I'd always wanted to see Fred Zinneman's A Hatful of Rain on a big wide screen (rather than on a small television set, which is what I saw it on when I was 15) because it's in black-and-white Scope -- my favorite format. So I caught it last night at the Aero, and briefly spoke with star Don Murray (who's looking very fit and vibrant at age 82) and listened to a q & a with Murray and costar Eva Marie Saint.

Released in 1957 and set mostly in a small...Read More

I realize, of course, that hundreds of thousands of people who don't know any better make fools of themselves in karaoke bars on a nightly basis, but I can't understand why intelligent journos who have a clue would degrade themselves in this fashion. "Hey, I have an idea! Let's all go to a karaoke bar and prove to drunken strangers that we can't sing or phrase as well as professionals! And are sometimes flat or off-key!" HE rule #39: if you're not all that good at something, keep it to yourself.

MSN's James Rocchi and Cinema Blend's Read More

Manhattan-visiting friend: "Just a reminder to call anyone you know who can help you score tickets to The Book of Mormon. I saw it last night, and it's the real deal. It's thrilling, and, yes, irreverent, blasphemous and an equal-opportunity offender. But would you expect anything less from Trey Parker and Matt Stone?

"But what's amazing is their real love and understanding of musical theatre, and the fact that is has a huge palpitating heart at its center. I don't remember sitting in a Broadway theatre surrounded by a more thrilled audience (which last night included...Read More

With today's release (and concurrent critical savaging) of Cat Run, it's time to once again lament the saga of John Stockwell -- an extremely bright, hip and likable guy who started out as an actor in the '80s (Top Gun) but really found his footing as a director -- first with the entirely decent, well-shaped, movingly performed Crazy/Beautiful ('01) and then Blue Crush, one of the best modestly-proportioned surfer movies I've ever seen.

But...Read More

While waiting for last night's 7:30 pm showing of A Hatful of Rain to begin at the Aero, Empire's Helen O'Hara tweeted that I owed her an apology for having written last Monday that her 3.28 story about Britain's Icon planning to open Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life on May 4th, or several days before its expected debut at next month's Cannes Film Festival, was "probably incorrect."

Because O'Hara's story is apparently correct.

Icon's 5.4 Tree release was confirmed yesterday (or the day before?) on the Film Distributor's Association...Read More

With the recent dispute between Donald Sutherland and Peter Bart over the filming of that legendary Don't Look Now sex scene (which Bart has more or less admitted error on by telling The Hollywood Reporter's Merle Ginsberg that the scene in question was shot "over four decades ago!"), there's considerable interest right now in Nicolas Roeg's 1973 thriller. Which bodes well for the British Region 2 Bluray that streets on 6.27.11.

Will there be a version for Americans without multi-region Bluray players? Of course not. Or at least not in the foreseeable...

In a speech given today at CinemaCon, the exhibition industry's annual convention in Las Vegas, James Cameron has announced he'll make Avatar 2 and 3 "with a native frame rate of 48 or 64," which will deliver fluid motion in the vein of Maxivsion (which Roger Ebert has been promoting for years) or Showscan. Cameron will demonstrate various frame-rate samples tomorrow at the Coliseum theater inside Ceasar's Palace.

MSN's James Rocchi tweeted as follows: "James Cameron keeps talking about Avatar 2/3. It's the only time in history the nerd who wants a sequel nobody else does has the power to...

$275 is too much for a seat at a Yankee game. It's not even outdoors on the first or third-base line where you can smell the dirt and grass -- it's an ambassador club box over the right-field bleachers. They used to charge 25 cents for a bleacher seat in Babe Ruth's day. I don't know what prices were like when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were slamming homers, but I'll bet they had some relationship to the price of rice...unlike today.

TheWrap's Sharon Waxman has reported that there may have been "significant misinformation" about the shooting death of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen last November. Apparently she may have taken three in the arm and two in the back rather than five in the chest...whatever. The feeling here has always been that the official explanation is ridiculous. The late Harold Smith shot Chasen at a Sunset Blvd. stoplight after chasing her along that high-speed avenue on a friggin' bicycle? It may have happened, but no self-respecting screenwriter would dream up such a scenario for fear of being laughed out of town.

Last Tuesday Deadline's Michael Fleming outlined the latest configuration of Sony's Cleopatra biopic -- Angelina Jolie in the lead, David Fincher possibly directing, Scott Rudin producing from a script by Brian Helgeland (but with a new punch-up writer possibly being sought), based on Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life. An inside source says it's all "conjecture" at this point, but I'm hearing the project may actually come together.

