Martin Provost's Seraphine, a fictionalized story of painter Seraphine de Senlis that no one talked about during the Toronto Film Festival (certainly not in my circle), has won seven Cesar awards. The ceremony ended in Paris two or three hours ago. It won best picture, best original screenplay (Martin Provost), best actress (Yolande Moreau), best cinematography (Laurent Brunet), best costume design (Madeline Fontaine), best original score (Michael Galasso), and best set design (Thierry Francois).

The Independent's Sheila Johnson observes that the femme fatale has all but disappeared from screens. The last time there was a crop of such roles was in '80s and '90s films like Body Heat, Blood Simple, Basic Instinct, The Last Seduction, etc. I think the lack of femme fatales is a result of men's maturing attitudes about women, since the original femme fatales of 1940s film noir were misogynist fantasies rooted in male loathing of women due to envy of their tremendous power.

"Personality Disorder and the Femme Fatale," an essay by Scott Snyder, states in its summary that "the type...Read More

A Blu-ray Three Days of the Condor will be out on Tuesday, May 19th. In honor of Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, David Rayfiel, that pretty Asian lady who was machine-gunned to death and Max Von Sydow, I've already bought it in my head. But with so many visual knockout films that were shot on big formats not yet announced as Blu-ray releases, why are visually so-so titles like Condor being chosen and not, say, To Catch a Thief, which was shot by Robert Burks in VistaVision and looks phenomenal even off a standard DVD (i.e., when played on a Blu-ray player and...Read More

I'm trying to think of a precedent in which a sexually-oriented relationship dramedy not only costars but has been produced by the wife of a big-city mayor who's also regarded as a comer on the national scene. The film is The Trouble With Romance, which opened yesterday at Manhattan's Quad Cinema, and the producer-costar is Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom.

The trailer tells us Mrs. Newsom plays a scene in champagne-colored underwear, and that it apparently has to...Read More

I was quoted in a N.Y. Post piece than ran today about the just-announced remake of Damn Yankees with Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal. The author is Mandy Stadtmiller.

Sample: "'There are more musicals coming,' Wells says, but he frets that remakes are the rage rather than originals. 'A movie has to come from the fiber and the spirit and time that it's made,' he says, noting that you can't just inject 'iPods and Barack Obama' into the Dwight D. Eisenhower-era Damn Yankees."

It's fairly common for actors to express thanks to journalists who've said kind and supportive things about their work. It's probably been happening since the days of Aeschylus and Euripides. How is their gratitude usually conveyed? At Oscar-season parties, mostly. Or an actor's publicist will pass along a "much appreciated" in an e-mail. But in this day and age with everyone texting and twittering and never stopping to take a breath, it's just about unheard of for an actor (and especially a very young actor) to mail a personal note. Is sharing this a breach of trust? All I know is...Read More

I just bought my ticket to see Watchmen: The IMAX Experience at the 3.6 10 ayem show at the Lincoln Plaza. I tried to buy one for the Thursday midnight show but it was sold out. I won't be able to see it before then because I'm still on the Warner Bros. shit list. I was led to think a couple of months ago that I might be reprieved, but no dice.

AP writer Lynn Elber's 2.27 interview with At The Movies' Ben Lyons and Ben Machieweicz was neither here nor there. The guys sat down because they wanted to counter-spin the negativity, but Elber didn't hammer them or get any live-wire quotes. The best thing that came out of it was Erik Childress's mock poster that accompanied his riff on the piece.

"There's one genre of filmmaking in which the 'they-would-have-gotten-rid-of-the-grain-if-they-could' line holds a great deal of water," Some Came Running's Glenn Kenny wrote yesterday, "and that's animation. Disney works with Lowry Digital on (thus far) all the restorations of its classic animation titles, and the digital work goes beyond erasing scratches and smudges. It extends well into the issue of the grain that was produced when the actual animation cels were photographed.

"It aims to give a representation of what the artwork would have looked like had the intermediaries of the camera lens and the...Read More

Sandstorm-strength grain is a technological blight that classic-era filmmakers had no choice but to work with as best they could. Bring the great directors back to life -- Wilder, Lubitsch, Fleming, Capra, Hawks, Ford, Griffith, Keaton, Hitchcock -- and they would all say, "Yes, naturally, obviously, of course...ask Lowry Digital's John Lowry to do what he can to tastefully take down the grain levels in our films! Because we want our films to be seen, and we never liked that damn grain gravel to begin with."

Take no notice of the present-day monks who say...Read More

A day and a half ago Variety's Anne Thompson said that "for the most part, women will not go for Watchmen. I can take neck-crunching, body-bashing, blood-spattering action, but this was tough for even me to sit through.

"While the movie is set to open big on March 6 -- some folks are guessing as high as $70 million -- I'll wager that the ultimate audience will be limited to male action fans only. As someone with only fleeting exposure to the graphic novel, I watched the movie with little engagement or understanding of what was going on."

In response to...Read More

"I'm not saying that Crossing Over is a masterwork," I wrote on 1.31. "It's not. It uses a familiar strategy -- five or six story lines woven into a social-issue tapestry -- in an attempt to be an illegal-immigrant Traffic. But it's really Crash. Which, to some, may sound like damnation. But sitting through Crossing Over isn't hell. Far from it. Within the boundaries of its scheme and particularly given what Kramer had to deal with in post, it's not half bad. The bruises and abrasions show, but it has a certain integrity. You can feel the efforts of a strong impassioned...Read More

For simplicity's sake I want to say thanks to everyone who sent along those scripts I asked to see on Wednesday, and to list them all once again: Fair Game, Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida's Away We Go (for Sam Mendes), Noah Baumbach's Greenberg, Jason Reitman's Up In The Air, The Human Factor (the Clint Eastwood Mandela film), Imperial Life in the Green Zone, James Schamus's Taking Woodstock, Peter Straughan's The Men Who Stare At Goats, Brothers, untitled Nancy Meyers (the Meryl Streep movie), Amelia, a faded 2007 draft of Shutter Island, The Informant, The Lovely Bones, Hot Tub Time Machine, David O....Read More

Variety's Michael Fleming posted a story last night about Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal being attached to star in a "contemporized" musical remake of Damn Yankees, which opened as a Broadway musical in 1955 before the screen version, directed by Stanley Donen and George Abbott, opened in 1958.

Carey would play Mr. Applegate, i.e., the Devil, and Gyllenhaal would play the dual role of Joe Boyd and Joe Hardy. The plot is about Applegate offering Boyd, a middle-aged baseball fan, a chance to become a suddenly younger man and a gifted ball player (with...Read More

An hour or so ago Indiewire's Peter Knegt ran a piece about Tribeca Film Festival creative director Peter Scarlet resigning his post, effective immediately. Knegt ran a statement from Scarlet saying that the decision results from a "seven year itch" and an urge to "seek new challenges" and so on.

Right away I wrote Knegt and Tribeca Film Festival spokesperson Tammie Rosen the following note: "Scarlet's resignation has nothing to do with Geoff Gilmore taking over as the festival's new creative director? Simply passing along Scarlet's 'seven year itch' comment seems dishonest. Shouldn't the Indiewire story have addressed the...Read More

"Few are begrudging Kate Winslet's Oscar win," writes Chicago Tribune columnist Mark Caro, "and yet few contend that her portrayal of former Nazi concentration camp guard Hanna Schmitz in The Reader is her strongest work ever.

Winslet's performances in Revolutionary Road and Little Children, he argues, "were more complex and searing, and she transfixed even in Heavenly Creatures, her 1994 debut." Caro uses this as a launch into a piece about 10 accomplished artists -- Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Paul Newman, Sydney Pollack, etc. -- who won Academy Awards for the "wrong" movie.

I could come up with...Read More

A Defamer report about Jeremy Piven's tearful pleading during yesterday's Speed-the-Plow hearing, sourcing Patrick Healy's N.Y. Times report and filed at 2:10 this morning by Ryan Tate, is so tartly written and seething with such heartless cynicism that I'm just going to paste most of it here:

"Jeremy Piven [yesterday] convinced five other actors his mercury poisoning is real, deadlocking a union hearing and sparing Piven penalties for leaving Speed-the-Plow. How did he do it? Maybe with some crying.

During a 20-minute interview with Healy at the Times, conducted after the three-hour Actor's...Read More

A Summit snitch informs that a company-wide email was circulated yesterday announcing that Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker will get a slow-build release starting on June 26. New York and LA first, and then 200 screens around the country and so on. I've e-mailed the Summit spokesperson but she won't be responding for another two or three hours (i.e., probably still sleeping) so let's just run this for now and wait. But I've been told by a second source (i.e., a good one) that this story is accurate.

This is excellent news, if true, as it...Read More

This is going to sound a little strange, and it's definitely way late. But something hit me this evening as I was looking at the front cover of the Rachel Getting Married Blu-ray, which comes out March 10th. It's odd that I never noticed it before since the jacket photo art is the exact same photo art used for the theatrical one-sheet. Anyway...

