Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature: About Elly, directed and written by Asghar Farhadi; Best Documentary Feature: Racing Dreams directed by Marshall Curry; Special Jury Mention: Defamation, directed by Yoav Shamir; Best New Narrative Filmmaker: North, directed by Rune Denstad Langlo, written by Erlend Loe; Best New Documentary Filmmaker: Ian Olds, director of Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi; Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film: Ciaran Hinds in The Eclipse; Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film: Zoe Kazan in The Exploding Girl, directed and written by Bradley Rust Gray.

A friend has written with a last-minute offer of a shared apartment in Cannes during the festival. It's a two-bedroom place, open from May 10th to 24th, in Pointe Croisette, on the east side of the Croisette -- about a 15-minute walk along the beach to the Palais. He's asking $1750 (or half of what he's paying) for a room with a king-sized bed that can be split into 2 singles. And he can send pics. I'm the go-between.

When all was said and done and the NRA aside, Charlton Heston was always a talented, confident and resourceful actor. He always brought it home; knew how to sell it. The non-verbal conviction be brought to this scene from The Big Country -- those looks of intense resentment and lingering loyalty for his boss, played by the blustery Charles Bickford -- are what make it work. They're the emotional bedrock.

Should I, like, cancel my flight to Nice on May 11th (i.e., a week from next Monday) along with my participation in the Cannes Film Festival? Or should I just double-up on the alcoholic hand-wipes and hope for the best?

I know one thing. The travel-industry reps who are downplaying the swine-flu reports on the news shows are reminding me of Murray Hamilton, the mayor of Amity in Jaws, telling Roy Scheider to be careful about scaring away tourists with all this shark talk.

Can you imagine saying to anyone, publicly or privately, that you were "scarred for life, for a year" about anything at all? Isn't this the same thing as saying, "I was shot and killed, wounded kinda badly"? It makes more sense to say you were "scarred for a year, for life" because this sounds like you're building on the original thought -- i.e., elaborating for effect. But to backpedal from a lifetime of scarring to a single year's worth suggests, to me, a limited intellectual capacity. [Thanks to New York/Vulture for the original link to Perez Hilton.]

Apologies to Washington Times writer Sonny Bunch for my not responding to an interview request last week to talk about film grain. A decent piece resulted. He wound up quoting Some Came Running's Glenn Kenny and the Criterion Collection's Lee Kline. Kline blows smoke, however, by saying the choice is strictly between removing or not removing film grain. He knows full well that film grain can be reduced tastefully and respectfully with picture detail not being compromised in any significant way.

MCN's David Poland's has not only called Wolverine "a low-rent masterpiece," but says it makes you "ready to sit through the next Origins." But will Fox marketers feel too skittish about hyping "low rent," which obviously suggests a cheesy quality?

Here's the portion of Poland's review that it came from: "Is Wolverine the comic book equivalent of Hal Ashby and Waldo Salt's Coming Home with mutant powers? No. But versus last year's second tier parade of high grossing action - Indy 4, Hulk Incredible, Mummy 3 and Jules Verne's Center of the 3D - it looks like a low-rent masterpiece.

"It's...Read More

A 4.29 Ad Age story about the firing of Entertainment Weekly publisher Scott Donaton -- the mag's fifth publisher in five years at the time of his hiring in late '07 -- reports that parent company Time Inc. is saying that "the magazine will continue to publish, contradicting persistent rumors to the contrary, and that a successor [to Donaton] will be named shortly."

What is the blockage over there? The dwindling ad income at EW isn't enough to support the massive staffing and overhead costs....hello? At best revenues are going to drop even more and then, if things work out, they may...Read More

Make your own list of the most moving film performances of all time -- the ones that reach right in and melt you down, no matter how many times you've seen them -- and I'll bet serious cash that Gladys George's in The Best Years of Our Lives is not among them. I'll bet, in fact, that right now most HE readers haven't a clue who Gladys George was. But watch this clip from William Wyler's Oscar-winning film (or start, rather, at the 37-second mark and stay with it until 1:51) and you'll never forget her.

...

My earnest sympathies to Movie City Indie's Ray Pride after getting beaten up by right-wing thugs during the Thessaloniki Doc Festival last month. His 4.29 posting says he suffered no organ damage or broken bones, and is on the mend -- good to hear. And thank fortune for medical insurance.

But who sits on a story like this for over a month?

If you're a movie blogger/columnist you're filing as it happens -- screenings, festivals, musings, reviews, etc. But when something like this occurs -- an awful traumatic thing that could have been...Read More

Speaking earlier today to Coming Soon's Ed Douglas, Girlfriend Experience director Steven Soderbergh spoke about how it's "hard for anything [these days] to have the cultural impact of a movie like The Godfather," and that he was "disappointed there weren't those sorts of benchmarks in the movies being made today." But then he added that perhaps James Cameron's Avatar might punch through on this level. "I've seen some stuff and holy shit," he told Douglas. "It's the craziest shit ever. [So this] could negate everything I just said."

Directed and written by Nora Ephron, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, from Sony on 8.2.09. Streep's vocal impersonation of Child sounds pretty good. Plus she somehow looks like she's Child's height of 6'2", even though Streep is only 5'6" or thereabouts. Which means it's one of those noteworthy physical transformation roles a la De Niro in Raging Bull, which means she's an automatic Oscar contender. Unless the film is a shortfaller.

