Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which HBO opened in Manhattan and Pasadena last Friday in order to qualify the doc for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar, was reviewed by plenty of people at last January's Sundance Film Festival, but N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has taken advantage of last Friday's very limited, zero-profile opening to formally review it.

The doc "gets at the strong, curiously divisive reactions" that the famed director of The Pianist, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown...Read More

With his direction of Leatherheads (Universal, 4.4), George Clooney has attempted "one of the hardest things there is to do -- re-create the fizz of old Hollywood screwball comedies," notes Variety's Todd McCarthy. The result, lamentably, is "just a mild buzz."

Indeed, the best screwball comedies play as if everyone in the cast is (a) slightly deranged and (b) on some kind of light flutter drug. Like the effect of two or three sips of champagne and a half-quaalude. Or a half tab of ecstasy. ...Read More

George Clooney's Leatherheads (opening Friday) is tracking well at 73, 40 and 18 -- it should do close to $20 million, maybe a bit more. Nim's Island, a kid's picture with Jodie Foster, is running at 59, 27 and 7. The Ruins is at 44, 22 and 6...doesn't look like much. Among next weekend's (4.11) openings, Prom Night is at 59, 28 and 5; Smart People is running at 39, 22 and 2, and Street Kings (Fox Searchlight) is at 47, 35 and 3. 4.18 openings: 88 Minutes...Read More

As it must to all men, death came today to the great Jules Dassin at age 96. A Greek-descended, Hollywood-employed, highly-rated noir director, Dassin was blacklisted in 1949 only to bounce back with Rififi ('55), the greatest heist film ever made. (Rififi was actually released in France in '54.)

The Paris-based melodrama re-ignited Dassin's career and led to subsequent hits such as He Who Must Die ('57), the lightly comedic heist film Topkapi ('64), Phaedra ('62),and the legendary Never on Sunday ('60). He also directed Uptight ('68 -- a Harlem-based remake of ...Read More

Dith Pran, the real-life Cambodian-born photographer whose story of capture, enslavement and eventual escape from the hands of the psychopathic Khmer Rouge was dramatized in Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer.

Dith Pran (l.), Haing S. Ngor (r.)

I never met him, but I interviewed Haing S. Ngor, who not only played Dith in the film but knew him as a close friend, for an Us magazine piece in '84.

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A little Martin Scorsese My Space action, heavy with Shine a Light ads and photos. The guy has 11,315 friends.

It may as well be acknowledged that Hillary Clinton has a brief appearance in Shine a Light (Paramount, 4.4), Martin Scorsese/Rolling Stones documentary that I reviewed on 3.26. (She and Bill have a handshake moment with Mick Jagger and Keith Richard on the Beacon theatre stage before the show begins.) She's also told reporters she's a big Stones fan, and admires Jagger's "incredible presence...he's very disciplined, he works out, and he's incredibly devoted to what he does."

Art from leecamp.net

Nothing wrong with this and nothing to fret about...Read More

HE's Moises Chiullan participated in one of the many mismanaged and frustrating Texas county delegate conventions two days ago (i.e., Saturday), and has promised to provide an account of how it all went down. Here's a site that's keeping tabs with the latest Texas delegate tallies, but the long and the short is that despite his narrow loss in the Texas primary popular vote, Barack Obama has scored a clear delegate victory over Hillary Clinton so far, making it more
...Read More

I have another 45 pages of Stanley Weiser's W to read, and I don't finish it soon...

"Look at Yahoo or Google or CNN, [and] take away the branding and just look at the headlines, and they're very similar. But if you take away the branding of The Huffington Post and the signage, you'd probably still recognize us." -- Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff says in a 3.31 N.Y. Times profile of the site and its co-founder Arianna Huffington, by Brian Stelter. "We've always wanted to be part of the national conversation," Sekoff also says.

...Read More

Given a theoretical choice between a sublime dinner of Herb-Roasted Amish Chicken with White Wine Jus, Sauteed Wild Mushrooms, Green Market Arugula and Parmigiano Bread Pudding at Manhattan's Union Square Cafe and a steak and lobster meal at any evening-trade restaurant in the country, most Americans would choose the latter. Not because they have peon-level taste buds (although this could be argued) but because known quantities trump surprises every time.

By the same token, Fandango's list of Most Anticipated Summer 2008 Movies...Read More

Joel and Ethan Coen have called George Clooney's characters in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading "my trilogy of idiots," Clooney said in a 3.28 Screen Daily interview. "The only thing that made me feel better [about Burn] was that Brad Pitt is as stupid as I am in this one. I get to play Tilda Swinton's lover who hates me and is rotten to me throughout the whole thing. It's a flat-out comedy. There's not a message in it."