Rachel, as we all know, is played by Rosemarie DeWitt, and the guy she's getting married to in the film is a bit of a dullard named Sidney, played by Tunde Adebimpe. And...Read More

HitFix's Greg Ellwood ran an exclusive earlier today about Eddie Murphy being attached to play Richard Pryor in a biopic called Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? for director-writer Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters) and Fox Searchlight.

Very cool, looking forward, etc. But my first reaction when I heard this was that it will be surprising if Murphy really plays Pryor -- i.e., not just does his voice and comic manner and speech rhythms, but really gets into his life and under his skin. I just don't believe that Murphy, renowned for rampant egoism and his "fuck you, I'm...Read More

A.O. Scott's 50th anniversary appreciation of' William Wyler's Ben-Hur (which actually opened 49 years and nine months ago, in November 1959) is a bit too gracious. Being the kind of film they don't make any more doesn't make it particularly special. What makes it special is Miklos Rosza's music. Eliminate the chariot race and it's mainly a film that accompanies the score rather than vice versa.

On top of which Scott doesn't address the central Ben-Hur conceit, used to sell stage and screen adaptations of Lew Wallace's book since the mid 1800s, that it's "a tale of the Christ." It's actually a...Read More

Almost 18 months after debuting at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival, Roger Spottiswoode's Shake Hands With The Devil has been acquired from Halifax Films by Regent Releasing. It will open next summer. Spottiswoode's drama covers the same ghastly events depicted in Hotel Rwanda -- i.e., the Rwandan genocide of 1993. The main character is Canadian Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, played by Roy Dupuis here and by Nick Nolte in Hotel Rwanda.

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, posted today.

The L.A. Times can consolidate and revamp and re-arrange the deck chairs all they want, and it won't really change anything. The dead tree/Gutenberg empire is going down, down, down. The Rocky Mountain News will publish its last issue on Friday. The Tuscon Citizen will cease publishing on 3.21 after 138 years in business. One by one, newspapers are dropping like flies.

It is nothing short of a Biblical scourge. Frogs, locusts...the Nile turned red. It's the green mist descending from the sky and gliding along the ground, bringing death to every publication that doesn't have lamb's blood...Read More

I forgot to ask if anyone has PDFs of these scripts also -- untitled James L. Brooks, The Rum Diary and The Matarese Circle. I promise to return the favor. Update: I've so far received Up In The Air, The Human Factor (i.e.,Eastwood/Mandela), Imperial Life in the Green Zone, The Men Who Stare At Goats, Fair Game, Brothers, Amelia, a faded 2007 draft of Shutter Island, The Informant, The Lovely Bones and A Serious Man.

As that Pineapple Express Oscar short proved, James Franco's stoner character is one of the great comic incarnations of our time. He was so euphorically good as "Saul Silver" in Pineapple Express that it's a little hard to come to terms with the idea of Franco performing in a dramatically straight, soulful and sincere vein.

Nonetheless, a straight, soulful and sincere Franco will be giving a Word Theatre performance this Sunday at Manhattan's Soho House from 3 to 5 pm. I've attended several Word Theatre readings and remain a big fan. I...Read More

I'm looking to get hold of PDF scripts of all the prospective 2009 Best Picture contenders plus whatever shot scripts that I haven't read or heard about that might be surprise contenders. If you don't ask...

At a bare minimum I'd be most happy to receive Mandela/Playing The Enemy (d: Clint Eastwood), Biutiful (d: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu); Nine (d: Rob Marshall); Amelia (d: Mira Nair); Green Zone (d: Paul Greengrass); Taking Woodstock (d: Ang Lee); Shutter Island (d: Martin Scorsese); Cheri (d: Stephen Frears); The Informant (d: Steven Soderbergh); Away We Go (d: Sam Mendes); Up In The Air (d: Jason Reitman); The...Read More

A non-proofed review copy of Paul Newman: A Life, written by Shawn Levy, arrived today. I've been hearing about this sucker for a long time, and how some really good material about Newman's early days has been dug up. I'm two pages ...no, three pages in and so far it's a very clean, smooth and easy read. It'll be buyable in early May.

Newman never sat down with Levy, but he didn't tell friends and colleagues not to cooperate either. It's obviously a good time for an in-depth review of the life of Henry...Read More

Those Leslie Nielsen Naked Gun movies did pretty well in their time -- the 1988 original took in $78 million (an excellent gross for the Reagan era) and the last one, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, earned $51 million domestic in '94. But they're old news and they're over, for God's sake. There's no room for an old-dog comedy franchise in the Age of Obama. That's what my attitude was, at least, until a Paramount employee slipped me a PDF copy of -- prepare yourself -- The Naked Gun: What 4? -- The Rhythm of Evil.

Would such a property have...Read More

It's not surprising to hear that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience will clean up with a possibly $30 million (we all knew it was at least going to do Hannah Montana-level business). And learning that Slumdog Millionaire may take in a possible $9.5 million and thereby crack $110 million domestic is not exactly heart-stopping. But a decent summary of what may happen numerically has nonetheless been tapped out by Big Hollywood's Steve Mason.

A somewhat older critic friend saw Watchmen yesterday and "dug it," although his review will have to wait out the embargo. "As you may recall, I wasn't a fan of The Dark Knight but I loved Batman Begins," he said this morning. "I'm not a regular comic-book reader but have read Watchmen and felt like the film was faithful without being slavish -- incredibly dark and violent, and not a comic-book movie for kids. And I thought [director Zack] Snyder's style was a perfect mesh with the material.

"On the other hand, I left the screening with a fellow critic (who shall remain...Read More

Finally, a non-vested, stand-up professional critic unblinkered by geek allegiances -- Variety's Justin Chang -- has weighed in on Watchmen and more or less called it a half-and-halfer.

"Auds unfamiliar with Alan Moore's brilliantly bleak, psychologically subversive fiction may get lost amid all the sinewy exposition and multiple flashbacks," Chang says early on. "Though it cries out for equally audacious cinematic treatment, the novel has instead been timidly and efficiently streamlined by David Hayter (X-Men, X2: X-Men United) and Alex Tse, who struggle to cram as many visual and narrative details as possible into the film's 161 minutes.

"From...Read More

The slogan of Movieguide, a family-friendly Christlan conservative website that reviews movies with an eye for moral worthiness in themes and storylines, is "help us bring God's light to an industry with much darkness -- protect your family." The site is published by Dr. Ted Baehr, a self-righteous media critic and chairman of The Christian Film and Television Commission. In short, a loon.

Dr. Ted Baehr

Baehr has just written a piece for Andrew Breitbart's right-wing website Big Hollywood called "Sean Penn and His Buddies Will Sink Hollywood."

"The Academy Award members painted themselves as...Read More

How many HE readers have used kosmix.com as a search engine? A 2.22 N.Y. Times story about deep web search engines led me to it. Kosmix.com co-founder Anand Rajaraman was quoted saying that "the crawlable Web" -- i.e., Google world -- "is the tip of the iceberg." Kosmix, the story said, "has developed software that matches searches with the databases most likely to yield relevant information, then returns an overview of the topic drawn from multiple sources."

Four months from now another big Stanley Kubrick coffee-table book called Stanley Kubrick: The Napoleon Film will be published by Taschen, running 1900 pages and costing I don't know what....just under $300 quid? Written by Allison Castle and edited by Christiane Kubrick (i.e., Kubrick's widow), it will focus entirely on the famous Napoleon biopic that Kubrick began working on in '68 and bailed on four or five years later -- i.e., "the greatest film that Kubrick never made."

In a 1969 interview for his anthology book, The Film Director as Superstar, Joseph Gelmis asked Kubrick...Read More

Roughly 40 days ago I read a Daily Mail story that said Sienna Miller had been dumped from Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood project (once called Nottingham, now untitled). The reason was said to be Milller's relative youth and very thin figure, which would have caused the not-thin Crowe to look too old and Friar Tuckish. I don't know the final egoistic or caloric truth of things, but it's what I read.

Now the Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit has written that the rail-thin Cate Blanchett has been tapped for the Maid Marian...Read More

Tomorrow is Jeremy Piven day at Actors Equity headquarters at 165 West 46th Street, New York, NY. Hit for financial damages by the producers of Speed-the-Plow for abruptly bailing on their show, Piven will appear before a grievance committee to defend a claim that he was more or less forced to quit due to high levels of mercury in his bloodstream caused by gorging on sushi. I'm going to show up with my camera and try to take a photo. This sounds too good to pass up. I don't know when the meeting is so I guess I'll just show up at 9...Read More

HE reader Joel Meares caught Watchmen at a screening in Sydney last night (which would be Wednesday) and was came away "disappointed," "confused" and "pretty mixed," he says. Meares isn't a geekboy and he isn't exactly David Thomson either so his reactions are about what he liked and didn't like -- take it or leave it.

"I enjoyed the first half a lot," he notes. "It's dark, ambitious, New York noir stuff with lots of rain, violence and a gritty-sounding if sometimes unnecessary voice-over by Rorschach (the masked bloke played by Jackie Earle Haley). I liked the conceit that these people are...Read More

The Slumdog Millionaire tykes Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubiana Ali Qureshi, whose real-life living conditions in Mumbai were described in suspiciously-timed stories that some regarded as anti-Slumdog smears, have been promised new homes. The abodes will be an upgrade over the small huts the kids have been living in with their families. But it isn't clear who will actually provide the new digs -- local Mumbai politicans or Slumdog Millionaire's director Danny Boyle, producer Christian Colson and Fox Searchlight, the film's distributor.

