Brooks Barnes has a piece in today's New York Times pondering this very question. Barnes points out that stars such as Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell have all starred in big releases that have flopped in recent weeks, which has left studio executives scratching their heads desperately trying to figure out why the doltish masses aren't consuming what Hollywood is trying to force-feed them, just as they've been doing for years.

"The cratering of films with big stars is astounding," said Peter Guber, the former chairman of Sony Pictures who is now a producer and industry elder statesman. "These supertalented people are failing to aggregate a large audience, and everybody is looking for answers."

Mr. Guber added, "Even Johnny Depp" - starring in the drama "Public Enemies" - "didn't exactly deliver a phenomenal result." (The A-list results may be damped partly because Will Smith, a regular summer powerhouse, had no movie open this season.)

Mr. Ferrell bombed in "Land of the Lost," a $100 million comedy that sold only $49 million in tickets in North America. Ms. Roberts missed with "Duplicity," a $60 million thriller that attracted $40.6 million. "Angels & Demons" (Mr. Hanks) was soft. The same for "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (Mr. Washington and Mr. Travolta).

"Imagine That," starring Mr. Murphy, was such a disaster that Paramount Pictures had to take a write-down. Mr. Sandler? His "Funny People" limped out of the gate and then collapsed.

Ha! Well, here's a clue as to what might be wrong: all of the films mentioned here, with the exception of Duplicity, sucked! But of course, their failure to make truckloads of cash is all the fault of modern technology.

"You look around the theater and can see the glow, not on people's faces from watching the movie, but on their chins - from the BlackBerrys and iPhones," said Mr. Guber. "They are immediately telling their friends whether it's worth their time. And the answer to that, more often than not, seems to be no."

So if the big movie star attached to a sub-par product method isn't working at the box office any longer, what's the secret to success? Make a product that's entertaining! The studio heads can sit around and bitch all they want about the internet is destroying their business because I can now blast a tweet from inside of a theater telling everyone how Funny People sucked ass, but that doesn't get to the root of the problem, which is their shitty product. On the flip side, make a movie that entertains people and then they will employ the same online tools to laud it and encourage all of their friends to go see it. You see how that works? Amazing, isn't it?

So how does Hollywood "entertain" people these days? By making films that are well-written and well-acted OR feature storylines that are too fast-moving and complex for most people to understand with massive explosions mixed in every 7 minutes or so. Either make smart films that stimulate and engage the mind or make extreme sensory stimuli films that reduce the mind to a blob of mush tucked inside of a thick skull. That's it. Like I said, it's really quite simple. Either way, just don't suck.

Pic via

After all, we might never experience the geeky, naughty rush of shattering security protocols everywhere from MySpace to Gmail (and then bragging about it later). But when we've got a dumb-ass as spectacularly candid as Holly sharing his road map with us, it's like we can almost smell the SWAT team outside our own door:

Holly told Threat Level he stole about a dozen Cyrus pictures but only published the most provocative ones. He said he got access to Cyrus's Gmail account after obtaining unauthorized access to a MySpace administrative panel where he found passwords for MySpace accounts stored in cleartext. He found the password Cyrus used for her MySpace account — Loco92 — and tried it on a Gmail account Cyrus was known to use. The password worked on that account as well, but only for a couple of weeks before it was changed. [...]

The agents came armed with a dossier of information they'd amassed on his past activities — including online forums he had frequented and spamming activity he'd been involved in more than two years ago, which he said he'd disclosed to only a few people.

"I guess somebody ended up ratting me out," he said.

Hiiiiighly doubtful, especially considering his clear tendency toward painstaking discretion both in interviews and online, where fellow hackers said he'd "been acting like an attention starved 8-year-old." Nevertheless, Holly has yet to be arrested or charged with a crime; investigators are expected to review the evidence, however, just as soon as they've successfully tried their case against Miley's better-known exploiters at Vanity Fair.

• Miley Cyrus Hacker Raided by FBI [Wired.com via Fox News]

After intensely studying the works of Volney Mathison, inventor of the e-meter, and L. Ron Hubbard, who ripped off Mathison to make his own similar meter, I've reached into the future and hacked, ripped off, and refined the e-meters of the past with this Mark 9000 e-meter! The improvements you'll notice right away. And this is handcrafted! And I don't even want to tell you how long it took to make!