A guy I don't know much less trust directed me to an IMDB comment posting, allegedly written by someone in the loop,...Read More

FilmDistrict's decision to open Bruce Robinson's The Rum Diary, an apparently troubled adaptation of the Hunter Thompson book with Johnny Depp in the lead role, on 10.28 is well and good. FilmDistrict co-founder Graham King has said he's "extremely proud to bring this novel to film and to honor Hunter's legacy"...hah!

But let's not forget that the film may be opening tomorrow (3.31) in Moscow, according to a longstanding IMDB listing. And if it is, let's hope someone is there to review it. I mentioned on 2.5 that I'd love to fly to Moscow for the occasion, but you...Read More

In my head, Farley Granger has always been and always will be "Guy Haines," the anxious, darting-eyed, pinch-mannered tennis player in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train ('51). The 85 year-old actor, also known for his performance as an anxious, darting-eyed, pinch-mannered gay murder accomplice in Hitchcock's Rope, passed on 3.27, but for some reason the news is only just breaking now.

Granger copped a long time ago to being openly bisexual or mostly gay or what-have-you.

Here's an amusing portion from his Wiki bio: "In Rope, Granger and John Dall...Read More

Remember that ComicCon 2010 buzz about Tron: Legacy helmer Joseph Kosinski being "the new James Cameron"? After Tron made the rounds he began to look like the new Peter Hyams. And now Kosinki's latest project, a dystopian, post-apocalyptic graphic novelly action-quest thing called Oblivion, has been scuttled by Disney.

Kosinski, 36, will bounce back and may even make something good some day, but it's entirely possible that he won't. He's one of the gamer/comic-book generation directors (Battle LA's Jonathan Liebesman, 35, is another) and I just don't trust these guys. At all. Their heads are all about hard-drive...Read More

If you've ever looked at slapped-together covers for bootleg DVDs, you know that the pirates who put them out sometimes create their own cover art based on generic but reality-divorced concepts of what will appeal to Average Joes. So when boots of The Tree of Life begin to show up on the streets of Tijuana and Beijing and Manila, it's not inconceivable that the jacket art might look something like this. (Jacket design by Mark Frenden.)

I don't know what exhibitors and distributors felt about Terrence Malick's Badlands or Days of Heaven or The Thin Red Line or The New World when they first saw them, but I'll guess they weren't swooning. Exhibitor and distributor types are always bitching about art films, and that's the only kind of movie Malick makes so he and they are natural-born adversaries. Industry guys have always hated ambitious cinema -- Francis Coppola once told me about exhibitors complaining about how dark and gloomy The Godfather was -- so their views need to be taken with a grain.

I was reminded of this...Read More

Early last May I ran a complaint piece about Paramount Home Video's failure to punch out a Shane Bluray. It's my responsibility, I feel, to bitch about this until they finally give in and agree to fund the proper restoring and remastering of George Stevens' 1953 classic. An off-the-lot source says it'll be a moderately expensive project, which is mainly why Paramount has been stalling for so long. Except Shane is one of the respected jewels in the studio crown, and what monarch would allow one of its legacy symbols to lose its shine?

Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion Bluray, 6.21) is pure black-and-white splendor. You can can take or leave the plot/dialogue/theme, but you can't ignore the magnificent visual capturings of mid '50s Los Angeles. All those downtown locations that are gone now plus Ralph Meeker/Mike Hammer's still-standing apartment building (10401 Wilshire Blvd, NW corner of Wilshire and Beverly Glen and the Hollywood Athletic Club (6525 W. Sunset Blvd.), where Hammer finds the black box with the bright light inside.

I'm not a coffee snob, but I've owned a couple of cappuccino machines and been to dozens of European cafes and have acquired a mature understanding, I believe, of what makes a really good cup. Imagine my surprise, then, when it hit me two or three weeks ago that this kind of instant coffee is really delightful -- rich, rounded, full-bodied.

This is the raptor seen in one of the micro-squares on that one-sheet for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Would it be out of line to ask for a poster for a screaming Sean Penn and Brad Pitt being chased by a raptor, Jurassic Park-style? If anyone has the Photoshop ability and the time....well, obviously many people do. But do they give enough of a damn to work on it and send it along?

U.S. forces are "stopping the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan"? Really? I hadn't heard that.

I'm almost getting a supernatural, time-trippy Purple Rose of Cairo vibe from this Midnight in Paris trailer. Or maybe more like A Stop at Willoughby? That's good, I think. Woody Allen hasn't gone off the imaginative deep end in quite a while.