Times Online reporter Rhys Blakely reported today that the "children's families will be given...Read More

So in order to save the San Francisco Chronicle, which the Hearst Corp. wants to close or sell due to catastrophic losses since 2000 (and a current situation that will require cutting 47% of the Chron's staff to offset a projected $50 million loss), the only feasible option is to sell the paper to Media News Group, which "operates a sprawling complex of newspapers across Northern California whose collective audience dwarfs the Chronicle's 370k daily circulation by more than 2 to 1," according to Reflections of a Newsosaur's Alan D. Mutter.

It's heartbreaking but it's become...Read More

"There's an intra-Republican debate: some people say the Republican party lost its way because it got too moderate, some people say they got too weird or too conservative. [Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal] thinks they got too moderate, and he's making that case. it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is [and] I think it's insane. I think it's a disaster for the party." -- Conservative-minded N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks, speaking last night to Jim Lehrer.

Last night renowned French Connection cinematographer Owen Roizman trashed William Friedkin's bleachy, grain-heavy Blu-ray transfer of his 1971 Oscar-winning film, which many DVD and Blu-ray aficionados have already savagely dismissed. Roizman called the transfer "atrocious," "emasculated" and "horrifying." He said that he "wasn't consulted" by Freidkin and he "certainly wants to wash my hands of having had anything to do with [it]."

(l. ro.) Owen Roizman, frame capture from French Connection Blu-ray, William Friedkin.

Roizman was speaking to Aaron Aradillas on a blog-radio show called "Back By...Read More

Yesterday afternoon EW.com's Christine Spines ran a quote from Steven Speilberg's spokesperson Marvin Levy that the long-gestating Lincoln movie, despite being recently put into turnaround by Paramount, is "alive and well and continues in active development."

That would presumably mean in development at Disney, the new home of DreamWorks. And the "later this year" means that Disney has committed to fund and distribute the film...right? Levy wasn't specific. "Everyone is proceeding with great enthusiasm," he declared. "The script is still being revised by Tony Kushner and our plans are now to shoot the picture later this year."

Well and good,...Read More

"Thanks for the kind words," director Rod Lurie wrote earlier this evening, "and the kind regret you expressed over what happened to Nothing but the Truth (and, for that matter, What Doesn't Kill You -- the terrific film by Brian Goodman).

"However, it's a tad misleading to say that the film made just 3K before it was yanked from theaters. That seems to indicate that some sort of disinterest is responsible for those numbers. The film was put into a couple of theaters as part of an Academy qualification procedure. Both films were only scheduled for a one-week run. But about nine...Read More

Watch CBS Videos Online

Speaking to Wired's Adam Rogers, Watchmen creator Alan Moore puts the fanboys in their proper place with a six-paragraph quote: "I have to say that I haven't seen a comic, much less a superhero comic, for a very, very long time now," he begins. "But it seems to be that things that were meant satirically or critically in Watchmen now seem to be simply accepted as kind of what they appear to be on the surface.

"If you remember back in the '80s, there was an incredible spate of monumentally lazy headlines in British and...Read More

We're now in the third phase of Watchmen reaction buzz -- a turning of the karma that is now starting to point upwards with Devin Faraci's very lengthy praise review that went up today on CHUD and Drew McWeeny's Hitfix rave. Slight counter-boosts, temporary mood changers. But don't be surprised if the naysayers rise again.

The first phase began eight days ago (on 2.16) with that rancid, embargo-ignoring, anal-ecstasy fanboy piece by Time blogger and Simpsons exec producer Matt Selman.

That prompted Phase 2 -- a series of angry counter-reactions in this...Read More

In a righteously angry L.A. Weekly piece about the awarding of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar to the "relentlessly medicore" Departures instead of the much more deserving Waltz With Bashir , critic Scott Foundas has written that "it seems likely that Ari Folman's film was simply too innovative for the Academy's notoriously calcified tastes.

"Certainly, by Academy standards, it was one of the more radical works ever to be nominated in the Foreign Language category -- a fragmented memory film in which truth and illusion collide on a tide of uncertain recollection. There...Read More

I just came from a screening of Departures, and Kris Tapley's 2.21 assessment of this film was definitely a bit kind. It's a "sensitive," curiously comedic at times, sometimes affecting, often cloying and very "middle class" film about transitions and coming to terms with death (and with your dead dad who abandoned you as a child) and feeling the sadness and showing the respect. There are moments when you don't feel a strenuous, pull-out-the-stops effort by director Yojiro Takitato to emotionally "get" you, but they are few. A movie that makes you feel the effort and hear the grinding gears as much...Read More

According to Kim Masters' 2.24 Daily Beast article about Peter Chernin's resignation from 20th Century Fox, former Fox Studio chief and present-day producer Bill Mechanic is an "outspoken detractor" of Chernin.

"Peter's in the Peter business," Mechanic tells Masters. "That's his job. Every day is focused on, `How do I do something for myself?' Certainly when I was there, he was not a popular guy."

Certainly, people who play their cards too much in a "me, me, me" vein lose out in the end. You have to try and be a mensch in life, in business, on the subway, on...Read More

I'm seeing Departures, the Japanese-produced film that won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, late this afternoon in Manhattan. Two press screenings are also set for Los Angeles on Friday, 2.27, and Wednesday, 3.4. Regent Releasing will be opening Yojiro Takita's drama sometime in May.

Take this with a grain but I've been told that Departures won due to a very old but still effective hide-the-ball screening strategy. The fact that it won the Oscar surprised a lot of people so theories have been kicking around. The hide-the-ball strategy, while hardly complex, certainly sounds clever.

Since those foreign-film committee members who...Read More

When Doug Liman's Fair Game arrives sometime in 2010 or the following year, we will have had two movies based on the the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson -- Liman's, which will probably costar Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, and Rod Lurie's Nothing But The Truth, which was also partially based on the trials and incarceration of Susan McDougal.

It still blows my mind how Lurie's film was abruptly scuttled and gone in a flash when Bob Yari's company went belly up a little more than two months ago. Nothing But The Truth cost $11 million and...Read More

That deliberately degraded, snow-grained Blu-ray of William Freidkin's The French Connection is out today, and I'm searching for reactions from non-reviewers. You can't trust regular DVD reviewers since they tend to bend over backwards to say nice things because they don't want to alienate the folks who send them free copies. If anyone was dumb enough to buy this thing (as I was), please send along your reactions. You don't have to hate it.

I was stunned when I noticed the absence this morning of David Jones' Betrayal, the notoriously missing 1983 adaptation with Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodges, among films that will compose a three-day Harold Pinter tribute at the American Cinematheque from 3.26 through 3.28.

I thought after Pinter's passing that this captivating, jewel-like drama would at begin to turn up at special venues like the Cinematheque, at the very least. Even when a rights issue has prevented a DVD release of a film, the elite venues (AC, Aero, Film Forum, Film Society fo...Read More

"AmEx was shot and edited in a day and a half back in April 2006, as a sardonic response to the multitude of big-name filmmakers [Wes Anderson, etc.] appearing in American Express commercials. Three years later, with the collapsed state of indie film and the strangled economy/credit market, it seems more relevant than ever." -- Jamie Stuart.

AmEx (2006) from The Mutiny Company on Vimeo.

Is there any overlap between the folks who saw The DaVinci Code and are planning to see Angels and Demons (Sony, 5.15), and the ones who've seen or recently rented Bill Maher's Religulous and have maybe begun to consider or even accept his rational humanist views? The answer, I'm fairly sure, is somewhere between "very little" and "next to none." And that, in a nutshell, is why things are as screwed up as they are right now.

(l. to r.) Ton Hanks, Ayelet Zurber, some guy and Ewan MacGregor in Ron Howard's Angels and Demons (Sony,...

"I didn't hate Watchmen, but I didn't love it either," says a longtime HE reader who managed to snag a ticket to the London premiere, which ended a couple of hours ago.

"I'm not a cinema snob and can take a decent loud popcorn film in my stride as much as an animated Israeli documentary or the latest from Shane Meadows. I read one early Watchmen review (if you can call it that -- it was more of an ejaculation of words) that seemed to praise the movie purely on the basis that it existed, and that any fan of the...Read More

This went right by me last month. The guy who plays George Lucas, I feel, is a deranged genius. From IFC's The Whitest Kids You Know.

Is there any word on how the implosion of New Yorker Films will affect the U.S. release of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys? Eugene Hernandez's Indiewire piece, posted four or five hours ago, doesn't say if existing bookings will be honored or if someone other distributor will step in and take over. Here's my Cannes 2008 review.

Update: HE friend & correspondent Nick Dawson has been told that New Yorker "was handling the film as part of a service deal, so the release of the film won't be affected by the shuttering of...Read More

For most of his career John Cusack has focused on projects with a fair amount of integrity, so his agreeing to star in a self-produced lowbrow comedy called Hot Tub Time Machine certainly seems like a concession to the times. Straight paycheck, hold your nose, hunker down.