Three days ago the Independent's Rachel Shields ran a story about an anti-domestic violence TV spot with Keira Knightley, called The Cut, being banned from TV by Clearcast, an ad-approval org, unless footage is trimmed. The ad began appearing in British cinemas about three weeks ago.

It's a riveting spot in the way it makes you feel the horror of physical assault. It's especially noteworthy for a moment just after Knightley has been slapped by her brute boyfriend in which she breaks character and complains to...Read More

Outside of journalism my favorite all-time job was driving a Checker Cab in Boston, when I was in my early 20s. I always came home with fresh cash and learned something new every day. I met several pretty girls. I was once punched and spit on by biker psychopaths after I flipped them off after refusing to pick them up. I found a wallet in the back seat with no ID and about $400 in cash -- a heavy sum in the '70s. It was more or less one interesting episode after another.

From the Robert DeNiro Film...

Clive Donner's What's New, Pussycat? (1965) was a sloppy, mostly unfunny sex farce, but the stories of its making are legendary (or at least the ones told to me by production designer Richard Sylbert were). It falls, then, into a category that's rarely discussed -- movies that suck on their own terms but would have been unforgettable to work on with the key creatives. If a film was fun or intensely dramatic to work on and was also great to watch then it doesn't make the list.

Earlier today it was reported by Fandango's Harry Medved in an e-mail that Wolverine, which opens tomorrow night at midnight, is accounting for 65% of all advance ticket sales. Going out on a limb, Medved wrote that "in a survey 44% of Wolverine ticket-buyers had viewed the 2009 Academy Awards Show with Hugh Jackman as the host, and 34% of those viewers said the Oscar telecast actually made them more excited to see him as Wolverine. 64% said his Oscar duties had no effect on their anticipation for the movie, while 2% said it made them less excited to see him playing...Read More

Already the yay-or-nay shorthand verdict for X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been decided upon, and that's whether or not it's better or worse than Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand. Which is why Justin Chang's Variety review could slightly encourage Fox marketers since he says that Wolverine "overpowers" X-Men 3. This reminds me of the first instant analysis about Waterworld after the first press screening -- i.e., "It doesn't suck."

Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

"Heavily fortified with adamantium, testosterone and CGI, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a sharp-clawed, dull-witted actioner that falls short...Read More

Two days ago Endeavor and the William Morris Agency finally and formally announced they'd agreed to merge. Except the name they've chosen to go by -- William Morris Endeavor Entertainment -- sounds drearily corporate, even with the strong likelihood that it'll wind up being called WME. The problem is the sound of the name "William Morris Agency," which carries the aura of 20th Century showbiz culture -- analog, yesteryear, old times and Cadillac fins. If you were Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel would you want your agency's name to be just tacked on to Morris's, like the new last name of a woman...Read More

I've always had a slight problem with women who speak like Sasha Grey. Women who sound basically mallish and fringe-suburban. Like they work the checkout at Gelson's or something. Listen to Grey ask, "Do you have anything specific in mind?" and the way she pronounces the last word as a hastened two-sylllable thing -- "maayeend" -- as opposed to how Angelina Jolie or Faye Dunaway in Chinatown or Obama foreign-affairs aide Samantha Power or Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill might say it.

I'm just saying...Read More

Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (Magnolia, 5.22) had its big Tribeca Film Festival showing last night. It's a superbly made film about (a) Soderbergh's view of himself as an artist dealing with a series of "Johns," and (b) the anxious psychological currents created by collapse of the U.S. economy in the fall of '08. The after-party was at 675 Bar (675 Hudson, 9th Ave and 13th St.), a basement-level place that used to be an S & M bar in the '70s and was a hospital in the Civil War days.

Tony Gilroy, Girlfriend Experience costar...

20th Century Fox has nailed down Oliver Stone to direct a sequel to his 1987 hit Wall Street, which was called Money Never Sleeps when Stephen Schiff wrote the original script. Variety's Michael Fleming says Shia LaBeouf is negotiating to join Michael Douglas, who naturally will play the legendary Gordon "greed is good" Gekko. Allan Loeb (21) is credited in Fleming's story as the writer, but my understanding is that he's the rewrite/reshuffle/touch-up guy. Edward R. Pressman is producing.

Quoting from my 3.8.09 piece...Read More

There are only two performances by film critics (i.e.,in which they play characters and not themselves) that I've really liked -- Leonard Harris as Sen. Palantine in Taxi Driver, and Some Came Running's Glenn Kenny as a predatory porn website manager in Steven Soderbergh 's The Girlfriend Experience, which screens tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival. (It just hit me that I forgot to attend the round-table interviews for this earlier today -- brilliant! The story of my life.)

The dirty little secret of Sony Home Video's recently-released Nickelodeon DVD is that neither of the two versions -- the original color release plus the new monochrome re-do from the hand of director Peter Bogdanovich and Sony restoration guru Grover Crisp -- are very attractive.

Snap of monochrome Nickelodeon as it appears on my 42-inch plasma.

