Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967) "has a reputation for being one of the sexiest films ever made, simply because Catherine Deneuve behaves throughout like a pre-adolescent girl. Through the prism of the 21st century, the film seems oddly contrived; what is now a cliche -- the child who, subjected to the sexual advances of an adult, then becomes a frigid woman who is only turned on by squalor -- is coyly exploited as a series of fetishistic images that juxtapose her fantasy life with her actual life.

...Read More

The projected holiday weekend numbers have been slightly revised. Night at the Museum is now expected to hit $46,497,000. The Pursuit of Happyness is looking at $25,529,000 by tomorrow night, and Dreamgirls should earn close to $18,284,000. Charlotte's Web is looking at $14,943, The Good Shepherd $14,517,000, Rocky Balboa $14,265,000, Eragon $10,806,000, We Are Marshall $10411, Happy Feet $9,696,000 and The Holiday $8,526,000.

It's been almost two years since I ran a review of Alpha Dog out of the '05 Sundance Film Festival, so I'm figuring it can't hurt to re-post with the film finally opening on 1.12, or less than two weeks hence:

Shawn Hatosy, Emile Hirsch, Harry Dean Stanton, Bruce Willis, Olivia Wilde and Justin Timberlake in Alpha Dog.

Directed and written by Nick Cassevettes, Alpha Dog isn't a great film but it's quite provocative...Read More

Two days ago George Lucas said that filming on the fourth Indiana Jones film -- Steven Spielberg directing, Harrison Ford starring -- will begin next year. He also said, "I think it's going to be really cool." So it's going to happen -- the tired-old-bones geezer action flick that nobody under the age of 45 wants to see is going to get made anyway because the soft-bellied, white-haired guys behind it are powerful enough to push it through.

It is axiomatic that anything the bloated, self-deluding Lucas...Read More

I'd say "Happy New Year" to everyone, but...all right, Happy New Year. I have always hated saying those words. Nothing's "happy"...nobody's "happy" anywhere. At best, people are content, joyously turned on for the moment, laughing or telling a funny story or a good joke, placated, relaxed, energetic, enthused, full of dreams, generous of heart, intellectually alive...but "happy"? The word itself has always struck me as one that only simple minds would use.

I'm only drinking Monster and Perrier tonight, and I'm not forking over $14 to any bartenders...Read More

The Reeler's Stu VanAirsdale is running some interesting comments from Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro about why, despite its themes and violence, kids should be encouraged to see it.

"Fairy tales, when they were created first, they were not only very disturbing tales, but at the same time they were meant to represent very dire circumstances at the time they were written," del Toro explains. "Famine. Plague. Not, in general, very nice situations, with kids being orphaned, being abandoned, etcetera. And I think in that sense, the movie is just a continuation of that threadRead More

Movie City News has assembled 164 Top Ten lists from 164 film critics and calibrated the standings based on a point system, and the #1 film is Paul Greengrass's United 93 with 590 points, compared to 533 for The Queen, 524 for The Departed, 402 for Pan's Labyrinth and 392 for Letters From Iwo Jima.

That's it -- there's no excuse any more for any Academy member who refuses to see United 93. None. at. all. If you, an Academy member, see United 93...Read More

This first-person account by N.Y. Times Baghdad correspondent Marc Santora, appearing in Sunday's edition, about Saddam Hussein's final hour of life is historic, essential reading -- tight, terse, riveting. (The eyewitness observations apparently came from Ali Adeeb and Khalid al-Ansary.)

"At 6:10 a.m., the trapdoor swung open. [Hussein] seemed to fall a good distance, but he died swiftly. After just a minute, his body was still. His eyes still were open but he was dead. Despite the scarf, the rope cut a gash into his neck."

...Read More

The lead graph introducing USA Today's "Oscar Oracle" chart begins as follows: "If the Academy Awards were given out based on what the nation's film critics think, at least two of the races would be over right now: best actor and actress." And then it goes blah, blah, Forest Whitaker, blah, blah, Helen Mirren (The Queen)....we're bored, we need something to fill space with, we're just running another Oscar chart based on critics like Movie City News, blah, blah...it's the end of the year and we're plotzing.

The critics have gone good things by celebrating ...Read More

Having finally watched the Extended Unrated Bugsy DVD last week, I can report with great satisfaction that N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr was totally right when he said that this longer version of the 1991 film "plays much more smoothly and inexorably than it did in the edited [theatrical] version," which ran about 15 minutes shorter.

(l. to r.) Toback, Levinson and Beatty taping discussion about the making of Bugsy, which is included on the DVD.