In a 4.7.08 review, New Yorker critic David Denby is playing my Stop-Loss song, or vice versa or something in between. But Kimberly Peirce's film opened two days ago and didn't exactly rewrite box-office history, so Denby's support has come late in the game. Perhaps too late.

Stop-Loss "is not a great movie," Denby says, "but it's forceful, effective, and alive, with the raw, mixed-up emotions produced by an endless war -- a time when the patriotism of military families is in danger of being exploited beyond endurance.

...Read More

L.A. Louver, an art gallery located at 45 North Venice Blvd., Venice -- Sunday, 3.30.08, 1:10 pm

Another big-name print critic has been trap-doored -- Newsweek's David Ansen! One of the best critics in the country, certainly one of the wisest and most learned, a good fellow and a major voice on the big-time movie circuit since 1977 is being proverbially put out to pasture due to plummeting ad revenues and the general downswirling of dead-tree journalism. Ansen, 63, is one of 111 Newsweek staffers who accepted buyout deals last week.

Newsweek's David Ansen

Radar broke the story two or three hours ago. Variety's Anne Thompson is reporting...Read More

"...and Hillary said if her pastor had been blown by Monica Lewinsky, she would have stayed." Plus two or three other goodies from Bill Maher's Real Time monologue the night before last.

And a joke in the same vein from Jay Leno: "James Carville was really upset the other day, really upset...he called Bill Richardson a 'Judas.' There've been a lot of Biblical references in this campaign. The latest one is they're calling Bill Clinton 'Jonah' because he's the one who got swallowed by a whale."

According to this Slashfillm posting that went up Friday night, a clueless Ben Affleck was recently fooled by Sacha Baron Cohen during filming of Bruno. Or so claimed National Enquirer gossip Mike Walker during last Thursday's Howard Stern show. Forget the Affleck b.s. -- how can Cohen get away with this routine with anyone? What 30 year civil servant on the edge of retirement isn't in on the joke?

Affleck allegedly called Sarah Silverman...Read More

Yesterday was "a day that will live in infamy," according to sagwatch.net, since it marked a huge split in the contract bargaining posturings of SAG and AFTRA over attempts to decertify memberships among TV show performers. An instant doze-off for most HE readers, I realize, but the allusion to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (12.7.41) caught my attention. Especialy since the statement uses the word "war."

"The possibility of SAG and AFTRA engaging in joint bargaining with the industry collapsed today," the statement reads, "after SAG's Doug Allen...Read More

The Kids Choice Awards aired last night in Nickleodeon. I agreed with Ratatouille being named the Favorite Animated Movie. Otherwise I was fantasizing about being Jay Silverheels (a.k.a. Tonto) and rounding up all my renegade Indian pallies and getting on our horses and riding down to the place where the show was taped and kicking up dust and causing trouble. Which is merely a variation on my standard reaction to treacly pop plasticity, which is that the Taliban has a point.

Borys Kit-Carl DiOrio wrote a story for last Thursday's Hollywood Reporter about Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio being signed to write a Lone Ranger movie for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The news about the project itself, however, was revealed almost a year ago by Collider's Steve Weintraub.

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In a short q & a that ran two days ago, Wall Street Journal softballer John Jurgensen put the following pregnant question to My Blueberry Nights star Nora Jones: "Have you read any of your reviews?" To which Jones replied, "No. Never have, never will. This acting thing has been fun and if I never do it again, I had a great experience. If I do do it again, I hope I get better at it. But I don't have ambitions to conquer Hollywood or anything."

I saw Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights (Weinstein Co., 4.4) eleven and a half months ago at the Cannes Film Festival. It's finally opening this Friday at limited venues. The best thing about it, honestly, is the title -- the allusions to eroticism and delectability within. I was going to say I can imagine hip urban thirtysomething couples being okay with some of it, but I honestly can't do that. Here's are portions of what I wrote from the Orange Cafe so many months ago:

(a) "I could sense trouble fairly early on in Wong Kar Wai's ...Read More

Can you imagine being dead for 48 years, just floating around in some airy-fairy, non-material way, when a bulletin from earth suddenly punctuates your cosmic head-space? The news being that a guy named David Bret has nailed you in a book for having had halitosis, hepatitis, rotting teeth and "shovel-like" hands? I don't know that these and similar revelations concerning Clark Gable's life are things that I need to know. I can deal with his halitosis (read about it years ago) but that's as far as I'd like to go, thanks.

