Brit rocker Charlie and his brother, in a flashback, talked about kicking drugs at Morgan's house in the Nuuanu section of Honolulu.
At the end of a road cutting past a small airfield and another ranch along Oahu's North Shore is the former site of show's crash site, long since packed away. Rugged, beautiful and far from Hawaii's hordes of hottie surfers, Mokuleia Beach has precisely the end-of-the-world feel that permeates the show. Just you and a couple of locals casting their fishing lines from the edge of the surf.
Lost fan and new Hawaii Pacific University graduate Wes Grotjan said he's particularly noticed the show's use of Honolulu's Downtown and Chinatown sections, which have done turns as everywhere from the streets of New York to towns in Australia's Outback.
"I feel I'm kind of in on the joke that I get to see a lot of these places," said Grotjan outside HPU's downtown campus — a block from where struggling artist Michael foolishly ran out into the road and got hit by a car.
Oahu's North Shore is also home to other spots visited by the ill-fated passengers of Oceanic Flight 815.
Across from the fabled surf break of Waimea Bay — now flat as a pancake without the wintertime swells — is the Waimea Valley Audubon Center. Hunky badboy Sawyer and mystery lady Kate dove and jumped off the falls there, even though No. 3 on the list of posted rules explicitly says to do neither.
But never mind, a lifeguard is stationed just to the left of the falls should anything go wrong.
People are always intrigued by the possibility of jumping from the falls, but it's not clear if the TV scene has attracted more daredevils, said Hazel Shaw, a spokeswoman for the center.
Like the Kualoa Ranch, Waimea Valley has hosted film crews since the days of Magnum P.I. But the site doesn't receive a credit in the episode, so few would know where to look for the falls — except the readers of stories like this one, Shaw said.
PARAMOUNT GETS SMALL
Paramount is planning to announce Monday an ambitious slate of 11 titles for Sony's PlayStation Portable entertainment device, including "Sahara," arriving Aug. 30, the same day as its home video release. Paramount titles also draw heavily from fellow Viacom divisions Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV, making Paramount the first studio to bring TV shows to the PSP's Universal Media Disc format. The first wave of titles, due Aug. 9, consists of "Team America: World Police," "Coach Carter" and "Without a Paddle." The second wave, arriving in stores Aug. 30, includes "The Italian Job" and, "MTV's Viva La Bam: Vol. 1." Other titles coming this the year include "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" and compilation UMDs of "Chappelle's Show," "The Ren & Stimpy Show," "South Park" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" episodes.
HOT COP
Annabella Sciorra signing on to play Detective Carolyn Barek, the female partner of Chris Noth's Detective Mike Logan on NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent this fall, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
TV's 'Sopranos' final season will focus on money
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The much-anticipated final season of "The Sopranos" will strike a theme of money and materialism, which for the characters on the hit mob drama is "all they care about," according to creator David Chase.
Chase insisted at a New York appearance on Tuesday that the sixth season, now in production, will be the last but still left open the tantalizing possibility that fans won't have to say goodbye to the fictional mob family just yet.
"I really enjoy it, so why leave something like that?" he told a forum sponsored by The New Yorker magazine and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. "It's just a question of whether the story works out creatively in six seasons, which I think it will. Then we probably shouldn't do a seventh."
Pressed repeatedly on the question of a seventh season, he said, "No. No more," but then conceded the plot line would not have to change drastically for added shows.
"It is possible," he said.
It has long been rumored that the show may climax with a feature film, something producers have remained silent on.
Naturally tight-lipped about who might get "whacked" in the upcoming season, Chase simply said: "Somebody, I guess."
"We do have that machine that sprays blood on the wall," he explained.
The show's creator, writer and executive producer said he has known for two or three years how the violent yet funny series will end. The Emmy-award show made its debut in 1999.
"I started thinking about what are these people really about, what are they really after," he said. "It's going to be about money and about materialism, buying stuff, consumerism.
"That's all they care about," he said. "All that stuff helps them not to think about larger issues. I notice that myself. When I go shopping, I feel better. It's like a high."
The final season of "The Sopranos" is not expected on HBO until spring 2006, nearly two years after the last season ended on the Time Warner Inc.-owned cable channel.
