R.I.P. Miramax

[Grubert]

From The Wrap:

It’s been a slow death, but Miramax dies on Thursday.

The New York and Los Angeles offices of the arthouse movie studio owned by Disney will close.

Eighty people will lose their jobs. The six movies waiting distribution -- "Last Night," "The Debt," "The Tempest” among them -- will be shelved, to gather dust, or win a tepid release.

It’s not clear that anyone at the studio will care.

But a lot of other people around the movie business mourned the impending loss of a label that once set the bar for taste and artistry.

Over 31 years, the movie company that for most of its existence was led by founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein brought the public enduring stories that plumbed the depths of human emotion (“My Left Foot”) and pushed the boundaries of cultural barriers (“Reservoir Dogs”).

When we think of the movies that defined the latter part of the 20th century -- the movies that mattered, that stories that hit pop culture like a hammer and left a dent -- more often than not they came from Miramax.

“The Piano.” “Pulp Fiction.” “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” “Clerks.” “The English Patient.” (See slideshow.)

All too often, we may find ourselves saying: Why doesn’t Hollywood make those movies anymore?

Maybe the movie industry doesn’t know how to. Miramax, for well over a decade, was something special.

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