Nourishing, semi-leisurely Sunday activity is a good thing. Tomorrow, if you live in Los Angeles, satisfaction on that level could and perhaps should include (a) Word Theatre's 11 a.m. event at the Venice Canal Club (brunch plus readings about sex and death) with Tess Harper, Rae Dawn Chong, Gary Dourdan, Sarah Maclay, etc., and (b) a 5:30 pm screening of Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974, w/ Robert Mitchum, Ken Takakura, Brian Keith, Richard Jordan) at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre.

Honoring the recently-departed Richard Widmark's performances, N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr shows a little more passion and vigor that he usually does within the boundaries of his tweedly-deedly prose style. Here's a graph about Widmark's work in Jules Dassin's Night in the City (1950):

"It's hard to imagine another tough-guy actor of the period allowing himself to come as close to tearful impotence...Read More

I'll post a thought or two about Stanley Weiser's W, formerly known as Bush, on Monday. I couldn't get my hands on a recently revised draft, but if the film that Oliver Stone will begin shooting next month is at all similar to what's on the page, W won't be any kind of breathtaking, guns-blazing, political-zing movie. It's primarily a modest, brick-by-brick character study about who George W. Bush...Read More

John Edwards is the essence of petty equivocation. He's a phony. Obama didn't provide the right kind of oral pleasuring so he didn't endorse him, this 3.28 John Heilemann New York article reports. He's a slinky performance artist who likes power and money, y'all. The mere sound of that awful buttery drawl gives me the willies. He's selling vacuum cleaners.

"I realize this will sound geeky, but for me a good character match for Hillary Clinton is the old Star Trek character of Dr. Janice Lester, played in the original late '60s series by Sandra Smith. All it takes is her breakdown scene at the finale when she sobs, 'I'll never be the Captain!' If you haven't seen it or don't recall, I'm sure plot capsules abound on the net." -- HE reader ChuckW, writing this morning.

A reliable-seeming online synopsis of episode #79 (original airdate: 6.3.69) states...Read More

I've been told that producer Jean Doumanian is partnering with the Weinstein Co. to produce a film version of Tracy Letts' masterful August: Osage County, which N.Y. Times critic Charles Isherwood called "the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years" in his 12.5.07 review.

Deanna Dunagan (r.) as Violet Weston, the family matriarch; Amy Morton (l.) as her daughter, and Rondi Reed (center) as Violet's sister.

As always, a Broadway hit (Osage County is certain to triumph at the '08 Tony Awards...Read More

21 will crest $25 million by Sunday night -- the exact rival-studio estimate is $25.7 million -- after earning $8.6 million yesterday. Dr. Horton Hears a Who will come in second with $19.9 million, give or take. The Weinstein Co.'s Superhero Movie is disappointing with a distant third-place showing with a projected weekend tally of $9.4 million. Tyler Perry's Meet The Browns will be fourth with about $8 million, and Drillbit Taylor will be fifth with $5.9 million.

Shutter will come in sixth with about $4.8. Poor Stop-Loss...Read More

"I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign," the eloquent Peggy Noonan has written in her 3.28 Wall Street Journal column. "This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will."

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Slate's new "Hillary Death-Watch" feature, written by Christopher Beam, Chadwick Matlin and Chris Wilson. They estimate she has a 12% likelhood of winning the Democratic nomination, and they consider this rating "generous."

Offering a Hollywood analogy on the Democratic primary race, Sen. Barack Obama told a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania crowd earlier today that running against Sen. Hillary Clinton has been like "a good movie that lasted about a half hour too long." He and Clinton have been running in the Democratic primary so long, he explained, that they could reverse roles and recite each others' lines without missing a beat. He added, "I think there are some people who felt like, God, when will this be over?"

What other movie analogies are apt? N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd...Read More

In order to qualify Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar, HBO has, like, sneak-booked it into the Coliseum Cinemas on West 181st Street in Washington Heights. A similar-type booking is now happenign at Laemmle's One Colorado in Pasadena. (Thanks to HE reader "RP" for the information.)

Defamer's Stu Van Airsdale spotted the New York-area ad...Read More

As long as I'm bumming scripts, I may as well scout around also for Joshua James' adaptation of Peter Biskind's "Down and Dirty Pictures," which is apparently going to be shooting soon under the aegis of director Kenneth Bowser, producer Kevin Scott Frakes and PalmStar Entertainment.

