Take a look at Will Smith's IMDB page and you'll notice that over the last 15 years he's made four movies with four top-ranked directors -- Fred Schepisi's Six Degrees of Separation ('94), Tony Scott's Enemy of the State ('98), Michael Mann's Ali ('00) and Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance ('01). And Redford's film (a.k.a., Bag of Gas) was probably his worst and therefore barely counts.

The rest of Smith's directors have all been journeymen -- nice guy professsionals (Barry Sonnenfeld, Peter Berg) but mainly fellows who can shoot a film in focus, get it in on time, etc, but...Read More

Most of the 20something assistants who work for top-tier producers, agents and studio bigwigs think that their job is somehow about them -- what they deserve, being shown the proper respect and consideration by their bosses, getting their weekends off. And if they aren't treated the right way, they all go "waahhh." Maybe one in ten of these guys understand that it's not about their piddly-ass needs or their boss's personality, but about excellence and doing it right and giving 110% or 115% in the service of whatever movie or deal or campaign they're working on.

Mark Roybal,...

In a 12.27 interview with CulturePulp's Mike Russell, Valkyrie screenwriter Chris McQuarrie tries to pooh-pooh the matter of the film's inconsistent, all-over-the-map accents. McQuarrie reports that he, director Bryan Singer and star-producer Tom Cruise "talked about it" and decided against having the characters speak German-accented English because it would sound distracting.

(l. to r.) Valkyrie director Bryan Singer, screenwriter Chris McQuarrie, star-producer Tom Cruise.

The solution, says McQuarrie, was everyone saying "why can't we all just be human beings in this movie and not worry about that?" And have everyone speak...Read More

In tribute to the late Heath Ledger and his ridiculous death -- easily the saddest, dumbest and most infuriating act by a gifted artist in the year 2008 -- here's a clip I never saw until this morning. In taping this silly bit with Ellen DeGeneres, I love that Ledger went right to work at conveying the unreality of it -- mock fear, reading a book, juggling balls, going to sleep, etc.

Given the miraculous nature of Ledger's Joker performance in The Dark Knight, his winning...Read More

"By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Barack Obama's disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Rick Warren is a relatively tiny infraction," writes N.Y. Times columnist Frank RIch in his usual Sunday column. "It's no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It's bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.

"Since he's not about to rescind the invitation, what happens next? For perspective, I asked Timothy McCarthy, a historian who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and an...Read More

So if the cash-strapped N.Y. Times sells its stake in the Boston Red Sox for $150 to $200 million, this won't be enough to get the paper through '09, but "it should buy it some additional breathing room," says the Silicon Valley Insider's Henry Blodgett . And they could pocket another $300 to $400 million if they sell the Boston Globe and About.com. A total between $450 to $600 million.

This additional cash "would allow the company to meet its cash needs until mid-2010," the story says. "By then, however, if current business trends continue and the company hasn't slashed costs, the...Read More

Three days ago Jamie Lee Curtis published a HuffPost piece called "It Is A Wonderful Life." It's one of the most inspiring responses to the economic trouble we're all facing that I've read since Election Day.

The gist is that too many of us have become drunk on lifestyle comforts over the last 20 or 25 years, wrapped up in them to the point of isolation and neurosis, living inside (and keeping life out of) our SUVs, McMansions, iPhones and whatnot. And that the severe economic downturn that we're all going to suffer through for the next couple of years will...Read More

"I've been wondering what film WALL*E might pick off for a Best Picture nod. I'm guessing Frost/Nixon is the low-hanging fruit, huh? How long until we start seeing those articles? A Best Picture race of The Dark Knight, WALL*E, Benjamin Button, Milk and...shudder... Slumdog Millionaire would almost be respectable. Even if it consists of too much lesser work by a lot of good people." -- HE reader "KB," posted a little while ago.

Posted eight months ago, never saw it until today, not ashamed to admit this. Kate and Gin's Wikipedia page; a 9.27.08 Daily Mail story

Marley and Me did $13.8 million yesterday -- a very strong showing -- and is projected to earn $38.3 million for the three-day weekend. Benjamin Button did about $9 million yesterday with a projected $27.9 million for the three-day weekend. Since it did around $12 million on Xmas Day, a good hold would have been about a million or so more than that, so $9 million isn't all that terrific.

Adam Sandler 's Bedtime Stories did $9.7 million, $27.3 million projected. And the fourth-place Valkyrie made about $8.1 million yesterday with $22 million projected by Sunday night.

Jim Carrey's Yes Man...Read More

The reputation of the shameless Ben Lyons, the 27 year-old co-host of At The Movies who's become infamous over the last four months as probably the least knowledgable and perceptive high-profile movie critic of the 21st Century, as well as a passionate practitioner of kneepad love in the service of the Hollywood entertainment machine, has finally stirred the interest of the L.A. Times entertainment section.

Chris Lee's 12.28 piece, called "Critic Ben Lyons Gets Many Thumbs Down" (with a subhead stating that "the new At the Movies reviewer's detractors find him a...Read More

A story posted today on Philly.com reported that a 29 year-old Philadelphia man shot a guy in the arm last night during a showing of Benjamin Button because the guy wouldn't stop talking. That's obviously a totally unacceptable and uncalled-for act. I hope the guy who took the bullet is okay...really.

But I would also be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a wee bit sympathetic as far as the feelings of the shooter were probably concerned. I'm more of a zap-em-with-a-squirt-gun man myself.

Now that I've mentioned it, that's not a bad idea. If theatres were to sell...Read More

In a chat with In Contention's Kris Tapley, Last Chance Harvey star Dustin Hoffman confesses to having "strong feelings" about film criticism. "There's no job description," he says. "You see someone's suddenly a new critic, and you say, 'Oh, I know that name.' Yeah, he was a food critic. So the newspaper moved him up from food critic to film critic, which is fine, because everybody is a critic.

"But there are other people who know film, who really understand it, maybe even on the level [that] Scorsese does." That's me! I'm that guy! I may not have quite the same open-door,...Read More

Imagine a world in which the assurance of fast wifi on a train trip would be so locked down that you wouldn't have a moment's doubt. I'm experiencing considerable doubt right now, of course, as I prepare to catch an Amtrak train from Albany to Penn Station. I found out during a train ride from Grand Central to Norwalk earlier this week that you can have three, four or five bars on your AT&T Air Card but you still can't connect to the internet if you're moving.

Albany-Rensselaer train station -- Friday, 12.26, 12:35 pm -- waiting on 1:05...

Okay, so Marley and Me/Old Yeller is the big 12.25 to 12.28 champ -- bigger than anyone had projected, myself included. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is second, Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories is third and Valkyrie is fourth. Marley's success -- it will end up with $100 million and then some -- is, of course, a bit of mixed-bag thing -- bad for our collective movegoing souls, understandable from an economically-afflicted-viewers POV, good for sales of the original book, bad because of the "me too, Marley!" movies it'll inspire.

