Martin Grove says there was applause at the Cannes screening, not
hissing and booing.\




The backlash begins (from Hollywood Reporter) -

May 18, 2006


'Da Vinci': U.S. critics need to look beyond Cannes

By Martin A. Grove

Cannes critics: Hollywood's love-hate relationship with movie critics
is leaner on love and heavier on hate these days, especially after
Sony's press screening of "The Da Vinci Code" earlier this week at the
Cannes Film Festival.

Within hours of the "Da Vinci" showing that ended Tuesday night about
11 o'clock in France, ultra-negative wire service stories were circling
the globe reporting on reactions at the screening and quoting some of
those on hand. Reuters' story was headlined "Cannes Critics Left Cold
at 'Da Vinci Code' Screening" while the AP said "'Da Vinci Code' Misses
the Mark for Critics." These articles prompted widespread coverage in
newspapers and on the Internet of the bleak reception given to "Da
Vinci" by the international critics.

These and other stories spread like wildfire on the Web. On the Drudge
Report, for example, there were links to articles about that screening
with headlines like: "JEERING, LAUGHTER AT 'DA VINCI'...CANNES CRITICS
LEFT COLD ...'A stodgy, grim thing' ... 'Hanks was a
zombie'...'Bloated'... Ron Howard Answers Critics ..."

That last item about Howard answering critics, by the way, did not
pertain to movie critics, but rather to people who are critical of the
film because they're unhappy with the version of Christian history that
Dan Brown set forth in his best selling novel upon which the movie from
Columbia Pictures and Imagine Entertainment is based. A Reuters story
Thursday, however, quoted Howard's reactions to the bad Cannes reviews
and was headlined "'Da Vinci Code' reviews 'frustrating,' says
director."

Produced by Brian Grazier and John Calley, "Da Vinci's" screenplay is
by Akiva Goldsman. Besides Hanks, the film stars Audrey Tautou, Ian
McKellen, Alfred Molina and Jurgen Prochnow with Paul Bettany and Jean
Reno. It was executive produced by Todd Hallowell and Brown.

Reading the wire service reports and some of the first reviews to
surface after the film was shown to French and other international
critics in Cannes the question that came immediately to mind was
whether that bad press in Cannes will hurt "Da Vinci's" domestic
release. In particular, will the fact that those early notices are
nasty ones influence critics here in the U.S. when they sit down to
write their own reviews? That's not something any critic is likely to
acknowledge as a factor that would affect their judgment, but am I the
only person who's wondering right now if it's going to be a problem?

After all, there's no question that negative opinions are highly
contagious in the Internet world in which we now live. Will the Cannes
reviews make it unfashionable for U.S. critics to say anything good
about "Da Vinci"? That thought came to mind Wednesday night when I was
waiting to see "Da Vinci" at Sony's Cinerama Dome all-media screening:
"Would the Hollywood media pack hiss and snarl the way their French and
international colleagues apparently did at Cannes? And would they laugh
out loud when they shouldn't be laughing?" As it turns out, happily,
the answer is, "No, they did not." In fact, the film actually played
pretty well with laughter in the right places and none where it wasn't
appropriate.

Not only was there no hissing or booing or rude behavior during the
screening, but there was a decent round of applause afterwards. No,
they certainly didn't give it a rousing ovation, but it did get
respectable applause -- and from a media audience that's rarely
generous with applause. Will that reaction be reflected in the film's
reviews? I don't know what those on hand Wednesday night will wind up
writing or saying about "Da Vinci," but it didn't appear that they
hated it the way people apparently did in Cannes. Nonetheless, as I'm
writing this the film has only a 17% score on the Rotten Tomatoes'
Tomatometer and that's far from "fresh." Of course, that could change
since it's based on a very small sample at this point of just 48
reviews with 40 of them being considered "rotten." The mix could
improve when more critics have been heard from.

If I had to guess -- which I do since there's no way to know as I'm
writing Thursday evening what's actually going to happen at the weekend
boxoffice -- I'd say that given "Da Vinci's" through the roof tracking
numbers it's probably too late in the game now for reviews to hurt its
Friday opening. Speculation about it doing $60 million or more
domestically this weekend sounds reasonable given the book's tremendous
readership and the widespread attention the film's received thanks to
the controversy it's stirred up. Controversy definitely is a plus point
in driving people to the boxoffice these days and when the Vatican
comes out swinging against a film it's more likely to make people
curious about seeing it than prompt them to toe the line and stay home.

In its marketing Sony did a terrific job of positioning the film for
release as a much anticipated adaptation of an enormously popular book.
The studio was smart to keep the movie under wraps and not show it
early to opinion makers who might then have compared it unfavorably to
the book. There was absolutely nothing to be gained by screening it and
it's unfortunate that it had to be shown to the press in Cannes (but to
have not done so would probably have provoked even worse media
coverage). Sony was particularly smart to have planned its domestic
release so that the long Memorial Day holiday weekend is "Da Vinci's"
second weekend in theaters. The film should benefit from a Memorial Day
weekend boxoffice jolt since the only new release over the holiday is
20th Century Fox's "X-Men: The Last Stand," a comic book franchise
targeted to younger audiences while "Da Vinci's" primary appeal will be
to adults. That holiday playing time should help keep the movie's
boxoffice momentum going. After that, of course, the picture will be on
its own and it will be word of mouth not reviews that's critically
important.

