I'm sitting in a little joint on Second Avenue near 11th Street, trying to do a little work and savor the warm mid-afternoon air. But I can't. I have to pack up and leave. A group of hysterical shriekers sat down about ten or twelve minutes ago -- okay, a shrieking man and a cackling woman accompanied by two hee-hee-ers -- and all I want to do is see one of them choke to death on a piece of ham. Or...you know, be garroted by one of the waiters.

It has to be said again because this trend isn't ebbing -- it's...Read More

Here's a satisfying video-screen explanation of that overhead soccer-game shot that went right down into the crowd in The Secrets In Their Eyes. Satisfying but not mind-blowing because some of us, frankly, are starting to take this stuff for granted with all the expert blending of CG and live footage these days.

Harry Brown is "a movie about the one guy who did something," Michael Caine recently said to Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale. "The idea [in making it] was, If you don't do something, then this is what innocent people will do.'

"A reporter said to me yesterday, 'Have you ever seen this with a proper audience?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'When you kill those people, they all cheered.' And I said, 'That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's how far it's gone.' You've got to do something, because people are cheering the killing."

Well...c'mon. People have been cheering the right killings for...Read More

I just sent an important message to a friend who's going to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, and I thought I'd share it with anyone else who's also going but has never been: If you don't bring an electrical adapter (i.e., adapteur) that looks almost precisely like the one shown in these photos, then you are dead in Cannes.

I'm not talking about a power converter, but an adapter. And it has to be the exact same shape because all the French power receptacles in walls and electric multi-plug strips are recessed, so it's...Read More

Indiewire's Eric Kohn agrees with my view that the highlight of the Tribeca Film Festival "was Eliot Spitzer -- or, rather, Alex Gibney's wry, even-handed account of the disgraced former New York governor's rise and fall, which may or may not be called Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer." Kohn lists some of the attributes, which I've abridged:

(a) The Credibility Factor: "It's an honest, believable portrait. Despite the many strange ingredients of Spitzer's final undoing -- including the multiple enemies on Wall Street...Read More

This is probably the classiest and most generally appealing one-sheet of the year so far, and it had better be that, given what it's selling. Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, which I caught at Sundance 2010, is a straight, earnest and well-honed backwoods tale...but occuring within a grim and scuzzy atmosphere. Joe Popcorn is going to take one look and say, "I work hard all week for insufficient pay at a place I don't like, and then I'm supposed to watch this when I want to be entertained?"

Aside from Jennifer Lawrence, who plays a steel-backboned 17 year-old...Read More

Two days ago I wrote that Gregg Kinnear's decision to play President John F. Kennedy in an allegedly right-wing-friendly History Channel miniseries called The Kennedys "means [he] isn't all that worried about liberal Hollywood establishment types frowning at this decision, and is willing to risk offending those (like documentarian Robert Greenwald and former Kennedy confidante Theodore Sorenson) who've sounded alarms about the tone and political leanings of the forthcoming epic."

Sure enough, Greenwald went public yesterday with a challenge to Kinnear and Katie Holmes (who's signed to play Jackie Kennedy) to "insist on a historically accurate and politically unbiased script." Translation:...Read More

I wonder what persuaded CAA, River Road Entertainment, Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi to cut a deal for Summit Entertainment to distribute Doug Liman's Fair Game? Favorable financial terms, I'm sure, as well as a strong p & a commitment and a promise of marketing vigor when it opens. I for one would have had second thoughts in view of Summit's half-hearted track record with The Hurt Locker, and to a lesser extent The Ghost Writer.

The bottom-line impression (as opposed to whatever the reality may be) is that while Summit is proficient with Oscar campaigns, they haven't been that tenacious...Read More

Recently discharged Variety senior critic Todd McCarthy has announced he'll be authoring a new online column -- Deep Focus -- at Indiewire starting on May 12th, or the first day of the Cannes Film Festival. He was probably coaxed into this deal by Indiewire columnist and old pally Anne Thompson, and the benefits are clearly mutual -- Indiewire lands a a major brand-name critic and McCarthy gets to play it a bit differently as a pick-and-choose sharpshooter (instead of leading and coordinating a team of Variety critics) while adopting a new bloggy-blog fluidity in his prose.

