Why both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter TOTALLY SUCK!

A little over a week ago, on May 14, 2008 we exclusively broke the news that Jason Reitman, the director of Juno was adapting the book UP IN THE AIR which you can read HERE. Later on that afternoon, Jason Reitman’s publicist Bebe Lerner of ID PR called me personally and asked me to update our story. Our scoop forced her to go into spin mode. Bebe wanted us to say that Reitman’s directing deal for UP IN THE AIR was not yet in place. We kindly obliged. In return, the only thing we asked Ms. Lerner to do was to tell the Hollywood trades to either mention or credit us with breaking the story. She agreed. As a precaution, when we broke the story we even emailed Borys Kit over at The Hollywood Reporter and a reporter at Variety.

Our scoop would explode all over the internet on other movie sites throughout the afternoon. Our story even made the coveted front page of a popular social news website.

Later that night at Midnight (EDT), Variety posted the story on their site which you can read here. Guess what? We weren’t mentioned. We emailed Tatiana Siegel and Michael Fleming (Variety) and kindly requested that their story recognize our contribution and properly credit us. We were ignored.

An hour later at 1A.M., The Hollywood Reporter ran their story without crediting us over here. We were heartbroken.

Later that morning on May 15, 2008, we again emailed Ms. Siegel and Mr. Fleming at Variety and once again we we’re ignored. At least Borys Kit from The Hollywood Reporter was kind enough to email us back, apologize, and explain the situation.

That apology is bittersweet though because Borys Kit and Variety did it to us again today with the news of Jake Gyllenhaal being cast as the lead in Prince of Perisa which we first broke HERE ABOUT A MONTH AND HALF AGO ON APRIL 8TH. This not only happens to us but to all movie websites and bloggers that break exclusive news.

Both Variety and Hollywood Reporter don’t properly credit movie websites when they are due at least a mention for breaking a story!

It’s a common practice which consistently not only frustrates us, but our online peers.

You want evidence?

I contacted BeBe Lerner to ask for an explanation and it went to voicemail. She wrote me back an email. Read below. Pay attention to the part that says and I quote –

“We appreciate you changing the story and all of the sites, including Variety and THR, Cinematical, etc. Picked up on your reporters' reporting.” “Thank you for changing the post so swiftly. I already had a conversation with Mike Fleming. It's caused a stir.”


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This time, we contacted an editor, Anne Thompson, about the situation because she did after all write an article in Variety on how blogs are reshaping film coverage which you can read HERE. We thought we had a sympathizer in Anne Thompson. We were wrong. Again, we were ignored. You know what the irony of Anne Thompson’s article is? WE WE’RE THE ONES WHO BROKE THE NEWS OF SHIA LaBEOUF BEING CAST IN INDIANA JONES! Not Variety!

The point is I and a lot of other movie websites have absolutely had it. For the first time, an email dialogue took place this past weekend between webmasters of the top movie websites and blogs addressing the issue. You can say a commission was formed. Frosty from Collider put in his two cents on the issue over HERE. Jeffery Wells even chimed in over HERE.

Now it’s our turn.

May 20th is a special day in the Latino community because May 20th is when Cuba declared it’s independence from Spain back in 1902. Today, we here at Latinoreview coin May 20th, 2008 as the day we declare our independence from linking to trades. Other movie websites are doing the same thing. We now ask you the audience to join us in EL GRITO DE LOS MOVIE GEEK BLOGGERS (Shout of the movie geek bloggers)!

Instead of supporting Variety and The Hollywood Reporter online, we ask you to support your preferred movie website or blog who works harder in bringing you the news and content, which we all make universal for all to enjoy.

I don’t know what kind of Buccaneer ship Peter Bart is running over at Variety, but a bunch of us are not going to stand for it anymore. What we do isn’t easy. We have to bust our tail for our scoops and all we ask is for some common courtesy. I speak not only for myself and my website but for the community as a whole in which we think we have been consistent enough in blowing the lid off some big stories to at least get a mention. Let’s face it, who broke the casting the Joker and Harvey Dent in the upcoming THE DARK KNIGHT?

Here’s a hint, it wasn’t Variety or The Hollywood Reporter.

Folks, do you know that Aint It Cool News in the last 12 years has been mentioned a grand total of 7 times? Outrage.

Call us what you like Mr. Bart. Amateur Fanboy, Blogger, niche pub (my favorite), whatever.