...Read More

Night at the Museum, the four-day weekend's #1 film, will end up with about $44,898,000 on Monday night (1.1.07), for an overall cume of $124 million...pretty good for a piece of CG shit. The Pursuit of Happyness, the #2 film, will have $24,200,000 as of Monday night, and a cume of $103,200,000. Dreamgirls, playing in 862 theatres, will end up with $17 million for the holiday weekend (i.e., not a bad haul), which makes it the #3 film.

The Good Shepherd (#4) will end up with 14,226,000 by Monday night. Charlotte's Web...Read More

Dreamgirls will have roughly a $40 million cume by Monday night (1.1.07), but can it reach $100 million over the next four weeks? Big financial earnings in all sectors are seen as an indicator of Oscar potency, after all. And let's face it -- between now and the end of January (or early February) is the peak earning time for this DreamWorks musical. If it cleans up in the Oscar nominations (which are being announced on Tuesday, 1.23), its hand will obviously be strengthened. But by how much?

...Read More

Cheers to N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman for writing one of the nerviest (let alone unusual) pieces I've ever read in this very staunchly establishment newspaper, renowned for its rigorous prose style and well-deserved reputation for being libidinally restrained (to say the least), if not disinterested altogether. Waxman has certainly sidestepped that attitude in the 12.31 edition by taking a look at "The Graying of Naughty" -- i.e., how a new type of porn film starring older, grayer and saggier performers is broadening the market.

"The mature-woman genre," Waxman writes, "represents ...Read More

For their role in deliberately obstructing the showing of An Inconvenient Truth to school kids, which would obviously help to raise awareness about the global warming threat, the administrators of National Science Teachers Association have befouled their reputation by refusing to accept 50,000 free copies of Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore's documentary to distribute to their members.

The stated reason was that the NSTA has a policy of not endorsing a particular project -- despite the reported fact that the NSTA "has accepted contributions from ExxonMobil, Shell and the National Petroleum Institute...Read More

L.A. Times guys John Horn and Patrick Goldstein in a series of podcast chats about Oscar snubs, the apparent chasm between Academy members and critics regarding Best Picture choosings, the Academy's problem with violent movies, and the surgings of Volver and Penelope Cruz.

The Envelope's Tom O'Neil asks if too many year-end releases are causing distribs to crunch Oscar voters and thereby hurt their films' chances. "With a glut of quality late-December releases this year, would-be contenders find themselves struggling to attract attention...and Academy and guild voters find themselves facing an onslaught of screenings and screeners," etc. Tom talks to Hollywood Wiretap's Pete Hammond, the Hollywood Reporter coumnist Anne Thompson and...well, myself.

Coming Soon's Edward Douglas thought some of us might be interested to know that Universal is expanding Children of Men into 1200-plus theatres next Friday. We'll all be curious to see how this expands, of course. Douglas predicts it will end up in the $5 million range for the weekend (i.e., about the same as Babel)

"I've heard from multiple sources in Los Angeles, including an editor at the L.A. Times, that David Geffen told a Timesman that were he to succeed in buying the paper, his first order of business would be firing a reporter in the business section who had crossed him. If Geffen has that on his to-do list -- much less at the top -- he's the wrong man at the wrong Times.

(r.) David Geffen with (l. to r.) Dreamgirls director Bill Condon, costars Jennifer Hudson, Anika Noni Rose and Beyonce Knowles

...Read More

Slate's John Dickerson on that Barack Obama "Monday Night Football" spot that went up two weeks ago...funny and spot-on.

Here it is Friday night and I'm copping once again to missing a good article -- Susan King's L.A. Times profile of Doug Jones, the guy who played the faun and the bald eyeless monster in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. "I consider myself an actor first, not a suit performer," Jones tells her. He's also had roles in del Toro's Mimic and Hellboy.

David Poland indulged in some attractively debonair potty-mouth name-calling in his Hot Blog coverage of George Hickenlooper's angry HE post earlier today about JWEgo's postings about Hickenlooper, etc. He referred to my column as "Hollywood El-Swear" and equated my output with internet pornography -- what a pissy, pathetic little bitch Poland can be at times. He also referred to me as George Hickenlooper's "buttboy." That's a really sophisticated way of saying I like George because I've liked several of his films, etc. David has, of course, never...Read More

"With just three weeks before filming of [Children of Men's] four-day sequence was to start, Emmanuel Lubezki called Doggicam Systems' Gary Thieltges, a Los Angeles-based camera-rig guru.