Okay, the black-and-white version looks a bit crisper and more distinctive at times, but at other times it seems a wee bit murky and shadowy. Look at any old-time black and white film and you'll notice how carefully lit everything...Read More

In Nothing But The Truth, director-writer Rod Lurie "has created female protagonists strong and self-aware enough to question sexism and hypocrisy. He's created two of the most fascinating female movie characters to hit screens in a long while," says Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday in a 4.28 review. "And they've been brought to life by two gifted actresses -- Kate Beckinsale and Vera Farmiga -- each working at the top of her game.

"Every once in a while, for reasons as random as a Hollywood executive's taste or an economic meltdown, a perfectly decent...Read More

It's my fault that Manhattan-based 20th Century Fox publicists didn't invite me to the two Wolverine critic screenings happening today. I haven't been aggressive enough about telling everyone I'm really and truly a Manhattanite. The first screening happened at 10 or 10:30 am; the next starts at 2 pm. I spoke to a critic who attended this morning's showing and his initial response was (a) there's too much Hugh Jackman and (b) it's not as good as any of the three X-Men films (i.e., obviously including Brett Ratner's version).

A credible Australian critic wrote yesterday to say he'd "caught...Read More

Senator Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic party is obviously an enormous boon to President Barack Obama's legislative agenda. Presuming that Al Franken 's Minnesota Senate race victory will eventually be ratified, Specter's vote will bring the Senate Democratic tally to 60, which will enable Dems to cold-cock any Republican filibusters that may arise in response to this or that legislative measure.

In a statement issued about 90 minutes ago, Specter said "he had concluded that his party had moved too far to the right, a fact demonstrated by the migration of 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans to the Democratic Party," says a Read More

I didn't see any harm last Saturday in posting that fake 18-month-old YouTube trailer (originally posted on 10.19.07) for James Cameron's Avatar. Especially since I was bouncing off Michael Cieply's 4.25 N.Y. Times piece, which explicitly stated in paragraph #7 that "neither a trailer nor even a still photo" from the forthcoming 20th Century Fox film has been made available.

In short I made no claims about the trailer's authenticity since I thought the lack of authenticity was obvious. At the same I liked the way the trailer plays and figured "where's the harm?"

Except late yesterday the Wrap...Read More

As gender transformations go, Larry Wachowski's -- she's now called Lana -- hasn't turned out too badly. Not drop-dead ravishing but moderately appealing in a no-big-deal, sitting-around-Starbucks sort of way. The shot on the right (posted by Us Weekly) is the first time I've seen Larry/Lana looking 100% female. If a sense of fulfillment and/or happiness is part of the dividend then it's all to the good, right?

(l. to r.) Geeky heavy-cat Larry about a decade ago; transformative Larry about six years ago; Lana snapped at LAX on 4.17.

To...Read More

Early last October it was revealed that Jim Sheridan's Brothers, a remake of Susanne Bier's original 2004 film, was being bumped by distributor MGM out of its 12.4.08 slot to either a late summer or fall '09 release. Producer Mike DeLuca confirmed this and also told me that the plan was to take the domestic drama to the '09 Cannes Film Festival.

Then I ran into Sheridan several weeks ago in Manhattan and he told me Cannes was a no-go, due to one or more of the actors (the costars are Jake Gyllenhaal,...Read More

Yesterday morning a 747 Air Force One and an F16 fighter jet buzzed lower Manhattan at low altitude, causing thousands to fear the worst. The reason for the flyover was a photo op. This prompted Darth Mojo to write this morning that "not only was this stunt thoughtless and cruel -- it was totally unnecessary. Hasn't the government heard of CGI? Why didn't the guys who wanted shots of a Manhattan flyover just call Hollywood? They can do fake planes like nobody's business."

Well, I've seen Marshall Curry's Racing Dreams (i.e., having been urged to do so by L.A. Times columnist Scott Feinberg) and I have to be honest and say that despite it being a well-crafted portrayal of a world I didn't know (and have never wanted to know), it alienated and creeped me out because of the NASCAR culture and lifestyle issues it brings to the fore.

Racing Dreams director Marshall Curry (second from right), exec producers Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (left), Dany Garcia (left of Curry), and Bristol Baughan (right of Curry), as well the subjects of...

Anybody who uses "Mr." before speaking or writing the name of a famous person is a small-time thinker and an old-time Charlie. (Photo snapped in Westwood within the last 24 to 36 hours by Jeffrey Ressner, formerly of Time and Politico.)

I've just reminded myself of another under-valued '70s film -- Bob Rafelson's Stay Hungry (1977). An eccentric Southern-style comedy about family wealth, corruption and the body-building world, it starred Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, R.G. Armstrong and -- in his first significant acting role -- Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Charmingly oddball comedies of this sort, the socially observant kind about values and growth arcs that began with Preston Sturges in the '40s, have all but disappeared from the landscape. Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars is another comedy of this type. What do we have today? Big corporate CG comedies directed...Read More

I just had a conversation about how being hungry has always been a great incentive to do good work and being too well fed has always had the opposite effect. Nothing new in this, but when I mentioned the curious case of the once-great Cameron Crowe and how he seemed to go off the rails after Elizabethtown, the guy said "I think he got too rich. Too comfortable, too much luxury, too many friends in the same position with the same comforts, and after a while the fire just simmers down."

The Providence Journal and the Ivy Film Festival website declined to run anything about the Jack Nicholson-Robert Evans-Brad Grey-Peter Bart's panel discussion at Brown University last Saturday (which I had considered attending until practical considerations intervened). But Variety's recently laid-off Dade Hayes attended and filed a report yesterday afternoon.