The finished film will almost certainly fail, of course. Any film produced by a company named "Palm Star Entertainment," trust me, hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being even half-tolerable. (The conjunction of the words "palm" and "star" assures ostentation and cluelessness.) In a column posted yesterday Fox News 411's Read More

My usual sources can't get their hands on a copy of Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone's W. If anyone out there has a PDF file or a hard copy, please get in touch. I'll return the favor somehow. Update: Forget it and thanks to everyone with PDF copies who couldn't be bothered. A guy got in touch right away, and Weiser's script -- hah! -- is sitting on my desktop as we speak.

"When Barack Obama didn't hear Reverend Wright say those awful things about America, he still should have rushed the stage, smite Reverend Wright with the cross, and left the church," Bill Maher has written in a recent posting. I "f there's anything the right wing can agree on, it's that. And that gays are going to hell, right after they suck them off in the airport bathroom.

...Read More

A salute to Judgment at Nuremberg screenwriter Abby Mann, who passed yesterday at age 80. Mann got going as dramatist in '50s live TV, and in fact originally wrote Judgment at Nuremberg for a 1959 airing of "Playhouse 90." He wrote a 1973 TV-movie called The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which was spun into the Kojak series with Telly Savalas. He also penned Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story ('89) and Indictment: The McMartin Trial ('95), about the false child-molestation allegations that ruined lives.

Late start (I'm tapping this out from a McDonald's in West L.A. between sips of black, stomach-searing "premium roast" coffee) and lots to get into. But first I have to drag myself out of this neon-lit formica hell hole, and it's hard to do that because I keep thinking of one more thing to say or post or link to.

I'll definitely get into Young @ Heart...Read More

A friend has faxed me the pages of that John Hughes/"Big Baby" article that I mentioned the other day, the one that trashed him -- despite Hughes being at the time the 25th most powerful person in Hollywood, according to the the then-thriving Premiere magazine -- for being "one crazed, scary, capricious bully." It turns out it was a January 1993 Spy magazine piece by Richard Lallich.

So here it is: page #1, page #2, page #3, page #4, page #5, page #6, page #7 and page #8.

...Read More

A former employee of Village Cinemas in Australia has responded to my recent post about the coming Gold Class operation that will charge up to $35 a pop for a super-deluxe movie-watching experience.

"Having worked for Village Cinemas in Australia, I can tell you unequivocally that the GC concept already works -- and how. In Australia there are lots of these venues (check out villagecinemas.com.au for pix, locations, etc.) and these screens pack out.

"Often, Gold Class seasons outlive 'standard' auditorium prints. For instance, a recent acclaimed, high-adrenalin thriller played until after...Read More

I'd love to be in the room when the Democratic Party bigwigs -- Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, etc. -- finally find the backbone to stand up to Billary in a conference or hotel room somewhere and tell them, no wavering and no backtalk, that the race is over. Shut up, sit down and call it off...or pay the price for years to come. Sometime in mid May, I'm guessing, or maybe even after North Carolina. In the meantime, a new national poll from the Pew Research Center.

Eric Spiegelman, writing on a blog called Bus Your Own Tray, has made available a 1971 documentary executive produced by John Ford called Vietnam! Vietnam! Narrated by Charlton Heston, it was reportedly (and is evidently, to judge from having watched about 20 minutes' worth) a work of propaganda commissioned by the U.S. government in support of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam! Vietnam! from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

It is also, to put it mildly, a stain upon Ford's hallowed reputation...Read More

Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me made a convincing case for the harmful effects of a pure-McDonalds' diet. I wonder if anyone has ever established a link between people suffering heart attacks and eating an Egg McMuffin (or worse, a Sausage McMuffin!) each and every day? I'm asking because the guy who invented the Egg McMuffin, Herb Peterson, the architect of the clogged American artery, died two days ago.

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In the view of two knowledgable guys interviewed by AP reporter David Germain, Heath Ledger's death will -- sadly, ironically -- be a kind of boon to the fortunes of The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18). Germain states that Chris Nolan's film "has already emerged as arguably the biggest movie featuring a posthumous role in Hollywood history."

Everyone is tiring of seeing this same old Heath/Joker photo over and over -- it would be nice if Warner Bros. would remedy this.

Bill Ramey, founder of the fansite Batman-on-Film.com...Read More

I've been told about three casting "likes" for Oliver Stone's W -- i.e., actors who are wanted for the George Bush bopic but not (as far as my source knows) signed. Toby Jones (who plays legendary super-agent Swifty Lazar in Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon) is being sought to play Karl Rove. They want Jeffrey Wright to play Colin Powell, and they'd like Tommy Lee Jones to have a go at Donald Rumsfeld. Again -- nothing firm, no contracts.

Toby Jones (l.), Karl Rove (r.)

