Word: katzenberg
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...entertainment industry heavyweights and Hollywood's Democratic powerbrokers. "I call this the courting phase," says Los Angeles political consultant Andy Spahn, who gets a call almost every day from a politician or his aide inquiring about a meeting with his clients, the Dreamworks power bloc of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen...
...When Aardman made Chicken Run, its first film sponsored by DreamWorks, Park and Lord talked about the visits Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks' animation chief, made to Bristol. Katzenberg would make his points, at an American force and volume, then Park and Lord would nod politely and continue doing what they wanted. Katzenberg basically bought the right to be ignored graciously...
...This time, it appears, Katzenberg was in charge. The movie's pulse races, compared to the tempo of Chicken Run. The film teems with pop-cultural allusions, referencing Finding Nemo (a small fish asking "Have you seen my dad?") and Monty Python & the Holy Grail (a mosquito that finds itself on Toad's tongue and shouts, "Run away!"). Roddy's groin takes quite a pummeling; that's less Wallace and Gromit than Larry, Curly and Moe. The script, like those of many a DreamWorks animated movie, seems assembled from a brainstorming super-session, in which bright guys spit out funny...
...Rabbit, determined to celebrate their vegetable festival as they've done for 500 years. Aardman is a business, and with Were-Rabbit earning only half the box office cash of Chicken Run, DreamWorks will want to protect its investment; Park and Lord will have to listen more attentively to Katzenberg. (He is unlikely, for example, to approve another Wallace and Gromit feature after the first one tanked...
...helping to revive UA as an artist-led studio, Cruise will be the latest entrant in an old-school Hollywood tradition. Like Chaplin's original vision, Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope and Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg's Dreamworks SKG (now owned by those baddies at Viacom), Cruise's UA will, apparently, attempt to nurture a creative environment for filmmakers. In an ever-more bottom-line-conscious era of movie-making, it sounds like an impossible mission. But then, we hear this guy has experience with that sort of thing...