"With this new...Read More

Old news, happened a week ago, but haven't paid attention to 3D YouTube until today.

Three days ago ScriptShadow's Carson Reeves posted a review of an "early draft" of Jez and John Butterworth's screenplay for Doug Liman's Fair Game, which will be playing in Cannes quite soon. Reeves says that the script doesn't quite do one thing or the other, which I find intriguing. This sentence caught me especially: "It reminded me, in many ways, of Michael Mann's The Insider, which is another film that demands a lot from you."

Here are the final three graphs:

"Whereas [the first] 60-70 pages [are] about the plot which led to the invasion of...Read More

I've noted many times in this space that I understand the plight of Hollywood filmmakers who support Republican or conservative causes. I got into this when I wrote a big piece for Los Angeles magazine in early '95 called "Right Face," about how it was easier in the liberal Hollywood culture of the mid '90s to say you're gay than confess to being a rightie, which could put you on what Lionel Chetwynd called a "white list."

So I knew right away what Patrick Goldstein was on about yesterday when he quoted mystery novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan, a leading conservative...Read More

Last night I scored a copy of the opening episode of Bill Condon and Cynthia Mort's Tilda -- a recent draft with the words "Tilda_April" on the top left corner. The cat ran out of the bag eight days ago, of course, when Hollywood Reporter columnist Matthew Belloni ran a combination review and legal assessment piece based on a reading of a February first draft, so there's nothing to say that's strictly mine except to call it hugely entertaining and so on. I'll elaborate in a sec.

(l. to r.)...

A longstanding policy at a certain studio has been to provide certain producers and production companies with box-office tracking reports as a courtesy. No big deal, been happening for ages. This morning the following e-mail was received from studio management: "Due to the ongoing debate about the potential trading of Movie Futures, [studio name] has instituted a policy that no one without a studio e-mail address will be receiving tracking reports from this department. Thank you for your understanding." Thank you , Cantor Fitzgerald LP!

Julie Bertucelli's The Tree, a drama about grief recovery and spiritual family nourishment, will be shown in Cannes following the closing ceremony on Sunday, 5.23. The Australian-based film, costarring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Martin Csokas and Aden Young, is an adaptation of Judy Pascoe's Our Father Who Art in the Tree.

If someone is in a position to forward relatively recent drafts of the first episodes of Tilda, the HBO series that will star Diane Keaton as a Hollywood blogger somewhat like Nikki Finke, please do so. Bill Condon and Cynthia Mort are in creative control.

It goes without saying, I presume, that Bill Condon allegedly agreeing to direct the final Twilight movie -- i.e., Breaking Dawn -- sounds weird. Like he's slumming, I mean. We all have to keep body and soul together and I wish him the best. Maybe he can make something more out of a franchise that everyone turned on last November when New Moon was seen. It's been rumored that the latest one, Eclipse, also smells.

To me, Gregg Kinnear signing to play President John F. Kennedy in an allegedly right-wing-friendly History Channel miniseries called The Kennedys means one of two things.

One, Kinnear isn't all that worried about liberal Hollywood establishment types frowning at this decision, which some are certain to do. Or two, he really needs the work and is willing to risk offending those (like Robert Greenwald and former Kennedy confidante Theodore Sorenson) who've sounded alarms about the tone and political leanings of the forthcoming epic.

Rabid conservative Joel Surnow is exec producing The Kennedys. The screenplay has been written by Steve Kronish while...Read More

Part Two of Robert Welkos' article about Hollywood Blogger Wars, subtitled "Crackpot Ratings - Nikki Finke, Sharon Waxman, David Poland, Jeffrey Wells" -- went up last night. Poland is deemed the crackpot-wackiest (i.e., level 5), followed by the equally-rated Harry Knowles, Tom O'Neil and Sharon Waxman (level 4) and then myself (level 3), and then Scott Feinberg and Sasha Stone (level 2) and finally Nikki Finke (level 1).

Wait -- Finke is the least crackpotty blogger-columnist of everyone in the front lines?

Significant excerpt: "As for the Hollywood blogosphere, the sad truth is that no...Read More

In a USA Today piece about Robert Redford's The Conspirator, Anthony Breznican says it "follows the race to hunt down the small band of Confederate sympathizers" who helped plot to murder President Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet.