"They removed the car roof and installed a rail system that allowed the camera to operate on a two-axis grid, controlled by a joystick. Lubezki, his focus puller and a dolly grip sat above the actors in an enclosed translu- cent loft...Read More

The Reeler's Stu VanAirsdale's Top 10 of Top 10 Lists of 2006, Part I -- but where's part 2? (He promises it'll be up on Friday. Except it's Friday right now, and a little after 2 pm.) He says the list is primarily about calling attention to "misconceived hype."

Regrets and spiritual support extended to Orange County Weekly freelance film critic Greg Stacy, who was recently whacked after 11 years of regularly covering film for that paper. He was told a few days before Christmas that he's "being let go as part of the Village Voice chain's plan to stop using freelancers altogether," etc. He wrote a column bitching about this situation that Media Bistro Fishbowl L.A. posted yesterday.

No one has been a more passionate Dreamgirls supporter than The Envelope's Tom O'Neil, so his having written a 12.27 piece questioning whether it has the support to win the Best Picture Oscar is, I think, fairly significant. I don't think there's any question Dreamgirls will be nominated, but there's a real sense of uncertainty out there about its final-heat chances. Read O'Neil's piece and you'll see what I mean. The winning of an Oscar never has anything to do with quality -- it's always about negative, anything-but votes (i.e., last year's homophobic vote against Read More

"More than 85 percent of leading film critics are guys, more than two-thirds of whom are straight. Testosterone usually blinds them and they get caught up in a game of macho swagger that's hilarious to watch when you see them gabbing at industry events. Sissy movies are not only dismissed, but pummeled like school kids by bullies. The critics' cocky strutting gets so out of hand that female critics start straining the hardest of all just to fit in. Sometimes even the gay boys, desperate for social approval, betray their own, but not always. ...Read More

The Utah Film Critics Association gave United 93 its sixth critics group win as the 2006 Best Picture of the Year. Paul Greengrass's gripping docudrama was also a runner-up in the Best Screenplay and Best Director categories. And yes, naturally, of course, The Queen's Helen Mirren won for Best Actress while her costar Michael Sheen won for Best Supporting Actor. (I wholeheartedly admire Mirren's performance as Queen Elizabeth II -- I just find it oppressive that she's won the damn Best Actress award from critics groups 16 or 17 times now...Read More

Two days ago Media Bistro's Fishbowl L.A. broke the news that former EW editor Mary Kaye Schilling is joining the proverbially tortured, searching-for-an-answer-when-there-is-no-answer L.A. Times as editor of Calendar Weekend, starting in February. Terrific, she's a smart lady, best of luck. No one person can make a difference, of course, including David Geffen. The die is cast.

Factory Final

I didn't say very much about Factory Girl when I riffed on it last August (I'd seen an early, far-from-finished cut) -- I mostly confined myself to praising Sienna Miller's performance as Edie Sedgwick, which I thought (and still think) is a deeply sad, near-perfect communing with the spirit of a proverbial damaged debutante.

Last night I saw a more-or-less complete version of Factory Girl (i.e., almost but not quite the exact same cut that's opening today in Los Angeles), and guess what? This is a much better film...Read More

Results of the First Annual L.A. Weekly Film Poll were announced on Wednesday evening, and it was basically a rehash- remix of the generic 2006 film-elite selections we've read about before. Good stuff, good calls...and I'm sure the choice for Best Film of 2006 will generate interest in Jean Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows when it hits DVD. Wait a minute...Mirren again!

Forget observing any moments of silence for Saddam Hussein during the Sundance Film Festival, as projected a couple of days ago. The former Iraqi dictator will reportedly be put to death by hanging before sundown on Saturday, which would be sometime in the early afternoon or late morning New York time. (If you're going to take the meaning of the term "before sundown" literally, that is.) It could even be a tad earlier. I wanted a YouTube video clip up and running no later than Sunday evening, but it could take longer. Iraq's national security adviser ...Read More

There's no such thing as global warming -- it's all liberal crackpot malarkey. And yes, giant ice shelves the size of 11,000 football fields have been snapping free from Canada's Arctic for thousands of years. Totally normal, no big deal, stop worrying.

"I saw Dreamgirls last night for the second time, and I'm wondering if there really isn't something to the notion that black and white audiences sometimes see things differently. Because this was a mostly black audience. And vocal audience, which can be both hilarious and irritating. But also, with a film like this, it was...right.