On the front you will see that it is a simplified reading from either Mathison's or Scientology's. If there is an engram or a thetan, the meter will show that, and the non-functioning lights will wish they could blink appropriately. Note also that the dial on the lower left goes up to 11! Show me anybody else's meter that goes to 11!

On the inside you will see the technology I have discovered. What better way to detect thetans but with thetans! The green porcine thetan looks for nonhuman entities, and the cute girl/clock thetan looks for human entities. I've used high-tensile ultra-clear tape to ensure that this product is as good as it gets! And the string has a tensile strength of 20 pounds!

One of the cans is a real Campbell's name-brand can, while the other is an off-brand. I did this to create an oscillating tone between the cans that helps wake up the thetans as you hold the cans.

This is the one-of-a-kind prototype, so no warranty is included. But if you have any thetans after 90 days of use, I'll gladly give a refund provided the thetans sign a statement saying "I'm still here, jackass."

So what's a trend-addicted, style-focused bizzer to do? Carry two devices.

"I'll make my booty calls with the iPhone and get reamed in the ass by my boss on my Blackberry," cracked one senior studio exec.

In addition to the many hilarious complications that may arise when the simultaneous buzzing of both phones causes an exec or agent to mix up his booty-calling and ass-reaming devices, accidentally blurring the line between recreational and professional sodomy, carrying an extra device will give quick-triggered bosses a second projectile to fire at an incompetent underling. If a poorly aimed Blackberry crashes harmlessly off the wall, the more aerodynamically designed iPhone will certainly find its target, and its beautiful, scratch-resistant screen is a cinch to wipe clean of an assistant's blood, making it the perfect weapon for the rage-prone man-on-the-go.

• iPhone gets busy signal [Variety]
• Previously: Report: CAA Sends Evil Minions To Camp Out At Century City Apple Store [Defamer]

"We could put Marilyn Monroe alongside Jack Nicholson, or Jack Black, or Jack White," he continued, seated in the conference room where the emoting actress and her avatar shared the screen. "If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that. We can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model. We can create new scenes for old films, or old scenes for new films. We can have one human being drive another human character." [...]

But if Image Metrics can do what it claims, the door may open wider still, to vast, uncharted territories. To some who make the movies, the possibilities may seem disturbing; to others, exciting: Why not bring back Sean Connery, circa 1971, as James Bond? Or let George Clooney star in a movie with his aunt, Rosemary; say, a repurposed "White Christmas" of 1954? Maybe we can have the actual Truman Capote on-screen, performed by an unseen actor, in the next movie version of his life.

Should the idea of mixing and matching stars across decades not prove sufficiently soul-chilling, either to SAG members or to people who don't like their cinematic history fucked with, the article ends with the suggestion that a worst-case-scenario abuse of the technology is already in process:

As for reanimating former movie stars? "That sounds terrific," said Chris deFaria, head of visual effects for Warner Brothers. "I'd love to see it." But, he added, "There are real complexities involved with that."

Undoubtedly so. But at least one former movie star thinks the ideas holds some promise. Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the governor of California, has conducted tests with Image Metrics to use his Conan the Barbarian character in political ads.

If the idea of seeing an attack ad for the upcoming gubernatorial race featuring Conan the Incumbent solemnly responding to a question from a fellow barbarian about what is best in life with, "To crush Phil Angelides, see him driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of his wife, Julie, and his daughters Megan, Christina, and Arianna," isn't enough to inspire you to fire bomb the Image Metrics offices to prevent their black magic from falling into the wrong hands, nothing will.

• Cyberface: New Technology That Captures the Soul [NY Times]

A top producer of hard-core porn will start selling downloadable movies that customers can burn to DVD and watch on their TVs, illustrating how Southern California's multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry may again set the technological pace for Hollywood. [...]

Los Angeles-based Vivid will start selling burnable movies May 8 through online movie service CinemaNow. [...]

Vivid, producer of such titles as "Bad Wives" and "Generation Sex," will offer 30 downloadable videos for about $19.95 apiece that include everything that is on a standard DVD — cover art, scene navigation, bonus material and deleted scenes.

It won't be long before the major studios follow suit with the cross-platform service. (Currently, their feature film downloads are only viewable on a computer.) Of course, having mainstream and XXX entertainment available on the same movie purchase site is only asking for trouble: One wayward click on CinemaNow's catalog could result in you stumbling in on your terrified children watching the hi-def adventures of The Anal Princess Diaries.

• Porn Industry Again at the Tech Forefront [LAT]