And yet Breznican decides against mentioning what I reported on 4.16 after reading James Solomon's Conspirator script, which is that (a) the plot and the chase are handled in flashbacks and (b) the basic plotline of The Conspirator involves a young attorney (James McAvoy) being reluctantly assigned to defend Mary Surratt in her conspiracy trial.

"The main arc...Read More

Due respect paid to Award Daily's Sasha Stone, who posted this Allocine-generated clip from Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger before me. It's not much, fairly standard, etc. Obviously Antonio Banderas is thinking about doing the nasty with Naomi Watts and vice versa.

Last night I finally saw Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. It's not a "bad" film, but the savage beatings of Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson are certainly sickening and easy to loathe. Most of the audience was in a lousy mood to begin with because the stars arrived so late and spent so much time on the red carpet that the film started 45 minutes late, so it wasn't that much of a stretch to tip over into animosity.

On top of...Read More

This is four days late, but here are four sequential videos I shot of Alex Gibney's q & a following last Saturday's screening of his Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film. Here are part 2, part 3 and part 4. A fascinating discussion. And here's my 4.24 review again. (Tribeca Film Festival honcho Geoff Gilmore is the one standing next to Gibney.)

This would obviously be more amusing if the Werner Herzog imitator was more Herzogian, which is to say less British-sounding. And yet the narration is just right.

Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale ran into Fair Game's Doug Liman last night (i.e., at an event I missed due to seeing Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me) and of course spoke to him about the film, which will show at next month's Cannes Film Festival:

STV: "It's kind of a weird climate for this film. There was Nothing But the Truth, which was kind of mishandled. Then there was Green Zone , which audiences were very cool toward. Where will Fair Game fall in this political intrigue/spy thriller spectrum?"

Liman: "I think it's in the spectrum of 'it's a really...Read More

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott has delivered one of his perfect little sonnet pieces on James Foley and David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Except he doesn't mention Foley. No one who talks about this film ever does. Because GGR is a show about one thing and one thing only -- Mamet's "hard-boiled, lyrical mysticism," as Scott puts it.

Except it's not, as Scott infers, a commentary on the "the current economic crisis [that] had its origins in the real-estate bubble and bond market...Read More

Get Low star and executive producer Robert Duvall said during today's junket that Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper recently met with Brad Pitt about directing The Hatfields and the McCoys for Warner Bros....if and when Pitt decides to clear a place in his schedule. An excellent script about the legendary family feud of the 1800s has been written by Eric Roth, Duvall said. Pitt's Plan B would produce with Pitt playing "the main guy," Duvall said. Duvall would costar, and T-Bone Burnett would do the music.

Get Low star/executive producer Robert Duvall during this afternoon's Four...

The Cinetic/Film Buff team today hosted a few journalists for lunch at the Half King (23rd St. and 10th Avenue) to discuss various new ventures. Big Kahuna John Sloss and aggressive lieutenant Matt Dentler discussed the basics, which is basically that FilmBuff, the digital distribution label run by Cinetic Rights Management, will release Pelada, a doc about soccer that debuted last month at South by Southwest, in June. And that Collapse, which has been among the top-ten iTunes sellers, will be released on DVD on 6.15.

Cinetic/FilmBuff guys Matt Dentler, John Sloss at today's press...

Update: Producer Scott Rudin, producer of David Fincher's forthcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo pic, says the report about Carey Mulligan playing Lisbeth Salander, punk heroine of Stieg Larsson's bestselling trilogy, is "absolutely not true."

Previous posting: I've been waiting for Nikki Finke or the trades to run a confirmation of John Harlow's 4.25 Times Online report that Carey Mulligan is set to play Lisbeth Salander, punk heroine of the bestselling trilogy that began with "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," in an alleged feature to be directed by David Fincher and produced by Scott Rudin."

Except the report hasn't...Read More

"Iron Man 2 isn't as much fun as its predecessor, but by the time the smoke clears, it'll do," writes Variety's Brian Lowry. Wait -- didn't Edmond O'Brien say that to Robert Ryan at the end of The Wild Bunch? "It ain't like it used to be but...it'll do." Life tends to degrade or disappoint rather than improve. But you have to laugh about it.