"I am also black (this I think you knew) and I loved it again, Jeff. And last night's audience really loved it. So did the audience in Conyers...Read More

"Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth is something alchemical. To an astonishing degree, the 42-year-old Mexican filmmaker -- best known for his contribution to the Blade and Hellboy franchises -- has transformed the horror of mid-20th Century European history into a boldly fanciful example of what surrealists would call 'le merveilleux.'" -- from Jim Hoberman's Village Voice review, one of the most sagely written reactions I've read to this remarkable film.

The AFI's "Moments of Signifiance" awards are at least more thoughtful and somewhat less politically-inspired than the "best of" awards that litter the landscape. But it seems as if the AFI shovels out an awful lot of awards to an awful lot of people and movies these daysd...that their organizational need to hand these out is stronger and more primal than anything else.

My sons and I saw Children of Men Wednesday night inside a packed theatre at Leows' Lincoln Square cinemas, but before I get into reactions I need to point out once again that the sound in the smallish theatre in which this Alfonso Cuaron film was playing sucked -- nothing close to the super-robust, room-filling, razor-sharp sound I heard in Westwood's Village theatre at the Children of Men premiere several weeks ago. It was muffled and down at least two volume notches too low.

Beware of the sound in the right-rear shoebox!

...Read More

My sons were agreeably stunned by Children of Men last night -- they both were going on and on about what a mindblower it was, about the awesome production design and the visual innovation, etc. -- but the general crowd was not in the same place. You could feel it plain as day. They were not the least bit charmed or aroused -- you could tell by their shoulder-shrugging expressions and murmurings as we all shuffled out of the theatre.

I think it's because Children of Men...Read More

Mirren-Whitaker have again won the Best Actress and Best Actor trophies, this time from the herd-mentality Chicago Film Critics. Worthy choices, certainly, but it's as if critics nationwide were all injected with the same drug. Jackie Earle Haley (Best Supporting Actor), Martin Scorsese (Best Director, The Departed), Peter Morgan (Best Original Screenplay, The Queen), William Monahan (Best Adapted Screenplay, The Departed), An Inconvenient Truth (Best Documentary), et. al.

The only semi-standout award is Rinko Kikuchi winning the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance in Babel.

Here's a take...

Anyone can download pirated films from this and that illegal source, but I've never seen a site like www.peekvid.com, which has a long list of new and/or fairly new movies (Night at the Museum, The Departed, etc.) that you can simply click on and pow!...there they are. The usual crappy visuals (vidcam shooting from inside a theatre) and atrocious sound, but I'm amazed that the big-studio pirate hunters haven't jumped all over the Netherlands-based person[s] running this site. The Alexa figures are exceptionally high...

The reason that Dreamgirls, which has been doing pretty great business since opening semi-wide last Monday (i.e., Christmas Day), isn't playing in more than 852 theatres is...? My understanding is that there's some degree of concern that the want-to-see isn't strong enough in the more rural areas of the country, so DreamWorks marketers are waiting for the Oscar nomination announcements on 1.23.07 -- three and a half weeks away -- to open it wider.

What about all the musical-loving women out there who want to see it now...Read More

The fascist dictatorship awards mindset known as Mirren-Whitaker prevailed again with yesterday's Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards. Why do I seem to be the only one who's admitting to feelings of being irked -- i.e., almost but not quite "sick of" -- this oppressive and monotonous dominance?

There were other actresses (Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Sienna Miller) who gave beguilingly crafty and affecting performances besides The Queen's Helen Mirren, but you'd never suspect it to judge by the 14 critics groups who've handed out Best Actress awards this month. It's been Mirren, Mirren, MirrenRead More

The decision of the Florida Film Critics to give Peter O'Toole a kiss-of-death, gold-watch, career achievement award is unfortunately symptomatic of the thinking out there, which is that O'Toole can't win against Will Smith and/or Leonardo DiCaprio in the Best Actor competish, but let's gather round and show our respect, etc. O'Toole's decision to wait until mid-January to show up in Los Angeles probably sealed his fate. I wish it were otherwise and I'm genuinely sorry, realizing he's been coping with forces beyond his control. All hail Becket!

Variety's Ian Mohr on the box-office implosion of Apocalypto following a surprisingly strong opening weekend. I love how Mohr sidesteps the matter of Apocalypto's Oscar-nom prospects (saying"it remains to be seen," blah blah) when Mohr and everyone else knows full well that no one outside of the Latino community truly enjoyed Apocalypto, and that while some Academy mainstreamers may feel respect for Mel Gibson's visceral filmmaking chops, they're strongly inclined to blow it off anyway (and we all know why), not to mention Gibson's "sugartits" problem with women voters.