Michael Fleming's 2.23 Variety story says that Scott Heald's script is about a group of guys with the usual issues and complications in their lives returning to a ski lodge where they partied as teens, blah blah. They all find themselves in a hot tub -- which happens to be a time machine --...Read More

I've put some thought today into the Best Picture contenders as well as the apparent second-tier films, and almost no thought whatsoever into the other categories. I've mainly just copied and pasted and plopped them into the new 2009 Oscar Balloon. The refinement process begins now.

BEST PICTURE (21): Mandela/Playing The Enemy (Warner Bros.), d: Clint Eastwood; Biutiful (Universal), d: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; Nine (Weinstein Co.), d: Rob Marshall; Amelia (Fox Searchlight), d: Mira Nair; Green Zone (Universal), d: Paul Greengrass; Public Enemies (Universal), d: Michael Mann; Taking Woodstock (Focus Features), d: Ang Lee; Shutter Island (Paramount), d: Martin Scorsese; Cheri (Miramax), d:...Read More

Jean-Marc Vallee's The Young Victoria, a period drama aimed at women who went to see The Other Boleyn Girl and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, may turn out to be more than it seems. But since it focuses on a romance between the young Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) and a really fetching Prince Albert (Rupert Friend)...well, draw your conclusions. Opens a week from Friday (3.6) in England; undetermined release in the U.S. Costarring Miranda Richardson, Mark Strong, Paul Bettany.

Obviously a kind of Animal House by way of a true saga of British radio pirates in the mid '60s, operating off a ship in the North Sea. The director-writer is Love Actually 's Richard Curtis, which, if you've seen Love Actually, could be a cause for slight concern among some of you. Opening in England only about six weeks from now, and then throughout Europe in April and May. Universal's domestic release date is apparently up in the air.

The cast includes Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour...Read More

Like I said early this morning I've been piddling around with a brand-new Oscar Ballon 2009 chart and whammo, In Contention's Kris Tapley just posted a whole big '09 projection package. I guess I have to throw mine together today as well. I was hoping to chill down today.

Why doesn't the L.A. Times Buzzmeter poll ask for predictions in all categories so everyone can see how well the experts did at the end of the day? Why hasn't MCN's David Poland published the right-wrong calls of all final Gurus of Gold poll so we can all see at a glance who was better at reading the race than the others?

For what it's worth, I got five wrong last night, including an abstention. And I fully admit I'm not too good at predicting because I can't divorce myself from my personal preferences, no matter what the tea leaves...Read More

"What's not to like about James Franco and Seth Rogen's Beavis and Butthead routine, slobbed on the couch in front of this year's contenders? Their giggling and guffawing at The Reader is somehow more damning (and more exposing of the film's overweening pomposity) than a thousand bad reviews." -- the Guardian's Xan Brooks during an Oscar-show live blog.

Tina Fey: "It has been said that to write is to live forever."

Steve Martin: "The man who said that is dead."

Fey: "Yet, we all know the importance of writing, because every great movie begins with a great screenplay."

Martin: "Or, a very good idea for the poster. But usually, with a screenplay."

Fey: "And every writer starts with a blank page."

Martin: "And every blank page was once a tree."

Fey: "And every tree was once a tiny seed."

Martin: "And every tiny seed on Earth was placed here by the alien king Rondelay, to foster our titrates and fuel our...Read More

I've just posted last night's winners in the Oscar Balloon, but Oscar Ballon 2009 will be up and rolling sometime this weekend, certainly by Sunday night. I've already started this discussion but right now I'm looking for imaginative but not-too-loopy spitball nominations in nine major categories -- Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Actress, Original and Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography.

In no particular order: Clint Eastwood's rugby-themed Mandela (or Playing The Enemy); Michael Mann's Public Enemies, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, Paul Greengrass's The Green Zone, Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, Lone Scherfig's An Education (with a promising Best Actress nomination...Read More

Hollywood & Fine's Marshall Fine has five snippy pisshead complaints about last night's Oscar show. "With the exception of Steve Martin and Tina Fey (who, I would imagine, wrote their own dialogue), the banter between presenters was incredibly thin," he writes. I'm afraid that's true, guys. "Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston gave me chills of embarrassment. While Hugh Jackman's opening number was clever and energetic, nothing he said afterward was worth repeating or remembering."

Jeffrey Wells to Judd Apatow (privately and publicly): Your Pineapple-themed tube-watching short was far and away the best thing on last night's show. By far the funniest, warmest, coolest and most sophisticated. Loved it, man. Seth Rogen and James Franco are kings of the realm. The world belongs to those two, or certainly belonged to them last night. It would be one of the most perfect moves of all time if they were to co-host next year's show...seriously.

The sound on the above YouTube clip is out of...

I need to clarify matters on the Departures prophecy issue in lieu of this Japanese film having won the Best Foreign Language Oscar -- another "gulp" episode in the Academy's foreign- language voting record. Waltz With Bashir should have won, Waltz With Bashir should have won, Waltz With Bashir should have won. Expel those turkey-neck softies in the foreign-language branch who always vote for the stodgy, emotionally reassuring films. But I digress....

Three days ago (on 2.20) In Contention's Kris Tapley wrote in his column that Departures is "looking to spoil" and "waiting in the wings to upset" the presumed front runner...Read More

For me tonight's Oscar show was defined by an agreeably classy vibe, nice but less than historic production numbers, and a couple of big shockers -- the defeat of The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke by Milk's Sean Penn in the Best Actor race, and Departure's defeat of Waltz With Bashir and The Class to take the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

And the utter predictability of just about everything else.

The best innovation by producers Bill Condon and Larry Mark was having five Oscar-winning actors of the past come out...Read More

I would have gone the traditional old-school smoothie route if I'd been Rourke. Played against the knockabout persona. Worn a plain black, perfectly tailored tux. Less is more, modest restraint, etc. Instead he decks himself out like a punk from Venice Boulevard who doesn't know any better.

Regrets and salutations for Defamer's Seth Abramovitch, Stu VanAirsdale and Kyle Buchanan, who've gotten the axe. Why was this announced today? It's not as if everyone's ignoring it, although I suppose it helps to minimize coverage.

It sure feels terrific not watching or thinking about, much less commenting upon, red-carpet crap in front of the Kodak. As Klaus Kinski said near the beginning of Act Two of Dr. Zhivago, "I am the only free man on this train!"

I happened upon this Roddy McDowall speech from the godforsaken, all-but-unwatchable Cleopatra earlier today. I'm posting this now because McDowall's performance as Ceasar Augustus Octavian was probably the best in this otherwise leaden film (along with Rex Harrison's, I suppose), and because McDowall, excellent as he was, might have nabbed a Best Supporting Actor Oscar if a clerical error on the part of 20th Century-Fox hadn't screwed him.

No decent captures of McDowall in Cleopatra/Octavian gear are findable online.

Fox incorrectly listed McDowall's Octavian as a leading rather than supporting role. When the studio asked...Read More

The crinkly smiles of those elderly ladies in that Atlantic City hotel, as it were, still give me the willies. When was the last time a camera did a 360 on a dense crowded set and changed half of the set (but not the actors) while the camera was otherwise engaged? Few sequences have better explained the axiom that "simple is beautiful." Or that the best way of portraying a state of psychological delusion inside a character's head is to play it straight and banal.

"Man! Man on the street is never easy but lemme tell ya. Gettting people to admit they're going to watch the Oscars, have opinions on them? Tough sleddin' out here. Good luck with the ratings, guys. It's dark out here. It's been 'no' after 'no' after 'no'." -- from David Carr's final video report from 42nd Street, posted two days ago.

About to drive back to NY/NJ in the bone-chilling cold and rain. Back on the case when the Oscars begin, perhaps a little before that.

Route 7 in Ridgefield, Connecticut -- Sunday, 2.22, 11:13 am.

Nikki Finke wrote an Oscar-disconnect piece yesterday afternoon (i.e., the gorillas aren't watching). And, a friend writes, "the Drudge Report played it up, and every right-wing booster left a comment complaining about the movie business. Read all these comments and you will see how 47% of America feels about Hollywood and the movies. Incredible insights, very depressing, but if you're interested in movies they're an absolute must-read."

N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis knows her Jerry Lewis, all right. The remarks that Lewis will speak on tonight's Oscar show aren't going to bite the hand. He's a politician, in his 80s, knows it's his last moment in the sun. The real Lewis comes out in private, and it's usually a humdinger. Ask Shawn Levy.

I sat down with Jerry Lewis at the '95 Sundance Film Festival to talk about Funny Bones. The interview happened at the Stein-Erickson. Right away you could feel the testy fear-factor vibe, but I enjoy that as it sharpens...Read More

I'll be live blogging the Oscars along with everyone else. After it's all over I'll condense all the posts into one piece and then move on. I'm very much looking forward to the good old March-April blahs at this stage.

"Like everything else in the world, Oscar season is diminished these days," producer Lynda Obst wrote a couple of days ago on the Atlantic site. "[And] this year's Academy Awards are grim for a whole different set of reasons. We have no money [and] this year's Oscar narrative offers us no clear direction out of this mess.