On the other hand, New York...Read More

Tracking on 21 (opening Friday) has surged -- it's now at 72, 49 and 30, which should translate to somewhere north of $25 million and possibly up to $30 million. David Schwimmer's Run Fat Boy Run (Picturehouse) is at 62, 29 and 6. Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss is at 47, 29 and 9. Superhero Movie is running at 75, 31 and 13 -- decent numbers, fairly good business.

George Clooney's Leatherheads (4.4) is at 70, 37 and 11 or 12...not bad, will open decently. Nim's Island is at 52 27 and 3. The Ruins...Read More

New Republic senior editor Christopher Orr has written a review of Robert Luketic's 21 (Sony, 3.26) that's based solely on the trailer. The point is that with 97% of today's trailers giving 97% of the film away, who needs to see the feature? Orr says he'll review the film itself tomorrow. I've seen the long version of 21 and can say with authority that Orr's reactions aren't very different from reviews of the film.

I knew the movie would be simultaneously pretty good and not great based on the opening trailer clip. Jim Sturgess...Read More

Arizona Daily Star's Phil Villarreal is reporting that Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (with Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) will be released by the Weinstein Co. on 10.31. Phil says he was "was sour on the past couple Smith movies" but has a feeling "this one will match the excellence and rewatchable hiliarity of Smith's first four: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, with an honorable mention for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. (Which I liked as well.)

...Read More

This Lou Dobbs-dissing trailer for Under The Same Moon (Fox Searchlight, limited) is fairly amusing. Created in-house by the Fox Searchlight guys, It's airing on CNN today, and particularly on Dobbs' news and commentary show.

Patricia Riggen's film, written by Ligiah Villalobos, is a heart-warming tale of a Mexican immigrant mom working as a domestic in Los Angeles, and her Mexico-residing son from whom she's separated. Dobbs has been hating on illegal Mexican immigrants...

There's something hugely satisfying in Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro's "MSNBC First Read" summaries, which I read each and every morning. I love the internal-office-memo prose style. Their stuff is straight and unpretentious, and always fortified with comprehensive reporting and sharp observations.

The most interesting aspect of Michael Cieply's 3.27 N.Y. Times story about the impending divorce between Paramount and DreamWorks is the photo of Laura Ramsey and Jena Malone in The Ruins (DreamWorks, 4.4), an apparently standard kids-in-peril horror film from director Carter Smith and screenwriter /novelist Scott B. Smith. The subdued lighting and amber tones are intriguing, which is more than you can say for Ceiply's story about clashing egos.

The IMDB keywords for The Ruins...Read More

HE reactions to Oliver Stone's casting choices on W, his about-to-shoot Dubya drama which will star Josh Brolin. Elizabeth Banks, 34, seems too young to play First Lady Laura Bush, who was just shy of 50 when her husband became the Texas governor and 54 when he was inaugurated as President on 1.20.01. James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush -- perfect, but he'll have to be de-aged. Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush -- fine.

Finding the right guy to portray Dick Cheney...Read More

No two ways about it -- Martin Scorsese's Shine a Light needs to be seen in the IMAX format. It'll be agreeable in regular 35mm -- fun, engaging -- but the wow factor will be missing. The Rolling Stones concert film was shot in a semi-intimate setting -- Manhattan's Beacon Theatre -- and the intense close-ups and gigantic size of the bodies and faces of Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts make it seem even more so. This movie is all over you.

An approximation of the IMAX aspect ratio (1.43 to 1) of

Whatever happened to the alleged plans of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio to make The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, apparently with DiCaprio intending to play T.R. I guess it died...right? Because the consensus was that the Leo casting made as much sense as Tom Cruise playing Abraham Lincoln or Giovannni Ribisi playing Harry S. Truman?

Theodore Roosevelt in either his late 20s or early 30s; Leonardo DiCaprio at 30 or 31.

I'm mentioning this because I happened to watch John Milius's The Wind and the Lion last night, and I really loved ...Read More

From Minneapolis Star-Tribune cartoonist Steve Sack...

For over 25 years I've watched films in the finest screening rooms in Los Angeles, New York, Cannes, Paris....all over. The sound, projection and butt-comfort qualities have been sublime at 90% of them. (Paris screening rooms have the best seats -- velvety, armchair-sized, sofa-soft. The rear seats at Sony's high-altitude screening room in Madison Avenue are almost as good.) The point is that I've been to screening-room Shangri-la hundreds of times and I know how good it can get, and there's no way I'd pay $35 bucks to see a movie at a Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinema.