We are here to stay and are changing the landscape in how people get their news. Don’t think so? Read these articles HERE, HERE, and HERE.

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Cinematical Seven: Who Else Could Have Played Indy?

Indiana Jones -- he's got to be Harrison Ford, doesn't he? Okay, we had young Indiana Jones characters -- River Phoenix in the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Sean Patrick Flanery in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles -- but I never really thought of Indy as a character who could be cast in any other way. You know, you figure the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark was practically written for Ford, who'd been in a couple of George Lucas films before that anyway (Star Wars and American Graffiti).

However, that assumption couldn't be more wrong. I've been digging around on that great source of reliable information, the Internet, and reading all kinds of stories about the casting of Indiana Jones. The general gist is that Steven Spielberg was interested in Ford, but Lucas didn't want to be one of those directors who cast the same guy in all his movies. So they tested a bunch of other actors, and were seriously interested in one who had to back out ... and then ended up with Harrison Ford after all. We are all profoundly grateful. But let's take a look at some of those actors allegedly under consideration, and a few more that I threw into the mix just for fun. (I picked only actors who were alive and the right age at the time, which is why you don't see Steve McQueen on the list.)

Tom Selleck

Selleck is the most likely of all the casting choices on this list. He'd supposedly been picked to play Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but couldn't make it work with his Magnum P.I. schedule and had to decline. I can see him as Indiana Jones, but I think his performance would have dated the first film even more than it is now (which arguably isn't much). Selleck always strikes me as being a product of the 1980s. His later attempts at action-adventure movies provided us with fare like High Road to China and Quigley Down Under. For bonus points, imagine if Spielberg had succeeded in not only getting Selleck in the lead but also convincing Danny DeVito to play Sallah, and hey, let's throw Debra Winger in the mix as Marion Ravenwood. Raiders would have been less of a hit and more of a cult movie, dripping with extra cheesiness, on a double-bill with Big Trouble in Little China.

Michael Douglas

Douglas came along a few years after Raiders and offered his own take on an Indy-style character in Romancing the Stone. But why didn't anyone think of him as Dr. Jones? He was the right age and had the right looks. Douglas hadn't done much in the way of action films before Romancing the Stone -- he'd played a heroic doctor (Coma) and a heroic cameraman (The China Syndrome) but nothing involving fight scenes and Nazis. Apparently he had a skiing accident in 1980 that would have kept him out of the running for action roles. It's said that Sharon Stone was seriously considered for the role of Willie Scott before Kate Capshaw came along and stole Spielberg's heart. I'm not fond of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but a version starring Douglas and Stone might have had much more entertaining chemistry (and been much less shrill).

Jeff Bridges

I've only read one reference to Bridges possibly being cast as Indiana Jones, but it does make the mind boggle. On the other hand, you can't think of The Dude in this context -- this is the Jeff Bridges who starred in an entirely different kind of blockbuster special-effects movie, Tron. Before that, he'd been in the King Kong remake and Heaven's Gate. (And way before that, The Last Picture Show.) Still, I can't picture him in the fedora. And just think ... what in the world would have happened to his career? Would we still enjoy him in The Big Lebowski or The Fisher King? Could he have fit a fourth Indy film in his schedule along with Obadiah Stane in Iron Man? This is an alternate reality I prefer not to pursue.

Jackie Chan

Have you ever seen the film Armour of God 2: Operation Condor? The 1991 film was Jackie Chan's tribute to Raiders of the Lost Ark, except that Chan decided his action hero would have three lovely supporting heroines, not only one. The opening scene in particular is obviously a love letter to the opening in Raiders. It makes you wonder what would've happened if somehow, in some universe, Spielberg and Lucas tried casting Chan as Indiana Jones. Chan's big American film in 1981 would turn out to be The Cannonball Run, which did not exactly launch his Hollywood career, and which showed that he didn't have the fluency of English he displayed 16 years later in Rush Hour. He wouldn't have delivered "It's not the years, it's the mileage" in quite the same way, but on the other hand, Indy would have had fabulous martial arts skills.

Tim Matheson

Matheson apparently participated in some screen tests to cast Marion, reading for Indy, but I can't determine whether he was seriously considered for the role. All I can think of is Otter in Animal House, the womanizing frat boy carrying the little doctor bag. Otter might possibly carry a whip, but I'm not sure he'd know how to use it. And it would have been weirder still if he'd been paired up with Karen Allen -- you'd expect Peter Rieger to show up at any moment and punch his lights out. The last I've seen of Matheson was as the Vice President on The West Wing ... very un-Indy-like.