After nearly 22 years of reviewing films for the Charlotte Observer, Lawrence Toppman has been taken off the beat and will concentrate on the barely existing Charlotte theater scene and start an arts column of some kind. "Except for the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore and another guy in Miami, I was the last critic at a daily paper in the Southeast reviewing as often as I did," Toppman wrote last Friday. To supplement his reduced income Toppman will now do occasional deliveries and pick up sandwiches and coffee for the remaining staffers at lunch hour...kidding! But not that much.

Eight cases of swine flu reported in New York City means no touching anyone for any reason and frequent hand-washings (and carrying around sanitary towlettes). No Michael Jackson surgical masks, but let's see how it goes.

"I strongly suggest you make time to see Racing Dreams, which is easily the best film I've seen so far at the [Tribeca Film Festival] and probably this year," wrote Scott Feinberg in a Sunday e-mail. "It's a documentary by Marshall Curry, the guy who did Street Fighter a few years ago, and like Hoop Dreams it follows kids who aspire to become professionals at race-car driving.

"Without giving anything away I'll just say (a) Curry found three perfect subjects, (b) the film was tremendously moving, and (c) it received a standing ovation through...Read More

I'll be seeing JJ Abrams' Star Trek (Paramount, 5.8) very soon so Dave Itzkoff's N.Y. Times profile of Abrams and his filmmaking partners -- Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Bryan Burk -- had my attention right off.

Star Trek director JJ Abrams

"Abrams and his partners are guys with mainstream pop-culture aspirations," Itzkoff writes. "Their forte is taking on genres with finite but dedicated fan bases -- science fiction, fantasy and horror -- and making them accessible to wider audiences. And what they had in mind for their Star Trek movie is a film that is...Read More

Former Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman hasn't wasted any time in launching his own site, which he's calling Showbiz411. Starting out slowly, gradually. The graphics could use enhancement and refinement, but so could Hollywood Elsewhere's in the early days. He's running around the Tribeca Film Festival, going to Cannes, etc.

There was a Tribeca Film Festival screening and after-party last night for Barry Ptolemy's Transcendent Man, a proflle of futurist and "singularity" proponent Ray Kurzweil. He's been projecting that singularity -- the creation of super-intelligent, long-lived beings via the fusing of humans and computers -- will happen within 30 years. Ptolemy profiles Kurzweil as well as followers -- including Steve Wonder and William Shatner -- of his regimen, which he says will bestow eternal life.

Transcendent Man director Barry Ptolemy, producer Felicia Ptolemy.

Ptolemy "also interviews evangelists who believe that Kurzweil is challenging God, especially...Read More

Has anyone mentioned an obvious analogy about Kristian Levering's Fear Me Not, a current Tribeca Film Festival attraction? Levring and Anders Thomas Jensen's script is about a mild-mannered family man who undergoes big changes and wreaks havoc after taking an experimental mood-altering drug. This is the basic premise of Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life. IFC On Demand is opening the film on 6.10.

This comic short has been playing before every feature shown over the last three or four days at the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by David Gray for Ogilvy New York, it's about a nebbishy flasher (Doug Moe) who hits it off with one of the women he's tried to shock. Moe and the women playing the would-be victims (Jennifer Morris, Jennifer Bowen) are appealing and amusing, but the piece doesn't work after the friendly-flirty stuff begins. I'll explain why in a second.

Ogilvy creative directors...Read More

A reminder that Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys will stream freely this Sunday, 4,26, on www.theauteurs.com. Ceylan's Climates will also be viewable on the site from 4.23 to 5.3.

Why is a forthcoming DVD of Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido ('58) only available in England? Why isn't it coming out here through Criterion? This is Antonioni's first landmark film -- his first world-class depiction of characters trapped and semi-narcotized by a sense of their alienation and rootlessness.

"When sugar refinery worker Aldo (Steve Cochran) is jilted by his mistress, Irma (Alida Valli), he takes to the road. With daughter in tow, Aldo wanders the Po River delta, seeking temporary but always illusory respite with a series of lovers, who only serve to remind him of Irma....Read More

Eight months before its scheduled release on 12.18.09, James Cameron's Avatar, a science-fiction thriller filmed with his own specially devised 3-D technology, "is stirring up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the Rapture," writes N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply in tomorrow's edition.

But before we go any further, let's cut to the chase with a few Avatar Wikipedia page quotes.

One, in Cameron's original Avatar script treatment, "a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an...Read More

Two days ago I ran a two-point riff on the themes of Kirby Dick's Outrage. One, closeted gay politicians who support anti-gay legislation are tragic and despicable figures. And two, while I understand and sympathize with those who've sought to "out" these hypocrites, I would never out anyone on my own. But I feel differently after seeing Outrage at a Tribeca Film Festival screening last night. Not about my own hesitations, but about how there's a certain logic and a rightness to outing Washington, D.C. power brokers.

Running only 90 minutes, Outrage seems to me...Read More

Dan Fogler's absurdly broad performance in Balls of Fury convinced me that he was a sworn enemy of restraint. His name went to the top of my must-to-avoid list. Then I read about his portraying the young Alfred Hitchcock in Chase Palmer's Number Thirteen and thought about cutting him a break. Now comes Hysterical Psycho, a Tribeca Film Festival entry that Fogler wrote and directed. Couldn't see it last night; will try on Tuesday. Anyone?