I know one thing for sure: I felt more than a little nauseous the second that Michael Sheen's character began talking about wine. So he plays (a) Tony Blair, (b) mad vampires kingpins with white hair and crazy glazed expressions, (c) soccer coaches and (d) assholes?

David Gordon Green's Your Highness (Universal, 4.8) was shown to select press last Friday, and I was waiting for hate tweets all weekend...and they never happened. The trailers have made it clear that this medieval stoner comedy is (a) unfunny, (b) loathsome even by stoner-improv standards, and (c) a blend of downmarket sloth and Danny McBride toenail shavings. I really can't wait to get my hate on for this thing. So who saw it last weekend and suffered involuntary convulsions?

So once again, two years ago Natalie Portman decided on a strategy of...Read More

A month ago MCN's Kim Voynar wrote about the Girls on Film clips in which famous scenes from great films starring guys are recreated with women. I paid no mind, and for whatever reason Girls on Film's Ashleigh Harrison waited a whole damn month to say to herself, "Let's see, is there anyone else we haven't gotten some attention from? Oh, yeah, this Jeff Wells guy...okay, let's write him." The No Country For Old Men caught my fancy most of all.

Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky has more or less dismissed claims by dance-double Sarah Lane that Natalie Portman performed only a small fraction of her ballet scenes in the film. Aronofsky's official statement, released through Fox Searchlight, says Portman performed 80% of of the dancing seen in the film."

"Here is the reality," his statement reads. "I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that's 80% Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double...Read More

A distribution guy who knows everyone and has been around forever saw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life a good while ago, and while discussing it with a friend several weeks ago said somewhat perfunctorily, "I'm a fan." Now, you have to understand what it means when a distribution exec says "I'm a fan." That's like some dude who's just gone out on a blind date saying the next morning that the girl has a nice personality. It means (a) the film has problems, (b) the distribution guy is being polite, and (c) he doesn't want to say anything too strong for fear...Read More

It appears as if some kind of mistake was made by England's Icon Distribution in announcing (or failing to convincingly deny) that it would commercially release Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life on May 4th, as reported earlier today by Empire's Helen O'Hara.

A shock wave went around for a couple of hours later this morning when it seemed at least possible that the story might be true because such a move would have completely undercut the hoopla effect of the expected Cannes Film Festival debut of Malick's film, which will probably happen a...Read More

Awards Daily 's Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino and myself, at it again. Michael Caine, Taxi Driver, Natalie Portman, Sucker Punch, IKEA moving guys, Don't Look Now, annoying hums, Notorious, Win Win, cats, etc. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

I guess I'll be signing up for the $35-a-month hit, dammit, so I can get all-device access to the N.Y. Times starting tomorrow. But I resent being asked to pay that much. I'd be much cooler with $20 or $25 a month. That I could handle without a hiccup.

I was surprised by the results of a 3.24 poll, published by Awards Daily's Ryan Adams, revealing his readers' favorite gay-themed films. It's a respectable list, but the absence of William Friedkin and Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band ('70) -- arguably the most groundbreaking-in-its-time gay film ever made -- tells me Adams' voters weren't interested in films that weren't about them, or which failed to provide comfortable and/or stirring self-images.

It's common knowledge, of course, that the gay community turned its back on The Boys in the Band...Read More

Albert Brooks has a book, "2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America," hitting shelves and Kindles on 5.10.11. A few hours ago he was complaining that recent tweets haven't resulted in online sales. I wrote him and offered to read the book and do an interview, etc.

There was a morning bike ride and breakfast followed by an hour-long Oscar Poker chat, and then the IKEA guys deivered the couch...not a single piece but in sections inside big boxes and plastic cases with wing nuts and screws and slipcovers, etc. So I had to put it together -- not any kind of a problem but it took about 90 minutes. Time flew.

God, these guys were perfect in 1950 or '51! Why can't they invent a drug that prevents you from physically aging beyond the age of 22 or 32 at the oldest for the rest of your life while allowing for the usual gathering of intellectual knowledge and spiritual wisdom? It wouldn't be for everyone and perhaps not for most, but...

One question: where did Lewis Black get that '70s tie? It's like a satin shawl.

Listen to this fascinating discussion of the impossible-to-swallow, fantasy-projection finale of Martin Scorsese's just-restored Taxi Driver by Slate's Dana Stevens and John Swansburg. It feels like a two-character play about a gap in comprehension among two extremely bright observers, and how they can absorb every detail of a classic film and still miss something really obvious.