"Much like The Dark Knight, this Paramount release brings an enormous stash of goodwill to the party, thanks to a well-crafted origin tale whose popularity fueled anticipation for a follow-up. Yet while the first go-round for this...Read More

I hate it when I'm framing a shot on a Manhattan street and people who are walking along and about to enter into the frame stop and wait for me to snap the shot. They're being polite, of course, but in a tediously mundane and American middle-class way, which is to say a form of politeness that says "we don't get it." Know this and know it well -- people who stop and wait for you to take a shot don't get it.

If you're in the shot then you're in the shot, and if you're not then you're not in the...Read More

I've just spent the last 140 minutes or so hanging at an elite gathering of new-media people at a fifth-floor loft on Warren Street, listening to The Wrap's Sharon Waxman, indie producer Ted Hope and B-Side/Slated CEO Chris Hyams talk about brilliant new ways of using social media to get the word out about shorts, sites, films, whatever. It was fast-moving and a little spritzy from time to time, but I'm glad I attended. It pushed things along in my head.

(l. to .r.) New Media discussion moderator Sharon Waxman, B-Side/Slated CEO Chris Hyams, indie producer...

In recognition of tomorrow's (4.27) DVD release of Sidney Lumet and Tennessee Williams' The Fugitive Kind, or more precisely the Criterion Collection's rendering, an appreciation by David Thomson currently sits on the Criterion site.

Sidney Lumet, Marlon Brando on the set of The Fugitive Kind.

"Movies are not just the sum of the stories that can be told about their shooting," Thomson says toward the end. "The Fugitive Kind was unlike other films, and it was something Lumet had never tried before: a portrait of small-town meanness in which the outward action was to be fired by...Read More

Someone who may be Russell Crowe is on Twitter and strongly disputing Gawker's excerpt from Nicole LaPorte's upcoming DreamWorks book, "The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks" (Houghton-Mifflin, 5.4). The possible Crowe is saying, in fact, that "mentions of me are eg's of distance from the truth [and a] waste of paper written by a lying horse's ass."

New tracking shows Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, which opens in 18 days, averaging a 38 definite interest -- 43 from under-25 males, 42 over-25 males, 28 under-25 females and 38 over-25 females. It's also averaging a 7 first choice -- a figure that clearly needs to increase over the next two weeks.

I'm not looking to pour rain on anyone's parade and I'm very much looking forward to Robin Hood, but Universal needs to buckle down and get on the stick, and fast. Iron Man 2 is opening only a week before Scott's film and its average definite-interest and first-choice figures...Read More

Except for one incorrect observation, Anthony Kaufman's 4.26 Indiewire piece about the response to Alex Gibney's Eliot Spitzer doc, which screened at Chelsea's SVA theatre early Saturday evening, is righteously reported. The wrongo is Kaufman's statement that "the film was one of a number of titles drawing a crowd larger than its theater over the weekend in New York City." In fact, the screening was noteworthy for several seats in the rear section being unfilled.

Inside the Client-9 screening at SVA theatre -- Saturday, 4.24, 6:10 pm.

The above photo was taken by yours truly a few...Read More

There are two interesting snippets from Michael Cieply's short N.Y. Times piece on Nicole LaPorte's upcoming history-of-DreamWorks book, "The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks" (Houghton-Mifflin, 5.4). Both involve Terry Press, the company's battle-axe marketing chief.

The first is that "it was Ms. Press who had the courage to tell Steven Spielberg -- correctly, as it turns out -- that Amistad was not destined to win Oscars." I spit my coffee out when I read this. A fact that was dead-pig obvious to anyone with...Read More

The three basic points in David Gritten's 4.24 Telegraph piece about the waning of movie stardom ("Have Stars Lost Their Shine?'") is that (a) yes, movie stars ain't what they used to be, (b) they're certainly getting less upfront cash and are increasingly settling for back-end deals but (c) they're still pocketing relatively hefty amounts when they agree to make big dumb-ass CG Eloi tentpole films.

Bottom line: The idea of getting humungous paychecks for films that aspire to quality and class and end-of-the-year awards is pretty much out the window.

