Word: hollywoodism
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Contacted yesterday, students lauded Mitchell’s accessibility and ability to bring Hollywood professionals to the class...
...ancient impregnable city that was destroyed partly by its overreaching. The makers of Troy can probably sympathize. The movie was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, a skilled filmmaker who suffers from one fairly serious flaw: he is insane. His insanity is not crippling; since moving from Germany to Hollywood in 1987, Petersen has managed to make such bankable fare as In the Line of Fire, Air Force One and The Perfect Storm. But his condition is chronic, and its occurrences are memorable. "You know, I am amazed a bit by the proportion of Brad Pitt's pectoral muscles," he says...
Despite Horn's sangfroid, there is no guarantee that Troy will be a hit. Summer blockbusters have become the riskiest investment in the film business. In his book Hollywood Economics, economist Arthur De Vany analyzed 2,015 movies to determine what succeeds and what fails. The answer, best summarized by screenwriter William Goldman, is that "nobody knows anything." What De Vany did learn is that moviegoers behave according to the principles of Bose-Einstein condensation--a fancy way of saying they are more likely to go to a movie if they receive an "authentic signal" that other people have enjoyed...
Horn insists Troy is a safe bet when home-video and foreign-box-office revenues are factored in, but even he admits there's risk. So why make such a sprawling hydra of a movie and throw it into Hollywood's most competitive season? In part because no one knows anything. Troy could be a monster hit. But for everyone from Petersen and Horn to the lowliest production assistant, the audacity of the enterprise is, in large part, the point. "As an actor [on a movie like this], you get to feel like you're an explorer," says Bana...
...brutal Roman occupation, were virtually powerless. Centuries later, after the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, blame was shifted from the Roman Pontius Pilate onto the Jews. That was a clear case of rewriting history, and we Jews have suffered terribly as a result. Jesus would overturn the tables of the Hollywood money changers in shock and anger if he knew what a travesty had been made of his life in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. DAVID ZOHAR Jerusalem...