Stevens and Swansburg list all the incredulous stuff during the film's final minutes -- tabloid news stories describing Robert De Niro's East Village whorehouse shootout as "heroic," Jodie Foster's parents writing to thank him for saving their daughter, Cybil...Read More

If I never see another movie about fierce and growly Asian guys leaping around and fighting each other with swords, it'll be too soon. I'm serious. If powerful forces were to sent a rep to my door with this message -- "You will never again see another Asian-machismo sword-fight movie in your life" -- my answer would be, "Okay...I can live with that." And I'm saying this as someone has has three real-deal swords in his apartment, including a samurai sword.

I've always respected and admired director Todd Haynes, and I realize that Mildred Pierce (Sunday, 9 pm) has been well-reviewed, and I accept that I'll be seeing all five episodes...but I just can't get it up so far. I respect James M. Cain but I don't relate to women-suffering-in-the-'30s atmosphere. Plus I didn't get any screeners or screening invites and...I don't know. I just don't feel involved.

President Obama will explain the Libyan adventure early Monday evening. Most people support limited military action to take out the bad guy and prevent the killing of civilians, especially if it doesn't drag on for years and cost hundreds of billions. It seems to me that for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-decades, U.S. military action is actually up to something half-good.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules will be the weekend champ by Sunday night with a likely $22 million and change, according to boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino. And the deeply loathed Sucker Punch, which made $8 million yesterday, will come in second with about $20 million, and possibly a bit less than that.

The Lincoln Lawyer -- a nice score for all concerned and particularly Mathew McConaughey -- will come in fourth with approximately $10,300,000 and a two-week cume of $28,267,183, give or take.

And Tom McCarthy's Win Win, by far the best film out there right now, is in limited...Read More

$150 for the used bike (Craigslist, used as a prop on a TV show) and $180 for the front light, the horn, the rear blinking light, the rear-wheel rack, the black basket, a three-pronged bike wrench and a snake lock with two keys. My last bike was stolen; good to have one again.

I know what this sounds like (i.e., "aah, the good old days!"), but I really can't imagine someone making a more satisfying, better-photographed, delightfully performed and tonally spot-on Three Musketeers than Richard Lester's 1973 version...or versions, I should say, since a not-quite-as-good Part 2 installment was released the following year. Plus you have to assume that 3-D will degrade things.

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So in addition to buying stand-alone, multi-region Blurays of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Lolita as well as a French-language-only Bluray of Rififi during a half-week stopover in Paris following the Cannes Film Festival, I'll also be visiting the Stanley Kubrick exhibit (now through July 23rd) at the Cinematheque.

You have to laugh at Universal Home Video's smirking chutzpah in announcing a $999 Bluray of Brian DePalma's Scarface, out on 9.6, which will include a specially designed wood-humidor packaging and other pointless perks. They're obviously pitching this to the music industry's rapper-gangsta culture. There will also be normally priced Blurays of same for those of us who just want to watch the film.

During an LA visit in 1982 I snuck onto the Universal lot. I literally climbed over a fence, and after some wandering around found a soundstage where Scarface was...Read More

I was assured by a director friend earlier today that Donald Sutherland's version of the Don't Look Now "did they or didn't they?" dispute is the more reliable. That doesn't settle anything, of course. But my source knows a thing or two about the shooting of intimate scenes and the odds of a non-essential visitor somehow sneaking a peek, and is persuaded that Peter Bart's memory might be a wee bit sketchy.

There was one couple that definitely didn't pretend, he added: Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen during filming of a sex scene in George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl. It's also...Read More

Movies usually try to conceal the size of extremely tall or short actors. You can't tell from watching Black Swan that Mila Kunis is unusually tiny (I've stood next to her); ditto Emma Watson in the Harry Potter films. But there's no missing the fact in Sucker Punch that Emily Browning (.a.k.a, "Babydoll") is roughly the size of a typical eight- or nine-year old.

Ellen Page, Natalie Portman, Kunis, Jessica Alba, Snooki, Lil Kim, Eva Longoria, Watson, Hilary Duff, Rachel Bilson, Elisha Cuthbert, Isla Fisher -- there's something a bit queer about so many super-short actresses (5'3" or...Read More

Here, in order of preference, are my favorite Sucker Punch judgments. Along with a portion of one of the two or three semi-favorable reviews currently out there, written by Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, and which I respect.

"It might be better to say that all levels of the story in Sucker Punch are self-evidently ludicrous," O'Hehir's final paragraph reads, "and that the point of the movie is the vertiginous thrill ride that takes us through them. If you want to understand Snyder's central narrative gambit, it's right there in the title. He gives us what...Read More

Donald Sutherland has said that Peter Bart's forthcoming account of having witnessed the shooting of the legendary Don't Look Now lovemaking scene, and observing that Sutherland and costar Julie Christie were actually doing it, is "mendacious." Which is a roundabout way of saying Bart is full of shit.