(a) "Increasingly fewer films are dependent on big-name stars for...Read More

Yesterday afternoon L.A. Times/"Company Town"'s Ben Fritz reported that "just four days after debuting on store shelves, Avatar has sold 2.7 million Blu-ray discs to consumers in the U.S. and Canada, according to 20th Century Fox -- more Blu-rays than any previous movie has sold.

"The previous record holder, The Dark Knight, has sold 2.5 million Blu-rays since its debut 16 months ago.

"Fox also sold 4 million standard definition DVDs. The combined total makes Avatar the biggest DVD launch of the year, breaking a previous mark of 4 million Blu-ray and DVDs combined set...Read More

If I had to listen to singing of this quality this for very long, I would literally get sick. Conan O'Brien and Jim Carrey performing Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" at Saturday night's "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour" -- Gibson Amphitheater, Los Angeles, 4.24.10.

"And then you do this Jedi serenity waiting-to-die thing....yeah, that's it...your eyes closed, waiting for it...and then...no, you won't be struck or fall...your brown tunic will fall and Obi-Wan will just, y'know, dematerialize. That way he'll transform rather than die, without actually getting tagged by a light saber. No, I just want it that way. Alec? I don't care, dammit, if it makes no sense to you. Listen, Alec...I wrote this, I'm the director."

Is there an embed code for this webcast of Al Pacino talking to Katie Couric on 60 Minutes "about his films and how he prepares for them, including his upcoming movie in which he stars as Dr. Jack Kevorkian in You Don't Know Jack"? Yes, it turns out.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Selectively speaking, Ashley Horner's brilliantlove is an exceptionally hot and skillful depiction of sexual delirium. A tale about a lickin' love affair between a couple of none-too-brights that succumbs to melodramatic poisoning by way of (horrors!) money and ambition, this British-produced Tribeca Film Festival entry, which I caught the night before last, is at the very least a stylistic stand-out. And yet I'm not sure where it stands (or writhes) in the annals of erotic cinema.

I know it feels a bit more feverish...Read More

"So, Jeff...are you thinking about seeing The Human Centipede?," an IFC guy asked me a night or two ago. My response was something along the lines of "Gee, I...uhm, well, not at the moment but..." That was party-speak for "I've heard such repellent things that I tossed it out of my mind and haven't given it a second thought until ten seconds ago."

"It's time to add a new type of bad movie to the ever-growing list: The aggressively bad movie," wrote Horror Chick on 4.23. "There's...Read More

Anyone who's ever succumbed to addiction or dealt with an addict over an extended period knows what a fascinating monster denial can be. Addicts can be right on the edge of obliteration with death blowing cool air on the back of their necks and still they don't think they're in any kind of trouble. Lindsay Lohan's dad has his issues, but at least he understands this.

I've seen where addiction ends up, and it's always the same place if the victim doesn't wake up. I've said before that Lindsay's saga needs an ending -- she needs to save herself...Read More

It was known, of course, that Alex Gibney's Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film, which screened earlier this evening via the Tribeca Film Festival, would focus on the sudden and scandalous fall of Eliot Spitzer, the former New York Governor, due to his involvement with prostitutes. What I didn't anticipate, and what in fact surprised the hell out of me, is that the doc unfolds and holds like a masterful political suspense drama.

Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film director Alex Gibney during post-screening q & a; former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

I was expecting a smart...Read More

I ask again for the front page: how is the idea of Mickey Rourke playing Genghis Khan any less ridiculous than John Wayne doing the same thing 54 years ago?

Disgraced wheeler-dealer Jack Abramoff has become a reformed whore, says director Alex Gibney whose documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a study of Abramoff's abuses, is being screened before its May 7th release. (Gibney's untitled Eliot Spitzer doc is also being shown this evening at a special Tribeca Film Festival screening.)

Former big-government lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the focus of Alex Gibney's Casino Jack and the United States of Money.

"He's going to get out [of jail] soon," Gibney tells N.Y. Times profiler John Anderson. "I was going to tell him that, like my movie or...Read More

Attention must be paid to David Thomson's New Republic review of Peter Biskind's Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America for the simple fact that Thomson, author of Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes, knows the realm of this former Hollywood heavyweight better than most.