...Read More

Richard Widmark has departed after living a mostly full and rewarding life for 93 years. We should all be so fortunate. I know I'm supposed to say that his performance as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death ('47) was his most memorable work. But I'll always enjoy three of his performances a bit more -- the Dauphin in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan, the hard-assed Colonel Lawson in Judgment in Nuremberg and his oily operator character in Against All Odds...Read More

If Hillary Clinton defeats Barack Obama among the secular, deeply dug-in Pennsylvania Democrats by a lousy 10% margin, it'll be meaningless. She has to tan his hide with a 20% victory margin or the chattering class will just shrug it off. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Pennsylvania shows Clinton leading Obama 49% to 39% right now, which reflects her favorable rating having dropped to 68% from 76% in the last survey.

Meanwhile, N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written...Read More

In a 3.25 piece called "How (and Why) Anthony Minghella's Talent Wasn't Quite Fulfilled," New York critic David Edelstein fingers Harvey Weinstein as...well, not quite the central villain in the life of the just-deceased British filmmaker, but some kind of messy meddler and spiritual usurper.

"Now that the shock of Anthony Minghella's sudden death has dissipated slightly," Edelstein begins, "I think it's less unseemly to say that this brilliant and soulful filmmaker died unfulfilled. And I can't help thinking that what happened has something to do with someone whose name rhymes with Shmarvey Shmeinstein.

...Read More

Russian businessman and movie financier Leonid Rozhetskin, 41, who allegedly covered the shooting costs of Hamlet 2 single-handedly, may have been killed, according to a 3.26 Moscow Times story by Max Delany.

Leonid Rozhetskin

Hamlet 2 played at last January's Sundance Film Festival and will be released by Focus Features on 8.22. Rozhetskin also produced Duncan Ward and Danny Monahan's Boogie Woogie, a possible '08 release.

A friend of George Hickenlooper's and, one gathers, an associate of Hamlet 2 producers Eric Eisner, Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger...Read More

L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein posted a 3.24 piece on '80s-youth- comedy poobah John Hughes, honoring the now-reclusive director as the author of the original treatment of Drillbit Taylor and the father of the Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith-type comedies filling screens today. Defamer found Goldstein's piece unsatisfying, however, and yesterday ran a request for reader questions to be sent to Hughes for some kind of follow-up. I don't have a question for Hughes, but I have a question about him that I'd like answered.

It concerns an article about Hughes in the Read More

Speaking of brilliant impressions, the guy who may or may not do a first-rate George Bush in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay but who definitely has the knack of it down in this My Space video clip is James Adomian.

There's a hilarious four-page scene between Harold, Kumar and Adomian/Bush at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas (cheaper to replicate than the Oval Office) in a 7.10.06 draft of "Harold and Kumar 2" by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg...Read More

"I can eat planets....hah-hah-hah-hah! I can fly, okay? I can fly. I like to throw nails in the street. Hah-hah-hah!....stop, shut up, shut up....stop. Shut. Up. Hah-hah-hah!...I'm okay."

Cheers to Miles Fisher for doing the best Tom Cruise voice and laugh...ever. The clip is from the Weinstein Co's Superhero Movie!.

Three mildly interesting things have just happened in the Democratic primary race -- one today, two yesterday.

First, a Public Policy poll released earlier this afternoon found that Barack Obama had regained a sizable lead over Hillary Clinton among North Carolina voters, 55 to 34 percentage points. He leads 80% to 14% among black voters with Clinton topping him 47 % to 40% among white voters, although she was allegedly ahead of him with this group at 56% to 30% a week ago.

Second, Senate Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada told the Las Vegas Review JournalRead More

Before I proceed this is a spoiler warning for all the history scholars out there who don't know that gangster John Dillinger was shot and killed by FBI agents on a hot night in Chicago in July 1934. Okay? Sorry if this upsets anyone who wants to be kept in a state of white-knuckled suspense when they sit down to see Michael Mann's Public Enemies sometime next year.

Last night I bought a copy of Bryan Burrough...Read More

Hillary Clinton (speaking earlier today in Greensburg, Pennsylvania): "I think that what we have to wait and see is what happens in the next three months. There's been a lot of talk about what if, what if, what if. Let's wait until we get some facts...over the next months millions of people are going to vote. And we should wait and see the outcome of those votes."

N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks (in a 3.25 column called "The Long Defeat"): "Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Politico's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen...Read More

Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta has posted a piece about an alleged San Francisco backlash to the Forgetting Sarah Marshall slogan campaign. If any San Francisco HE readers notice any of these satirical knockoffs that Sciretta is referring to, please snap a photo and send it along.