Meanwhile, as the show's actors work to replace its profanity-laced lines for future reruns on network television, Chase said he has little problem with HBO making money reselling the hit series.
But he said: "It's going to be very painful for me to see the show transformed like that. I probably won't even look at it."
In his own future, Chase said he would like to try full-length films and make a comedy or a psychological thriller.
Looking back, he said he was relieved that four broadcast television networks originally turned down the opportunity to make "The Sopranos."
"It would have been a plane crash of differing expectations," he said. "We would have had a terrible time."
Network television, particularly hour-long drama shows, "gives such a false picture of life," he said.
"So much of it is a glorification of authority and an attempt to convince the American people that life isn't tragic, that everything works out and all those cops and all those firemen and all those judges and all those doctors, they really care," he said.
His favorite "Soprano" is its burly, hot-tempered mob boss Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini. "He's so earnest," Chase said. "I guess that's what I like about him. When he's upset, he really gets upset about something."
Handicapping the 2005-06 TV Season
That the major TV networks are desperate to snag the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic is no surprise.
But now even CBS, once the domain of unhip, older-skewing viewers, is making no pretense: It's all about the under-50 set.
Last week marked the networks' annual advertiser and media upfront presentations, four days of celeb-studded, gimmicky sessions, where the nets unveiled their schedules for the tube season ahead. (See UPN President Dawn Ostroff with a big yellow snake around her neck, just like Britney! See CBS honcho Les Moonves, in puppet form, punch a puppet version of NBC honcho Jeff Zucker! See the Desperate Housewives cast arrive glammed out in gowns and furs!)
And it's a quote from CBS's Moonves, explaining why the network pulled the plug on former Friday night hit Joan of Arcadia, featuring a teen who talks to God, in favor of a new drama in which a psychic Jennifer Love Hewitt talks to the dead, that sums up this year's festivities.
"I think talking to ghosts may skew younger than talking to God," explained Moonves, whose top-rated network will likely finish the season just behind Fox in viewers 18-49.
And God, apparently, isn't the only one who gets kicked to the curb in the name of ratings. UPN, CBS' sister station, is pinning its ratings wishes for next season on new Thursday night comedy Everybody Hates Chris, a Wonder Years-type series based on Chris Rock's teen years in Brooklyn.
Rock took the stage at UPN's upfront on Thursday and told the crowd, "Everybody Loves Raymond, Everybody Hates Chris. White man out, black man in. See how it works?"
Jokes aside, UPN is hoping that's exactly how it works, as one of the biggest time-slot battles of next season will take place Thursdays at 8 p.m. Rock's show, which will include narration by the former Saturday Night Live star, goes head-to-head with CBS's Survivor, the WB's Smallville, Fox's The O.C., ABC's Alias and NBC's Joey.
"It's a really, really important night for the movie studios, and a ton of money flows into that night with movie advertisements," says Bill Koenigsberg, president and CEO of Horizon Media/New York. "It didn't surprise me that no one was willing to give up ground, that everyone wanted to stick to their guns there, because it's such a huge night. That's where a lot of the dollars are going to fall."
Speaking of the ratings-beleaguered former Friend, poor Joey, which was the buzz of last season's upfronts, took jabs from almost everyone at this year's presentations, including his own network.
"I think its storytelling was very disappointing," NBC's Zucker told the New York Times last week. "There was and continues to be a lot of residual good will toward that character."
Still, NBC, the erstwhile comedy king that is on track to finish this season's ratings race in fourth place, gave Joey another go, pairing it with the increasingly tired Will & Grace as lead-ins for a fourth season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice.
Shows that weren't as lucky and got the axe included Taye Diggs' Kevin Hill and Star Trek: Enterprise at UPN, CBS' Judging Amy and JAG, the WB's Jack & Bobby (one of last season's most buzzed-about new shows), ABC's Eyes and Blind Justice, and NBC's family drama American Dreams.