It's wrong that most of this review, called "You Used To Be In Pictures!", is hidden behind a paywall. Here are the last three graphs:

"Warren Beatty is an emblem for our last cluster of male movie stars. He is the same age as Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and near enough to Al...Read More

A friend mentioned last night that one of the most intensely desired Blu-rays is Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Intensely so for its curious absence, and intensely so for months, years and decades after it's released, I'm sure. Everyone will have to own the most precisely rendered and visually faithful digital version of one of the 20th Century's most admired near-great films.

Nick Kostopolous posted the following on The Auteurs about eight months ago: "The only reason Barry Lyndon hasn't yet made it to Warner Home Video Blu-ray is that the elements need re-mastering for the...Read More

The essential task of any quality biopic is to persuade the audience that however "good" or "bad" or likable or dislikable a person may have seemed to his/her peers (or seems right now to history), the character had his/her reasons for acting as she did and being who he/she was. So if you decide to show this person acting like an insensitive, arrogant asshole -- even in a single scene -- you need to explain why with a semblance of empathy.

I'm mentioning this because I'm finally seeing...Read More

Awards Daily's Sasha Stone has also commented on Robert Welkos'"Blogger War" piece for HollywoodNews. I wasn't as taken with the slight re-hash of the Nicolas Chartier e-mail debacle as the minor bickering that flared between Stone and L.A. Times columnist Pete Hammond over the perception of an anti-Hurt Locker bias among L.A. Times contributors. Or more particularly, over Stone's resentment of Hammond's mild dissing of Awards Daily.

"There is a lot of tension between actual journalists -- people who went to school for it, studied it and worked for newspapers and magazines until the online media began to smoke...Read More

Former L.A. Times reporter and current Hollywood News.com editor Robert Welkos has posted Part Uno of a two-part piece called "Inside The Blogger Wars: Finke, Waxman, Poland and Wells among others." Kind of a lumpy-sounding title, no? But it's a decently written thing. Welkos captures a whiff of the flavor of the 24/7 intrigue and mood-swing humor and rat-a-tat-tat of this all-consuming racket. It's not an in-depth Vanity Fair article but it's all right. I shrugged, I chuckled, I can roll.

It was awfully nice of Bob to bring up the Vinessa Shaw nude-photos thing again -- owe ya one! A...Read More

Matt Zoller Seitz intros his latest video piece as "a totally fluffy essay that will contribute absolutely nothing to anyone's cinematic education. It's just a collection of loud ties with sarcastic captions, scored to Three Dog Night. Enjoy!"

Dialika Krahe's 4.23 Der Spiegel article, titled "Nollywood's Film Industry Second only to Bollywood in Scale," has the following subhead: "Two-thirds of its population lives on less than a dollar a day, and yet Nigeria has the world's second-largest film industry. It's called Nollywood, and it provides Africa, and beyond, with a steady stream of action flicks and love stories."

The average definite interest number for Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 is 71 -- 84 for under-25 males, 81 for over-25 males, 55 for under-25 females and 62 for over-25 females. That's quite high for a film opening two weeks hence (i.e., 5.7). The average first choice figure for IM2 is 32, for God's sake, while the average first choice for Furry Vengeance, which opens on 4.30, is 1 with an average definite interest of 19.

Roman Polanski pitchforkers will be heartened to learn that the likelihood of the 76 year-old director being flown back to Los Angeles for prosecution and probable jail time is now fairly high. The California 2nd District Court of Appeal has rejected the director's 3.18 petition for an inquiry into alleged prosecutorial misconduct during his 1977 trial for unlawful sex with a minor, and now the final extradition decision is in the hands of Swiss authorities.

Dominic Patten's 4.23 Wrap report notes that "based on comments from the Swiss Foreign Ministry in March that such judgments are usually made within a...Read More

Of the final four films announced as official Cannes selections, I'm most interested in Andrei Ujica's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu, which will be shown out of competition. Because it's emotionally satisfying to see a dogmatic murdering bastard eat lead for his sins, symbolically or otherwise.