Kevin Kline

This is all my own imagining -- Kline had appeared in no movies around the time Raiders was being cast, and would have been a completely unknown except for Broadway musicals and a small soap-opera role. His role as the Pirate King in the 1983 film adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance is delightful, and shows that he at least knew how to swashbuckle a bit. And let's not forget that he played Douglas Fairbanks in Chaplin. I can't really see him as Indy, though. He's not quite edgy enough. However, he did end up working with Raiders co-writer Lawrence Kasdan in several movies, starting with The Big Chill and moving into a more action-hero role (sort of) in Silverado. If he'd starred in the Indiana Jones films, Kline might never have taken such a broadly comic role as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, so let's be thankful he was off the Hollywood radar at the time.

Nick Nolte

Several sources claim that Nolte was in the running for the Raiders lead. But the actor frankly scares me sometimes, which doesn't strike me as a good characteristic for an action hero like Indiana Jones. Indy should never be creepy. But back in the late 1970s, Nolte wasn't playing creepy guys -- he was perhaps best known for playing a bad boy-type in the TV mini series Rich Man, Poor Man. He missed out on Raiders but instead ended up with the lead in 48 Hours as the straight man to Eddie Murphy. I like to imagine an edgier, darker version of Raiders in which not only was Nolte cast as Indy, but Sean Young (who'd participated in screen tests) played Marion Ravenwood and Klaus Kinski (who claims he was offered the role) terrorized everyone as Major Toht.

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Top 10 Fights In Movie History

Violence in movies – terrible, isn’t it. No! We all like to see a good old-fashioned scrap once in a while.

Don’t even try to deny it. You may try and act like you abhor violence in movies, but deep down the sight of two people kicking the crap out of each other really gets you going.

Well, hecklerspray understands. There’s been many a time when we have pictured ourselves beating Sting to a bloody pulp. See kids, violence is fine as long as it’s in your mind, not on the streets. Anyway, to celebrate the fact that we all love to see someone evil get a good hiding, we have come up with our 10 favourite fight scenes in films.

And if you disagree, we’ll come around your house…

10. From Russia With Love (1963)

James Bond has had many brutal encounters on his way to saving the world, but none quite as thrilling as this punch-up against Robert Shaw’s assassin in a narrow train compartment. Shaw’s crime: asking for red wine with fish. That’ll teach him.

9. The Big Country (1958)
You see, men really were men back in the old days. This manly jaw-breaker between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston goes on so long the people watching it go to bed. Even the following morning they are still slugging away at each other.

8. Kill Bill Volume 1

To us, this scene in which Uma Thurman kills off an entire army of deadly assassins is when Quentin Tarantino came of age as a director. Without his superb dialogue to help him, he still managed to come up with a superbly co-ordinated and creative fight sequence, which culminates in the spectacular demise of Lucy Liu’s character. Oh, and it’s got lots of limbs being chopped off

7. Bridget Jones’ Diary

We do feel a slight amount of shame for putting this pathetic excuse for a brawl between Bridget Jones’ would-be suitors in a list of the finest fights in movie history. But, let’s face it, we all like to think in a fight situation that we would kick ass like Bruce Lee. However, in reality we probably fight more like fucking Ang Lee

6. King Kong

King Kong kicking the crap out of three T-Rexes is the monster of all fight scenes.

5. Oldboy (2003)

Armed with just a hammer, the main character in this 2003 South Korean film has to somehow find his way past a narrow corridor cluttered with baddies trying to stop him. All in one take. It’s hammer time

4. Empire Strikes Back

It’s possibly the most iconic chapter in the entire series. After an exhausting duel with Darth Vader, Luke gets his hand cut off and is told the truth about his father. Hecklerspray remembers walking out of the cinema still in shock.

3. Happy Gilmore (1998)

After constantly bickering throughout a round of golf. Adam Sandler finally punches Bob Barker in the mouth. It leads to one of the funniest fight scenes in history. “The price is wrong, bitch.”

2. Evil Dead 2

Beaten up by your own hand – what a slap in the face that is. But that’s just what happens to hero Ash after his hand is bitten by one of the, er, evil dead. He thinks he has the final laugh when he cuts off it off with a chainsaw, but that is only the start. Very funny.

1. They Live

We’re pretty sure this is the longest fight sequence in history. It just goes on, and on, and on…

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