Sciretta begins by explaining that he recently wrote "about Universal's genius viral marketing campaign for the upcoming Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall...Read More

My favorite scene from Bonnie and Clyde ('67), the special edition DVD of which is in stores today. Speaking of stupid, I'm guessing I'll probably hem and haw another year or two before I discover and then write down the name of the software-for-dumbasses that'll make it easy to capture and transport frame-captures from DVDs, instead of my current method.

My favorite Gene Hackman/Buck Barrow dumbass line: "You know what they say. It's the face powder that attracts a man, but it's the baking powder that keeps him at home."

Stream's Eric Kohn summarizes and comments about the Harvey Weinstein-produced Superhero Movie vs. the rage and the rebellion of the Fanboys contingent.

"Dismayed that The Weinstein Company was tearing up a paean to what many fanboys considered to be a variation their own story, the real fanboys turned to their best resource -- the internet," he says. "At Stop Darth Weinstein!, visitors are greeted by [the] Weinstein Company head honcho dressed up as Darth Vader, and threats from the fanboy community that if Fanboys doesn't get a proper release. they'll boycott TWC's upcoming release of ...Read More

"No, I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. you know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement." The fourth time on this topic, in fact.

On one level this Chapter 27 one-sheet is fairly off-putting. Who wants to spend a whole movie with the creepy fat guy who killed John Lennon? (Who, by the way, is portrayed in the film by a guy with too-dark hair, which I found hugely annoying.) It also suggests an extra-intense commitment by the marketers for Peace Arch, the film's distributor. They must know what this one-sheet is saying to people. Hardcore, man.

A friend who passed along PDF copies of the scripts for Pineapple Express, which I've read, and Tropic Thunder, which I haven't, shared a short opinion. "I think the Pineapple Express script is funny -- if a bit underwhelming -- but Tropic Thunder is surprisingly primitive," he said. "It's a really uninspired execution of a terrific premise. Here's hoping they improvised some better material on set. In an odd coincidence, the final acts of both scripts are very similar. Strange."

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The Reeler's (and not, in this instance, Defamer's) Stu VanAirsdale reported an hour ago that another New York City film critic -- the Village Voice's Nathan Lee -- has been whacked for "economic reasons." Lee was a Voice staffer for a grand total of 18 months.

"My employment at the paper ends immediately," Lee said in an e-mail earlier today. "Someone else, alas, will be tasked with specifying the precise shade of periwinkle frosting atop the cupcakes in My Blueberry Nights...Read More

"Yeah, I'm writing something. I'm going to direct it at the end of the year. And no, I haven't told anyone what it is yet. It's a comedy and a drama [book adaptation]. Think Thank You for Smoking, but instead of political it's corporate." -- a quote from Jason Reitman to MTV, posted earlier today. I've always been under the impression that Thank You for Smoking was both political and...Read More

"Most men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and continue as if nothing happened." -- a Winston Churchill quote used by educator-consultant Pamela Gerloff at the start of a 3.23 essay about how really big thoughts and moments, like those contained in Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech last Tuesday, are waved off or attacked by most listeners, for the most banal and petty of reasons.

In a 3.31 New Yorker piece called "Out of Print: The Death and Life of the American Newspaper," Eric Alterman notes that in a recent episode of The Simpsons, "a cartoon version of Dan Rather introduced a debate panel featuring 'Ron Lehar, a print journalist from the Washington Post.' This inspired Bart's nemesis Nelson to shout, 'Haw haw! Your medium is dying!' "'Nelson!' Principal Skinner admonished. "But it is!" came the young man's reply.

IlIustration by Gerald Scarfe

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21 (Sony, 3.28), the Kevn Spacey-Robert Luketic-Jim Sturgess-Kate Bosworth movie about MIT kids taking the casinos for millions, will be the only big performer among the new films this weekend. It's tracking at 67, 48 and 23, which means $20 million and then some.

David Schwimmer's Run Fat Boy Run, which snuck last weekend, is at 39, 28 and 6. Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, a vital, compelling, believably acted drama about an Iraq War veteran that's running against the tide, is tracking at 62, 29 and 6. And Craig Mazin's Super-Hero Movie...

Huffington Post contributor Allison Hope Weiner has posted a recording of a 2001 conversation between Courtney Love and Anthony Pellicano. Love was calling from the Vancouver set of Luis Mandoki's Trapped (which came out the following year) and looking for help from Pellicano with (a) her then-boyfriend Jim's divorce and custody lawsuit and (b) concerns over an ex-assistant having hacked into her email account and threatened to publish all kinds of personal correspondence.