Has anyone with a cinematic IQ over 50 even seen Obsessed since it opened, or in a press screening beforehand? The bizarre success of this faux-Fatal Attraction knockoff (to go by Variety's John Anderson) tells you there are two moviegoing cultures out there. One, people who have a semblance of taste in (or a healthy amount of passion about) movies, which accompanies a certain fervor and sophistication about movies in general. And two, those who flock to films like Obsessed.

Three days ago I mentioned that Jack Nicholson hasn't made a film since The Bucket List -- two years ago -- and wondered what's up. The next day I was told about a discussion he'll be taking part in today at Brown University's Salomon Center, in a panel arranged by the Ivy Film Festival. It starts at 3 pm. I was going to cover it, which would have involved Amtrak-ing all the way up to Providence and back within a 10-hour period. But I didn't want to blow all that time and money.

But if...Read More

N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks speaking to Charlie Rose about the Obama White House -- "It is astonishing what they've done."

The white-horse photo (with obvious allusions to you-name-it) is what should have been used for the new Bruno poster. But instead caution (i.e., a polite word for timidity) won out among the Universal marketers. The result is the field-of-flowers poster, which has disappointed everyone. Oh, and that "Borat was so 2006" slogan is so March 2009, guys. It was funny the first time.

This doc definitely has the heat as we speak. The first Tribeca Film Festival public screening happens this evening at the SVA theatre on West 23rd Street.

"Nicolas Sarkozy requests that Muammar Qadaffi remove the photos of Carla Bruni from his photo album," etc.

"There are limits to artistic self-indulgence, limits to how long a filmmaker can keep spinning his creative wheels before his work approaches self-parody, and limits to the tolerance of even a devoted specialized audience for artistic vacuity, and they are all well exceeded by The Limits of Control. This discerningly photographed travelogue of modern Spain features Jim Jarmusch in shallow poetaster mode, grafting familiar quasi-philosophical doodles and trendy cameos onto a woolly hitman's journey. The limit on the theatrical potential for this Focus Features release is extreme." -- from Todd McCarthy's Variety review, posted yesterday afternoon.

There have been a couple of recent bellwether showings of Judd Apatow 's Funny People (Universal, 7.31) in Los Angeles -- a friends-of-Apatow screening plus a research screening that happened (I'm told) about eight days ago. And the word is better than pretty good, "amazing," "James L. Brooksian," etc. The leads, of course, are Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, with Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman in supporting.

Possibly an award-level thing, a director friend said this morning, although he was just passing along the chatter. It's more in the realm of Sandler for...Read More

There are three reasons I want to attend the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Tom Hanks tribute next Monday night. One, because of his performance in Cast Away, which I've come to admire and respect a bit more every time I see that Robert Zemeckis film. Two, because I truly loved that Barack Obama video testimonial that he put up last May. And three, because he's one of the nicest big-time actors I've ever met in my 28 or 29 years in the business.

Paramount's decision to boot Joe Wright's The Soloist out of the '08 Oscar season and into a late spring '09 release was a message to the masses that it didn't work as an awards-level thing and perhaps not even in a regular-paying-audience sense. And now the opening-day reviews -- a lousy 54% positive from the Rotten Tomato grunts and a marginally better 65% positive from the creme de la creme -- seem to underscore that.

But it's far from a disaster. You could call it mildly disappointing but I wouldn't. Not altogether,...Read More

Francis Coppola's Tetro -- his part-color, part-monochrome, all-Vincent Gallo Argentine family drama -- will open the Director's Fortnight section of next month's Cannes Film Festival. Coppola had previously turned down the festival's offer of a non-competitive slot. The Director's Fortnight offer is a sop, but it's a slight improvement in terms of prestige.

The rationale for doing awful things in order to defeat or weaken your enemy was articulated 44 years ago by Cyril Cusack in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, to wit: "Our work, as I understand it, is based on a single assumption that the West is never going to be the aggressor. We may do disagreeable things but we're defensive. Our policies are peaceful. But our methods can't afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition...can they?

Cyril Cusack as "Control" in Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

A 4.18 German-language Adenblatt article says that Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen isn't going to Cannes because he didn't submit it. The German-Turkish director (The Edge of Heaven) simply couldn't make the Cannes deadline. The piece says that the film, which stars Moritz Bleibtreu, is being cut as we speak and will be ready by June. Same info from this article.

You'd think that L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan might be ...how to put it?...partial to slipping on the kid gloves in reviewing The Soloist? Since it's at least partly an L.A. Times milieu story based on a book by a Times colleague, Steve Lopez, about a relationship he had/has with a gifted but schizophrenic street musician? Uhn, nope.

Jamie Foxx,. Robert Downey, Jr. in The Soloist.

"Remember when Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle, 'I knew Jack Kennedy [and] Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy'?," Turan begins. "Well, I felt a little that way when it...Read More

At or near the top of my list for pure enjoyment, pure male-mood adventure, pure turn-off-your-brain animal-criminal swagger. (But without beating up on or shooting anyone.) No American youth comedy has ever even tried to be this anti-social or anarchic. It's way ruder, nervier and more up-the-social-order than any similar-type American youth comedy you can name. American Pie, hide your head in shame.