This response to Rick Warren's 12.23 "this is who I am and what I believe" video is interesting for the points that are made, for the intriguing Latin accent of the speaker, and the fact that he speaks very quietly, so as to not wake someone else up, I'm guessing.

I thought I was all safe and locked in at Park City's Star Hotel, having stayed there during the '07 and '08 Sundance Film Festivals and having left a cowboy hat there as a token of my intention to return the following year. A cowboy hat left behind means you're a true-blue guy! But I failed to place a proper, formal confirmation call to proprietor Carol Rixey, and now she's given away my room. So now I have to scramble with the festival starting in 20 days. If anyone knows of a share situation inside Park City proper (just a room, a bed,...Read More

Untitled from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo

I was delighted with the sharp, robust, extra-clean image quality of the Fox Home Video French Connection DVD that came out in February '05. William Friedkin's 1971 crime classic probably looked and sounded better than it ever had in Nixon-era theatres.

But it's not supposed to look too good. Too much attractiveness would take away from the raw-grit vibe that Owen Roizman's photography tried very hard to capture as he shot in various Manhattan, Brooklyn and other-borough locales. So I'm wondering what the point is going to be of the French Connection Blu-ray disc...Read More

The Financial Times once defined Pinteresque dialogue as ''full of dark hints and pregnant suggestions, with the audience left uncertain as to what to conclude.'' That's not bad, but I've always defined it with seven words: (a) spare, (b) precise, (c) cutting and (d) sometimes a bit cruel. That leaves out opaque, terse, witty, chilly and all the other applicable terms, but however you slice it the man who created this form of expression -- playwright Harold Pinter -- died yesterday in London at age 78.

I've seen The Birthday Party and The Homecoming on-stage...Read More

Can anyone imagine any half-savvy online journalist or news site running a December 2008 story titled "VHS Era Is Winding Down"? I can't. At the same time I shrugged when I read Geoff Bouncher's story with this title in the 12.22 L.A. Times because this is the kind of "duhh" story that the LAT sometimes likes to run. It's about a low-rent, bottom of the barrel VHS distributor named Ryan J. Kugler who's finally decided to pack it in as far as this format is concerned. Whatever. It's the Be Kind Rewind of video-format trend stories.

My 11.25 review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, reposted with David Fincher's film opening today: Will viewers be willing to let Button be Button and put aside whatever high falutin' expectations they may bring to it? It could all work out if they do, but it didn't quite work for me because I couldn't. I enjoyed and was even heartened by this dreamy-sad glide through time and memory and the textures and aromas of 20th Century America, but I can't say I'm as hungry for a second immersion as I was when I first saw Fincher's Zodiac some eighteen or...Read More

A nicely written piece by Christopher Durang about catching repeat viewings of Alistair Sim's A Christmas Carol on WOR-TV's "Million Dollar Movie" way back when, and why the film still sinks in emotionally like few others.

"Can you forgive a pig-headed old fool for having no eyes to see with nor ears to hear with all these years?"

And here's another Christmas Carol piece, written by Ray Edroso and posted today on the Village Voice site.

Here's Livestation, a free player from Britain that provides English-language versions of Al Jazeera, Russia Today, France 24, and Deutsche Welle Radio, plus ITN and BBC world service.

Will a 2020 review of '08 high-tech toys seem as funny-pathetic-astonishing as this Xmas checklist of 1997 items seems now?

Directed by Brad Silberling, Land of the Lost (Universal, 6.9.09) is...there's no point in saying anything smart-ass about this. Night at the Museum meets Jurassic Park and Jumanji. A klutzy but likable forest ranger Will Ferrell and his two kids "inadvertently stumble into a mysterious land populated by dinosaurs and other creatures, including the mysterious and dangerous race of Sleestak," etc.

N.Y. Times guy Michael Cieply reported today that a federal judge in Los Angeles intends to grant 20th Century Fox's claim that it owns a copyright interest in Zack Snyder's Watchmen, which has been funded/produced by Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures and set for release on 3.6.09.

"Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the Watchmen motion picture," the ruling said. The judge, Gary A. Feess of the United States District Court for Central California, "said he would provide a more detailed order soon," Cieply wrote.

What will happen from this, presuming...Read More

"Before killing something, I always talk to it. An animal that's been caressed before it's killed dies peacefully, and its muscles don't contract with adrenalin. If an animal is slaughtered in a stress-free way, it tastes better." -- Gerard Depardieu quoted today on contactmusic.com.

Except an animal can always tell when he/she/it is about to die. All living things can. They can smell the intent to slaughter like a lie-detector machine can read tension and anxiety. Knowing you're about to lose your head jacks up your sensitivity levels. (Say whatever you want, but I imagined this once when I was 19 years...Read More

In a 12.23 Film Threat interview to promote The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love (De Capo), co-author John Anderson is asked to differentiate between A-List and B-List movie journo-blogger-critics.

"Can we boil it down to pros vs. wankers?," Anderson replies. "There are a lot of alleged critics out there trying to prove that the internet was created to unleash the untalented, untaught and probably unwashed" -- the leading voice in this camp is Time's Richard Schickel -- "but those people exist in print too. The most...Read More

Dave Karger: "You think Sally Hawkins can win [for Best Actress]? Tom O'Neil: "I think she's one of the few who could." Karger: "No way."

"It is theoretically possible to make an apparently bigoted remark that is also factually true and morally sound. Thus, when the Rev. Bailey Smith, one of the deputies of the late Jerry Falwell, claimed that 'God almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,' I was in complete agreement with him. This is because I do not believe that there is any supernatural supervisor who lends an ear to any prayer." -- from a 12.19 Christopher Hitchens Slate piece titled "Three Questions About Rick Warren's Role in the Inauguration." The subtitle: "If we must have an officiating priest, surely we...Read More

A synopsis of Shane Acker's 9 (Focus Features, 9.9.09) reads as follows: "When 9 (Elijah Wood) first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction.

"Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to...Read More

Apologies for not taking note two days ago of a scathing Tom Cruise career-analysis piece by Slate's Stephen Metcalf. The gist is that Cruise's legend wasn't just born in the '80s but exemplifies -- is spiritually bonded to -- the Age of Reagan, and that he's now threatened by the current consensus that the Wall Street junk-bond/hedge-fund alcoholic greed splurge of the last 25 years is finally over and done with. As that spirit and attitude is tanking, Metcalf says, so is Cruise's career.

