Slate, the online magazine, did an informal survey of its readers to find out which was the most ordered and not watched movie among them. The concensus? HOTEL RWANDA. The much-lauded Don Cheadle movie based on a true story is in the top ten most popular rentals at Netflix, and apparently also the one most often guiltily sent back without ever seeing the inside of of a DVD player. Good news if you’re bugged by scratched DVDs - HOTEL RWANDA is probably always in mint condition!

Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey told me the company doesn’t keep track of which movies its subscribers hold onto the longest but said he wouldn’t be surprised if Hotel Rwanda was the one. He confessed he’s been sitting on a copy since September 2006.

I’m guilty of this kind of thing myself, but not lately. In the last 90 days I’ve watched everything I ordered. The one I wish I’d returned without watching was IDIOCRACY, which depressed and frightened me. Maybe I’ll feel the same about WALL-E. But God knows I’ve sent back plenty of material, from foreign classics to studio blockbusters.  In fact, here’s a list:

GHOST RIDER
ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
DEAD MAN
THE THIRD MAN
CONTROL ROOM
FINDING NEMO

As you can see, my rejection tastes are very eclectic.  I got a documentary, a classic, a couple of huge hits, and a couple of quirky independents. And come to think of it, I started to watch DEAD MAN but fell asleep.

I can’t speak to Netflix as a business model, but it has revolutionized the renting of movies. It allows you to consider renting any number of things that you would never go near if you had to pay for them individually. If you never go near them once you’ve rented them anyway, that’s your problem.

-daniel k.

Box Office Weekly #107 (MP3 - 15 MB - 22 min)

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In today’s show, weekend box office figures, TV ratings and these stories: The best awards show this weekend took place in a magic shop in Santa Monica… A British theatre chain is cruel to an old, old man… and in this week’s commentary Skot lays his Academy Awards observations on the table like a bowl of uneaten pretzels. All this and Dennis Quaid - the poor man’s Harrison Ford, today on Box Office Weekly.

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BOX OFFICE FIGURES (Courtesy BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TV RATINGS (Courtesy A.C. Nielsen Company)

STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING: IN A PERFECT WORLD, THEY’D HAVE TO ACCEPT IN PERSON

I’M YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE, SAY EXHIBITORS

PILOT DOWN!

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There is a British pub in Woodland Hills called The White Harte, and Sunday night they held an Academy Awards viewing party. I wouldn’t normally plug a local place like that but they presented me with a faux Oscar for correctly predicting the best picture award. When pressed for a speech I made a strangulated noise in the back of my throat, then added that I would post the list of people I need to thank in the trades next Tuesday.

This is the first time I’ve gone public to watch the 3 plus hour ceremony. In the past I’ve watched at home, or gone to a party sometimes held by an actress friend of mine. At that venue the guest list is usually half gay men, and believe me when I tell you that the Oscars are indeed the Gay Superbowl. The sports analogy was even more pronounced at the pub. The event was presented on a widescreen TV which was, indeed, a square picture stretched out to fit. I sucessfully corrected the aspect ratio there and was awarded a plate of chips (french fries, you yanks call them) for my troubles. The waitress who brought them to me, by the way, looked remarkably like Ally Landry, the Doritos babe who was so popular with Superbowl commercial viewers. She brought me the chips, I washed them down with a pint of Guinness, and watched the Brits walk away with all our precious awards.

Not that it matters who wins. This is the year that I realized why I watch this infomercial in the first place. The fashion doesn’t interest me, and i don’t care who walks away with the statue except for the editors and screenwriters. But the presentation allows a thousand tiny details, glimpses into the state of the industry.

This was the year of the obscure. For the first time in my memory, the special award went to an old dude who you HAVEN’T heard of. Robert Boyle, an art director for Hitchcock, and I just had to read through the liveblog on the Academy’s own site to find the name. He’s not even listed on the front page. The most obscure winners of real awards, that Irish songwriting duo from ONCE, were given the extraordinary courtesy of being allowed to come back on and complete a speech after being cut off. Best Actress went to Tilda Swinton, an actress so obscure that when I told people in another bar who won I had to repeat her name, then the name of the movie she was in, then George Clooney’s name. And Tilda’s been appearing in stuff for almost twenty years now. You’ve seen her, you just don’t know it yet.

Could this be the industry acknowleging that the days of the monolithic big studio system is finally coming to an end?

Other things - what was up with the slippery spot on the way to the stage right podium? Both Colin Farrell and John “Mr. Graceful” Travolta neary slid into the front row on their way to that mic. It was unusual, but probably doesn’t bode anything for the industry.

What was usual was the incredible lack of nomination-worthy songs. This catagory was conceived when musicals were a genre to be reckoned with. This year it appears there was only one big musical - ENCHANTED, and they mined it for three numbers. If they didn’t work perhaps its because they were all conceived ironically. AUGUST RUSH offered a pallid gospel number which only served as evidence that apparently last year, someone released AUGUST RUSH. ONCE? News to me. Those two seemed like nice kids though, huh?