"Marvel made a choice, and it was a very, very bad choice. They didn't keep their word. They didn't honor my contract. They produced a great bounty with the first one but they put it all in the storehouse and you were not allowed in. They did the same thing with Gwyneth Paltrow, from what I've been told. They did it with almost everyone except Robert Downey [Jr.]. One of the things that actors need to learn to do is always stick together, one for all and all for one." -- Former Iron Man costar Terrence Howard speaking to Parade's Jeanne Wolf.

Rod Lurie, director-writer of the upcoming Straw Dogs, naturally doesn't want his film to be compared too precisely to Sam Peckinpah's original 1971 version. So he's cast the very un-Dustin Hoffmanish James Marsden (next in The Box) in the husband role. Hoffman's character was a dweeby mathmetician but Marsden's is a big-city writer, as was the original character in the book, The Siege at Trencher's Farm.

In the view of Vanity Fair.com's Julian Sancton, the following TFF films are worth catching: Armando Ianucci's In The Loop (but then I knew that), Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, Leslie Cockburn's American Casino, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Still Walking, Spike Lee's Kobe Doin' Work, Eric Bana's Love The Beast, Alfonso Cuaron's Rudy y Cursi, Black Dynamite, Easy Virtue and Pandora's Box.

"My real problem with Whatever Works was the older-man-younger-woman theme, which has never been one of my favorite Woody motifs, even before it gained a real-life parallel. (Manhattan is a great film, but the Mariel Hemingway relationship is creepy and condescending, and I don't just say that as a father of an almost-teenage daughter.) Going back to Alvy and Annie, the romances in Allen's films often have a teacher-pupil quality, too, and in Whatever Works we get that as well as the December-May thing.

"But here, Allen doesn't even bother to make the relationship between Larry...Read More

Most of us, I suspect, believe that closeted gay politicians who support anti-gay legislation and do nothing to support their own are tragic and despicable figures. And yet I've always felt that it's a basic human and professional right to be closeted if you so choose. However loathsome or pathetic the reason for this or that gay person wanting to live secretly, privacy is privacy. I understand and sympathize with those who've sought to "out" these hypocrites, but I would never be party to outing on my own steam.

That said, the headliner in Kirby Dick's Outrage,...Read More

But we obviously did. Routinely, "legally," procedurally. Between this Fox News clip and being reportedly mentioned in Kirby Dick's Outrage (which will screen at the Tribeca Film Festival tomorrow night), this is definitely Shepard Smith's pop-through week.

Garry Shandling's Iron Man 2 cameo role (reported here and there earlier this month) is that of "a whiney U.S senator who's opposed to defense contracting and who's particularly jealous of Downey's Tony Stark character, especially his prowess with the ladies," a guy tells me.

As forecast by Variety's Todd McCarthy on 4.16 and in a more general way last February by Screen Daily's Mike Goodridge, the official 62nd Cannes Film Festival competition slate includes Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, Lars von Trier's Antichrist, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces.

Other competitors officially revealed in Paris this morning were Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, Jane Campion's Bright Star, Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Tokyo and Ken Loach's Looking for Eric.

The festival's Asian competitors will include Park Chan-wook's Thirst, Johnnie To's Vengeance, Brillante...Read More

Woody Allen's Whatever Works, which opened the Tribeca Film Festival this evening, is a kind of dry farce that isn't naturalistic for a second and is basically about manner and whimsy and bile, and it certainly doesn't go for broke. But it's fairly enjoyable. It's sometimes hilarious, especially when it rips into idiocy and thoughtlessness among the populace, and particularly red-state characters and values. It contains some wonderful zingers including a beautiful anti-NRA joke -- if only Charlton Heston had lived to hear it! And a gem about automatic toilets, and another about Barack Obama and taxis.

(l....

Regards to Movieline's Kyle Buchanan for mentioning yours truly in a summary of noteworthy Hollywood bloggers who feud (or have feuded). But I must again dispute that among other peeves I "regularly rail against Hispanics," as Buchanan has written.

If I rant about "Hispanic party elephants" who live above my apartment, I'm simply saying that these coarse and thoughtless people happen to be Hispanic. (Should I say they're German?) It's not railing to report that a mother of apparent Hispanic ancestry has taken her two year-old daughter to see Eli Roth's Hostel 2. Ditto if...Read More

Five days ago news broke that $99 Bluray players are coming from China, probably by the end of the year. The rumble says this will goose Bluray sales big-time. Will it? If you ask me the price of high-def plasmas and LCD screens also have to come down. $500, say, for the 42-inchers, and $750 for the 50-inchers.

In a Time magazine q & a with Roger Ebert about his Overlooked Film Festival (today through 4.26), movie maven S. James Snyder (formerly of the New York Sun) asks, "I try to keep up on movies, but I've never heard of two of this year's selections: Sita Sings The Blues and Nothing But The Truth. Why haven't I heard about these, and why have you chosen them for the festival?" Does anyone believe that Snyder has been living in a mile-deep mine shaft? I hate it when journalists are disingenuous.

I like this Al Pacino/Devil's Adovocate rap better than his big devil speech at the end. "That Florida stud thing...'scuse me, ma'am, did I leave my boots under your bed? Not the Trojan army -- just little ole' me. How the hell did that happen? They don't see me comin' -- that's what you're missing.'"