There's a lot riding on "Da Vinci's" success not only for Sony but also
for Hollywood in general. The industry needs to start generating some
new blockbusters to heat up this summer's boxoffice and avoid having to
cope with another series of summer slump stories. Paramount's "Mission:
Impossible III" fell short of early expectations, possibly because the
public's become disenchanted with Tom Cruise's new taste for
uncontrolled self-expression. Nonetheless, "M: I3" has already done
about $92 million going into this weekend and that's far from being
terrible. Warner Bros.' "Poseidon," on the other hand, isn't making big
boxoffice waves and faces competition from a flotilla of big new films
on the horizon.

"Da Vinci," on the other hand, has been talked about for months as
having the potential to help turn the boxoffice around and a lot of
Hollywood hopes -- not just at Sony -- are pinned on it. For the public
to resume active moviegoing there must be films playing that they want
to see. "Da Vinci" was considered to be a great example of such a movie
because it had brand name recognition as a book, a well-liked and
well-behaved superstar in Tom Hanks and an Oscar-winning director in
Ron Howard. A critical drubbing, however, could cancel that out.

The confrontation with the critics actually points up the difficult
relationship that now exists between the studios and reviewers. In the
past, movies were thought to be critic-proof because word of mouth from
friends was more important than something people read in newspapers.
Today, however, the Internet has changed everything. You no longer have
to actually read reviews to know what they say. There are Web sites
like Rotten Tomatoes that sum it all up and make it instantly
accessible to anyone who wants to know what the critics think. In doing
so, equal weight is given to critics who are knowledgeable and to those
who are idiots and to those who are with major media outlets and those
who appear in insignificant publications or on low traffic web sites.

In the age of the blog, all voices are heard at about the same volume.
Without actually reading any reviews people can get a sense from
surfing the web of how reviewers as a group feel about new films.
People also draw conclusions from widespread reports about the weekend
boxoffice. If a film opens to big grosses, clearly that's a film
everybody's going to see and, therefore, it's one that shouldn't be
missed. On the other hand, if a movie opens poorly it means that
everybody else knows it's a turkey and there's nothing to be gained by
going to see it. Or so people now think.

The days in which people made up their own minds about movies they
thought they'd enjoy seeing are long gone. With limited free time
available in which to see movies and with the cost of moviegoing having
gone way up, its no wonder that moviegoers are thinking like consumers
when they decide what to see or whether to see anything at all. There
are so many other choices available to us now to be entertained less
expensively at home -- including, hundreds of cable and satellite
channels, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, TiVo, DVDs, video games, iPod
downloads and surfing the Internet -- that moviegoing is now just one
of many possibilities.

Hollywood has been a major source of consumer newspaper advertising for
many years. To accommodate those ads newspapers run sections filled
with features about new movies and then publish reviews of them. But as
reviewers increasingly turn their backs on mainstream Hollywood movies
in favor of small, specialized, artier dramas with limited appeal,
there's less value for Hollywood associated with consumer newspaper
movie coverage. In fact, one can argue that less coverage of new movies
in consumer newspapers would actually be better for Hollywood. With
consumer newspaper circulations declining in general, fewer people are
now getting their moviegoing information this way. When they want
details about show times they go to the Internet and, in fact, that's
where they're increasingly purchasing their tickets. Hollywood's
marketing money would be better spent on the Internet and in other
alternative media than in consumer newspapers.

In fact, it appears that the ability consumer media critics really have
these days is a negative one. They have more power to keep people from
going to movies than getting them to go and buy tickets. The public
seems more willing to believe on the negative side where a critic says
a film's bad and a waste of time and money than on the positive side
where a critic says he or she liked a film and, therefore, someone else
should now spend time and money to see it.

In article <8ZWdnfZs1_JAzPLZnZ2dnUVZ_tCdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Middlebrow <uhm@nothanks.pal> wrote:

"Puzzla" <puzzla@puzzla.net> wrote in message
news:K1Ibg.79316$H71.64414@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

Is their faith on such shaky ground that they have to tell people to see
or not to see a MOVIE? I never understood the reasoning behind such
declarations.

I suspect every culture that survives for as long as the Catholic Church has
is necessarily paranoid. Centuries of persecution, real and imagined, will
do that to you.

In the case of the Roman church, to be sure, they also have to worry about
the descendants of victims of _their_ very real and bloody persecutions
deciding it's payback time. Haven't you noticed how many Muslim
denunciations of the West refer to EuropoAmericans as "crusaders"?