"More so than any of his contemporaries,"...Read More

All that Valkyrie neg-dissing you're reading and hearing from online reporters and columnists (which I haven't contributed to with any real gusto, being something of a mezzo-mezzo responder), is one reason why there's some talk/expectation that Valkyrie will become a "surprise hit" over the next Xmas weekend. The new-release champs with the "just entertain us" crowd will be Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories (which has big family appeal), Old Yeller/Marley and Me, and Valkyrie in third place, I'm told.

I was listening to a couple of 20-something DJ/talkshow guys on FM radio during yesterday's big drive. Movies were on the table, and one of them, sounding like a fairly well-educated GenYer, said that when he sees a black-and-white film on the tube he goes into an auto-pilot reception mode because in his head (and, he said, in the heads of a lot of his contemporaries, raised on visual intensity/CGI/video games/IMAX/3D) "all black and white movies are the same movie." My mouth fell open. I give up, I said to myself.

Caroline Kennedy-Chris Matthews link from Politico's Anne Schroeder Mullins...fine.

On 7.21 Patrick Sauriol, webmaster of the legendary Coming Attractions website which ruled from the mid '90s to the early 21st Century, announced a re-launch of the site -- Coming Attractions 2.0. He said it would be up and rolling within 30 days or so. It's now five months later, and a Beta version is finally up and rolling.

What's missing at this stage is new information inside the Movie Database. Sequential backstage histories of this and that film is mainly what I used to visit CA for in the old days. I remember going to CA over...Read More

MTV.com's Josh Horowitz claims to have had an "interesting chat" with with Benjamin Button director David Fincher. With Button finally opening tomorrow, it'll be interesting to hear HE reader comments about it. I've said before that it's basically a languid, atmospherically-driven thing -- a film with exquisite, top-of-the-line chops from start to finish that nonetheless underwhelms in a pleasant and soothing way.

I love that transition period when you're leaving a warm building and walking out into 5 degree weather, when the warmth falls away like a fair-weather friend and you can feel micro-sized ice crystals forming inside your nose within seconds. It's a feeling of natural wowness comparable in warm-weather California terms only to swallowing a mouthful of salt water after being kicked around by the backwash undertow of a large wave.

A boogie-boarder could conceivably drown off the California coast if things went the wrong way, and a person could easily die in Connecticut weather like...Read More

Last night Vice-President-elect Joe Biden told Larry King that he felt "somewhat badly" for President Bush, and that he feels that "the incident in Iraq was unfortunate, that guy throwing the shoes...it was just, it was just uncalled for ." But it was called for. It was absolutely called for and then some. This is why Muntadhar al-Zeidi's rude and intemperate act triggered such a huge reaction worldwide. Because of a consensus that there was enormous justification for what he did.

As I wrote on 12.15.08, al-Zeidi "has articulated a popular rage in the same way Peter Finch 's Howard...Read More

I'm sorry, but when Rep. Gary Ackerman essentially called Caroline Kennedy the Democratic Sarah Palin, a voice within begrudgingly admitted that he wasn't far off. Kennedy has been acting way too timid and reclusive and un-Kennedy-like to be handed Hilary Clinton's Senate seat. She just doesn't have the strength of character that people generally want from a big-time legislator, let alone one with her lineage and last name.

The lady is clearly unwilling to intellectually engage off the cuff. She seems wimpy. She lacks pizazz. I'm not detecting any serious gumption or intestinal fortitude. There's...Read More

I was too lazy to respond to Roger Friedman's 12.22 item about Speed-the-Plow costar Raul Esparza addressing a Sunday-matinee audience about the departed, sushi-afflicted, mercury-poisoned Jeremy Piven...so here it is 24 hours late.

The puzzler for me wasn't Esparza (whose performance was more off-the-wall manic than Piven's when I caught a performance in late November) saying "today was the first time I really enjoyed playing this show" and "I hope you weren't expecting a big TV star." The puzzler was about how costar Elizabeth Moss allegedly "sobbed" while Esparza was dissing Piven, presumably out of sympathy. Why? Who sobs for...Read More

Vanity Fair's Julian Sancton has assembled a jukebox sampler of 11 movie-music clips, and after listening to most of them (I refuse to sample David Hirtschfelder's Australia music) it finally hit me why I've been so taken with Revolutionary Road all this time. Thomas Newman's score is so moving in its sadness and simplicity, so finely woven into the mood of the film (and vice versa) that it's like a character unto itself.

The other films and their composers sampled in Sancton's piece: Che (Alberto Iglesias), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Alexandre Desplat), The Dark Knight (Hans Zimmer ...Read More

I've noted previously that the "air" in Southbury, Connecticut, is awful. It's more or less the dark side of the moon. One of the few commercial establishments with any kind of tangible semi-reliable wi-fi is a just-opened Borders in the main shopping center, which is where I'm sitting now. But not for long. Within minutes I'll be submerged in the black hole of The Watermark, the retirement community where my mom lives.

Grand Central Station -- 12.22.08, 11:25 am

Object d'art at Museum of Modern Art...seriously. Located on a second or third-floor...

Getting on a train up to Connecticut, and then driving up to Northern Siberia, New York -- i.e., west of Rochester -- tomorrow. It's going to be a howling frozen hell with lots of boredom thrown in, and too many calories. As an exercise, I'm going to take a picture of something on the way into Grand Central and post it from the moving train, using the AT&T Air Card.

Update: Steve Martin isn't playing Meryl Streep 's ex-husband in Nancy Meyers' new film -- he's the new suitor. Alec Baldwin plays her ex, which is the larger dominant role. Martin's role is essentially an extended cameo.

Original Post: During a round-table Doubt interview Meryl Streep confirmed that she's starring in Nancy Meyers' upcoming movie with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, and provided Collider's Steve Weintraub (among others) with a synopsis:

"It's a kind of a...it's a comedy, but it has a little basis in something very real and a dilemma that people meet at a certain age. This...Read More

If you want something you need to say to yourself "I want this thing," and then you have to make the moves. Outside of the realm of royalty, nothing is handed to anyone on a silver platter. And if you've (a) cumulatively earned your laurels, as Kate Winslet clearly has, and (b) delivered a phenomenally sad and searing performance, as Winslet has in Revolutionary Road , then you're entitled to stand up and do what you need to do.

The following was posted five days ago -- five days ago! -- on gofugyourself. The dialogue...Read More

The basic DNA of every bullshit CG fantasy action-mythology epic of the last 25 years is contained in this mock-trailer for Thundercats, and will be repeated again and again as long as bullshit CG fantasy action-mythology epics continue to be made. Brilliant career moves by Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel and Hugh Jackman, but who's the actress under the makeup -- Scarlett Johansson? I've only watched it once. (Congrats to WormyT, thanks to Jack Morrissey.)

The Wormy T guys are saying all the effects were done frame-by-frame in Photoshop,...