Among the programming trends for the 2005-06 season are:
- Lost Knock-Offs
Insiders were predicting that the networks would roll out a plethora of Desperate Housewives clones for next season, but it's actually ABC's other monster hit that inspired copycats, including NBC's Fathom (scientists investigating mysterious creatures who live in the sea), the WB's Supernatural (brothers who travel around investigating unexplained phenomenon), CBS's Threshold (a team of Navy investigators assembled to investigate an alien spacecraft found in the Atlantic Ocean) and ABC's Invasion (aliens trigger natural disasters while plotting to take over the planet).
- CSI Knock-Offs:
If prime-time characters aren't investigating otherworldly type beings next season, they're investigating crimes. The slew of new crime and/or investigation series include Fox's Bones, about a forensic anthropologist/novelist, and The Gate, about detectives in San Francisco's Deviant Crime Unit; CBS' Criminal Minds, about an elite squad of FBI profilers assigned to especially twisted crimes; and ABC's The Night Stalker, a remake of the '70s drama about a newspaper crime reporter who investigates stories with supernatural twists, and The Evidence, which opens by flashing the evidence in a crime, allowing viewers to follow along and try to solve the case with the cops.
"I'm surprised to see this glut of investigative dramas out there," Koenigsberg says. "You've got Navy SEALs shows and Pentagon shows and crime investigative shows and FBI shows. I think the reason for that is the success of off-network shows to cable, like CSI and Law & Order. There's a significant revenue stream there, with those shows coming out and then switching over to cable, which is a new avenue of profit."
- Bold Time-Slot Maneuvering:
The Thursday at 8 p.m. traffic jam is a bit of scheduling where, unfortunately, at least one or two shows are likely to become ratings casualties. Another time slot making TiVo-ing a necessity: Tuesdays at 9 p.m., home of CBS' The Amazing Race, Fox's House, ABC's Commander-in-Chief and NBC's My Name is Earl and The Office.
And the nets have planned some other risky moves that will prove pure genius or pure disaster next season: Fox surprised many with its renewal of critically beloved comedy Arrested Development, and surprised insiders further by moving the show from Sunday to Monday night at 8. The network also moved aging comedy Malcolm in the Middle from Sundays to the tough Friday night schedule. ABC, meanwhile, swapped Lost from 8 to 9 on Wednesdays, moved Alias to Thursdays and shifted David E. Kelley's Sunday night hit Boston Legal from its cushy post-Desperate Housewives position to Tuesdays at 10, while NBC ousted The West Wing from Wednesday night and moved it to Sundays at 8.
- Bruckheimer Rules:
Still. Jerry Bruckheimer produced four of the top 20 shows this season. As of next season, he will have a record 10 shows on the networks, including six on CBS. Among his new series are his first comedy, the WB's Modern Men, about three single pals who hire a life coach to help them get dates; CBS' Close to Home, about a mom/prosecutor; the WB's Just Legal, a drama about a teen prodigy attorney with a crabby mentor (Miami Vice's Don Johnson); and NBC's E-Ring, a military drama set at the Pentagon and costarring Dennis Hopper and Benjamin Bratt.
- Reality TV on Life Support?
Practically since Who Wants to Be a Millionaire helped spark the prime-time reality craze, industry types have been predicting its imminent death. And while the fall schedules for next season still include plenty of unscripted hits--Survivor, The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model and yet another spin on The Bachelor--Fox, the network known for its reliance on short-term ratings grabbers in the past, has swept such fare out the door. Aside from the Saturday night Cops/America's Most Wanted lineup, Fox has scheduled no reality shows until the next installment of American Idol in January.
Other new series that generated buzz among advertisers at the upfronts: NBC's My Name Is Earl, a sitcom about a petty thief who decides to change his evil ways and make amends with those he's wronged after winning the lottery, and the Martha Stewart-hosted version of The Apprentice; Fox's Headcases, starring Chris O'Donnell as a lawyer who suffers a nervous breakdown, and Prison Break, a drama about an architect who gets himself thrown in jail to help his imprisoned brother escape; ABC's Commander-in-Chief, starring Geena Davis as the first female President, and Emily's Reasons Why Not, a comedy starring Heather Graham as a self-help author who can't follow her own advice; and the WB's Twins, a comedy about two sisters (including Roseanne's Sara Gilbert) thrown together to run their family's lingerie business, and Bedford Diaries, a drama from Oz creator Tom Fontana, about students in a human sexuality course at a liberal arts college in New York.
