Huge crowd for Gran Torino

You can always get a sense of how eagerly anticipated a movie is by the size and behavior of the crowd at the promotional screening. These are held a few days in advance of the movie's opening, and people get free tickets by calling radio stations and such. The promoters always give away more tickets than they have seats, since not everyone shows up.

I showed up 30 minutes early to "Gran Torino" last night and was told the theater -- the largest at AMC Castleton -- was already filled, and they already had turned away 100 people. Probably quite a few more showed up after that and got the bad news.

(Luckily, somebody was doing their job and reserved a few seats for the critics.)

That's pretty astonishing for a January movie. And the crowd was very diverse in terms of ethnicity and age spread. Usually folks under 30 make up the bulk of the crowd.

Based on this, I'm betting "Gran Torino" is going to have a huge opening.

Why I still take the newspaper

Before heading off to the gym this morning, I followed my usual routine of reading the newspaper where I was formerly employed. Some people might wonder why I still do this, paying money to an institution that cut me loose so readily, and for a product that has clearly diminished. It's especially hard for someone like myself who is very interested in arts & entertainment and other feature coverage, and The Indianapolis Star has essentially eliminated the features section four days a week.

Oh, I know there's something included in the paper called an "Extra" section that the Star honchos would claim is the features section, but let's be blunt here: It's the classified section, filled out with comics and puzzles. There's been one small "story" at the top of the section each day, but it's a five- or six-inch blip with little substance. (I'm not being snooty; I had to write plenty of these myself over the years.)

The comics, puzzles, TV listings and syndicated columns are what we in the features biz call "furniture" -- stuff that occupies the same space day after day, and can be slapped in with minimal effort and editing.

They'd talked about these changes for months before they happened, and the question everyone in features department had was whether they were simply folding the features section into an existing part of the paper, as they have done with the business section, or actually eliminating all the daily features content except for the furniture. Now that we've seen it, it's clearly the latter.

So why do I still take the paper? Part of it is habit. I grew up with parents who read the paper every day (and still do), and it rubbed off. I can't imagine my day without thumbing through the sections, even though there's less and less of what I like to read. Some days "reading the paper" consists of a 5-minute skim.

Another part of it is reading the bylines of friends and former colleagues. Matt Tully takes a lot of beating in the Indy blogosphere, but he's a good friend and a good columnist, and I want to hear what he has to say. Ditto for David Lindquist, Shari Rudvasky, Mike Wells, Erika Smith and many others whose bylines I consistently enjoyed.

But the most basic reason is the one I would give to people when I was still employed by a newspaper, and they asked why they should pay for what they can get online for free. It's that news, or content, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't come free -- the good stuff, anyway. If I want to see this stuff, whether online or on paper, I feel I should pay something for it. Otherwise, it's likely to just go away ... suddenly, or bit by little bit.

Hurray for ... January?

January used to be the absolute pits for movies. All the big holiday movies came out in November and December, and the studios didn't start rolling out their good stuff until Spring.

Changes in recent years, though, have led to January becoming one of the better months for new movies, apart from the summer and holiday seasons.

First, the Academy Awards got moved up to February, which ended up compressing the time frame where ambitious films could get noticed. Some Oscar hopefuls started opting out of the crush, debuting in just a few cities in December to qualify, then waiting until January for their big roll-out. "Million Dollar Baby" followed this strategy a few years ago with virtually no hype, had January essentially to itself, and the money and golden statues rolled in.

Now many of the big Oscar wannabes are waiting until January to hit most markets, including "Gran Torino," "The Reader," "Defiance," "The Wrestler," "Revolutionary Road" and several others.

More importantly, studios have discovered that if you put out good movies during what is normally considered a slow time, avid movie-goers will show up.

So this month, in addition to those other movies mentioned above, some high-profile releases are slated. They include "Notorious," a biopic of rapper Biggie Smalls; "Bride Wars" with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson; the third installment in the "Underworld" franchise; and the Rene Zellwegger romcom "New in Town."

Worthwhile movies in January ... whoda thunk it?

Why movie critics shouldn't make movies

One of the most common assumptions people have about movie critics is that they're just frustrated wannabes. This view is particularly strong amongst filmmakers themselves. They think we all have a trove of unmade screenplays sitting in our desk drawers, or some truly awful video attempts lying around.