The character of Caden Cotard in Synecdoche "seems to echo many of Philip Seymour Hoffman's own internal debates and anxieties," writes Lynn Hirschberg in her 12.21 N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine profile called "A Higher Calling."

"I took Synecdoche on because I was turning 40, and I had two kids, and I was thinking about this stuff -- death and loss -- all the time," Hoffman explains. "The workload was hard, but what made it really difficult was playing a character who is trying to incorporate the inevitable pull of death into his art. Somewhere, Philip...Read More

"The story of the ongoing financial meltdown is "partly of President Bush's own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials," begins a 12.20 N.Y. Times story by Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton.

"From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

"He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent -- and with...Read More

In the final graph of her entertaining N.Y. Times review of Christopher Plummer's In Spite Of Myself: A Memoir (Knopf), Alex Witchel writes, "If your stock in trade is feeling for a living -- think about that -- you are required to make some messes along the way.

Christopher Plummer

"In spite of himself -- his relentlessly high artistic principles; his penchant for playing the underdog, even when he was the star; his keen ear, equally attuned to the precision of Elizabethan verse and to what passes as truth across a whiskey at 5...Read More

Three and a half days ago -- an eon! -- Australia director Baz Luhrman acknowledged to a Hollywood Reporter staffer that "there are those [who] don't get" his widely disparaged film. Or rather, he meant, "a lot of the film scientists don't get it. And it's not just that that they don't get it, but they hate it and they hate me , and they think I'm the black hole of cinema. They say, 'He shouldn't have made it, and he should die.'"

Nobody I know thinks Baz Luhrman is anything close to the black hole...Read More

Yesterday morning Jim Carrey's Yes Man was projected to pull in around $18,681,000. This morning's Steve Mason/Big Hollywood report says it'll do a tad less -- $18.1 million and change.

The second-place Seven Pounds was looking at a projected $15,500,000 yesterday morning. It's now expected to finish tonight with around $16 million -- a soft opener for a Will Smith film, and probably headed for a final tally that will be comparable to the grosses for Michael Mann's Ali.

The fourth-place Four Christmases will be just shy of a $100 million cume by late tonigh, the fifth-place Twilight...Read More

How could the Toronto Star's Peter Howell, whose opinions have often stirred me and which have always warranted respect, fall for the emotional dog food being peddled by Seven Pounds, the Gabriele Muccino-Will Smith movie?

Howell says he's "inclined to give the picture passing marks for two reasons. The first is that Smith is not trying to make us love him...this is no small risk for Hollywood's most genial superstar." Bullshit. Smith's character may be rude or anxious or perplexing at times, but at no time is Seven Pounds not trying its darndest to present this guy, thorny as he is in...Read More

I've read a few filmmaker biographies in my time, mostly about legendary types (David O. Selznick, John Huston, etc.) I've read two Montgomery Clift bios and two or three about Marlon Brando, and I thought I was Brando'ed out. But this 12.20 Daily Mail summary of Alice Marshak's paperback cheapie, Me and Marlon, is obviously authentic (being a first-person account) and a rendering of Brando as a hugely pathetic figure. Marshak wrote this because she needed the money, obviously, but I believe what she's written.

Yesterday The Envelope's Tom O'Neil ran some comments from a few journo-bloggers about whether Andrew Stanton's WALL*E might be Oscar-nominated for Best Picture instead of just Best Animated Feature, which this widely loved and admired film is obviously destined to be nominated and win for.

I was the only one who didn't just say no, it probably won't be nominated as Best Picture but bluntly and unequivocally no, it shouldn't be nominated for Best Picture because (a) it belongs in the animated category, period, and (b) winning in that category is a very honorable thing...Read More

John Anderson's 12.21 Washington Post piece about the difficulty of selling nice Nazis reminded me of Marlon Brando's Christian Diestl in The Young Lions. It's a 1950s "sell" job, all right -- a sanded-down, somewhat romanticized but still tolerable idea of what a decent WWII German soldier might be like, one who believes at first in National Socialism and later not so much. But I like this scene for the quiet conviction Brando brings to the words "I would do it." This scene isn't bad either.

With President-elect Barack Obama having nominated Colorado Senator Ken Salazar for Secretary of the Interior, a 12.19 Public Policy poll revealed that Democratic Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, cousin of film director George Hickenlooper and subject of a forthcoming GH mini-series called Hick Town, is a very strong contender against the top two potential GOP opponents. JH beats Bill Owens 54 to 40, and Tom Tacredo 54 to 37. So maybe he'll be appointed to fill Salazar's seat.

George Hickenlooper, Barack Obama during filming of Hick Town.

Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, perhaps the most fully and radiantly spiritual Hollywood-funded film about Yeshua of Nazareth ever made, opened 20 years and 4 months ago. I saw it on opening day at the Plitt theatres in Century City. I came out of the theatre moved and moist-eyed, and outside there was a raging mob of Orange County goons protesting the sexual-marital scene between Willem Dafoe 's Christ and Barbara Hershey's Mary Magdelene -- completely missing what the last temptation meant, too fearful and ignorant to even see the film.

It was then...Read More

As much as I love and cherish Bottle Rocket, shelling out an admittedly reasonable $26 and change for a Criterion Blu-ray version doesn't seem all that vital. It's not like it's renowned for its shattering, eye-melting visions of Dallas, Fort Worth and Hillsboro, Texas. Although I'll probably spring for it anyway because of my Blu-ray heroin habit, which requires a fresh new experience every week or so.

Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson during the final scene in Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket.

...two days ago (which makes it the fourth time) and the only thing that's been bothering me is that Leonardo DiCaprio 's Frank Wheeler tends to speak in cliches when he's feeling awkward or emphatic -- "don't make me laugh!," "you were swell," "ain't that somethin'?" and so on. And I don't like the actorish way he always says "huh?" after every declaration or suggestion. But those are the only beefs.

Obviously the critics groups, SAG and the HFPA have greater concerns or there would be more awards love for Revolutionary Road than just that...Read More

I abhor people who text in movie theatres with others sitting around them. Loathsome behavior. But if two guys are sitting in a den or living room and texting each other about a show they're watching, who cares? That's almost the way it was when Bill McCuddy and I texted each other through the last 60% of Seven Pounds as we sat in Sony's seventh-floor screening room on Madison and 55th.

One, there was no one in our vicinity at all -- we were in the rear seats, and the other two guys in the theatre were several rows in front of us....Read More

The Washington Post's Dan Kois has written a sharp, concise but slightly too contained profile of the Oscar publicist trade, with special attention paid to the highly accomplished Lisa Taback, based in Los Angeles, and 42West's Cynthia Swartz and Amanda Lundberg. "It doesn't matter what [journalists and Oscar bloggers] think," says Lundberg. "It matters what people who have a ballot think."