As funny as it was to see Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill pretending to be Halle Berry and Dame Judi Densch, it needed a punchline. I’d have liked to have seen Dame Judi Densch and Halle Berry come out in black wigs and glasses. Maybe next year.

I’m in love with Diablo Cody and I’m thrilled that she picked up a stauette for JUNO, and If I ever meet her I’m going to slip a five into her waistband.

- daniel k

• There was a general tone of weariness about the whole affair. After the long, drawn-out , contentious WGA strike, there is probably a need in The Industry for something light, traditional, conciliatory and uncontroversial. I know the feeling: After a protracted squabble or grinding contretemps I wouldn’t want to sit down and watch three hours of churlishness, egomania and excessively strong lighting. I would prefer a pleasant evening watching a well-controlled, predictably glitzy affair.

• Jon Stewart did a fine job, alternating between constrained comedy and plain niceness. He said nice stuff about award winners after the breaks. He may have had a hand in getting Markéta Irglová back up on stage for another shot at her cut-off acceptance speech. He may have been holding his barbs back because, due to the truncated prep time available, he didn’t have a volume of barbed material to fall back on.

• The opening montage was awful, a mash-up of film character clips CG’d into a driving game. Frenetic, pointless and poorly made.

• Humility– Something I merely hoped would begin to return to Hollywood as a result of the strike– seems to be making a serious comeback. Marion Cotillard’s acceptance speech was so heartfelt and touching it almost made me cry. Ethan and Joel Coen kept it very simple (Especially after the clip montage of winning directors showing, among others, James Cameron proclaiming himself “King of the World.” Did that really happen?) Javier Bardem brought his mom. Awww. Even Scott Rudin managed to keep his ego to just a few times larger than average.

Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno, was a genuine surprise– but not just because she won (The screenplay for Juno was pretty good: Excellent thematics, well-crafted narrative structure, but grating dialog. But as the stilted “Buffy” slash “Gilmore-Girls” style dialog is the film’s gimmick as much as it’s teen pregnancy plot). Diablo Cody’s common definition as a “stripper turned blogger turned screenwriter” was getting so annoying I was beginning to lump her in with Sofia Coppola, as just another indie hipster who would probably deliver an incoherent, glib, Juno-like acceptance speech. But no– she held back the tears and operated under the two emotional states most appropriate to the evening’s general tone: gratitude and humility. More power to ya, Ms. Cody. As Tim Goodman from SFGate said of her, “she’s a perfect example that no matter who you are, if you turn on a pitch and get all of it, you can go places.”

• No Country For Old Men, the film I wanted to take best picture, took it. Yay.

• Most people I have talked to about the Oscar telecast thought it was a snoozer. I personally liked it’s stripped-down presentation. If a few more hard decisions were made early on, I’ll bet it could have come in under 2.5 hours.

• I don’t know if this is indicative of the sort of film year it has been or some other factor I can’t even fathom: We threw an Oscar-viewing party this year, but nobody showed up– Every invitee claimed force majeure due to illness. It was just me and my wife, the sole audience for my witty observations. I’m out about $90 in groceries and booze, money I hoped to make back by taking the betting pool. Well, the booze won’t go to waste.

–Skot C.

The Golden Raspberry Awards celebrated its 28th year this morning. The brainchild of the (some say) fiendish John Wilson, the Razzies are a response to the bloated self-importance of award season. It’s an annual reminder that beautiful and talented people are as capable of mistakes as ugly untalented people like us. The award costs $4.98 to make and most of that goes to gold spray paint.

This year, Eddie Murphy finally got closure. They say that he lost his DREAMGIRLS Oscar last year because of his work in NORBIT, which came out in January. Well, he had a Razzie windfall for that movie. He won Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actress (he played the male lead AND the lead’s obese wife) and Worst Supporting Actor, for the racially insensitive portrayal of Mr. Wong.

Normally the Razzie to watch for is Worst Screen Couple, and you’d think Murphy would have had that one sewn up. However, he lost the dishonor to Lindsay Lohan, who played twins or something in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME. This one was the motherlode for Razzie fans; to quote the press release:

KILLED ME copped the awards as Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie and Worst Remake or Rip-Off (where it competed as both a rip-off of the HOSTEL and SAW teen-torture-porn movies and an oddball remake of the 1960s sitcom THE PATTY DUKE SHOW).

Additionally, she tied with herself as best actress, so they gave the award to both of her.

I love the Razzies. For one thing they’re reliable - I knew the show would go on because since no one involved has a prayer of getting a job in showbiz, the strike doesn’t affect it. But more importantly it’s a refreshing tonic to the intoxicating cocktail of big stars. They never pick on people who haven’t made it big, only the ones who have and who, maybe, don’t really deserve it. This is why Stallone was such a Razzie stalwart in the eighties and nineties. I wish I’d gone to the ceremony this morning, but at that hour of the morning, Santa Monica is a long long drive.