Film industry worries about lack of Oscar films
2000-12-01

People Night Shyamalan Kevin Costner Ben Stiller Billy Bob Thornton Robert De Niro Steven Soderbergh Michael Douglas Matt Damon Bruce Willis Sean Connery Nicolas Cage Ang Lee Mel Gibson Tom Hanks Catherine Zeta Jones Movie All The Pretty Horses Legend of Bagger Vance, The Men of Honor Charlie's Angels Pay it Forward Remember the Titans Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Good Will Hunting The English Patient The Green Mile American Beauty Shakespeare in Love

LOS ANGELES - Following a long tradition, Hollywood plans a grand finale of film openings over the next month as studios hope to improve on what some experts say is the worst year for high-quality movies in recent memory.

Over the past several weeks, there has been a lot of grousing around Tinseltown about the lack of good films ushered into theaters by the major studios and the absence of "Oscar-quality" films from the recent slate of fall titles.

Movies like "The Legend of Bagger Vance," "Men of Honor" and "Pay it Forward" -- being hyped by studio marketing teams as potential Academy Award winners in March -- failed to score big with audiences.

So here come the holidays, Hollywood's last-ditch effort to premiere films with big-name stars like the upcoming "Cast Away" with Tom Hanks. Smaller films such as "Quills" that have a chance at wider recognition also will be released.

Has 2000 truly been a bad year?

"They say that every year," Los Angeles Times box office watcher Richard Natale said. "You can't win."

Indeed, 1999 was a banner year for Hollywood studios with record box office sales of about $7.5 billion and a host of fine films like best picture Oscar winner "American Beauty." By this time last year, audiences had yet to see other top films like "The Cider House Rules" and "The Green Mile."

A lot of attention was paid to slipping ticket sales in late August and September this year, and many industry pundits were predicting a horrible holiday season ahead. But that gloomy picture brightened in October with strong box office performances from surprise hit "Remember the Titans," the Robert De Niro/Ben Stiller comedy "Meet the Parents," and this month's "Charlie's Angels" and "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

Heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, movie ticket receipts inched ahead of last year's record pace with $6.61 billion vs. $6.56 billion at this point in 1999, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Inc. Total attendance is down about three percent, but the average ticket price appears to be slightly higher at $5.25 vs. $5.08.

"Let's put it this way: statistically we are dead even" with 1999, said Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian, making it sound like a presidential contest.

"It's been a year of ups and downs, but we're starting to see more people get interested in movies again," he said.

The holiday movie-going period began Wednesday when Disney's "102 Dalmations" starring Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil took on the "Grinch" and "Rugrats in Paris" in a bid for the attention of kids and parents.

Ghostly thriller "Sixth Sense" was one of last year's surprise hits, and its director M. Night Shyamalan and star Bruce Willis team again in the supernatural tale of a train wreck survivor in "Unbreakable."

"Quills," based on an award-winning stage play, also opened in several cities this weekend and will see a wider release later. It stars Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade in a fictional account of Sade's effect on people.

BIG-BUDGET DRAMAS

Big-budget dramas down the road include "Finding Forrester" -- industry watchers are calling it this year's "Good Will Hunting" -- starring Sean Connery as a reclusive author shepherding several young kids.

"Cast Away," starring Tom Hanks as a shipwrecked man, opens in time for the Christmas weekend along with Kevin Costner's drama "13 Days," chronicling the 13 days in which President John F. Kennedy's administration led the United States through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"Most movies made in Hollywood are about men who want to fight, but this is a movie about men struggling not to fight," producer Armyan Bernstein told reporters recently.

All three dramas will get a big Oscar push from their respective studios.

Miramax Films, after a host of recent winners such as "Shakespeare in Love " and "The English Patient," may garner yet another Oscar. This year, the studio has two films, "Chocolat," a romantic tale about the owner of a small town's chocolate store and a tourist who finds he can't get enough of a sweet thing, and Billy Bob Thornton's screen adaptation of the 1992 novel "All the Pretty Horses," starring Matt Damon.

Among the small films looking for some Oscar attention are "Quills," director Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" starring newlyweds Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and writer David Mamet's satire of Tinseltown, "State and Main."

A lot of noise is coming from Ang Lee's martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and supernatural thriller "The Gift" is scaring up some buzz, too.

Finally, as "Meet the Parents" has shown, moviegoers love comedies. Among the films up for laughs is "Family Man" starring Nicolas Cage as a hard-charging business executive who awakes Christmas morning in an alternative life as a suburban husband with a loving wife (Tea Leoni) and child. "What Women Want" has Mel Gibson playing a male chauvinist who, through a fluke of nature, suddenly is able to hear what women think about him.