Oscar publicist/strategists Lisa Taback, Cynthia Swartz

This 12.19 Bagger video is the best in days -- i.e., a chat with N.Y. Times critics Manohla Dargis (on voice-box) and Tony Scott (live in the flesh) inside the paper's carpeted Eighth Avenue sanctum.

I had a pretty good current going when I tapped out my 12.12 pan of The Day The Earth Stood Still. But my Seven Pounds review hasn't panned out at all, in large part because I'm not allowed to talk about the basic shot -- i.e., the climactic third-act revelation that tells viewers what Will Smith's character has actually been up to, which has been kept obscure throughout 98% of the film.

Unless the viewer has simply read the IMDB reader comments about the plot particulars, which have been sitting there plain as day for...Read More

While I was piddling around the apartment and making rental-car reservations, TMZ and Defamer reported this morning that the sushi-afflicted Jeremy Piven "was worried he was suffering from mononucleosis" two months ago (i.e., October), near the beginning of the run of the now-Pivenless Speed-The-Plow.

Plow's producer told TMZ that Piven had "complained of illnesses from the beginning of the show's run in October. First, says the producer, Piven reported 'low-level mono.' After that, Piven told producers he was worried he might have Epstein-Barr virus. The final diagnosis, as his doctor stated publicly, was mercury poisoning from a two-a-day raw fish...

"Buffalo Bill's defunct / who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion / and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat / Jesus / he was a handsome man / and what i want to know is / how do you like your blue-eyed boy / Mister Death" -- E.E. Cummings.

Or rather how are you, Mr. and Mrs. American moviegoer, coping with all the Hollywood expiration over this holiday season? But before going any further... SPOILER ALERT! (Okay?) Between 12.1.08 and 12.31.08, there will have been no fewer than fifteen films in which either the lead or one of the second-lead...Read More

There's a Huffington Post story explaining Jeremy Piven's mercury-overload condition that led to his quitting the Broadway production of Speed-the-Plow and running home like a weenie. It turns out Piven brought this condition upon himself by compulsively eating too much sushi.

Photo-illustration by Everett Bogue stolen from a 12.18 New York "Vulture" item.

The statement from Piven's rep says he doesn't like it that everyone has been making fun of his ass over quitting the show due to the mercury thing. Trust me, Piven -- the term "sushi defense" makes you seem like an...

"A slain cop is resurrected as a masked crime-fighter in The Spirit, but Frank Miller's solo writing-directing debut plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air," writes Variety's Justin Chang.

"Pushing well past the point of self-parody, Miller has done Will Eisner's pioneering comic strip no favors by drenching it in the same self-consciously neo-noir monochrome put to much more compelling use in Sin City. Graphic-novel geeks will be enticed by the promise of sleek babes and equally eye-popping f/x, but general audiences will probably pass on...Read More

HuffPost's John Aravosis has posted an allegedly leaked conversation (sic) between President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in which the president-elect decided to to choose conservative evangelical Christian leader Rick Warren to handle the invocation at Obama's inaugural.

Yes, the piece notes -- the same Rick Warren "who wants to ban all abortions, has compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, helped lead the fight for Prop. 8 in California, has said he agrees with far-right wingnut James Dobson on pretty much everything, and who's devoted his entire life to destroying everything Obama stands for and believes in."

Feinstein's...Read More

I should have noted this earlier, but here's to the Toronto Film Critics Association for ignoring the Zelig impulse, standing up like men of character and cojones and giving their Best Picture award to Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy. The two runnners-up were Rachel Getting Married and WALL*E.

Wendy and Lucy's Michelle Williams was named Best Actress, Jonathan Demme was named Best Director for Rachel Getting Married, Rachel's Jenny Lumet won for Best Screenplay, Rachel's Rosemarie DeWitt won Best Supporting Actress, Mickey Rourke took the Best Actor award for The Wrestler and the late Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for...Read More

What the hell is a "high mercury count"? Whatever it is, it reportedly caused Jeremy Piven to abruptly end his run in Broadway's Speed-the-Plow after missing Tuesday evening's performance and a Wednesday matinee. I thought this was a put-on after reading David Mamet's comment that he had spoken to Piven and was told "that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury...so my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer." This is the lamest cop-out excuse I've ever heard from any shirker in any profession in my entire life. It's on the...Read More

Vanity Fair.com's Julian Sancton is reporting that among this morning's SAG-nominated actors are eight "mutineers" -- actors who've stood up against SAG president Alan Rosenberg by refusing to sign a strike authorization. They are 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin, Milk's Josh Brolin , Recount's Kevin Spacey, Susan Sarandon of Bernard and Doris, Michael C. Hall of Dexter, Sally Field of Brothers & Sisters, and Monk's Tony Shalhoub.

The Florida Film Critics Circle have shown themselves to be just as conformist, regimented and sheep-like as other award-bestowing critics groups, with each of their '08 winners well within the arena of safety. Best Picture -- Slumdog Millionaire. Best Actor -- The Wrestler 's Mickey Rourke. Best Actress -- Frozen River's Melissa Leo . Best Supporting Actor -- The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger. Best Foreign Language Film -- Let the Right One In. Best Animated Feature -- WALL*E. Best Documentary -- Man on Wire. Breakout Award -- In Bruges director-writer Martin McDonagh.

I don't mean to single Florida out. I'm just...Read More

"Ideals are like the stars. We cannot reach them but we profit by their presence." -- a philosophy oft-spoken by John le Carre's father, Ronnie Cornwell.

The just-announced 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations contain at least two what-the-hells. Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel, a novice, is up for Best Supporting Actor while Revolutionary Road 's Michael Shannon has been ignored. (What is the blockage that people have about Shannon and this film? It's unconscionable to blow off a performance this lightning-bolt vivid.) And Changeling's Angelina Jolie has been nominated for Best Actress for a strong if less-than-breathtaking performance, while the stunning achievement of I've Loved You So Long 's Kristin Scott Thomas has been given the go-by.

Two...Read More

On top of his other allegiances, The Day The Earth Stood Still director Scott Derrickson is an avowed Christian. Which has clouded his vision. Everyone agrees that Michael Rennie's Klaatu in the original 1951 film is a Christ-like figure (his adopted earth name is John Carpenter -- i.e., J.C.) but how Derrickson sees Keanu Reeves' Klaatu in the same light is beyond me. For most of the film Reeves seems barely cognizant of moral or emotional distinctions in people, and he's decided from the get-go to murder the human race in order to save the planet earth -- an understandable...Read More

And speaking of entertainment industry professionals who demonstrate their allegiance one way but play a different tune when asked, Seven Pounds star Will Smith has told Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman that he's "not a Scientologist" but has told Access Hollywood that "the ideas of the Bible are 98 percent the same ideas of Scientology, 98 percent the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism."