Since he broke through with a star-making performance 40 years ago in Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson -- who today turns 72 -- has made 45 films, or a little more than one a year. Except he hasn't made a film since '07's The Bucket List and apparently has no irons in the fire. So what's going on? His absence has just hit me so I'm asking. I'm thinking of Jack Cardiff having worked until his early '90s. There's no fun in sitting around.

Cinematographer Jack Cardiff is no longer with us. Is there sadness in having lived 94 robust years, and in having shot 73 movies over a 72 year career? None I can sense. My favorite Cardiff-shot film is John Huston's The African Queen ('51), which I think was the first major-studio film to capture African locations in Technicolor. My second and third faves are The Vikings ('58), which Cardiff shot for director Richard Fleischer, and John Irvin's The Dogs of War ('80) -- Cardiff's last truly decent film.

Does it not seem likely (if not inevitable) that the Tribeca Film Festival will soon decide to become a mid-fall film festival, launching sometime in mid-October or thereabouts? I've been hearing that one for...I don't know, two of three weeks? Or maybe it started when Geoff Gilmore left his Sundance post to become the new TFF honcho, and the talk just didn't around to me until last month.

As the Tribeca Film Festival launches this evening with an opening-night screening of Woody Allen's Whatever Works, the back-in-New-York John Anderson essentially argues for a fall...Read More

"Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, JJ Abrams' new and improved Star Trek will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Faithful enough to the spirit and key particulars of Gene Roddenberry's original conception to keep its torchbearers happy but, more crucially, exciting on its own terms in a way that makes familiarity with the franchise irrelevant, Abrams' smart and breathless space adventure feels like a summer blockbuster that just couldn't stay in the box another month.

"Star Trek here joins the James Bond series as...Read More

The first remarked-upon instance of "mood hair" since Mickey Rourke's appearance as the sometimes white-haired, sometimes grayish-black haired, sometimes grayish white-and-brown-haired Det. Stanley White in Year of the Dragon (1985) has been pointed out by Variety critic Todd McCarthy in his rave review of JJ Abrams' Star Trek.

Chris Pine in Star Trek; Mickey Rourke in Year of the Dragon.

McCarthy doesn't make a big deal out of it, but he does note that the mane of young Chris Pine, who plays a kind of surfer-dude version of...Read More

I was told yesterday afternoon to watch for a leap-out New York Observer piece about the Hollywood blogger/columnist. Called "Get Me Rewrite!" and written by John Koblin, it turned up last night at 11:39 pm. Ten minutes later I was going...this? It's a scamper through the poppy fields, is what it is.

Photo totally stolen from New York/Vulture's summary of Koblin's piece. Cheers to photo illustrator Everett Rogue.

Drew Friedman's illustration of Alec Baldwin, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in Walter Burns/Hildy Johnson/Front Page garb told me not to expect much, and so...Read More

After coming out of MOMA's Mike Nichols tribute last Saturday night, I came upon a long line of people at the corner of 53rd and 6th Avenue. 40 or 50, at least, waiting to buy $5 plates of chicken and rice from a food truck. I asked one of the guys in line what the big deal was. "It's really delicious, man," he answered. "You've gotta try it." Can't be that good, I said. "It is," he said.

I didn't want to be a lemming so I passed. Everyone in line looked youngish. I can't...Read More

This 4.17 Newsweek piece by Jesse Ellison actually argues that Earth, Disneynature's watered-down feature version of BBC's Planet Earth miniseries doc, is too unsettling for kids to be rated G. That's because it contains sequences that imply (but don't show) that a Caribou calf and a baby elephant are killed due to natural forces and circumstances. Coddle much?

When I was three years old I saw a neighbor chop a chicken's head off, and then watched as the chicken's body ran around a bit with the arterial blood spurting out. I was a...Read More

Carson Reeves' Script Shadow, which attempts to review the latest Hollywood scripts, is, at the very least, amusingly written. A conversational blunt style that reminds me of....uhm, well, me.

At the top of the Script Shadow pile right now is a relative oldie -- Brad Inglesby's The Low Dweller, which reportedly sold for $650,000 and may/will star Leonardo DiCaprio with Ridley Scott directing. I found it a boringly pretentious effort that took me three tries to get through. Here's what I said about it on 3.23.08....ready?

"I have an instant problem with scene descriptions of rottin' dead dogs and mayflies...Read More

There are 42 Rotten Tomato reviews of Rod Lurie's Nothing But The Truth, representing the big-city snoots who had a chance to see this sharp and tight journalism drama before distributor Bob Yari fell into Chapter 11 and Truth became instant road-kill. First-rate film, tough deal.

I understand there are some regional and hinterland film critics who plan to review the Nothing But The Truth DVD as a brand-new feature when it comes out on 4.28. That's a good and gracious way to go, I feel. Lurie's film deserves all the benefits...Read More

There is no spoon, there is no dress, and there is no Nickelodeon/Last Picture Show DVD. Or at least, not in the Manhattan video stores (quaint term!) I've been to today.