With rare exception, this is not true. Most critics I know are quite content to watch movies for a living instead of make them. Well, those that still have jobs feel this way, anyway.

But over the years, some critics have successfully made the transition behind the camera. The most well-known are the French New Wave boys. Francois Truffaut is probably the best critic-cum-director. (I'm not such a big fan of Goddard.) In America, Rod Lurie ("The Contender") is the best-known example, although his films have been very hit-or-miss over the years.

Personally, I believe the skill set to be a good critic does not jibe with being a good director or screenwriter, and vice-versa.

This was confirmed for me yet again when I watched "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" the other day, the Russ Meyer flick written by Roger Ebert. It's a non-sequel sequel to "Valley of the Dolls," and essentially acts as a parody of it. After seeing Meyer and Ebert's effort, my feeling was that somebody needs to come along with a movie that makes fun of their movie.

If it's supposed to be funny, it's not. If it's supposed to be titillating, it's not. Mostly I was just happy for it to be over -- though I will admit a couple of the songs were decent, and Meyer is a visually inventive director. Although he seems to be a progenitor of the modern affliction of hyper-fast editing, in which no image is allowed to linger long enough to savor.

Ebert's one of my favorite critics -- watching he and Gene on television, along with reading the critic in my hometown paper, the Orlando Sentinel, is what first got my interested in the craft. I'm glad Ebert gave up his film career 40 years ago to hone what he does best.

The film education of Miss Jean (not Brody)

Being married to a film fanatic is not always peaches and cream, as the response to virtually every query about things to do is, "Let's watch a movie!" My wife has been very patient in indulging my passions, and letting me foist my sensibilities onto her.

One thing that became apparent soon after we started going out is that Jean has missed out on many of the seminal movies of our generation. It always astonished me when I would mention a line of dialogue or famous scene from a movie that I assumed simply everyone has seen, and she would respond that she hadn't seen it.

The Star Wars Movies, the Indiana Jones movies, the Godfather movies, the Lord of the Rings movies -- I could go on and on. It's hard to think that anyone who, like me, grew up in the 1970s and '80s could have missed all these cinematic events, but she did.

Needless to say, I've taken upon myself to tutor my bride in these matters. I knew she would be a patient pupil when (over the course of a couple of weeks) we watched the entire Lord of the Rings series -- extended version, over 11 hours total.

Before going to see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," I had to show her "Raiders" -- her first encounter with the fedora and bullwhip.

She's enjoyed most of these "lessons" -- although after watching "The Godfather" for the first time yesterday, she did mildly inquire as to what the big deal was.

Some of them she's really enjoyed, and I admit it's a thrill to see someone having the same reaction I did to a movie the first time I saw it 20 or 30 years ago.

Hello, Louis(ville)!

Since May, my film reviews and articles have been running in three Florida newspapers, all part of the New York Times chain: Gainesville, Sarasota and Ocala. I started doing it for simple reasons -- the Star only let me review a handful of the bigger "event" movies, and it wasn't enough to satisfy me professionally.

Plus, as I tried to explain to my Indy bosses in a futile attempt to let me write more of it, criticism is a very specific type of writing that requires special muscles. You can't shut it down for months on end and expect to maintain any kind of proficiency. If I stopped going to the gym between July and November and then tried to lift the same amount of weight, I'd be swallowing dumbbells.

I can't begin to describe how grateful I am to my Southern colleagues for letting me have an outlet for my work -- and more importantly now, provide a little bit of income.

I'm pleased to announce that starting next week, the Courier-Journal in Louisville will begin running a featured review by me every week. Altogether, the circulation of my client papers now exceeds 400,000 -- far more than even the Star's considerable reach.

So as I welcome the new year and celebrate this new addition, I wanted to take the time to thank my "customers" for giving me a creative outlet at a time when I desperately needed it.

And for visitors to this blog, please visit their Web sites and click on the published links to throw a little extra traffic their way.

The Gainesville Sun
Ocala Star-Banner
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Louisville Courier-Journal

Read the reasoning for my Top 10

I shared the list the other day, now read the thoughts behind my list of the Top 10 movies of 2008. Click the link among my published articles on your left.