It's good to read that Manhattan is marginally less dead than Los Angeles this week, since HE is heading back there this morning and staying through January 4th or 5th. Seeing the final version of Factory Girl, visiting the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library, probably paying to see Rocky Balboa, etc.

With the news of the passing of former president Gerald Ford -- in office for 896 days from 8.9.74 to 1.20.77 -- my mind rewound the following clips/impressions: (a) Chevy Chase's falling-down routines on Saturday Night Live, (b) the dutiful apparatchik who pardoned Richard Nixon, (c) the way he looked totally wrecked and red-eyed the morning he conceded the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter; (d) Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's apparent intent to shoot Ford in front of San Francisco's Fairmount Hotel in '75, (e) that N.Y. Daily News headline: "Ford to City: Drop DeadRead More

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek has compiled the most independent-minded Ten Best of '06 list I've read anywhere. It's so described because she's included Marie-Antoinette (in some kind of royal tie with The Queen), Bryan Barber's Idlewild (not clever or crafty enough to be considered even an off-perverse choice), The Painted Veil (a tiresome dirge), The Notorious Bettie Page (scattershot), etc. Her choices are off the planet, but Zacharek deserves moxie points.

Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.27) has done well enough by me, and it's gotten a 79% Rotten Tomatoes positive and a 75% rating from Metacritic. But what's really intriguing, I feel, is that at least one critic -- the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt -- thinks it's misogynist (as does a columnist I know), and another -- N.Y. Times' Manohla Dargis -- feels it's misanthropic. Good...this adds a certain something.

"Is this Judi's film or Cate's, Barbara's or Sheba's?" Dargis writes...Read More

N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a. "the Bagger") "believes the movies that matter most are the ones being made right now. The Bagger has seen his share of crap, but he has also spent the past few days staring at films that take his breath away. In between shopping, gift-giving, and building fires that always seem to go out, the Bagger kept sneaking upstairs, away from the rellies, for a little him-time. Between screenings, screeners and premieres, he has seen stuff that left him confused, baffled and delighted.

...Read More

By the time the Sundance Film Festival ends on 1.27.07, or perhaps before, a hooded Saddam Hussein will have been dropped through a trap door and suffered death from strangulation and a broken neck.

Where's the data supporting Nikki Finke's reported assertion that the Dreamgirls audience is significantly expanding beyond the black/gays/hip urban demo? David Poland reported last night that Dreamgirls' opening-day gross (on 852 mostly urban-ish screens) was not $6 million (as Finke reported) but significantly over $8 million, second only to Night At The Museum, which was playing on nearly four times the number of screens -- 3685.

"What Is It About Obama?" -- a nicely reported, fairly-close-to- the-button L.A. TImes piece by Terry McDermott.

L.A. Times guy James Bates speaks to ThinkFilm's Mark Urman about awards-season surge of Half-Nelson and Best Actor nominee Ryan Gosling: "There's not a day that goes by when someone isn't in a position to read about Half Nelson," Urman says. "That wasn't the case when it was in active theatrical release. Now, it's part of the dialogue. On the January- February cusp, when this film is about to come out on DVD, if the gods are good, it will be an Oscar nominee in a major category. It would make an enormous difference on DVD."

Director Karen Moncrieff acknowledges that titling her latest film The Dead Girl serves as a form of truth-in-advertising and that those uninterested in the occasionally disturbing subject matter might be better served elsewhere.

"I understand making an unrelenting film may make some people feel like 'life's difficult enough, I don't want to see a movie that's going to make me that uncomfortable for that amount of time,'" she told L.A. Times profiler Mark Olsen. "And I absolutely respect their right to go choose another movie.

...Read More

Casino Royale is the all-time King Shit among the James Bond movies with a worldwide gross of $304.4 million. The super-succcessful Daniel Craig vehicle (no thanks to deadhead producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli) took in $14.5 million at 6,300 European theatres over the holidays. Royale is "only the fourth 2006 pic to clear $300 million, joining Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Da Vinci Code and Ice Age: The Meltdown," says Dave McNary's Variety story.

A thoroughly dull Matt Damon interview in the 12.26 L.A. Times, written by Josh Gajewski. Damon's Good Shepherd character has no pulse, and neither does the piece. I was nodding off after the first five graphs. The role of Edward Wilson -- a soft-spoken, stiff-shouldered secret agent -- is "not flashy," Damon tells Gajewski. "It won't get any attention in terms of awards or anything like that, but for me personally, for just how complex a role it was and how interesting the subject matter is to me, this was ...

