What week for Harvey Weinstein: Win a truckload of Oscars on Sunday, re-up on a PR war with the MPAA on Tuesday, and then today — as his company's other notable French import Intouchables prepares for its U.S. premiere in New York City — start a trans-Atlantic flame war with France's most infamously racist old coot. It's like Linsanity, but for Hollywood megalomaniacs! Weinsanity! And there's more.
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You've heard about Bully, right? The anti-bullying documentary featuring real video of real teenage bullies tormenting real peers, interspersed with experts and victims alike expounding on our ongoing bullying epidemic? Of course you have, because when The Weinstein Company wasn't shoving its 2012 Oscar crop down your throat, it was protesting way too much about a ratings "controversy" that would require youngsters under 17 to attend the doc with a parent or guardian. God forbid! Because the last thing we want is parents and teens watching and ideally discussing a film about bullying, right?
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Congratulations to Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin, whose film Undefeated lived up to its title at last night's Academy Awards by taking home the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Exploring the intersection of class, race and a hard-luck high-school football team, the doc started earning fans a year ago at Sundance South by Southwest — including Harvey Weinstein, who acquired Undefeated on the spot and promptly fast-tracked it for 2012 awards glory. Mission accomplished. The only thing Undefeated didn't do? How about help get three unjustly convicted men — one condemned to die — out of prison?
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"Nothing will come from this if you win!” joked Seth Rogen as he opened his hosting gig at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards. “Absolutely nothing. This won't help you get paid anymore -- if anything, it proves you'll work for nothing.” That may be painfully true for many of the indie film nominees honored today at the annual Spirit Awards, held in a tent on the beach in balmy Santa Monica. But what does it mean that the night’s big winner was the Harvey Weinstein-backed awards season juggernaut The Artist?
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And why? Because they're based on hype. But that's OK, Ben Zauzmer — Harvard freshman, analytical whiz kid and proprietor of the new "matrix algebra"-based awards prognostication site Ben's Oscar Forecast! Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has the science down and is soliciting interns for next year's awards-season death march. Inquire within.
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It's only taken a few years, but the success of director Daniel Espinosa's Safe House means that Harvey Weinstein is finally ready to let the filmmaker's Swedish-language hit Easy Money -- née Snabba Cash -- off his shelf on July 27. The distributor cited the eventual Stateside publication of the film's source novel (as opposed to Safe House's $83 million-and-counting domestic haul) as his motivation: “We love the movie, but we needed the book to be out here,” he told the LAT. Right. As always with Harvey, all release dates are subject to change and/or revocation at any time, so remember to mark your calendars in pencil. [LAT]
Says storied MPAA-fighter Harvey: "I have been compelled by the filmmakers and the children to fight for an exception so we can change this R rating brought on by some bad language. As a father of four, I worry every day about bullying; it’s a serious and ever-present concern for me and my family. I want every child, parent, and educator in America to see Bully, so it is imperative for us to gain a PG-13 rating. It’s better that children see bad language than bad behavior, so my wish is that the MPAA considers the importance of this matter as we make this appeal.” [Press release via IndieWire]
File under the ever-thickening berth labeled "Dirty Oscar-Season Tricks": No sooner did the sun rise on the Academy's final-ballot mailing day than word circulated about the author and publishers of The Reader suing The Weinstein Company for undercompensation. I know, I know -- you're shocked.
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Oh, Harvey: “We have a star in Tom Hardy who’s completely anonymous right now. If you go to a line at the ArcLight nobody would know who he is. [...] He’s going to be a huge movie star by August.” [LAT]
"I love George Clooney's movie, The Ides of March," Harvey Weinstein raved recently when asked for an Academy Award prediction. "I love politics, and this movie is the best political movie -- it's gotta be right up there with the best of the best. Seriously, it is the toughest, most incisive, no-bullshit movie I've seen this year. And [Ryan] Gosling hits it out of the ballpark. And the entire cast is great. Clooney just nailed it. It's an appropriate movie for these times. So Oscar prediction? That that gets nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. And it's not mine." [Vulture]
Earlier today we were tickled by tales of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's genius early '80s sexifying shenanigans, but this afternoon brings allegations of shady accounting and legal chicanery lobbied by none other than former collaborator Michael Moore, who claims the Weinsteins deceived him out of millions in profits from his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Naturally, we wonder: What's this mean for the Oscar race?
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