Love: "I need everything from refinement to fucking baseball bats, and I need them all under one roof." Pellicano...Read More

Most depression-era gangsters had coarse features -- puffy, rough-looking, scarred, pockmarked -- with feral, pitiless eyes. Some were flat-out ugly. Movie stars tend to have appealing, often pretty faces and are pretty much unable to walk into a room without engaging audience empathy. So there's a Hollywood b.s. factor going in when you cast anyone genetically gifted as a gun-totin' psychopath.

Johnny Depp during filming of Michael Mann's Public Enemies

Like, for example, when Bonnie and Clyde producer Warren Beatty cast himself as the short, dorky-looking Clyde Barrow. This worked, obviously, because the equally pretty Faye Dunaway...Read More

I have an instant problem with scene descriptions of rottin' dead dogs and mayflies and greasy spoons with good old truck drivers sayin' where they've a'trucked to. I especially don't like readin' about some lowdown Robert Johnson tune playin' as a title card says we're in the southern Indiana lowlands in the year 1985. When Ronald Reagan was in the White House and scratchy 78 rpms of Johnson's Delta blues songs were heard almost everywhere, and were cherished in the hearts of the people.

Colorful, sweaty, earthy, pre-corporatized

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Schemer#1: If I blundered like you, my head would roll.
Schemer#2: I dare say from a greater height than mine.
Schemer#1: You would?
Schemer#2: Yes. From the height of vaulting ambition.
Schemer#1: You have none?
Schemer#2: No.
Schemer#1: (Pause) Do you fear me, Rochefort?
Schemer#2: Yes, eminence. I also...hate you.
Schemer#1: I love you, my son. Even when you fail.

If you didn't recognize this main-title music, you'd know right away it's some kind of spunky chick flick about starting over after a divorce. I'm kidding. The point is that there's no mistaking what you're in for once you hear it. The Mina-title music for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice worked just as well this way; ditto Ed Wood. This track gets you excited and in the mood besides. There are dozens of others that have done this; perhaps some recently. Examples?

I finally clicked on that IFC/Red Bull ad, which I didn't have a clue about since I don't do the selling these days. The IFC guys want people to submit a trailer for a miniseries with an urban nocturnal theme. It can't be any longer than six minutes and it has to tell some kind of story. That doesn't seem too hard. As always, the thing to do is avoid the cliches. No stories about bartenders, waitresses, cabbies, cops. I got it, I got it -- make one about a homeless cat. Or a dog. The lonely lives of vagrant animals.

I've been trying to refine my reactions to Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That, an '07 Sony Classics release that came out on DVD earlier this month. And they won't. It's a documentary that nearly kills you with its refusal to say "this is this." Life itself may have indeed refused to provide a clear answer to the film's Big Question, which has to do with a possible art fraud, but that doesn't make the film any less irksome.

Marla Olmstead

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Hillary Clinton's "Walter Mitty Moment" -- an apparent fabrication about the non-dangerous circumstances of a 12 year-old state visit to Tuzla, Bosnia -- is reviewed in this 3.22 Daily Kos posting and this Washington Post Fact-Checker report. Very Weird. Busted, in any case...and for what?

There are two grabbers in Katrina Onstad's 3.23 N.Y. Times profile of Stop-Loss director-writer Kimberly Peirce. One is a blunt comment from Peirce about her career, the second is her non-response to a cheap-shot question by Onstad (and a cheap-shot collusion on the part of her editors).

Stop-Loss director-writer Kimberly Peirce, Ryan Phillipe.

The first, following a statement that "after almost a decade in the Hollywood wilderness trying to find a project that would equal her first film, she earned just a single directorial credit, for an episode of the television series The L Word...Read More

Today's Gallup tracking poll shows Barack Obama retaking the national lead over Hillary Clinton "after the Jeremiah Wright scandal had badly damaged his numbers and put him behind for nearly a week," says a 3.22 Talking Points Memo report. Obama is now at 48% (up 3) to Clinton's 45% (down 2). Obama's Philadelphia speech last Tuesday combined with Bill Richardson's endorsement "have gone a long way in fixing his poll numbers for now, but he still has yet to fully recover the six-point lead he had in Gallup a little over a week ago."

Last weekend's Philadelphia speech is what finally convinced Gov. Bill Richardson to endorse Sen. Barack Obama. He was leaning in this direction, but the speech is what did it.

"The decision by Mr. Richardson, who ended his own presidential campaign on Jan. 10, to support Mr. Obama was a belt of bad news for Sen. Hillary Clinton," writes N.Y. Times reporter Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny. "It was a stinging rejection of her candidacy by a man who had served in two senior positions in President Bill Clinton...Read More