The U.S. military announced today the violent deaths of six more American soldiers in Iraq, for a grand total (since the March 2003 invasion) of 2978 stiffs. This is exactly five bodies more than the number killed in the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Gray-haired, jowly-faced Robert De Niro will portray "Ben," a character based on hotshot producer Art Linson, in What Just Happened?, a Warner Bros. release that will begin filming under director Barry Levinson in March.

The title and story are taken from Linson's 2002 book, which is largely about the making of The Edge. The 1997 drama was a pretty good, moderately well- received film about a grizzly bear looking to hunt down and eat three guys -- a multi-millionaire (Anthony Hopkins), a younger man who's been sleeping with the rich guy's wife (...Read More

"Based on matinees already, I'm hearing Dreamgirls could score $5 mil and possibly even $6 mil today (i.e., Monday, 12.25). Many theaters sold out 24 hours before the 12.25 screenings [began] and added a midnight extra to accomodate moviegoers. The target audience had been African- Americans, gays and upscale whites. But now the movie is playing bigger than expected with white audiences in general. Anecdotes are starting to come in of audiences cheering and clapping and crying, which had been happening nightly since 12.15.06 when Dreamgirls...Read More

Susie Woz's USA Today article on Dreamgirls costar Jennifer Hudson's singing of the anthemic "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" (published 12.22) is far, far more interesting when you read it alongside Armond White's disparagement of same in the New York Press (published a week or so ago).

Woz sample: "Just about every Broadway musical worth its bugle beads has that one signature tune. The one that brings down the house...Read More

I've long felt that the only thoroughly decent Christmas film is the 1951, British-produced, Alistair Sim-starring A Christmas Carol (or Scrooge). Because it feels genuinely Dickensian, for one thing. Everything else I can think of has a problem of one sort of another -- forced, tonally one-note, one too many cute kids, oppressively sentimental, etc.

All the films directed by Bob Clark need to be permanently dust-binned, of course, and that necessarily includes A Christmas Story. The older I get the less comfortable I am about sitting down with It's a Wonderful Life (the town-rallies-round, happy-ever-after finaleRead More

The final projected four-day weekend figure for Night at the Museum is $38.5 million. The earnest and mild-mannered Pursuit of Happyness will end up with $20,642,000 in the #2 position. Rocky Balboa, diminishing quickly, will finish at #3 with $17,302,000 (last Wednesday was its best day with earnings of $6.4 million). The Good Shepherd will end up with about $13,943,000 for a fourth-place showing. Eragon, a dead dragon, fell over 60% from last weekend's tally, taking in $9,560,000. Charlotte's Web was right behind it with $9,506,00. We Are Marshall...Read More

Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson did a guest stint on "Ebert & Roeper" last weekend, and the consensus seems to be that Roeper bellowed and bullied her around a bit -- and that gracious Anne was perhaps a bit too restrained.

In response, a reader asked this morning if "we can get a thread going on the thoroughly arrogant, pompous, the-more-wrong-I-am-the-louder-I-get, insulting, Disney-thumping Roeper vs. the elegant, thoughtful, trusty Thompson?"

Thompson's best moment came when Roeper thumbs-upped We Are Marshall and she gave him "a look," a friend told me this morning.

Thompson gave Children of Men...Read More

"If the New Hampshire Democratic primary were held today, Sen. Barack Obama would be in a statistical dead heat with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, according to a new Concord Monitor poll. Last month, a Monitor poll showed Clinton trouncing her opponents, with Obama lagging 23 points behind.

"Although Clinton commands considerable support among likely Democratic primary voters, she struggles in general election match-ups, according to the poll. If the contest were held today, both Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani would prevail over Clinton. ...Read More

Microsoft has had a huge team of highly-paid techies going over Windows Vista for months and months with a fine tooth comb and no apparent issues, but serious flaws have turned up only days after exposing the new operating system to the general software community. The too-familiar lesson is that corporate management somehow always manages to discourage employees from airing and/or candidly examining in-house problems -- issues never seem to surface until outsiders have had a looksee.

A 12.25 N.Y. Times story says...Read More

"You'd have to go back to the old Hollywood studio days to find a year like 2006, when stars' off-screen personalities so completely overshadowed their movies," N.Y. Times columnist Caryn James wrote yesterday. A good piece, but while she cites numerous examples of celebs who've had to cope with this syndrome (Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, et, al.), she misses a fairly large sitting one sitting smack dab in the middle of an upcoming film -- Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering (Weinstein Co., 1.27.07 wide).

As soon as Jude Law...Read More

"There are, Mr. Cuaron suggests in Children of Men, different ways of waking up. You can either wake up and close your ears and eyes, or like Theo you can wake up until all your senses are roaring. Early in the film Theo (Clive Owen) and the restlessly moving camera seem very much apart, as Mr. Cuaron keeps a distance from the characters.