Yesterday Friedman reported that just-released tax returns for Smith's charitable foundation "show that he and wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, gave $1.3 million in donations last year to a variety of religious, civic and arts groups,"...Read More

Yesterday I read the Wikipedia biography of the utterly loathsome Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Now there's a fall-of-the-Roman-empire anecdote if I ever saw one -- spending a portion of your work day reading about a right-wing co-host of The View! There's something wrong with a world that seriously considers (and I'm obviously including myself in this equation) the knee-jerk political sentiments of a former Survivor contestant because she happens to be a moderately hot-looking blonde with great legs.

The profile, in any event, quotes Hasselbeck as saying she's "neither a conservative nor a liberal...her parents had an independent political stance, never telling their children...Read More

Each morning for the last few days, the first thing I've done online is delete the interracial loving spam that's among the comments for each post, and of course ban the sender, who's probably some desperado from Mumbai.

"I have to say I'm not that interested in making films any more," Nicole Kidman has told a Telegraph interviewer. "I know I'm not meant to say that, but that's where it is for me now.

"I'm 41 years old and very happy being in Tennessee with my baby and with my husband. I obviously have creative blood in me and it needs to come out in some way but I just don't have that burning desire any more. I'm not saying I'm never going to work again, but I'm at peace with whatever happens, which is a nice place to...Read More

A.O. Scott's video essay about Brian Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol ('51) says everything I've always felt and believed about it. This British-produced adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel is by far (a) the most emotionally affecting, (b) the best acted, (c) the spookiest and (d) the most atmospherically correct of the lot. You can sense the mood and aroma of 19th Century London in every frame, line, garment and setting.

And no ghost in any other film has ever howled quite like Michael Hordern's...

In one of his most stinging pans, Variety's Todd McCarthy has shown himself to be no jellyfish when it comes to zapping Gabriele Muccino and Will Smith's Seven Pounds.

Calling the 12.19 Sony release "an endlessly sentimental fable" that "aims at the heart at the expense of the head," being "unguided by rationality and intellect," he says it's considerably "off-putting for its manifest manipulations, as well as its pretentiousness and self-importance."

He also bitch-slaps Smith for embracing his character's "saintlike status...in a way so convincing that it proves disturbing as an indication of how highly this or...Read More

Who decides after 50 years of avoiding media attention that they want to jump into big-time politics as a U.S. Senator, a big-league, rough-and-tumble job that's not for novices or the faint of heart, and has always demanded some basic fire-in the belly ambition? Caroline Kennedy just doesn't strike me as the type.

She seems to have warmed to the idea of filling Hillary Clinton's Senate seat because she wants to...Read More

In a post up today, Filmmaker's Nick Dawson asks Nothing But The Truth director-screenwriter Rod Lurie if he knew in advance that the film's distributor, the Yari Film Group, was headed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"I didn't know," Lurie responds. "I found out about 6pm [on December 12] and it was really, absolutely shocking. At this moment, I still haven't spoken to Bob [Yari] and I'm sure he's got incredibly important things to do. None of us really knows what it's really going to mean, how it's going to affect the film.

"Probably it will have it's Academy [Awards] qualifying run...Read More

If I was a mother with an infant child and no marketable skills other than being attractive enough to attract powerful rich guys in their 50s and receiving $15 grand per month to live on, I would subsist on $6 grand per month and sock the rest away for a rainy day. In a year's time I'd have over $100 grand in savings, and I could use this for investments if and when the gravy train stops.

"Hey, Kirk -- We last said hello at the Ed Harris tribute dinner in Santa Barbara on 10.2. I'll always remember our discussions on the Laredo set of Eddie Macon's Run in '82, which I visited for a N.Y Post piece, and especially your offering me a lift on a private jet back to Houston. Love that you have a Facebook thing going." -- posted on Kirk Douglas's Facebook page a few minutes ago.

If Days of Heaven had never been made by Terrence Malick in the mid '70s and come out instead as a brand-new film a month or so ago with Jake Gyllenhaal, say, in the Richard Gere role and Reese Witherspoon in the Brooke Adams part, it would be the hands-down Best Picture choice of every film critic and Academy member out there. It would be so far ahead of everything else it wouldn't be funny.

"If moviegoers have delivered a message in the last few months," N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply observed yesterday, "it is that they want their films, for the moment, at least, to be a lot more fun than their lives." As opposed to last year or the year before when moviegoers were flocking to movies that weren't much fun? Is Cieply supposing that The Departed, let's say, wouldn't sell as many tickets now as it did two years ago? I doubt that.

And yet the news that Mamma Mia!, God help us, has brought in a higher...Read More

The Directors Guild of America wll bestow an honorary membership upon Roger Ebert at the group's 61st annual awards dinner, to be held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel on 1.31.09.

There's now a Facebook fansite for Muntadar al-Zaidi -- a.k.a., the Shoe- Thrower -- up and running. Obviously not his own as al-Zaidi has been in custody since the shoe-throwing incident last Sunday evening.

A Int'l Herald Tribune account recaps as follows: "At a news conference with Bush and Maliki on Sunday evening in Baghdad's Green Zone, Zaidi, a reporter for Al Baghdadia, a satellite television network, rose from his seat and threw one of his shoes at Bush's head. He shouted: 'This is...Read More

My Valkyrie reaction is that it's...uhm, not too bad. A passable sit, relatively okay, decent enough, I wasn't in pain. Except it feels as if this World War II-era thriller, about an effort by a group of patriotic German officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the summer of 1944, is taking place inside an underground bunker. There's something muffled and suppressed about it. As Tom Cruise and his co-conspirators go about to trying to bring down the Nazi regime, it just doesn't feel all that suspenseful. As much as I wanted it to be The Day of the Jackal, it's not.

Yesterday Fox 411's Roger Friedman said he'd been "banned" from seeing Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, and then Patrick "Big Picture" Goldstein had a discussion with Mike Vollman about the Friedman situation, during which Vollman said that the New York-based columnist "just wasn't invited...screenings are a privilege, not a right, and [if Freidman had] indicated a desire to be open-minded and not telegraphed his intentions ahead of time, we would've acted differently."

The interesting part comes when Goldstein writes that he doesn't "like the idea of studios banning writers from screenings, since judging from the state of my frosty relations with a...Read More

In a 12.15 petition, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Alec Baldwin and more than 125 other SAG members urged guild leaders to deep-six a scheduled strike authorization vote. "We support our union and we support the issues we're fighting for, but we do not believe in all good conscience that now is the time to be putting people out of work," the petition said.