The president of Communist Romania from 1974 until his firing-squad death in December 1989, Ceaucescu was a selfish, ruthless weasel of a dictator. The evidence is that he and his wife Elena deserved to be gunned down in...Read More

Between Hotel Rwanda, Peter Raymont's Shake Hands With The Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, Ghosts of Rwanda and those PBS Frontline documentaries about the 1994 slaughter, I feel Rwanda-ed out. But I'll still be catching Deborah Scranton's Earth Made of Glass, a Tribeca Film Festival selection, at Monday night's premiere.

Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda will be there for the q & a as well as Jean Pierre Sagahutu, the genocide survivor featured in the film.

"From the director of...Read More

Two days ago seven 2010 Tribeca Film Festival selections -- The Infidel, The Trotsky, Metropia, sex & drugs & rock & roll, Climate of Change, The Birth of Big Air and Road, Movie -- became available as On Demand titles through various cable providers. Four 2009 selections were also included in the package: TiMER, My Last Five Girlfriends, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia and The Swimsuit Issue.

Has this happened before during a Tribeca fest? Here's an assessment by The Wrap's Brent Lang.

This is a result of a new partnership between Tribeca Film and American Express....Read More

In a chat with Vulture before last night's Tribeca Film Festival red-carpet gala for Shrek Forever After, Eddie Murphy said something interesting: "I've lost a lot of my cool and edge...I think my cool and edge are gone." No! After doing the overpaid superstar asshole trip for the last 23 or 24 years (starting with his role in 1986's The Golden Child) which culminated with exiting the '07 Oscar ceremony after he didn't win for Best Supporting Actor in Dreamgirls, Murphy is actually copping to this possibility?

"You know, I think I'm onto some other place,"...Read More

Yesterday the Toronto Star's Peter Howell observed that (a) the "crystal balls of box-office wizards, prophets and know-it-alls have gone cloudy in the weekly game of predicting which movie will top the charts," and (b) the primary reason is that box-office expectations have in some cases been too high.

How to Train Your Dragon was initially called an under-performer, Howell writes, but is "still breathing fire" with $158 million in the till and therefore "a profitable slow-burner." Kick-Ass's $19.8 million opening was called disappointing (it certainly wasn't triumphant) but it "may yet prove to be" another steady earner, he says. Date Night's...Read More

Chris Hansen has an exemplary record of investigative inquiries (terrorist groups and Al-Qeada ops, airport security, Columbine, Oklahoma City terrorist attack, Unabomber, TWA Flight 800 disaster, Indian child slave labor, etc.), and yet his eternal, indelible identity will always be that of a mild-mannered buster of child predators, explaining the facts to perverts in kitchens and foyers as the cops gather outside, etc.

Variety's Tatiana Siegel and Andrew Stewart are reporting that Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet is not only "going 3D" but being bumped from 12.22.10 to 1.14.11 -- "the slower Martin Luther King weekend."

"The studio bristled at the notion that bad buzz surrounding the project played a role in its decision to abandon one of choicest days on the box office calendar," they've written. "Instead, Sony said that once the decision was made to incorporate 3D during the production process, Green Hornet needed to find a frame with sufficient digital screens."

Here's what my guy says: "Sony is not merely converting...Read More

Why can't the people who assemble these Hitler parodies (even this one) submit their copy to spell-check before posting? An apostrophe is idiotic when pluralizing "DVD." Any twelve year-old kid can tell you that. "Helped improved awareness..."?

The Criterion DVD of Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind arrives on 4.27. DVD Beaver's Gary Tooze says "the image looks good although not always stellar. I suspect it is as strong as the source elements will allow and probably what held it back from going Blu-ray."

Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward in Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, coming to Criterion DVD on 4.27.

I would written something myself but a screener never arrived, despite my having received them from Criterion's NY rep over the last couple of years.

"Criterion's first disc shares the feature film with nothing...Read More

The TCM Classic Movie Film Festival begins tonight in Hollywood with a screening of a restored, mostly complete version of George Cukor's A Star Is Born. This is the 176-minute version of the Judy Garland-James Mason drama-with-music (as opposed to an actual "musical") that Ron Haver assembled in 1983, and digitally restored to a fare-thee-well. Warner Home Video will release a Blu-ray version on 6.22.10.