"In time, though, the camera comes closer to Theo as he opens his eyes -- to a kitten crawling up his leg, to trees rustling in the wind -- until, in ...Read More

After the music (and this, for me, is the track that will always matter the most), the thing I enjoyed the most about the late James Brown was/is Eddie Murphy's impression of him. I saw Murphy do this at the Universal Amphitheatre a good 20 years ago, and it's still a hoot. Today especially. (It also reminded me how much I liked the Murphy of the '80s. It's a shame, but that guy died years ago.)

"Children of Men takes a while to get rolling. [But] then comes a scene that, checking my notes, had me writing down words such as 'brilliant' and 'ingenious.' Theo, Kee and their allies are driving down a road when their car is set upon by a terrorist group. The ensuing bloodshed is shocking, and nothing in the scene plays out the way you'd expect.

"[Director] Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who shot The New World...Read More

Hollywood gadfly, historian and Maxim film critic Pete Hammond reviews Hollywood's novel adaptations in 2006 -- successes, failures, in-betweeners -- on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition."

Smart-ass N.Y. Times writer Mickey Rapkin talks to Factory Girl director George Hickenlooper, who was still shooting new scenes for the 12.29 Weinstein Co. release "as of late last week." Favorite Rapkin line: "The character Billy Quinn...walks and quacks like Bob Dylan, no matter what he's called."

I could write an easy 5,000 words about R.D. Robb's Don's Plum, the black-and-white, John Cassevettes-like, unreleased- on-these-shores acting-exercise movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Kevin Connolly, Jeremy Sisto and Ethan Suplee that you can buy or rent on DVD in Europe.

In fact, I did write 5,000 words about Don's Plum in 'late 97 for Mr. Showbiz, only the piece has been deleted and presumably trashed -- but the backstory boils down to this: Robb and cohorts Dale Wheatley. David Stutman and John Schindler...Read More

My favorite eleven films of 2006, in descending order: 1. Children of Men (Universal); 2. The Lives of Others (Sony Pictures Classics); 3. The Departed (Warner Bros.); 4. United 93 (Universal); 5. Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight); 6. Volver (Sony Pictures Classics); 7. Babel (Paramount Vantage); 8. Pan's Labyrinth (Picturehouse); 9. Letters From Iwo Jima (Warner Bros.); 10. The Queen (Miramax); (11) Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight).

Rotely & Unexceptionally Worthy...Almost Boringly So: The Pursuit of Happyness.

Most Agreeable Stylistic Exercise...Read More

The weekend's big winner was Shawn Levy and Ben Stiller's Night At The Museum, which is looking at $33 to $35 million by Sunday night. The big tank was McG and Matthew McConaughey's We Are Marshall, which may end up with a piddly $7.5 million in 2,606 situations. (A fairly decent sports film...too bad.) And Robert De Niro, Eric Roth and Matt Damon's The Good Shepherd is a fourth-place ho-hummer with an estimated $9 million or so in 2,218 theaters.

Gabriele Muccino and Will Smith's The Pursuit Of Happyness...Read More

James Cameron has half-anecdotally announced in a 12.19 Independent interview that Avatar, his long-awaited return to feature filmmaking, won't hit screens until 2012. Yeah, I'm joshing: he actually said 2009, but what's the difference? The guy seems afflicted with a near- terminal case of foreplay syndrome -- a condition in which the victim becomes far more intoxicated with the rigors of preparing and diddling around (and endlessly talking about same) than pulling the trigger.

A casting breakdown I was sent about 10 months ago for Project 880 (i.e., Avatar...Read More

"Much of the media would have you believe that [Christopher Guest's] For Your Consideration isn't as sublime as A Mighty Wind, which three years ago was thought to be not as funny as Best in Show. They're all brilliant. What the philosopher and literary critic G.K. Chesterton said of Charles Dickens' fiction I would say of Guest's movies: Sit back, relax and savor them, not just as individual movies but as slices of the greater Guest." -- Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow writing in the 12.22 L.A. Times.

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott''s Ten Best of '06 list has eleven ties for eleventh place, and one of them is the late Fabian Beilinksy's The Aura, which I finally saw last summer (a year or so after it was completed) and was pretty much floored by. It's a seriously unusual psychological crime thriller. IFC will have the DVD out next April.