The kid at the downstairs video desk in the Union Square Virgin Megastore said the buyers never even ordered it. "Only the really big titles between now and closing," he said. "But Dave Kehr reviewed it last week in the N.Y. Times and made kind of a big deal about it," I stammered....Read More

If it was okay and funny and even convincing in Broadcast News (1987) for Albert Brooks to present a half-serious case about super-smooth news anchor Bill Hurt being "the devil," I should be allowed to express a similar view about Matthew McConaughey...no?

I saw the guy on a billboard this morning for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (New Line, 5.1), and I quickly said to myself, "That's the devil...the devil walking amongst mortals." Not that McConaughey is anything but average human. But if the Devil wanted to roam around and foster evil, he'd definitely pick...Read More

Soldier: Captain Willard of 505 battalion, 173rd Airborne, assigned SOG?
Willard: Hey buddy, y'gonna shut the door?
Soldier: We have orders to escort you to the airfield.
Willard: What are the charges ?"
Soldier: What?
Willard: What'd I do?

Centre Street just south of Canal -- Tuesday, 4.21, 11:15 am.

Soldier: There're no charges, Captain. You have orders to report to ComSec intelligence in Nha Trang.
Willard: Hmm, yuhn.
Solider: Captain?
Willard: (Muttering, sinking) Yup...Nha Trang for me.
Soldier: All right, Pete, we got a dead one here....

At last night's post-premiere party at Strata for Tyson (Sony Classics, 4.24). Raining cats and dogs outside. A sociologically intriguing guest list, to say the least. Chris Walken showed up early, told Toback he loved the film, and left. My camera's ostensibly rechargable batteries gave out on me. Proving that rechargable batteries are only good for a few charges, and then they're worthless. A friend snapped this.

Author/critic/columnist Shawn Levy wrote today that one of the things he discovered while writing about Paul Newman for his book Paul Newman: A Life (Harmony, May 5) "was that he had a [nearly] 30-year feud with the New York Post." Which has now come back around and bitten Levy's book in the ass, albeit in a cheap and petty way.

The feud started "when Newman was filming Fort Apache: The Bronx> in New York. Newman came to feel that the Post had deliberately stirred up community animosity toward the film. A few years...Read More

Not bad but...what is this, 15 months late? That's excessive. Photo from failblog.org.

Responding to this morning's riff about Russell Crowe's Maximus haircut in Robin Hood, a guy who gets around and hears things wrote the following: "Apparently everything you'll be witnessing in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood -- the hairstyles, the music and the aesthetics -- will make it play like an unofficial sequel to Gladiator. This is no accident. It's a commercial mandate and was part of the scripting delay. Expect a lot of mano y mano duels."

N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has written a who-cares? piece about the Marlon Brando trustees -- movie producer Mike Medavoy, accountant Larry Dressler and Avra Douglas, Brando's former personal assistant -- doing what they can to keep the Brando name from being inappropriately commercialized.

(l.) Approaching Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa; (r.) 45 year-old Teihotu Brando, the late actor's third-born son.

The article does, however, mention the ongoing development of the Brando, an "ecologically friendly" resort on the Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa, in the South Pacific. But the complex, according to Medavoy, is unlikely...Read More

In a 4.20 column, Marshall Fine notes how two semi-major studio movies released within a week of each other -- State of Play and The Soloist -- are (a) about print journalists and (b) are naturally including glimpses of the downsizing and death of the newspaper business. Talk about your rivers of sadness and finality.

"In last week's State of Play," he writes, "Helen Mirren, as the editor of the Washington, D.C., newspaper where Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams work, admonishes them about the fact that the paper has new owners -- and they want stories that sell copies. The message is...Read More

Okay -- no more Robin-of-Fatsley jokes. But I don't care for the short hair. Scissors were mainly for the wealthy or royalty in the medieval days, and I've never heard of barber shops in Sherwood Forest. Was Friar Tuck the Merry Band's designated stylist? Did he carry a rusty pair of crude shears in his knapsack? Whatever the 12th Century hair trends might have been, Crowe's Gladiator/Maximus haircut doesn't look right.

Russell Crowe as Robin Hood in a just-released still from the Ridley Scott/Universal release, which will hit screens on 5.14.10.

All...Read More

I refuse to illegally download films for any reason. It just seems sacrilegious. On top of which I can't abide watching films on my desktop or laptop. Not visually satisfying, and certainly not after banging away at the column all damn day. I guess I''ve become spoiled by watching films on a 42" plasma so it's that way or the highway. (Unless you're talking a 52" LCD, which I now wish I'd sprung for.)

When the option to download Bluray-or-better quality movies from an Apple TV-like box becomes widespread and affordable, maybe. As long as extras options (commentary, making-of docs) are also...Read More

I'm searching around for the story (stories?) I read two or three weeks ago that made it pretty clear that Fox Atomic, the Fox sub-distributor, was getting the hook. I've been feeling enervation from that outfit for months. I know Michael Fleming's story about the rumored plug-pulling, which appeared earlier today, sounded familiar.

"The words 'director's cut' on the cover of a DVD usually mean a few more minutes of gags too coarse to make the R-rated version shown in theaters," N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr begins in a review of an unusual DVD release. "For the DVD release of his 1976 Nickelodeon, Peter Bogdanovich has done something different. The director's cut is indeed a few minutes longer than the theatrical version (both are included on the new disc from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), but more conspicuously it's a black-and-white edition of a film originally released in color.

Read More