If an Academy member or press person allows a watermarked screener in his/her possession to be pirated and is thereafter busted for this, we the people (a) want to know the name and profession of this person, partly so we can speculate on his/her idiocy levels or circumstance, and (b) want to see the perp severely punished. But no such satisfaction has come out of the Quantum of Solace screener situation, that was recently reported by Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil, and which involves a female Academy member.

We didn't need to hear any details back in '04 when former Academy...Read More

The San Francisco, San Diego and St. Louis film critics announced their best-of lists yesterday, and I have to confess to a sense of growing tedium. Okay, there are two or three variations (thank God), but mainly they're all marching in lockstep with the status-quo faves. Half award-giving, half photo-copying.

At least the St. Louis gang gave their Best Supporting Actress award to Doubt's Viola Davis -- good call. And their Best Actress award to Revolutionary Road's Kate Winslet -- check. Their Best Picture award went to The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button...okay. But their remaining awards were the same...Read More

I suck at this Bush Shoe-Throwing Game. My highest score has been 13 or something. You think it's easy? The trick is to throw the instant Bush pops up; hesitate and he drops right down again. He's very agile, good reflexes, no easy target. Plus the soundtrack is distracting, messes with your concentration. And the blood-hit effect is unnecessarily vicious.

I'm not saying I'm so persuaded or even in the mood to go poking around, but since we're all pretty clear on the likely Oscar nominees, I'm wondering if there's any yearning out there to see this or that contender taken down. I'm really not feeling any of the old fire myself (it's been a bit of a tepid year) but does anyone out there feel anything? In terms of wanting a film or filmmaker out of contention, I mean?

Alliance of Women Film Journalists Special Mention Awards: (1) AWFJ Hall Of Shame Award to 27 Dresses; (2) Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent: Kate Hudson ; (3) Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn't (Tie) -- Mamma Mia! and The Women; (4) Best Of The Fests -- Hunger; (5) Unforgettable Moment Award (tie between The Dark Knight (Joker's first scene) and Slumdog Millionaire (young Jamal jumps into the poop....what?); (6) Best Depiction Of Nudity or Sexuality (tie between Elegy and The Reader); (7) Best Seduction -- Vicky Cristina Barcelona; (8) Sequel That Shouldn't Have Been Made Award -- tie...Read More

"Over the years, Detroit bosses kept repeating, 'We have to make the cars people want.' That's why they're in trouble. Their job is to make the cars people don't know they want but will buy like crazy when they see them. I would have been happy with my Sony Walkman had Apple not invented the iPod. Now I can't live without my iPod. I didn't know I wanted it, but Apple did. Same with my Toyota hybrid." -- Thomas L. Friedman in his 12.14 N.Y. Times column.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Egyptian journalist who threw two shoes at President Bush yesterday during a Baghdad press conference yesterday, is suddenly a new Middle-Eastern folk hero, and no wonder. Thousands of Iraqis "took to the streets today to demand al-Zeidi's release, to hail him as a hero and to praise his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president," says this AP story by Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Omar Sinan.

I agree with the angry masses. Like Peter Finch's Howard Beale did in Network, Muntadhar al-Zeidi has articulated a popular rage. Throwing those shoes
...Read More

HE reader Andrew Corks writes that he "saw Let The Right One In this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it took one of the top prizes, and was blown away by the overall quality of the film. It has an uncanny ability to successfully cross all genres -- horror, love story, comedy, coming-of-age -- combined with genuine acting and spectacular cinematography.

"Now that Let The Right One In has now picked up its second major critic's society award, why is it still absent from the Oscar Balloon and general Oscar talks?"

Wells to Corks: I'm not looking to put...Read More

Here's a video of an encounter last Friday night between some anti-Che Guevara right-wing Latins and Che director Steven Soderbergh. It happened during a q & a at the Zeigfeld Theatre after a screening of both Che pics, in tandem. The video appears in mini-form on Indiewire. (Thanks to Eugene Hernandez for the tip-off.)

It's appalling that American Film Institute's 10 Best Films of '08 included Iron Man -- a first-rate comic book action CG flick that is nonetheless a generic wish-fulfillment power-dreams movie aimed at adolescent males of all ages. A movie, in other words, with absolutely no river running through it whatsoever other than....okay, a certain aura of coolness exuded by star Robert Downey, Jr., a vibe of wowness because the film was very profitable, and the respectable career-bump panache enjoyed by director Jon Favreau.

I guarantee that one of the AFI jurors voting for Iron Man was documentarian and filmmaker-interview smoothie...Read More

Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth is a Manhattan-based yuppie-values drama that also involves time spent in Thailand by the husband character, played by Gael Garcia Bernal. (With a little tsunami action?) The wife/mother is played by Michelle Williams. Pic will screen in the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival 2009. This European TV clip contains a longish trailer for the film.

In a Rachel Abramowitz/L.A. Times interview that ran yesterday, Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes asserted that April Wheeler, played by Kate Winslet in the film, "is one of the great feminist heroines. She's the only person in the movie [who's] big enough to face the truth.

Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes, star Kate Winslet

"You know well this is not a movie about a woman who wants to go to Paris," Mendes says. "It's a movie about a woman who wants her life back and can still remember the dreams she once had and is finally...Read More

Here's a scan of the letter of transit that caused all the rumpus in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca. It's one of the extras in the relatively new Casablanca Blu-ray box-set. Notice, however, the date that Paul Henreid's Victor Laszlo is travelling on -- 22 Juillet 1941. And then notice the date on the gambling voucher signed by Humphrey Bogart's Rick at the beginning of the film -- 2 Decembre 1941.

Official Casablanca letter of transit with Victor Lazlo's name and other data filled in.

Gambling voucher signed by...

To properly absorb this rote holiday item, you need to click and listen -- that's all. Everyone's allowed to dip their toe into the swamp of sappy sentimentality around the time of year. As long as you keep yourself in check.

HE Xmas tree -- Sunday, 12.14.08, 6:25 pm

Hoboken's Willow and 7th Street -- Sunday, 10.31.08, 3:40 pm

Consider the Dickopedia profile of MSNBC's David Gregory, the very thought of whom makes me growl like Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski.

Watch this and tell me there isn't at least a small part of you that doesn't enjoy watching George Bush duck as an Iraqi journalist throws not just one but two shoes at him, in tandem. "All I can report," Bush joked of the incident, "is a size 10."

I for one am willing to temporarily buy Chris Weitz's statement of devotion and sincerity regarding his direction of New Moon, the sequel to Twilight. I happen to feel Weitz (The Golden Compass, About A Boy) is a weak choice, feeling as I do that he's a sensitive, well-intentioned but fatally middlebrow journeyman. I've also said before that given the chaste female sensibility of the Twilight novels that a woman director would have been a more natural fit. (Like The Hurt Locker 's Kathryn Bigelow.)

