In the crowded media landscape, it's not easy to create buzz for a new film. It takes years of careful positioning, delicate marketing skills, a well-cultivated grassroots network...Or you can just buy a bunch of bloggers trips to London.
Over the next weeks Hollywood gets its first look at many of the Oscar heavyweights at the Toronto, Venice and Telluride film festivals. But that doesn't hold back the pundits from weighing in today on who owns this race.
If there's a hell, it might look, feel and sound like the slapfight between aggrieved Oscar bloggers Patrick Goldstein, David Poland and Tom O'Neil, who today aired their tired tussle for all the world to overlook. But with your awards-season intelligence at stake, you really mustn't miss a minute of the wheezing action that so influences how Hollywood's biggest prizes are distributed every year. Your highlight reel follows the jump.· Back before the Internet, Patrick Goldstein used to sit at an old-fashioned typewriter and daydream and have the whooooole Oscar beat to himself at the LA Times. Then came bloggers, whom he couldn't read on his typewriter. Word got back to him they were writing about the Academy Awards! The effrontery! Grumpy Goldie upgraded and eventually wound up blogging himself, culminating in today's bitter screed arguing: "Anyone who doesn't believe that the Oscars haven't been thoroughly hijacked by a gang of daffy, clown-suit-clad Oscar bloggers making endlessly moronic best picture predictions just hasn't been paying attention." He specifically referred to political commentary like yesterday's insane EW item "How Obama Helps Batman," but the point was clear: Patrick misses his typewriter! · Not one to back down from an opportunity to write 5,000 words of self-defense from a piece where he isn't even mentioned, early blog adapter David Poland fired back:
Unless it results in an extra getting thrown off the set of Transformers 2 for lunch crimes against Michael Bay, we're not generally in the blog-comment monitoring business. But some flame wars are so spectacular (and some news days so implacably slow) they defy ignoring — especially when obvious intoxication is involved, and especially when the offending party himself is the only one around to catch fire.
· It's hard for us to fathom what it would be like to be 13 years old and related to Denise Richards. On one hand, holy hot aunt! On the other hand, there's moments like this, when Aunt Denise forces you into a conversation about her on-camera romps with Neve Campbell and the time she posed for Playboy. Awkward! [E!]
· Long-time rivals Jeffrey Wells and David Poland bury the hatchet long enough for Wells to wish Poland congratulations on getting married over the weekend. Well, sort of. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
· Either Katie Holmes and daughter Suri just got back from a Parisian bistro or they've got a big interview lined up at Foot Locker tomorrow. [ONTD]
· Videogum said it best, so we'll quote them: "Has Batman ever danced with the Batman in the pale moon light?" The answer is, unsurprisingly, yes. [Videogum]
· Adrian Grenier will surely "blank" the "blank" out of whatever club is willing to pay him $50,000 for the honors of hosting his upcoming birthday party. [Page Six]