But maybe he isn't.

Bart's tale is included in a new book he's written titled "Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex)." It streets on May 3rd.

"Not true...none of it...not the sex...not him witnessing it," the 75-year-old Sutherland told N.Y. Daily...Read More

Paramount Home Video's Bluray of The Ten Commandments (out 3.29) is fairly close to magnificent. It's a visual bath of the first order. The costumes, the golden armor, the beards, the wood grain, the jewelry, the matted hair on the donkeys and oxen...all the remarkable little details that are part of any well-photographed, large-format, big-event film just keep on coming. The glossy, freshly-painted chariots are a trip in themselves.

I'm not exaggerating -- this is one of the most excitingly detailed Blurays I've ever seen.

The soundstage scenes constitute 98% of this film, and are therefore...Read More

I've told my sons over and over that few things in life are more painful than to discover that your significant other has cheated on you. It's like a knife in the heart and will most likely destroy your relationship so don't go there. But if you do, don't get caught. Take it seriously. Play your cards like you're an undercover agent in East Germany in a John Le Carre novel. Which means short-term flings only because long-term affairs are always found out sooner or later.

This isn't a roundabout way of saying it's...Read More

Why am I getting a feeling that this film about cool young photographers -- sweaty, edge junkies, cynical but passionate -- is going to be a ho-hummer? You'd think that a movie about photographers would pay tribute to their profession by looking absolutely immaculate, but the trailer has scenes that are obviously too dark and murky. Honestly? There's one short clip that really caught my attention, and it happens at the 41-second mark.

The Bang Bang Club, a Tribeca Films release, opens on VOD on 4.20, and theatrically on 4.22.

That guy I know who often see films months in advance caught a version of Bennett Miller's Moneyball (Sony, 9.23) last night, and...well, here he is: "I loved it, and I didn't expect to. It's a baseball-from-the-business-angle movie, for goodness sake, and to be honest on my way over I was asking myself, 'why am i even going?' But this film is a triumph of storytelling, editing and a little bit of star power.

"I gather the story is more or less the same as the one in the Michael Lewis book, so there shouldn't...Read More

High-end design monger Christian Annyas ("online curator of all things typographic in cinema") has posted twice about fabled Saul Bass -- one showing how his original poster designs have been ignored by DVD marketers in favor of blah boilerplate art, and another showcasing his corporate logo designs, which have had an average lifespan of 34 years.

What's all that black about? Too much of it. Where's the "love"? Just show the May-December lovers and let it go at that.

A green face with a black teardrop...is she supposed to be sick or...

I saw Zach Snyder's Sucker Punch last night, and the first review I read this morning was from Marshall Fine. His admiring assessment mainly said three things: (1) "If you're looking for Sucker Punch to make sense, see another film," (2) Yes, it has "some flaws" but (3) "Snyder, in the space of three films" -- i.e., this + Watchmen and 300 -- "has become the most distinctive visual storyteller since Brian DePalma."

Calling the LexG's of the world! Emily Browning as "Babydoll" in Zach Snyder's Sucker Punch.

That last statement is true in a...Read More

Yesterday afternoon The Hollywood Reporter's Jay Fernandez quoted an amsuing excerpt from Peter Bart's "Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex)" (Weinstein, 5.3.11). It concerns the fabled Julie Christie-Donald Sutherland sex scene from Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now ('73), and whether or not the couple actually "did it" during filming.

According to Fernandez, who's read galleys of the book, Bart unequivocally says "they were fucking on-camera."

The following exchange happened between Bart and Roeg on the Venice set as this scene was being shot. Bart: "Nic, don't they expect you...Read More

I have surely heard the cries of HE readers, complaining of slow loading. I myself have felt the anguish of the drip-drip-drip. So today we cut down the number of postings on the front page -- formerly 50, now 30. And we're going to be more vigilant about accepting flash ads, which can also slow things down.

Variety's Andrew Stewart reported earlier today that Sony "many finally be conjuring up its long-gestating Harry Houdini project" with Francis Lawrence (Water for Elephants) directing and Jimmy Miller producing -- and that's fine. But I'll bet serious money that neither Lawrence nor Miller have thought about what would make a good movie about the legendary escape artist (and what would make a bad one) as much I have. Seriously.

In the late '80s and early '90s the late Stuart Byron and I had a small business called re:visions that sold analyses of stalled or otherwise...Read More

I don't think there's anything terribly thrilling in the official announcement that Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life will have its world premiere at Cannes 2011. The big news would have been if Fox Searchlight, the film's distributor, had decided not to show it there. But we all knew this was coming, just as we know that if Malick could have figured a way to delay showing Tree another year, he would have done so.