The original length of Cukor's film, seen at an early preview screening in Huntington Park, California on 8.8.54, was 196 minutes. A day after a second preview two scenes totalling...Read More

Three months after Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, a distribution deal has finally happened. Oscilloscope will release this absorbing semi-documentary in theaters and VOD on 9.24.10. Howl is quite an original thing -- an instructive education as to the meaning of Allen Ginsberg's legendary poem. I was really glad I saw it. Why did it take so long to cut a deal?

On 1.21 I called it "an indie, artsy, half-animated dream-cream movie that's basically an instructional primer for the uninitiated about what a wonderfully seminal...Read More

"In 2002, Stephen Baldwin had an experience that changed his life forever," the narrator reads. "He became a born-again Christian, giving his life to Jesus Christ. Over the next few years he became very vocal about his faith, using his spotlight to boldly preach the gospel to millions of people. However, because of his convictions [which] began to cause him the loss of several jobs and a highly publicized bankruptcy, he has been publicly ridiculed and insulted..."

This video and the website from which it came -- RestoreStephenBaldwin.org -- are completely on the level,...Read More

Naturally I never considered seeing Shrek Forever After, tonight's opener for the Tribeca Film Festival. But the festival does start tomorrow in earnest, and will continue until May 2nd. I've already seen The Trotsky (nope), Get Low (yup), that reasonably decent Rush documentary that I despised and the admirable Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. I realize that I'm obliged to see Clio Barnard's The Arbor and Brilliante Mendoza's Lola, only I'd rather not on some level. I really don't have a choice in the matter. I understand that.

I'm otherwise down for The Two...Read More

Listen to this rundown on the evils of super-banks by recently-arisen British political superstar Nick Clegg. The Guardian's Oliver Burkeman recently called him the new Obama, but when was the last time Barack Obama spoke the truth about fix-is-in banking practices as bluntly and plainly as Clegg says it here? Obama should aspire to be the American Clegg.

"A week ago, most people in Britain considered Nick Clegg, the 'little-known leader' of the Liberal Democrats, to be, by all measures, a long shot to become Britain's next...Read More

In a chat with Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney indulges in moralistic musings while comparing the wick-dipping pathology of Eliot Spitzer, whom Gibney has made a new untitled documentary about, with that of Tiger Woods. The Spitzer doc will screen under the auspices of the Tribeca Film Festival this Saturday.

A mildly funny riff on The Blind Side, posted yesterday by "Rod" of The Editing Room. The tone is rather like those Mad magazine movie parodies of the late '50s, '60s and '70s.

"Is it just me, or is he extremely articulate when he wants to be?" I've seen Aaron Schneider's Get Low (Sony Classics, 7.30) twice now, and have felt soothed and stirred both times. In the lead role as an ornery old cus, Robert Duvall scores in a way that recalls, here and there, his Oscar-winning turn in Tender Mercies. But Bill Murray, as a low-key funeral-home operator, and Lucas Black, as his employee, are just as spot-on.

N.Y. Times critic Charles Isherwood more or less agrees with my American Idiot rave, which I posted on 3.31. His review begins as follows: "Rage and love, those consuming emotions felt with a particularly acute pang in youth, all but burn up the stage in American Idiot, the thrillingly raucous and gorgeously wrought Broadway musical adapted from the blockbuster pop-punk album by Green Day.

"Pop on Broadway, sure. But punk? Yes, indeed, and served straight up, with each sneering lyric and snarling riff in place. A stately old pile steps from the tourist-clogged Times Square might...Read More

I'm trying hard to be interested in the Weinstein-Ron Burkle-Miramax-Disney negotiations, but I'm just not feeling it. Okay, there's one sentence that caught my attention in Anne Thompson's 4.21 Indiewire report, to wit: "It bears repeating that the Weinsteins themselves are not buying anything. Burkle is trying to acquire the Miramax library and will own it, while The Weinstein Co. will distribute the films." Employees, in other words.

A cheap whiney punk (James Dean) vs. a conservative middle-class doctor (Ronald Reagan) in a 1954 live teleplay called The Dark, Dark Hours, about a couple of thugs doing a home invasion. A Desperate Hours-type deal. Dean's emotional howl is similar to the one he used that year in East of Eden. Reagan doing the intro and outro obviously interferes with the suspension of disbelief.