Meanwhile, there were plenty of high-profile pilots that didn't make the cut, including Alias and Lost producer JJ Abrams' The Catch, an ABC bounty hunter show starring Alias' Greg Grunberg and old-school comedian Don Rickles; NBC's Notorious, starring Tori Spelling in an autobiographical comedy; and Fox's New Car Smell, starring Brooke Shields in a comedy about a used-car dealership; Queen B, a comedy starring Alicia Silverstone; and Windfall, starring Luke Perry in a drama about a group of friends who win the lottery. And one pilot that was looked over by NBC--Old Christine, a comedy with Seinfeld's Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a single mom--was later picked up by CBS for its midseason schedule.
"I was impressed with the new Chris Rock show," says Koenigsberg. "My Name is Earl on NBC is getting an awful lot of good buzz and it seems like it could be a breakthrough hit. Also E-Ring on NBC and Geena Davis as the President on ABC, there are some strong indications that it could be a breakout show as well."
"[But] I don't see the next Friends or Frasier or Seinfeld. I think it was a very safe route in terms of programming development."
And a prediction on that big Thursday at 8 battle?
"I think Survivor will garner the biggest ratings," says Koenigsberg. "And then I think it's going to be a toss-up between Joey and Alias."
'Sith' Can't Halt Slump
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of The Sith officially entered the record books Monday as the final tally for its four-day opening came in at $158,449,700, demolishing the previous four-day record of $134.3 million, set by The Matrix Reloaded in 2003.
Nevertheless, to the surprise of many analysts, the movie did not lift the overall box office out of its slump.
Total receipts were 3.5 percent below those for the same weekend a year ago. It marked the 13th consecutive week that the box office recorded total receipts below last year's.
"It's shocking," Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian told the Associated Press. "We really thought this would end the slump." Part of the problem was related to the fact that Sith had its best day on Thursday, drawing away business for the weekend.
And although its $108.4-million weekend gross was the second-biggest of all time (behind only Spider-Man's $114.8 million), other movies on theater marquees did not represent the kind of draw that last year's comparable lineup, which included Troy and Shrek 2, did.
Next weekend -- the Memorial Day holiday -- will see some flashy additions to the list, including the animated Madagascar and the remake of The Longest Yard. But analysts suggest that even that array may not be enough to give the box office the boost it needs.
Here are the top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of The Sith, 20th Century Fox, $108,435,841, 1 Wk. ($158,449,700 -- From Thursday);
2. Monster-in-Law, New Line, $14,350,134, 2 Wks. ($44,174,005);
3. Kicking & Screaming, Universal, $10,721,715, 2 Wks. ($34,196,720);
4. Crash, Lions Gate, $5,546,006, 3 Wks. ($27,648,811);
5. Unleashed, Focus Features, $4,123,556, 2 Wks. ($17,850,310);
6. Kingdom of Heaven, 20th Century Fox, $3,537,201, 3 Wks. ($41,218,408);
7. House of Wax, Warner Bros., $3,288,419, 3 Wks. ($26,912,839);
8. The Interpreter, Universal, $2,910,580, 5 Wks. ($65,403,045);
9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Disney, $2,054,904, 4 Wks. ($46,902,653);
10. Mindhunters, Miramax/Dimension, $1,005,839, 2 Wks. ($3,562,161).
Lohan Wants To Be Taken Seriously
Teen star Lindsay Lohan is fed up with the press only being interested in her wild social life, because she's desperate to be taken seriously as an actress. The 18-year-old actress has signed up to work with Meryl Streep on the upcoming movie from legendary director Robert Altman, the film version of A Prairie Home Companion. And Lohan is enraged her fellow actresses Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson, who are both just two years older than her, are highly praised for their work whereas she's known for her relentless partying and troubled family life. She says, "It's hard for me to have to watch that. I work just as hard as those people and sometimes (the media) make it seem that they're more mature because their fan base is more mature and my fan base is younger So they're writing about me going out all the time. It's easy to over-publicize me. I'm a young kid and I have a lot of pressure... (but) I know work is work."