"Usually we clone our Best Pictures. So even though Slumdog turned out to be a major success -- costing only $15 million and pulling in $88 million domestic and nearly $100 million international (and that's before it wins...Read More

If I had a good shot at winning this evening, as Rourke does, I'd prepare remarks that differ somewhat from all the other acceptance speeches he's been making since the Venice Film Festival last September. Something for all the others out there stuck in a hole and dying to climb out. God smiled, I did it, so can you...no beerhall jokes, modest and self effacing.

Best Spirit Awards line: "If [other actors who may one day work with Darren Aronofsky] haven't got the balls to bring it,...Read More

I've been in Connecticut for the last eight or nine hours. And I've read all about everything that happened today (including the Spirit Awards -- congratulations, Mr. Aronofsky, Rourke, Black and Ms Leo) and I just don't think I can add anything of interest from the frozen backwoods of Fairfield County. And I don't care that much either. There's that too.

Last night I saw Will Ferrell's "You're Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush" at the Cort theatre on West 48th. It's a show for the shlubs -- an extended lowbrow comedy skit with a fair amount of back-and-forth repartee between Ferrell and the audience, the sort of thing that could easily enjoy an extended run in Las Vegas. Written by Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay, it lacks depth and reflection but I laughed, dammit -- loudly and often.

The best...Read More

Yesterday afternoon Nikki Finke posted this Hugh Jackman Oscar rehearsal video. "Top Hat"?

Deadline Hollywood Daily vs. The Wrap vs. Big Hollywood. In the somewhat traditional, slightly old-school view of the Financial Times' Matthew Garrahan, the ultimate Hollywood blogger battle is happening between these three.

Thanks to dhreck.com for the heads-up. Also available here.

Haaretz.com's Gideon Levy has waffle-ironed Waltz With Bashir in an psychologically exacting, very well written piece that went up sometime late yesterday. He basically says that Ari Folman's film lies about Israel's heart of darkness, and particularly about its culpability in the wanton slaughter of Israel's enemies, past and present.

"Everyone now has his fingers crossed for Ari Folman and all the creative artists behind Waltz with Bashir to win the Oscar on Sunday," Levy begins. "A first Israeli Oscar? Why not?

"However, it must also be noted that the film is infuriating, disturbing, outrageous...Read More

Boil the snow out of Pete Hammond's 2.20 Envelope piece about possible Oscar stunners, and it comes down to a closer race going on between Best Actress contenders Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep than some people realize.

"A lot of bloggers have been throwing out Melissa Leo as a threat to presumed winner Kate Winslet," he writes. "Really? How can Kate lose? She's on the cover of Time magazine this week so it's over, right?"

Not necessarily, he warns, because "just as in the actor race a strong three-way contest can produce an unexpected result.

"A lot, I mean...Read More

And the favored/probable winners at today's Film Independent Spirit Awards will be....uhm, I had the nominees pasted somewhere, can't find 'em, whatever. I know this much at least -- hooray and hip-pip for Melissa Leo! Okay, the nominees are posted on this IFC.com news page. Get it together already.

If I was in Los Angeles I'd be driving over on the motorcyle to the big circus tent on the beach in Santa Monica around 11 am or so. Wine and champagne schmooze time begins around noon and the show, hosted this year by the great Read More

I mentioned this two or three years ago, but I'm still struck by Cary Grant's looking-forward remarks after being handed his Life Achievement Oscar on April 4, 1970. Right at the start of Hollywood's golden era, just as things were kicking in big-time, all the great '70s film yet to be made. And here's what he said.

"I'll say it again: Revolutionary Road is one of the best, if not the best, movie of 2008," writes HE reader Jeremy Fassler. "It was a great book and it made an equally great movie.

"But I was initially shocked by how alone I was in this feeling. Several of my friends either hated the film or refused to see it. Every single year there's one film I love which my friends don't warm to. In previous years those films were Sideways and Brokeback Mountain, proving that typically I'm vindicated in these situations.

"After thinking about it for a while, I think...Read More

Copied from IGN, which put up some ostensibly exclusive Inglourious Basterds stills and poster art this morning.

I'm fundamentally flawed as a handicapper and Oscar-pool better because I can't step back and say "this film or filmmaker will win even though I have problems with it/him/her." If I have issues with anyone or anything, I can''t just look at the odds and predict victory. Except when the odds are so overwhelming there's simply no other choice, as it is with Slumdog Millionaire winning the Best Picture Oscar two days and six hours from now.

Here we go anyway...

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire. Conflicted Feelings Factor: So-so to moderate as I've never truly felt this film is a major-league home run....Read More

Ron Rosenbaum's blistering anti-Reader piece on Slate ("Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader") went up on Monday, February 9th. Three days later , on 2.12.09, Rod Lurie's similar criticism piece ("The Holocaust Revisionism of Hollywood") appeared on the Huffington Post. Five days later -- Tuesday, 2.17 -- the Oscar balloting deadline arrived and the voting issue became moot.

Nonetheless it's taken Harvey Weinstein, Reader director Stephen Daldry, Reader screenwriter David Hare and producer Donna Gigliotti until today, 2.20 -- eight days after the Lurie article, 11 days after the Rosenbaum -- to send out a press release arguing with "fringe...Read More

A wise and rock-solid Oscar piece from New York's David Edelstein because of two judgments, one explaining the invincibility of Slumdog Millionaire and the other on the wrongness of Kate Winslet winning the Best Actress Oscar for The Reader and not Revolutionary Road.

During a Revolutionary Road screening q & a at the AMC Lincoln Square -- (l. to r.) moderator Glenn Kenny, costar Michael Shannon, star Kate Winslet -- Thursday, 11.20.08, 9:25 pm

I've said this to myself several dozen times but never quite tapped it out in so many words, so here's how Edelstein...Read More

Do you want to feel momentarily depressed? Just for a couple of minutes, I mean? In Contention's Kris Tapley believes that Departures, a Japanese-produced nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, is "waiting in the wings to upset" -- i.e., may take the Best Foreign Language Oscar from Waltz With Bashir.

Maybe. Not having seen Departures (i.e., nobody ever offered me a screening or a screener) I'm hardly in a position to speak about quality or the odds or anything else, although I'll be flabbergasted if Bashir loses. But listen to Tapley's description of Departures and ask yourself if this is really...Read More

A less-than-fully-illuminated HE reader concurrently named "FearDread" and "Imogen De Wynter" wrote this morning announcing that "the first legit Watchmen review is up on the Huffington Post." Let it never be said that Hollywood Elsewhere has it in for Watchmen, at least to the extent that I won't post friendly descriptions of it.

Mike Ragogna

The review's author, however, is a guy named Mike Ragogna. "In the music business since his teens, Mike Ragogna has been a singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, producer, arranger and even a songplugger," the bio reads. "He's worked on projects...Read More

Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces opens in Spain on March 18th, less than four weeks hence. (So why isn't there a Spanish-language website?) And it will certainly play in Cannes less than three months hence. Watching it in the Grand Lumiere will surely be another variation on your basic holy-moley Pedro penetration experience. How could it not be?

The Coming Soon guys have this description posted: "Broken Embraces is a four-way tale of amour-fou, shot in the style of '50s American film noir at its most hard-boiled,...Read More

The sound on this clip is weak, but the words that Laurence Olivier spoke when he accepted his Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1979 -- classy, precisely described and deeply felt, his emotional pores wide open -- has never left my memory. I also vividly recall Jon Voight putting his hand to his head and going "whoa!" after Olivier finished. That's something only an open-hearted liberal does. Voight, as we all know, has let that part of himself go.

There's something I've learned in all my years of banging out columns. The less you have to write about, the more personal and engaging the copy tends to be. (Mostly.) Which is why I love David Carr''s Oscar season jottings. Most or much of the time he's not writing about much. Gut feelings, intuitions, moods, what ifs, why nots, hairs on the back of his neck, lower-back scratchings and so on. And he's really good at it. Got that, Timothy Noah, a.k.a. "Mr. Chatterbox"?

This Syracuse junior I know sounded pretty good co-hosting a music, talk and weather-reporting radio show yesterday. I'm a little prejudiced, yeah, but he's pretty good anyway. Loose, spirited, fun attitude. Here's an excerpt.

"In an industry that insists that most actresses remain giggly, pliable and princessy well into middle age, Kate Winslet has somehow avoided that pigeonhole entirely. She doesn't play girls; she never really has. She plays women. Unsentimentalized, restless, troubled, discontented, disconcerted, difficult women. And clearly, it's working for her." -- from Mark Harris's Time cover story on the (very) likely Best Actress Oscar winner. Warning: Winslet may not convey shock or surprise at the podium. And no hyperventilating. No offense but we've had enough of that -- thanks.

I'm not aware of a single Manhattan Oscar-viewing party...not one. Not that it matters very much. I guess I'm saying I became accustomed to all the free booze and abundant food and friendly-ass socializing back in Los Angeles. A different deal here on the hard streets. Yesterday Nikki Finke posted a list of everything happening in Los Angeles between now and next Sunday.

