GIAMATTI GETS JOBBED. AGAIN.


he's the one hiding in the back.

It was bad and bitter enough that Paul Giamatti got jobbed by the Academy when he didn't get a Best Actor nomination for his fabulous performance as Miles, the broken heart and tortured soul at the center of Alexander Payne's brilliant Sideways. But now he's getting screwed again, this time by the design and marketing crews at 20th Century Fox Home Video.

Take a look at the (pretty crappy) Photoshop job on the cover of the DVD (out this Tuesday):



Who gets the smallest amount of real estate in the banner? Who's set deepest in the image? Who's peeking out from behind the shirts and shoulders of his supporting players?

That's right. The guy who got top billing and played the lead role.

I understand -- and can't really object to -- Virginia Madsen getting such prime cover-age. She's beautiful, she plays the lead love interest, and she emerged as a great draw for the film, both for her performance and for her cinematic comeback story. And Thomas Haden Church was great too. But I have this sneaking suspicion that he's up there -- you know, in the foreground -- less for the merits of his performance than for his familiarity as Lowell on "Wings." (If that is the case -- and far be it for me to criticize marketing flaks who've crunched their numbers and are just trying to sell a few more copies of the disc to people who don't recognize Paul Giamatti from some mediocre sitcom -- shouldn't they at least have used a better photo of the guy? He looks like he's suffering from a bad case of gas.)

I know that the film is billed as a small ensemble piece, but it's still pretty sad that the guy in the lead role, the guy who holds it all together and almost single-handedly makes the movie, has to be relegated to the back of the pack on the cover of the DVD.

Posted: Sun - April 3, 2005 at 08:51 PM          

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