Things have changed since The Tree of Life was a no-show at Cannes 2010, and I'm telling you that this Sean Penn-and-Brad Pitt darn-my-dad family dysfunction flick...Read More

A couple of hours ago on KCRW I heard a quote from Jeanine Basinger stating that the late Elizabeth Taylor launched the era of the superstar salary by hardballing it with 20th Century Fox executives during initial Cleopatra negotiations by saying, "If you want me, you'll have to pay me a million dollars." As I heard it the million dollar demand was actually meant in jest. She didn't want to do effing Cleopatra and figured, "Okay, this'll get rid of them -- ask or some ridiculous amount."

The new King of Kings Bluray (Warner Home Video, 3.29) arrived yesterday. I've said before that it's not the spiritual content of this so-so 1961 Biblical canvas flick (which I can take or leave) as much as (a) the lusciously detailed Super Technirama 70 photography, which looks mouth-watering on the Bluray, (b) Miklos Rosza's legendary score and (c) Jeffrey Hunter's performance as Jesus of Nazareth, which seems wooden and posed at first but gradually deepens and sinks in during the second half.

Jeffrey Hunter's blue eyes were radiant in this film -- no question...

Except for Netflix, these Google Ads that went up today are horrific. I've never had ads on this site that looked so ugly and low-rent and angled at the Walmart crowd. HE happens to be in an in-between period between film-campaign ads, and I was persuaded to allow the Google Adsense ads to run because it's money and it couldn't hurt. But look at them! They do hurt!

I once saw Elizabeth Taylor in the flesh. She was standing about ten or twelve feet away in a dense crowd of guys at an after-party at the Roxy, the popular Manhattan roller disco on West 18th, sometime in '79 or '80. I managed a glimpse or two of her eyes, and was slightly surprised to discover that they really were as beautiful as I'd been told. I was mesmerized. I think I actually said out loud, "Wow."

Elizabeth Taylor in either a Cat On a Hot Tin Roof or Butterfield 8 publicity still.

I'd been...Read More

Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner and Daniel Day Lewis's Lincoln will be a sad story, an Oscar-worthy collaboration, a possibly legendary performance...who knows? But it will be primarily be about Kushner's screenplay and capturing something very familiar. Words, dialogue, history...one of those films that owes a certain allegiance to what has already been imagined by millions. So it will be, in a sense, constrained by this. But Spielberg's War Horse, which will open on 12.26, could be another matter. Maybe.

I haven't read Lee Hall and Richard Curtis's War Horse screenplay or seen the B'way...Read More

Why didn't they call this movie One-Armed Surfer? And I say this as someone who really and truly liked John Stockwell's Blue Crush, which this film is presumably trying to emulate on some level. I realize that One-Armed Surfer wouldn't attract the Star-reading empties this movie is presumably aimed at, but still....Soul Surfer?

Anyone who seriously surfs knows it's like worshipping at a great cathedral and communing with the eternal, so they're a soul surfer to begin with. Having your arm bitten off by a shark or learning to live with a...Read More

The trailer for tonight's ABC special called "BEST IN FILM: The Greatest Movies of Our Time" (9 pm) has me sputtering and gagging and spitting at the computer screen. My feelings of contempt for those who participated in this show -- producers, guest hosts, hoi-polloi voters -- are boundless. Harrison Ford agreed to take part in this?

Watch and listen to co-hosts Cynthia McFadden and Tom Bergeron and try not to think of "correcting" them Jack Torrance-style.

One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that's over and done with is "all right...that happened!" Unless, of course, you're talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it, unbothered and in a mature, present-tense frame of mind. Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we're here now, living in the present...let's get a coffee or a drink and catch up.

All my life I've been friends with exes, or have at...Read More

Variety's Stuart Levine is reporting that Jeff Daniels is in negotiations to play an apparent mixture of Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz in Aaron Sorkin's cable-news HBO mini that's been in the works for some time. Levine description of Daniels' character, "the host of his own show who, from the network perspective, can be difficult to handle," obviously echoes Olbermann and Schultz, and particularly their real-life dynamic with MSNBC's Phil Griffin.

(l. to r.) Jeff Daniels, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz

There's amusement, I think, in Evan Rachel Wood having been cool with simulating blood-spattered animal sex with Marilyn Manson while fully nude in that Heart-Shaped Glasses music video, and then four years later telling Fancast's Julie Zied that she was nervous about doing a full-frontal nude scene in Mildred Pierce and needing to be nudged into it by Kate Winslet, etc. The HBO miniseries, directed by Todd Haynes, debuts on 3.27.