Film Jerk's annual series of Oscar Handicap articles are now online, starting with Best Picture.

From a purely spitballed perspective, what are the most likely 2009 Best Picture contenders at this point in time? Precious few. The only Coming Soon December releases that look like remote possibilities include James Cameron's Avatar, Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones and Clint Eastwood's rugby-themed Mandela movie.

The only November release that may have a reasonable (but by no means certain) shot is Rob Marshall's Nine. There's nothing at all in the October rundown right now.

There's also -- just blindly speculating -- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful,which has no release date and may not be seen until 2010. It'll...Read More

Among Esquire.com's Alternative Oscar salutations, which were posted earlier today. Actually there are only three that got me.

(a) The most moving monologue of the year delivered by Jean Claude van Damme in JCVD, to wit: "When you're 13, you believe in your dream. Well, it came true for me. But I still ask myself today what I've done on this earth. Nothing! I've done nothing!"

(b) Best Profane Dialogue from In Bruges, from a conversation between an Irish assassin (Brendan Gleeson) and his gangster boss (Ralph Fiennes).

Ken [Gleeson]: "Harry, let's face it. And I'm not being funny. I mean...Read More

Several years ago film historian Ron Haver raised a point about the Skull Island wall in the original King Kong ('33) that was so fundamental that it had been ignored for decades. Why, Haver asked, did the natives build a huge gate in the wall that was big enough to allow 30-foot tall apes and dinosaurs to walk through?

I have a similar-type question about John Ford's relentless use of Monument Valley as a backdrop in his westerns, particularly his use of it in The Searchers. Why are people there in the first place? There was...Read More

Yesterday evening a Hollywood Reporter story, written by Stuart Kemp and sourcing Warner Bros. execs, refuted a report in London's Sun that the studio had asked director Guy Ritchie to reshoot parts of Sherlock Holmes.

Damn straight. If I was running Warner Bros. production I wouldn't dream of telling Ritchie to re-shoot Sherlock Homie -- it's perfect as is! A kickboxing James Bondian Holmes with a totally buff bod. Maybe he'll have the ability to fly or at least leap like a tiger and run up walls like the martial-arts guys do. Maybe he'll be able to deliver a...Read More

On Collider late yesterday afternoon Steve Weintraub reported on a chat with Watchmen director Zack Snyder, and the big news is that the Watchmen DVD/Blu-ray will have two much longer versions of the film. One will be a 3 hour and 10 minute director's cut and another cut with "Tales of the Black Freighter" that will run 3 hours and 25 minutes. The theatrical cut runs 2 hours and 36 minutes.

A Watchmen screening happened last night at L.A.'s AMC Century City plex. Attendees included press (including HFPA), studio folk, friends of studio folk and random-off-the-streeters. It was 20 minutes late starting, but a friend of HE attended and his basic verdict is that Tuesday's early-bird review was pretty much on point.

"By far the highlight of the film is the opening credits," he begins. "It perfectly nails the surrealist tone of the graphic novel and does an adequate job of running through some of the back story of the Watchmen. It's so good I'm half-convinced that...Read More

Kim Masters has updated her Slate/"Big Money" piece about the fate of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln project, and she says that "a knowledgable source [informs] that Paramount has passed" on the project.

This is all Spielberg's fault since he's the one who's delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. A subject of this depth and scope is beyond his abilities and he knows it, which is the deep-down reason why he's been putting it off, I believe. Spielberg has already blown it by not shooting the film in '07 or '08, as releasing a Lincoln biopic right now would be perfect with...Read More

Defamer posted an Oscar telecast death-montage questionaire earlier today. Here are my comments/answers for now:

(1) Will They Make It? (Choose One) -- Arthur C. Clarke and Bernie Brillstein, for certain!; (2) Will Open the Montage -- who cares but if they don't put in Charles H. Joffe, Stan Winston, Harold Pinter and Isaac Hayes the montage guys will be guilty of dereliction; (3) Will End the Montage -- a tie between Paul Newman and the team of Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella; (4) Will Get Montage's First Video Clip -- Newman (the picnic scene from The Hustler) or Roy Scheider ("You're...Read More

Asked what he thinks about the 20th Century Fox-Warner Bros. battle over the distribution rights to Watchmen, screenwriter David Hayter has, according to this Hollywood Outbreak interview, called Fox "satan." Hayter doesn't mean the publicists, does he? He should be more specific. The correct thing would be to call the parties actually responsible for the legal challenge (i.e., Fox attorneys) "Satan's emissaries," "sons of Satan," "the fallen angels" or words to that effect.

Jane Fonda must be feeling like $10 million bucks these days. Make it $100 million. 33 Variations, the Broadway play I saw her perform in this afternoon, is a bracingly well-written, inventively staged, and deeply moving piece about fighting the demons of finality while living to the fullest, and it's given Fonda's comeback effort (which began about five years ago, give or take) the lustre and respectability that Hollywood failed to provide with Monster-in-Law ('05) and Georgia Rules ('07).

Fonda, yes, agreed to star in these films of her own free will but God, what...Read More

Last night I watched William Friedkin's new color-desaturated, de-focused, reduced and blended with black-and-white French Connection Blu-ray, which comes out next Tuesday.

From the standard 2005 DVD. Stark, blueish, unprettified.

The Blu-ray image -- lighter, quasi-bleachy, snowier, more grain.

I don't care if this makes me sound unhip -- it's awful, a rip-off, a desecration and a five-alarm burn. The original film (i.e., the version that played in theatres in '71 and which was captured for the 2005 standard DVD) is plenty gritty and muddy-looking on its own without Friedkin...Read More

"Another eerie sign came this weekend when three, count 'em, three (older) academy voters whose opinions I respect all said the exact same thing to me at different times. They weren't voting for Slumdog Millionaire because 'it's just not an Oscar picture.' I thought it was very strange that I would suddenly be hearing virtually the same kind of reasoning out of the mouths of three different academy members, but there it was. All of them, by the way, had cast their Best Picture vote for Benjamin Button." -- from Pete Hammond's latest Envelope column, the headline of which says "Signs Point...Read More

On her daily blog, Jane Fonda describes the play she's now performing in -- 33 Variations -- which I'll be seeing this afternoon with Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling, who's in town for a few days.

Bobby Zarem, casting director Bonnie Timmerman, Jane Fonda and "screenwriter Scott" following a performance of 33 Variations

"I play a musicologist of today who is obsessed with figuring out why Beethoven, at the height of his powers, spent 3 years writing 33 variations on a mediocre waltz written by a music publisher in 1819," she writes. "My character is...Read More

One of my all-time favorite title sequences. Because it visually conveys -- gently, economically, erotically -- not just what Humbert Humbert (James Mason) will be feeling about Lolita (Sue Lyon) starting around the 10-minute mark, but the essence of the fuel that will drive the dramatic engine. An amazing feat. (Still sequence stolen from Art of the Title.)

Main title sequence from Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962)

"The grim previews of the 81st Academy Awards show on Feb. 22 at the Kodak Theatre, designed by David Rockwell -- the modern-day Rube Goldberg responsible for the Mohegan Sun Indian casino, the ugly sets for Hairspray and the Jet Blue terminal at J.F.K. -- are already being described as 'community theater on steroids,'" writes N.Y. Observer critic Rex Reed in a piece that went up last night at 8 pm.

"[They] include a curtain made of 92,000 crystals, a thrust stage requiring an orthopedic surgeon in residence for presenters in stiletto heels, 20 monumental...Read More

MTV.com's Josh Horowitz and his team have put together another Oscar montage in which he shares some mock-challenging emotional moments with the big acting nominees (Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, etc.). You know, like Billy Crystal used to do when he was hosting the big show in the mid '90s? Amusing and technically together; ends nicely with a couple of Oscar kids making actual appearances.

Hollywood Elsewhere strongly endorses the notion of Cenk Uygur, the liberal, blunt-spoken, sometimes combative host of Young Turks, being given the up-for-grabs 10 pm slot on MSNBC. The guy is in the same general bright-nervy-mouthy ballpark as Chris Matthews, only younger. (No offense but I don't know the other big candidate, Air America's Sam Seder.) MSNBC needs a young smart-ass GenXer on the team. Somebody to counter-balance the attitude and presence of David Gregory, a.k.a. "monkey mouth."

"There are press embargoes on many, many films, " writes Tom Shaw in response to Matt Selman's "My Own Private Watchmen" piece, which went up yesterday afternoon. "Usually because the studio thinks that any early reviews would hurt attendance. Just like they would here.

"Sure, we all hold Watchmen dear in our hearts, but consider [the view of] someone who has never read it before.

1. "Far from the 'all action, all the time!' previews, the actual movie itself has only a handful of fight scenes, none of which are fair. A young dude beats up an old dude, God...Read More

Now, that gets our blood going -- CG footage of a centuries-old French building in Paris being blown to pieces. But honestly? The footage of that slowly sinking aircraft carrier and the jets alongside got me. It shows imagination. Otherwise it's obviously a good thing that Steven Spielberg has his executive producing hooks into this film because it ensures he'll make a lot of money, and if there's one thing that Spielberg needs in his life right now...