I also think that Weitz's statement-to-the-fans is politically correct b.s., but one may as well...Read More

Today the Boston Society of Film Critics tied on their choice of 2008's Best Picture, splitting their top honor between Slumdog Millionaire and WALL*E. Except they also gave WALL*E their Best Animated Film award. Due respect, but this seems to me like muddled thinking.

If you're giving WALL*E your Best Picture award (along with Milk), you're saying, "This Chaplinesque robot movie is so good it deserves honor and glory outside the animation ghetto." Which is fine and good. But you can't then turn around and say, "Oh, and it's also the Best Animated Film." That's like a Catholic male convincing...Read More

Every three or four months the Zapata obsession pops through, especially on weekends. When, why, what, what's the problem, etc.?

"A question has been nagging me for a while and recently intensified upon seeing Frost/Nixon," writes a reader named Mat (one "t" -- not a typo). "Why are Hollywood biographies so vapid? Every one i see is 'just line 'em up and knock 'em down,' straight facts, predictable arc. it leaves each film at the mercy of how interesting the given subject is, but rarely captures the essence of said subject.

"I'm thinking specifically of Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan doc of a few years ago (i.e., No Direction Home), which brought such a vivid feel to the man's life and experiences instead...Read More

For those HE readers who thought it perverse or presumptuous that I addressed Phillip Seymour Hoffman as "Philly" at a Doubt party a week and a half ago, listen to Jon Stewart as he welcomes Hoffman on-stage in this clip from the show.

I'm sick of running Daily Show embed codes because they go on forever (lines and lines and lines of coding) and sometimes they're not properly written (i.e.. no closing div tags) and because I don't care for the smallish size of these Daily Show clips. Why can't the tech guys create a coding that adjusts to...Read More

Click here before reading the following: Mira Nair's Amelia (Fox Searchlight, 10.23.09) was research-screened last Wednesday in Pasadena, according to what Nair told L.A. Times/Envelope columnist Scott Feinberg the day before. If anyone saw it (or knows someone who did) and has heard anything at least vaguely encouraging, I'd be curious to hear some particulars. If the word isn't so hot then forget it, for obvious reasons.

Hilary Swank as famed aviator Amelia Earhart; the real McCoy sometime in the early '30s.

Feinberg writes that "it has long amazed me that...Read More

Where can this guy possibly go in life, given the perverse tomb that he lives in, like a living mummy inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid, and his apparent inability to leave it, step out and renew, re-engage, reinvent himself. He's Miss Havisham from Great Expectations -- bloated, diseased and malignant beyond the darkest imaginings of Edgar Allen Poe, much less Charles Dickens.

Steven Soderbergh's Che is off to a strong start at Manhattan's Ziegfeld and L.A.'s Westside Pavillion, I'm told. In LA the entire weekend was sold out before the first show started, and the big Ziegfeld show (i.e., both films plus intermission) sold out an an hour in advance. People cheered during the Ziegfeld intermission. When Soderbergh dropped by for a q & a, he got a standing ovation. He spoke for about 40 minutes, and almost everyone stayed.

What Doesn't Kill You director-writer Brian Goodman invited me to a post-screening soiree last night at Almond, a noisy, reasonably priced restaurant on West 22nd near Broadway. By the time everyone arrived around 9:45 or so the news had broken about Bob Yari , the producer-distributor of Goodman's film, having gone into Chapter 11.

This is bad news for WDKY, which is only just starting to be seen and talked about, and for Rod Lurie's Nothing But The Truth , a Yari movie that's also been caught with its pants down. It would be one thing if they both blew...Read More

The American public will hand over roughly $31,524,000 to the makers of The Day The Earth Stood Still this weekend. The second place Four Christmases will make $12,234,000 for a cume of $86,900,000.
The third-place Twilight will take in $7,334,000 -- $149,129,000 as of Sunday night.
And the fourth-place Bolt will take in $6,946,000

Nothing Like the Holidays, the Hispanic holiday comedy, bombed with a projected total of $4,035,000 and $2400 a theatre. Baz Luhrman's Australia will earn $3,865,000 -- now to about $37 million domestic. Madagascar will follow with $2,879,000.

The only limited opener that looks like it has...Read More

Asked what he thinks the Obama administration "will do about Cuba," Che director Steven Soderbergh tells Politico's Jeffrey Ressner the following:

"What they ought to do is really obvious. Whether they'll do it is one of these questions in which you have a lot of people with certain beliefs controlling the dialogue, and therefore the problem is not getting solved.

"How many years are you supposed to give a bad idea? Would you stay married for 45 years to someone you hated? It's obvious what we're doing isn't working. The answer is [to] lift the embargo and flood that place with...Read More

The absence of a comma between the words "bad" and "can" drove me up the wall the minute I had a look at the Good poster last night. I'm convinced that movie advertising people enjoy running copy that ignores basic punctuation because they know it irritates people like me. I think it gives them a little perverse kick. Seriously.

What Doesn't Kill You director-writer-actor Brian Goodman on Prince and Lafayette -- Friday, 12.12, 4:35 pm. After shooting pics we went upstairs to a friend's office and did a half-hour interview. An excellent fellow all around -- candid, a humanist, unaffected, no bull. Relatively few guys with hard-knocks experience within the criminal world have gone on to a life of writing and entertainment, but Goodman's a member in good standing.

The career of Van Johnson, whose death was reported earlier today, peaked in the '40s and '50s. I never much liked his country-hick accent (he came from Rhode Island) and particularly the way he repeatedly groaned "ohhh, no!" in William Wellman 's Battleground ('49). But I've been watching that film all my life so Johnson obviously wasn't that alienating. I'll always remember his grim- faced Lieutenant Stephen Maryk in The Caine Mutiny ('54), and the pilot he played in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo ('44). He lived for 92 years, which is a pretty good long run. He was allegedly closeted.

Arizona Daily Star critic Phil Villarreal says "no Che screeners or screenings (that I know of) were set for the Phoenix Film Critics Society. Same for Nothing but the Truth. Voting deadline is today."

"Why not go the Full Monty and have Hugh Jackman host the Oscar telecast as Wolverine, with other super-heroes as presenters? That would be worth the price of admission." -- posted at 11:409 Pacific by Rich S.

Of all the Nazi-slash-Holocaust movies that have screened or opened over the last few weeks, I was surprised to discover that Vicente Amorim's Good (Thinkfilm, 12.31), an adaptation of C.P. Taylor's play with Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs in the lead roles, is the best of the lot. More satisfying than The Reader, slightly more engaging than Valkyrie, more period-believable than The Boy in Striped Pajamas, more emotionally affecting than Adam Resurrected.

Good exec producer and costar Jason Isaacs (l.), star Viggo Mortensen (r.) during an after-screening discussion at Manhattan's Museum of Jewish Heritage.