Blind Item #4
A lot of disagreements that have become much more heated. This permanent A++ lister says her thoughts on the editing of a new movie were ignored which is why the movie is getting such horrible reviews. She has lessened the number of appearances she is going to make for the new movie because of the disagreements.
Oprah?
ReplyDeleteWrinkle in Time?
DeleteToo bad! They hired a lady with no filmmaking training, who came out of the publicity world, who made a couple of flicks that were meh.
DeleteThis social justice stuff is insane. You can’t criticize someone just because they are female or ethnic? Hey lady, you made a crap film. Oops sorry I didn’t realize you were a black female.
If I’m a Disney exec and I see rushes of this film that are nothing but extreme close up of faces I would be saying “WTF is this?”
I have a much bigger issue with Oprah than I ever would with Ava duvernay. Ava is a real gem. I knew her from way back in the old school hip hop days in south central. Great lady, even better rapper. She would put cardi b to shame. All class and tons of skills on the mic. Selma was a good movie too!!
DeleteDing ding, +1 Tricia
ReplyDeleteOprah is just trying to protect herself by throwing Ava under the bus. Kind of shameful, really.
ReplyDelete+1 Sal
DeleteShameful is right
If only the Great One lent her editing expertise to Beloved. Yeesh, that was bad!
ReplyDelete“And they took my milk!”
Delete(.)(.)
Milked me too...
Delete(_(_)====D - - -
+1 Tricia
ReplyDeleteIt's true that editing doesn't get enough attention. But was that really where the ball got dropped?
JLaw?
ReplyDeleteWash your mouth out with soap lol, JLaw is not "permanent A++ lister"
ReplyDeleteHah... appreciate rly she doesn’t like “sex” either (her new PR angle)😏
Delete*apparently
DeleteNext time they should get the most qualified editor and actors. From the clips I have seen her acting could have been better
ReplyDeleteOne quick look at the ads tells you they ruined the book. Poor late Madeleine L'Engle.
ReplyDeleteThe books are about a white Christian family doing cool inter dimensional stuff. They also shit all over communism and big government. So imagine my shock when I hear Disney had turned it into an SJW shit show, removed all the cool themes and transformed the white family into lame a black woman, a black kid and Chris Pratt. This is what happens when you race switch in movies. Nothing good ever comes from that, Ask Scajo or the ginger devil Emma Stone. On that long line of Mickey Rooney's in Breakfast at Tiffany's we place Oprah. You aren't RDJ Oprah, you can't do white face. Stick to eating pie and licking pussy.
ReplyDeleteSomeone already made a so-bad-it's-good TV movie of A Wrinkle in Time 15 years ago. Why did they think we needed another one?
ReplyDelete@Vessimede Barstool- You are da man. Awesome post!!
ReplyDeleteJlaw plays a lot of games... wow. I’m tired of her.
ReplyDeleteThe WIT trailers look back. Just a bunch of egos trying to make something epic, and failing.
Normal & Vessimede +1
ReplyDeleteI'm a big supporter of getting more women into the directing field, but Ava Duvernay is a straight-out hack.
ReplyDeleteShe did a high-school-film-class level video for Jay-Z earlier this year.
@Tricia, haha
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5477823/Jennifer-Lawrence-reveals-talks-d-k-rarely-makes-love.html
Only boyfriends, STI tests, sounds more like barebacking than love.
Ava Duvernay is a self centered bitch, though she does a pretty good job at hiding it. She won't listen to anyone, even Oprah.
ReplyDeleteWrinkle in Time looks like it should be a Saturday Afternoon Movie on Nickelodeon.
ReplyDeleteIt looks freaking terrible.
Loading up the screen with A++++ Names isn't doing anyone any favors.
Jesus Christ, it looks awful.
I once worked with a producer and that producer/director who has used Oprah in their films.
The producer had a frothing HATRED of Oprah. Hated her.
And the producer/director, who everyone knows, kissed Oprah's ass.
Not because he liked her, but because he has zero integrity.
I once introduced him to the wealthiest guy in the world and he went f+cking nuts.
It was weird. Like, what do you think my wealthy friend is going to do for you?
Um, nothing.
Really? You actually personally know Lord Disick?
Delete@nutty_flavor glad she's finally being seen for what she is as a director, just using the talents of others.
ReplyDeleteVessimede Barstool - LOL, your posts make me smile. Yes, this looks like a misfire. You can tell from the poster alone that the movie has tone issues. I don't know enough about Ava D to be able to talk about her filmmaking skills. I haven't seen any of her movies. I will probably see this one just to see what goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteLet's see... start with a terribly-made sanctimonious preaching movie... what to do? I know! Give Oprah more input!