With one or two exceptions, Tthe Florida Film Critics Circle have delivered a totally non-mind-blowing roster of '06 superlatives: Best Picture -- The Departed; Best Actor -- Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland; Best Actress -- Helen Mirren, The Queen; Best Supporting Actor -- Jack Nicholson, The Departed (a sloppy call -- Nicholson's performance is just another standard high-styler; Best Supporting Actress -- Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal (good call); Best Director -- Martin Scorsese, The Departed; Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted) -- William Monahan, The Departed

The African American Film Critics Association has named The Last King of Scotland's Forrest Whitaker as Best Actor of 2006. I don't want to leap to conclusions, but I think this falls under the heading of "shocker." Put it this way -- is there any group out there of any half-serious standing ready to stand up for any other Best Actor performance? Dreamgirls'Jennifer Hudson named Best Supporting Actress, Eddie Murphy as Best Supporting Actor, Bill Condon as Best Director....yup. One good thing: the under-acknowledged Akeelah and the Bee...

"There's one performance that hasn't been recognized by any movie critics group or awards organization despite being one of the year's most widely praised," writes Pop Machine's Mark Caro. "Where's the year-end love for Daniel Craig, a.k.a. Agent 007 in Casino Royale? Here's a guy who was widely dismissed and even ridiculed upon being cast in this iconic role, yet the consensus is he's the best James Bond since Sean Connery and perhaps the closest one to author Ian Fleming's original vision."

Here's Wednesday night's Charlie Rose show with the "three Amigos" -- Children of Men's Alfonso Cuaron, Babel's Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and Pan's Labyrinth's Guillermo del Toro.

A more-than-possible Best Picture scenario: Little Miss Sunshine, the little family comedy-drama that could, wins the Oscar. It wins because (a) it's the only top-five contender without any nagging negatives, and (b) it's the only top-five contender that's really and truly about "us" instead of a film about "them" -- a simple but primal insight I've just lifted from Oscarwatch's Sasha Stone.

The Queen is primarily a story about "them" (the Royal Family, the elites in the Blair government, the British public). Ditto Letters From Iwo Jima...Read More

With mixed feelings, HE is announcing the death of Elsewhere Classic. It lived for a total of nine months, give or take. I created it so people who couldn't roll with the bloggy format (instituted last March) would feel more comfortable, but you have adapt and go with the times. Plus having a separate parallel column was a drag on memory and resources. I've also killed the news ticker, which I added in the summer of '05. It wasn't adding anything very significant to the site, although I always liked the energy -- the travelling fluidity -- of it.

"A movie about the last days of humanity that opens on Christmas Day may seem like a bleak choice for holiday viewing. But Children of Men (Universal, 12.25) is a modern-day nativity story that's far more moving and even, in its way, reverent than the current film by that name. It's also the herald of another blessed event: the arrival of a great director by the name of Alfonso Cuaron.

...Read More

Notes on a Scandal book author Zoe Heller (her work is actually titled "What Was She Thinking?" -- the movie title is a subhead) recently said during a Hollywood q & a that the plot of the book -- about a teacher in her mid '30s who has an affair with a 15 year-old student -- was inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal of the mid to late '90s.

My feelings on this issue are roughly those of former Labor secretary Robert Reich...Read More

"We've pushed the buttons too far. We've been greedy and selfish. Everybody knows what we've done to the rivers and the oceans; the fact that there's only 35 years' worth of fish in the oceans; the fact that the polar ice caps are melting. I think that right under the surface of everybody's consciousness is the full understanding that we're in for a really tough ride and everybody is really afraid to face it. The attitude is: 'Let me amass my pile and we'll worry about that 10 or 20 years from now.'" -- Little Miss Sunshine...Read More

This is for real as far as "real" goes: "I, Vincent Gallo, star of such classics as Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny, have decided to make myself available to all women. All women who can afford me, that is. For the modest fee of $50,000 plus expenses, I can fulfill the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally-born female. The fee covers one evening with Vincent Gallo. For those who wish to enjoy my company for a weekend, the fee is increased to a mere $100,000.

"Heavy-set, older, redheads...Read More

Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.27) is a sort of upscale, British-flavored Fatal Attraction minus the grand guignol... with a strong dose of sad-wicked lesbo suppression driving the engine. Skillfully adapted by playwright Patrick Marber ("Closer") from a Zoe Heller novel called "What Was She Thinking?," it's easily one of the best written, best-acted potboilers of this type that I've ever seen -- particularly when it comes to Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett's performance as a pair of schoolteachers caught up in each other's obsessions and vulnerabilities in a manner that goes way beyond intense.

Comments from Notes on a Scandal costars Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy plus screenwriter Patrick Marber at the press junket earlier this week.