I missed the press screenings of Neil Burger's Limitless, partly due to being in Austin last week, so last night I paid money (!) to see it at the Bruin in Westwood. Like everyone else I was simply intrigued by the idea of dropping a pill and suddenly being ten or twenty times brighter. I'd had a stirring time with William Hurt's radical transformation from cocky loquacious scientist to mystical raging-monk voyager in Ken Russell 's Altered States, and I sensed that a similar ride with Bradley Cooper might be in store.

And there...Read More

The second Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival will unfold from 4.28 though 5.1, mostly at the American Cinematheque and the Chinese. The progammers are Robert Osborne and Charles Tabesh. There will be an emphasis on musicals, apparently, but other genres will be included. Some of the films will have undergone some form of restoration prior to entering the Bluray market, or so I understand.

One of the films being screened is Robert Mulligan's To Kill A Mockingbird ('62), which will also be observing its 50th anniversary next year. I noticed this morning...Read More

One of my sons said this newly purchased jacket ($45 in a Melrose consignment store) makes me look like a gangbanger. It's actually a racing-label jacket commemorating Doug Herbert's 2004 World Tour. If your natural youthful effervescence ain't what it used to be, it's okay to supplement with a splash of color here and there.

From a mini-bio: "Dougzilla Herbert is a four-time International Hot Rod Association Top Fuel champion (1992, 1994-96). He won 20 IHRA races, including five of seven events in 1992. Herbert was the first IHRA competitor to run a four-second elapsed...Read More

Awards Daily 's Sasha Stone and myself all alone this time, talking about Limitless, The Beaver, Sucker Punch, France, beaters, the shortfalling of The Lincoln Lawyer and so on. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link. (Sorry for the underlying feedback hum sound.)

HOT GOTHY GRRLZ skimpy-hot outfits Matrix-y parallel dream world slowmo bullet-time plus shakycam catering to ComicCon fanboyz emo goth kids wake me shake me.

As I understand it, The Lincoln Lawyer came in fourth this weekend, earning $13,400,000 in 2707 theatres, for two Matthew McConaughey reasons. One, he sells tickets only to female fans of his crappy romcom movies. And two, he has zero cred with those who like semi-serious, relatively well-made films. The second group may have known about Lawyer's good reviews, but they probably said, "Yeah, okay....Netflix."

Two days ago Vulture's Kyle Buchanan asked some people if McConaughey can make the transition from romantic-comedy and Surfer Dude crap to more substantial films.

The Lincoln Lawyer is "pulp, for sure, but it's the...Read More

You need to wait until 2:30 for the good stuff: "One of the reasons nothing gets done is that one of the political parties puts much more into fantasy problems that real ones."

I finally sat down and watched the Almost Famous Bootleg Bluray, and it hasn't diminished a bit since I last caught it on DVD. What a seriously great (and unfortunately unseen, for the most part) rock 'n' roll heart movie. Chock-full of sly, luscious, lived-in performances, led by Phillip Seymour Hoffman's great Lester Bangs and, on the sub-supporting level, Jimmy Fallon's road manager.

And I'd completely forgotten that Rainn Wilson (33 when it was shot in '99) and Jay Baruchel (17 during filming) had significant small roles. And I was reminded once...Read More

Jennifer Lawrence will play the feisty and combative Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games! Which will be directed by Gary Ross! Every last site, it seems, has been reporting, repeating and re-phrasing this announcement as if it...meant something. Why is always left to me to call a spade a spade with these things, or least throw in some perspective?

Hunger Games: The Movie will almost certainly be an acceptably mid-level romantic dystopian Rollerball action melodrama by way of Death Race 2000, Logan's Run, The Running Man, Battle Royale and The Long Walk. It'll...Read More

I recently ordered a DVD of a flagrantly bad film -- Roger Vadim's Pretty Maids All In A Row ('71) -- just so I could check out a brief, nothing-special nude scene with Angie Dickinson, who'll turn 80 later this year. Dickinson au natural is why I also own Big Bad Mama ('74) -- another stinker. Dickinson was never much of an actress. And she only made two good films in her life, Rio Bravo and Point Blank.

The guy with Dickinson in this scene from Pretty Maids All In A Row is the late John David Carson....

West Hollywood skies are overcast tonight, completely obscuring the supermoon.

The Van Gogh sky plus Owen Wilson strolling along the Seine in this Midnight in Paris poster is a pleasant thing. But shouldn't it suggest that Woody Allen's latest (which will debut at Cannes in May) is an ensemble piece of some kind, or at the very least a somewhat-troubled-relationship-at-a-crossroads story between Wilson and Rachel McAdams?