ReplyDeleteWho can keep a straight face when the trailer for this bomb comes on? Oprah with the sticky jewels on her face---looking like a 2004 Gwen Stefani!!! ;)
ReplyDeleteAva DuVernay is a terrible director. No sense of narrative or storytelling. Her films are dull. All of them. Yes, I've seen all of them, too, including I Will Follow.
ReplyDeleteDee Rees is a genius and Mudbound was robbed. If you haven't seen it, it will rip your heart out and you will be glad for the experience.
I disagree. Ava is a good director, this just may be a one-off bomb. Many male directors have them and go on to do better films and no one bats an eyelash. If the film is bad, then let’s move on and expect her next one to be a recovery. Selma and 13th were well made and proof of talent. If you think they are bad, then you are judging her unfairly. They were not necessarily great, but they were good, better than a lot of crap that comes out of Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteWhy make A Wrinkle In Time? Why not? It's a potential gold mine and franchise - there are several sequels, it's an insanely popular book (been in print continuously since 1961 or 2), it's a good, solid story with a teen girl protagonist, it could be the new Harry Potter if handled right. But they didn't handle it right, from all accounts, and women (and men) who read the books and loved them are probably going to hate this stripped down and politically correct version (I don't remember exactly, but the book references Jesus and the Bible), so back on the shelf it goes, no franchise opportunities here, and we wait a generation before someone tries again. (The book is very good, it's a straight up science fiction novel for adults, but it was published during an era when sci fi was a boy's club. It's got an unfair reputation as a young teen girl's book, but it's not. Worth reading, if you're interested, along with it's sequels. Everything she wrote was in that universe, too.)
ReplyDeleteThe movie should make money at least on star power and grrl power, if not on merit. If it sucks, at least Madeleine L'Engle didn't have to see it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it can't be any worse than The Dark is Rising adaptation :(
Like most things Oprah touches recently, it's shit. She is such a phony, sanctimonious gas bag.
ReplyDeleteJesus, I mean even the ground around her house was trying to get away from her.
WIT is a sapfest. Thelma Shoonmaker Don Siegel, Tarkovsky and Verna Fields cannot save it. Hollywood will never ever learn. Character. Character. Character. Story. Story. Story but not to please the masses, to please the inner artist's heart felt discernible POV helming the vehicle.
ReplyDeleteThat's how creativity works - it's supposed to come from the heart, not the ego, or the pocketbook.
Thank you! I agree 100%
DeleteI loved the book. I cringed when I saw the trailer. the right person could make a terrific movie. Did the director even like the book? If you like the book and want to make a movie, why take out what made the book special?
ReplyDeleteHelen Mirran? Her new movie got some bad reviews.
ReplyDeleteI read this book as a kid - but every time I watch the commercial and think, I am sure I read this book but nothing in this commercial is reminding me of the book. I am more inclined to just re-read the book it's been almost 50 years.
ReplyDeleteOh I was one of those girls that read Sci Fi. I was a voracious reader then and couldn't get enough of the Sci Fi. It is also amazing how many sci fi writers made great predictions about the problems we are facing these days.
Weird how when you talk about a black female director that CDAN suddenly gets flooded with a whole load of Roger Eberts.
ReplyDeleteWell you know men have been making crappy movies for decades so women are going to fail too. I never quite understand the decision making process in Hollywood a lot of the time especially given how much movies cost to make these days. Thanks to Enty we see that casting seems to have nothing to do with talent and finding the right person but who is willing to sleep with the director, the producers and the lead actors. It is a wonder there are any great movies and yes some of them have been directed by women, gasp.
ReplyDeleteGreat scripts are mauled by leading actors and actresses who insist on changes and ruin the movie. Etc etc etc.
The casting couch is definitely prevalent over skill...
DeleteLook @ Danny Trejo with over 200 roles in his acting career. Yum, yum... would love to get him all hot and sweaty on my couch 😲😝
Of course audiences are partly to blame. If they make crap and you still buy the movie tickets, you will see the same crap in the sequels.
ReplyDelete@Unknown
ReplyDeleteNo one is going to touch AWiT because of the intersection of so many perspectives the book includes...that is unless one is an egotist who thinks the book needs their magnificent interpretation.
Read the book when I was young, loved it, and don't want this stupid movie nullifying my memories of it.
@Jen Ty
Some movies are developed on purpose to fail. It allows the studios to claim losses.
i totally agree about the audience factor. If there is no CGI WOW! assaulting the eyeballs, no one will go see a film anymore.
My impression is that Wrinkle In Time used a lot of stunt casting to make up for its horribleness.
ReplyDeleteReese Witherspoon says Oprah has a lot of rules. One of which is nobody can chew gum in her presence. I’d seriousky tell Oprah to fuck off if she told me I couldn’t chew gum in her presence. So self-centered.
ReplyDeleteIts mostly the source material. A Wrinkle in Time has always been a tough book to adapt. The versions before were also dreadful.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, this loss won't hurt Ava's directing chances in the future. She does have a very good eye and is strong as far as character development goes.
