In May 2006, exactly two years ago, film distributors in Israel decided to wage war on local movie critics. They wanted to stop critics and magazines from running reviews on opening weekends, claiming that bad reviews are hurting their box office business and that journalists should give movies at least 3 days grace period and run the reviews on the Sunday following opening weekend. Trying to reason with the distributors, and telling them that in the age of broadband internet you can read the review of any movie online weeks before it’s premiere fell flat on tin ears. When asked what is the logic behind such a move, when the film business is moving into the globalization mode of day-and-date release and marketing, a distributor proxy said “we will turn the clock backwards”. Meaning that modern film practices, in exhibition and distribution, mean nothing to those banning Israeli distributors (indeed, they are also the last to employ digital projection in Israel).

Most distributors folded their ban within 2-3 months, some did so after the studios they represent heard of it and went ballistic. But two major distributors are adamant with their ban, and are at it for two years now. They are the distributors that represent Disney, 20th Century Fox, Sony, Miramax, New Line and The Weinstein Company.

Indeed, some blockbusters don’t need any reviews to succeed. “Enchanted”, for instance, was released in Israel without any press coverage and did just fine. But Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” was idiotically released without reviews and did poorly.

“Deadline Hollywood” blogger Nikki Finke wrote about this moronic ban a year ago here and here. Variety’s Ali Jaafar wrote about the ban almost n real time. Even David Poland commented on it.

Israeli distributors are also Israel’s movie chain owners - with two companies controlling most of the screens and titles in what may seem as a virtual cartel (though no evidence to an actual cartel was ever substantiated) - so their hold on the film business is tight. There is no one to tell them what to do. The banning distribution company, Forum Film - a family business operating since the 1940’s - also has some gentleman’s club clout with major Hollywood business, with whom they deal for decades and who obviously look away.

But apart from not letting movie critics do their job properly - writing a review in a print paper or online, has a lot to do with the timing of the publishing as it does the content of the writing - this ban elucidates the impotence of most newspaper editors who are willing to see their critics banned from screening (or worse: letting their critics attend preview screening and promising the distributor they would wait the weekend before running the review) just not to hurt their chances of getting a roundtable interview in a junket with the big star of an upcoming blockbuster.

It also shows how much of an ego power-trip this entire ban is. Because not only are reviews (indeed in English, and not in Hebrew) available online - on movie blogs and sites such as Variety - a week before a film’s release, but online critics in Israel could easily buy a ticket to see the morning show of a new movie (films are released here on Thursdays) and have a review up by noon, so the ban is actually pointless. (Although I am one the banned critics, both my online blog in Hebrew and my print column has been mostly unaffected by the ban, either by writing on opening day online, after a morning matinée, or writing in print with the aid of screeners sent to me by colleagues abroad. (I have to really not care about a movie to let it slide, as I did with “What Happens in Vegas” yesterday: the movie was released here with zero publicity, no billboards, nothing except a quarter page ad in a newspaper, and I found it not interesting enough to go see it on opening day).

So what’s the point? Ego. Power. Trying to prove they are allnighty, and having the ability to make newspaper publishers kneel in front of them and succomb to their might. And thus they have succeeded.

So in the upcoming summer season Israeli newspaper readers may read a junket interview with Will Smith in one magazine (that’s the way it goes here: if one magazine gets it, the others don’t), but they won’t know what “Hancock” is actually about, or whether it’s any good. And the same goes for Disney/Pixar’s “Wall-E”, and also “Narnia: Prince Caspian” and “Sex and the City”. I will admit that the latter movies will be huge here even without reviews, but superhero movies perform mediocerly at best with the Israeli teens, so no reviews means also almost zero visibility for a major release (last summer “Ratatouille” was huge in Israel but “Spiderman 3″ did poorly, in relation to its worldwide success - both films were banned from critics on opening weekend).

But assisting in the movie’s financial prospects is a side-affect of film reviews. This is, ultimately, another example of  corporations shutting out the media. And because as far as I know they do not manufacture Uranium in Israeli multiplexes it is not done to protect state secrets. Just to show who’s really the boss here. And it’s not the press or the freedom of the press.