Taking Chance is "austerely nonpolitical," writes Hollywood & Fine's Marshall Fine. "It's [a movie] about honoring one man's sacrifice, without getting into polemics of any sort. It's about the shared humanity of everyone Chance Phelps' encounters on his last ride home and its impact on his escort, played with understated anguish and strength by Kevin Bacon. I haven't been this moved by a film in a long, long time."

The fact that Fine, a very shrewd critic, swallowed the bait and wound up calling Taking Chance "nonpolitical" shows you how sly and tricky Ross Katz's film really is. It may be one...Read More

Ross Katz's Taking Chance, a somber, well-made drama about youth, grief and terrible finality, is an infuriating film because it's also, for me, a sneaky Iraq War sell-job in sheep's clothing. It will have its premiere on HBO this Saturday, 2.21, at 8pm. So it seems time to re-run some of my original 1.17.09 review that I wrote at the Sundance Film Festival.

Kevin Bacon in Ross Katz's Taking Chance

Taking Chance "moves you with understated eloquence about the profound and lasting sadness of a young man dying in a war (any war) with so many...Read More

Last night Variety's Michael Fleming posted a story about an entertaining movie-to-be called Pride and Predator, a Jane Austen jack-off about aliens landing on earth and butchering 19th century men and women of quality. Elton John's Rocket Pictures will produce.

Director Will Clark, who made a moderately amusing short called The Amazing Trousers, wrote the Pride and Predator script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape.

Rocket producer David Furnish told Fleming that "it felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume...Read More

This morning's announcement that Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore is jumping ship for a new gig as chief creative office for Tribeca Enterprises is a wowser, all right. He must have been offered a pretty rich deal to leave the top berth at Sundance, the biggest and most successful film festival in the country. Especially given Tribeca's financial concerns over the last couple of years.

Geoff Gilmore

According to a release, Gilmore will be responsible for "Tribeca's global content strategy and lead creative development initiatives and expansion of the brand." That means...what, he'll be trying...Read More

To double-underline that I have no dog in the Watchmen hunt, I'm stating an obvious interest in posting any other reactions to the film -- pro, con, whatever. Even a submission on the level of that detestable 2.16 article by Nerdworld's Matt Selman would be of interest. Obviously there's more to Watchmen than the opinion of one journalist colleague or some alpha-brained Simpsons contributor. I've been told that another critique will land in my inbox fairly soon so I hope others will follow.

Has anyone noticed, incidentally, that Selman hasn't written a word on Nerdworld since yesterday afternoon's blow-up? What...Read More

Restoration guru and all-around film expert Robert Harris has seen and spoken out about William Freidkin's notorious visual re-imagining of The French Connection ('71), which will be viewable on Fox Home Video's upcoming Blu-ray of this classic Oscar-winning film, due on 2.24.09.

Captured from the forthcoming Blu-ray French Connection -- the color extracted, de-focused, reduced and blended with black-and-white.

Harris's fundamental point is that "what one is seeing in this Blu-ray incarnation is no longer the Best Picture of 1971," he writes. "It is a re-vision. Like many of the Disney animated classics, it has been...Read More

The fact that I was instinctually repelled by Matt Selman's whorish and insipid remarks about Watchmen (Warner Bros., 3.6) doesn't mean I have a dog in this fight. I don't. I worship any film that convincingly creates in its own realm and knows how to zap the audience into believing in its theology, so if Watchmen manages this feat, terrific. But a trusted journalist friend, aroused by yesterday's uproar over Selman's very suspicious testimonial, passed the following along this morning. Again -- I have no stake in this. I'm just a guy on the sidelines.

...

After being criticized by Israeli fans for recycling his Ophir Awards acceptance speech at last month's Golden Globes, Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman has stated a willingness to read any remarks suggested by readers of Yair Raveh's Cinemascope (and of this column, of course) if and when he wins the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this coming Sunday.

If it happens a Bashir win will be (a) the first Oscar for an Israeli film after eight nominations, (b) the first foreign-language win for an animated film, and (c) the first foreign language win for a documentary. Folman, who has been...Read More

"Make no mistake, this is a review," says CHUD's Devin Faraci about Matt Selman's girlishly giddy, fluttery, not-to-be-trusted riff about Watchmen. "And make no mistake, despite what [this] reviewer and Simpsons executive producer says, he's a journalist in this case.

"He's blogging on the Time magazine website in a Time magazine-sanctioned blog, for the love of God! [And] I'm going to guess that he's probably drawing a dime or two for his work.

"This is sheer bullshit, and I hope that the next time some studio flack talks about how online breaks embargo, they remember that it was Time...Read More

"For me, Watchmen isn't a movie at all. It's a miracle the likes of which my 14-year-old self would never have believed. Now the special thing that it still feels like only I know about has been given to the whole world. I hope they like it. I don't think I realized how close I was to the original book until I saw such a loving, detail-rich, almost obsessive recreation of that universe. It had my heart pounding and head swimming. I barely slept that night. Someone took the most special personal thing of my adolescence and put it on a movie screen....Read More

"Sooner or later, you know you will crash into the densest of Armondic icebergs, i.e., Steven Spielberg. White regards the maker of E.T., Schindler's List, and 1941 to be 'the greatest of all American humanist directors, every bit the equal of John Ford...the measure by which all films and filmmakers must be judged.'

"The possible notion that Spielberg, eternal box-office boy-king of Hollywood, may embody the Reagan-Clintonist consumerism White claims has ruined serious film appreciation in this country is rejected with little more than a sardonic chuckle. For White, defending Spielberg is a waste of his...Read More

"Although the specific plans [for the Oscar show] are heavily under wraps, the physical relationships of the audience to the stage, and the stars to one another, are being radically altered," according to Patricia Leigh Brown's article in today's print edition of the N.Y. Times. "The biggest change involves reimagining some of the seating arrangements in concert with redesigning the landscape of the stage, including a new, curvaceous thrust. The novel new topography will allow more interesting camera work and more varied and streamlined entrances and exits."

There's a line of narration in this trailer for The Haunting of Connecticut (Lionsgate, 3.27) that drives me batty. Virginia Madsen talks about how her family, dealing with a major illness situation, was "just a regular family like anyone else...we didn't ask for this and we didn't deserve it." In other words, you deserve what happens to you. Which means, following her logic, that some people out there do deserve to get hit with some form of tragedy. Some do, some don't.

What a clueless and pathetic...Read More

Nate Silver, the numbers-and-poll-crunching whiz kid whose accurate primary and general election predictions were posted last year on fivethirtyeight.com and won him immense respect, has delivered an analysis of the Oscar contenders and delivered one big surprise -- i.e., that Benjamin Button's Taraji P. Henson will win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. No way. Bank on Penelope Cruz.

Silver claims there's a 71.1% likelihood that Mickey Rourke will win the Best Actor Oscar. The late Heath Ledger has an 85.8% chance of winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. (Do ya think so?) Kate Winslet, he says, is a 67.6% favorite...Read More

The U.S.-only version of Bertrand Tavernier's In The Electric Mist, a truncated thing that will turn up in DVD stores on March 3rd, wasn't as hard to watch as I'd been led to believe by certain critics. Ever since Tavernier's longer, more atmospheric cut played at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this month, the word has been that the 15-minute-shorter U.S. cut is "brisker but less coherent," as Variety's Leslie Felperin put it.

Felperin also wrote that the shorter version ends with a "tacky summing up" and a self-consciously spooky final twist that "makes...Read More

There's this New York interview with 35 year-old supermodel Kate Moss that went up yesterday. The idea is to plug a Kate Moss for Topshop collection of urgent-style apparel. But I'd be remiss if I didn't allude to the slideshow that's attached to the article. It's funny how people can look younger than their years for a long period, and then out of the blue they look somewhat older. No crime in this, but Moss could be 40 or 41 now. That's the lifestyle catching up, of course.

Or, as "the Bagger" put it today, if I "owned every one of the Academy's 5,800 votes, what injustices would be rectified?" Okay, here's what.

One, Revolutionary Road would be a Best Picture nominee. Two, Michael Shannon, a beautiful glint-of-madness actor with things to do and miles to go before he sleeps, would win for Best Supporting Actor. Three, The Dark Knight would still not be one of the five Best Picture nominees because it wore me down by being too damn long. Four, WALL*E, just for fun, would be. Five, The Visitor's Hiam Abbass would be a Best Supporting Actress nominee,...Read More

"The first thing you should know about Gomorrah," says New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, "is that no fewer than three members of its cast have been arrested on suspicion of illegal activities. There could be no more unimpeachable testament, surely, to the integrity of Matteo Garrone's film, which is about organized crime in Naples. Many of the actors were recruited from the area, presumably on the basis that they already knew the ropes, not to mention the Kalashnikovs.