IIRC, A Wrinkle in Time has vast sections of out-of-body experience, where human identifiers are erased. Nope, can't exactly film that.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the Great Opes doesn't take out any revenge on Ava for this.
I dislike Oprah and find it rather obnoxious that somewhere there is a list signed off by her prohibiting gum chewing in her presence but I must say it is kind of gross to watch people chew gum and downright obscene when some make that internal popping noise or smack their lips with it. I like gum but I'd never chew it again if it meannt no one else could either. also too when I used to go to meetings and look around seeing people chew gum always came off as looking incredibly nervous, if not foolish. I can find many more substantial reasons to justify my contempt of her, but she wins this one @buck
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFinally something I can comment on. I'm not surprised the least that Ava DuVernay bumped heads with Oprah because the exact same thing happened during the filming of Selma. Even though it would cost her close to nothing more in a budget, Ava refused to sign the MBA agreement to make her movie a signatory of the Writer's Guild of America. She eventually bumped heads with Paul Webb the writer of the film and then lost the chance of a co-writer credit a possible arbitration by the WGA would have given her. This decision, by the way, hindered the chances of the movie getting more nominations at the Academy Awards too. Paul Webb gets no residual payments ever from his work on the film due to streaming, international broadcast, tv broadcast etc. That's the kind of person this woman really is, a mediocre director with a huge ego. Watch a Wrinkle in Time and you'll realize why Oprah was right in criticizing the close-ups. Why spend millions on CGI if you shoot your film as a bad made for TV film? Blah!
ReplyDeletePeople, it's not the editor's fault. If the mediocre director only shot extreme close-ups of most scenes, what is an editor supposed to do? The editor can only do so much with what they have. If they're handed badly shot angles there's no miracle to be done here, which is the main problem with Wrinkle in Time.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I'll be that dude who admits that he has not seen AWiT yet, so I won't be commenting on the quality or content. ADV is a good director. I don't know that AWiT is in her wheelhouse. Someone mentioned Rees, who is great but a) lets not compare the two because they are Black women only b) she can do sci-fi fantasy.
ReplyDeleteOne thing ADV has done better than other younger directors is master the art of making herself a star. She has really leveraged social media and has a "brand." It may give her an edge over other young directors when it comes to getting jobs. Spike Lee did the same for different reasons, (so unless you hate Lee and also excellence, don't knock it).
As for the alleged feud and Oprah's ideas, who knows if they were actually good suggestions. It's easy to find fault in hindsight.
@Lucius Cassio
ReplyDeleteI find that a lot of young directors now are doing tons of close up shots. It was really irritating during the Handmaid's Tale to constantly be confronted by close ups of Elizabeth Moss, every other shot. It must be something about the selfie generation is all I can figure. So so boring.
Oh so she treats writers that way? Fuck her. Let her fail with AWiT.
LAw... but is she A++?
ReplyDeleteHow is Oprah permanent A ++ though? Nobody outside of the US knows who she is
ReplyDeleteI won't pay to see this, so not sure I have a right to say how much it sucks. But as a Christian it bothers me they took out the spiritual element of the great novel I read a half dozen times in my tweens and teens. I question why some people think it's terrible when ScarJo and Emma--or Christian Bale as Moses, LOL--and others get whitewashed, but awesome when Storm Reid plays Meg (particularly when nearly all reviews for the poor young girl are bad, say no more).
ReplyDeleteOprah-ness reeks from the movie, dutifully embodied by talented but smug, self-impressed Ava D.'s direction. What I read makes it sound like she is in over her head and doesn't have a powerhouse central actor at the center of the story as in "Selma."
But I hate the general horrible Hollywoodness of it all, the transparent SJW motif that's spread across Disney product like margarine on Wonder Bread atop all Disney product now, dumbing down "Star Wars" and threatening the Marvel brand (though "Black Panther" is the ideal expert version). Can anyone deny this is happening? Does it appear Kathleen Kennedy is the creative driving force behind it, or is she merely implementing orders from somewhere above?
"She would put cardi b to shame."
ReplyDeletedamning with faint praise...
As a Black woman I must say that it's counterproductive to not want to criticize a movie because a woman or a woman of color directed it, as I have been seeing much of lately. It sets the bar pretty low, it says that we don't have to do better or put in any real effort to make something good; all we have to do is show up. I do not support this mindset. If the movie sucks, it sucks and just because it has a Black female director doesn't make it ok. It's a poor attitude that Ava Duvernay displays, that is, to say she doesn't care how the movie fares because hey, it's not HER money that was spent making it. What about having some pride in the work you put in? She AND Oprah dropped the ball on this one. I knew it was going to flop the moment I saw Oprah in that ridiculous makeup. Even so, they both should stand behind the movie they made, even if it is bad.
ReplyDelete