WHAT A VERY GOOD QUESTION! Even though we have Christopher Masterson's photo as "Mr. Bowen" from Cutthroat Island we don't have any other information from that movie, even though it was well-written-up in On Location, On Production and other publications which you would expect people like us to read. UNFORTUNATELY, the people at M.G.M. were EXTREMELY UNCOOPERATIVE about supplying us with a press kit, even though we were assured on several occasions that one would be sent to us immediately, and even though the Shea-man wrote directly to Frank Mancuso (CEO of M.G.M.) complaining about getting nothing on the film despite the repeated assurances of his employees. Soooo . . . all we have to say about Cutthroat Island is that it looks as though it might have been an impressive theatrical film, but for home video it has been panned-and- scanned (or "scanned-and-panned" in our book) and looks like fish dung. We suggest that you enjoy whatever stills you see of the supporting cast members because the film-to-video scanner did a neat job of focusing on the center of the screen and cutting off the sides of anyone to the left or right of center (which generally included "Mr. Bowen"). We put this on our main page instead of on a linked document because we would really like M.G.M. to know that not only are we pissed off at them, but we are quite happy to share our displeasure with the whole world.
(Bitching about M.G.M., we will say that, having seen a preview of their new James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, we can honestly say that it looks . . . LOUD. We suggest that you save $8.00 by simply placing a lit firecracker in a steel can and holding it next to your ear while staring at the sun -- you'll get the same audio-visual effects without the hassle of going to the movies. You'll probably get a better story out of it, too, from what we can tell.) Rating: NW8.
. . . we would like to thank the people at Dimension Films, Miramax, Touchstone, Buena Vista (notice a pattern there, industry observers?), Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and some other studios and production companies who have been very helpful to us over the last few years as we have endeavoured to bring YOU the inside skinny on certain films and television shows (and not "just" our own opinions).
The continuing luvfest: the nice people at Miramax having messengered us some info on Chasing Amy, we may now share with you that, in addition to the usual suspects, brother Casey Affleck was in it, as was Ben's co-writer and co-star of the upcoming Gus Van Sant-directed Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon. (Gods, we just LUV these Miramax people!) Further apropos of Chasing Amy, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert have both raved about how good it is.
(Speaking of rave reviews, those of you who have read the Shea-man's review of Scream should not be surprised that he began that review with a question to the effect of, "Why would anybody bother to review a movie which has been out for weeks?" Well, Scream had been out for six months when it was RETURNED to wide release, and, as of the third week in June, Scream had returned to number SIXTEEN in U.S. box office receipts, despite the release of its video! As an incentive for you to see it again and again and . . ., we have beefed-up the links between our review and other sites on the Web. We are not being paid for this, by the way; we never even got an autographed photo of Matthew Lillard, and Liv Tyler never drops in to schmooze.)