"There are five stories, layered and stuck together, raising the possibility that Garrone modelled the whole thing...Read More

This 1959 clip shows that the mystery-guest segment of the old What's My Line? show was harmlessly amusing. (Certain amusements, I'm saying, are definitely harmful.) If a present-tense show tried reviving this I'd probably watch. I chose this clip because Gore Vidal was one of the panelists, and because Arlene Francis says to James Cagney at the end that "you're a wonderful performer and we don't see nearly enough of you in films." A year or so later she starred with Cagney in One, Two, Three.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw today came up with a list of the ten weirdest (i.e., most embarassing) Oscar presentation speeches of all time. Good idea, but who'd tap out such a thing without links to video clips? This makes Bradshaw's article seem the weirdest of all.

An absolutely terrible-looking video of The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke and Milk's Sean Penn thanking the Boston Society of Film Critics for the "discerning indecisiveness" that resulted in the org splitting the Best Actor award between these two. The BSFC ceremony was held at the Brattle Theatre on 2.8.09, the video was posted on 2.10.

Last night I paid to see Tom Tykwer's The International, having missed the Manhattan press screening. And I knew right away that the downish critical response (Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 52% and 55% from the rank-and-file and creme de la creme, respectively) was at least somewhat unfair and inaccurate.

This is a pretty nifty shot when you consider that the rear-wall glass should but doesn't reflect the presence of a camera in front of Watts and Owen. Very nice CGI, this.

For The International is another smart and mostly satisfying "tween." A thriller that isn't...Read More

The only standout in the latest Envelope/Gold Derby prediction poll is the support for Best Actor contender Mickey Rourke from myself, In Contention's Kris Tapley, Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and Mike Olsen. Gold Derby daddy Tom O'Neil cautions that Rourke's chief competitor, Sean Penn, still leads among all the Gold Derby pundits.

Meanwhile, Slumdog Millionaire's dp Anthony Dod Mantel has been handed the top prize by the American Society of Cinematographers.

And WALL*E, Slumdog Millionaire and Man on Wire have taken three choice ACE Awards for editing.

Jeffrey Wells to Bertrand Tavernier (sent in an e-mail just now that I might as well share): "Bertrand -- We haven't spoken since Cannes in '04 or '05, but I hope you're well. I'm writing to say that I've just found a copy of In The Electric Mist at a DVD store in Manhattan, even though it's not supposed to be released until March 3rd. And I'd like very much to see your 15-minute-longer version of this film.

Snapped inside an anonymous Manhattan DVD store this evening -- Sunday, 2.15, 8:20 pm.

"I've read all...Read More

"We can't lose with Jerry Lewis at the Oscars next Sunday," Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips wrote today. "Like the clashing personalities showcased in Lewis' greatest film, two scenarios present themselves.

"Scenario 1: The perpetually divisive screen icon takes a gracious pill and accepts the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award with his own brand of charm, plus a couple of inoffensive jokes, steering clear of any references to 'broads' or homosexuals or his 'kids.'

"Scenario 2: Lewis forgoes the gracious pill. He seizes the moment. And he...Read More

I've always liked Michelle Pfeiffer in recent years but I haven't paid serious attention to her since The Fabulous Baker Boys, so it'll be a welcome thing when Stephen Frears' Cherie (Miramax) goes into the screening and promotional dance, which I suspect won't happen until the fall (i.e., either during or just after Toronto). The last time I was seriously focused on Pfeiffer due to serious ardor was...well, a long time ago.

By pinching his reptile fingers and sending out unmistakable brain signals, this guy is telling the Wall Street bankers, the donkey-stubborn Republicans in the House and Senate, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner exactly what to say and do. Thank fortune there are some with the will to resist.

Arianna Huffington was dead-on when she wrote the following: "The battle lines over how to deal with the banking crisis have been drawn. On the one side are those who know what needs to be done. On the other are those who know what needs to be...Read More

If you could somehow capture and compress all the rage and contempt in the reader comments about this "Utterly Correct" story and convert it into liquid fuel....

"All the companies are laying off employees. There will be fewer deals. Budgets will be tighter. It will shrink the business, I'm sure. That's not necessarily a bad thing. When you look back on some of these weekends when you have five, six movies opening the same day, they cannibalize each other. So with fewer films it's better for all concerned. Even the consumer -- it's easier to decide what to see." -- producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Confessions of a Shopaholic) speaking on the current economic climate in Hollywood.

"...and we're gonna catch the hell. Gonna be pretty goddam bad. [But] that's all...Read More

1999 is commonly regarded as an excellent movie year, and just as commonly 2008 is seen as a relatively weak one. I didn't realize how weak until I spent some time today looking over a month's worth of HE clips from November 2006. Volver, Children of Men, The Lives of Others, Tsotsi, United 93, Babel, Pan's Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada -- I hereby nominate '06 as a classic year also. The movies weren't just better then, but this column, I regret to say, was a more engaging and inventive read.

This is hilarious -- a projection riff about Baz Luhrman's Australia written in November '06. Red River...hah!

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." -- quote attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Thomas, used in the opening credits of Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil and initially mentioned in this column 2 years and 3 months ago.

In his review of The International, N.Y. Press critic Armond White says that Clive Owen's "perpetually sullen, unshaven mug provokes dreadful flashbacks of his woebegone heroics in the ludicrous apocalypse-thrill-ride Children of Men." We're all familiar with Owen's sullenness, but equating Children of Men with some kind of "dreadful"? It was my choice for Best Picture of 2006, and I knew whereof I spoke when I wrote this initial review.

White has to be the contrarian; he has to blow your mind, piss on your temple, show disgust for one of your all-time favorite films, etc. It's his handle, I...Read More

According to the photo editor of London's Daily Mail, the below photo, chosen to illustrate an article by reverse-mortgage pitchman Robert Wagner called "I blamed myself for Natalie Wood's death: Robert Wagner on the night his wife disappeared," is a shot of Wagner and wife Natalie Wood in All The Fine Young Cannibals.

If the woman in this photo is Natalie Wood I'm Alanis Morissette. Look at her eyes and her teeth. Tell me she doesn't summon thoughts of a flesh-eating ghoul ready to take a bite out of Wagner. Tell me she doesn't...Read More

On the "tell me something I don't know" portion of this morning's Chris Matthews Show, a female guest announced that the first film that the Obamas had watched in the White House screening room was The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button. Nobody coughed, smirked...nothing. Imagine the chuckling mockery that would result if I wrote a piece that referred to Treasury Secretary William Geithner. The Matthews blooper says something about the public's attitude about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think. But what?

The mystifying if not ridiculous success of Michael Bay and Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th -- $20 million yesterday, estimated to bring in over $50 million over the four-day President's Day holiday -- at least underlines the old truism about the movie business being recession- or depression-proof. Or that it tends to be, certainly, when there's something playing that people unencumbered by taste are looking to see. A good thing, that. The sexual metaphor of slasher movies translates so fully. The dumbest people in the world get it, and that's fine because every so often they need to feel they're in on...

Thematically-linked Blu-ray double features...sure. Although I'm wondering if I can stand to watch In Cold Blood again. Everyone has limits and there's something awfully tedious and on-the-nose about it. Maybe it's the way the Quincy Jones score sometimes tries to underscore the sentiment in a scene when it's already dead obvious what you're supposed to be feeling. (I hate scores that do that.) Maybe it's Scott Wilson's performance, which seems too soft and charming given the notorious psychopath he's supposed to be playing (i.e., Dick Hickock). It's just that Conrad Hall's black-and-white widescreen cinematography is so choice.

...

"I think we can safely say that a woman like Gwyneth Paltrow has never in the history of NYC fallen in love with a 30-something" -- a downbeat donkey, played by Joaquin Phoenix -- "who lives with his parents in Brighton Beach." So said Ben, a N.Y. Times commenter, early this morning about James Gray's Two Lovers. "Which pretty much ruins the movie as a serious work before you even see it, since it's constantly reminding you of its inauthenticity."

Add this gripe to my own about Vinessa Shaw being poorly cast as a slightly-too-nice Brooklyn neighborhood girl, and you've...Read More

That untitled Michael Moore documentary mentioned as a possible Cannes 2009 entry by Screen International's Mike Goodridge is either (a) some phantom doc no one's ever heard of or (b) Moore's currently shooting film about Wall Street chicanery which he's said will be about "the biggest swindle in American history" as well as "the greatest crime story ever told."

If it's the latter it seems unlikely that Moore would have anything to show three months from now since he's still looking for Wall Street veterans to come forward and spill the beans. That means he's in the earlyish stages. If...Read More

The just-out Raging Bull Bluray "produces a more subtle visual improvement than many are used to seeing in high-definition," writes DVD Beaver's Henrik Sylow. "The contrast is superior" but "much more of the intended grain is [also] noticeable." I remember the raw deglammed look and murky sound of Raging Bull when I first saw it at Manhattan's Beekman theatre in 1980, so I know what the idea was back then and what this new Bluray is trying to recapture.

An avoidance of "pretty" was key. Scorsese wanted a flat visual representation of the primitive...Read More

Criterion has finally announced the release of its single-disc DVD of Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73). It comes out May 19th. Nothing much besides a remastered high-def version of the film, which Yates approved. Okay, there's a Yates commentary track, a stills gallery and a booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Kent Jones and a 1973 Rolling Stone profile of Robert Mitchum, based on a set visit. Here's an mp3 of the coffee shop gun-talk scene between Mitchum and costar Steven Keats.