"Early Sunday, the sound of anti-aircraft fire and screaming fighter jets echoed across Tripoli, punctuated by heavy explosions," reads David Kirkpatrick, Steven Erlanger and Elisabeth Bumiller's 3.19 N.Y. Times story about the combined American, British and French air strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, "unleashing warplanes and missiles in a military intervention on a scale not seen in the Arab world since the Iraq war."

There are some who moan and frown and condemn when hostilities of this sort break out (like Michael Moore), and others, like myself, who strangely love the greenish flashing nightlight...Read More

This is bad. This is really bad. Variety's Jeff Sneider has reported what Joseph Gordon Levitt's role will be in The Dark Knight Rises as if the world gives a shit. All villains, quasi-villains and sons-of-villains in superhero franchise films are essentially the same -- broad, perverse, self-amused or self-hating, corrupted, flamboyant, diseased. And it doesn't matter what their names or backstories are. It's all the same corporate crap. For what it's worth, Levitt will play "Alberto Falcone, the son of Mafia chieftain Carmine Falcone, the character Tom Wilkinson played in Batman Begins."

With The Lincoln Lawyer opening today, here's my initial two-week-old response: "Lawyer is basically a high-intrigue investigation-and-trial drama with an unusual lead character -- Matthew McConaughey's Mickey Haller, a bottom-feeding LA criminal attorney who operates out of his gas-guzzler. The story is about Haller being hired by an arrogant big-money client (Ryan Phillippe) and soon after finding himself in a difficult ethical spot.

"Lawyer doesn't reinvent the wheel. It's not quite as grave or surprising or jolting as Primal Fear, the 1996 Richard Gere-Edward Norton courtroom thriller that it resembles somewhat....Read More

I'm waiting on my 3:20 pm flight in a US Air/Continental cafe at Austin airport, and so far I'm the only person who hasn't walked up and dropped money into the plastic tip jar for the guitar guy. He's crooning country standards, of course, and I'm marvelling at the ironclad rule that states that all lounge/cafe performers have to use the same country-twangy singing voice with that little vowel cry from time to time. I don't know enough about country music to cite an influence, but every one of these guys sounds the same.

And that's why...Read More

With my Austin-to-LA flight leaving today at 3 pm, yesterday was my only shot at enjoying one of those "bail on the film festival in order to absorb rural atmosphere and smell the grass" days. So I rented a Mazda and drove west on 290 out to the Texas hill country.

The True Grit courthouse in Blanco, Texas -- Thursday, 3.17, 7:05 pm.

I first visited Johnson City, and then the Lyndon B. Johnson ranch, just east of Stonewall, for 90 minutes or so. (Those who haven't yet seen David Grubin's LBJ, a 1991 American...Read More

Darren Aronofsky's stated reason for deciding not to direct 20th Century Fox's The Wolverine, which would have required working in Japan for over a year, is that he "was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time."

Honestly? My first reaction was that Richard Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell offered roughly the same reason when he resigned from the Committee to Re-Elect the President on 7.1.72, saying that "he'd been spending too much time away from his wife and daughter."

An industry friend explains: "Aronofsky was ambivalent about doing this project from the get-go,...Read More

The cost of the just-announced N.Y. Times digital subscription plan, which kicks in as of 3.28, seems a wee bit high. We're looking at three different kinds of flat-fee buys. Access to NYTimes.com on smartphones will cost $15 per four-week month, access to the same on phones and the iPad2 and other tablets will cost $20 every four weeks, and an "all device" access will cost $35 bills per month. In other words, if I want full access on my laptop I'll be getting the $35 plan...right? I don't know, man. I'd go $25 to $30 bucks a month, or roughly a...Read More

Summit Distribution has acquired a rep for timidity in the matter of The Beaver. So it's likely that even if star Mel Gibson didn't have an appointment last night to be booked and then released for misdemeanor battery at L.A.'s El Segundo police station (which he kept), Summit marketers would have advised him not to join Beaver director-costar Jodie Foster, costar Anton Yelchin and screenwriter Kyle Killen for last night's SXSW premiere showing in Austin.

But what's the point of hiding at this stage? If you ask me there's only...Read More

Jodie Foster's The Beaver, which showed to a packed house tonight at Austin's Paramount theatre, is occasionally amusing but is mostly a sad and red-eyed and rather distressed family drama. Everyone thought early on that the basic story (i.e., a man surrenders his life and personality to a Beaver hand puppet) would be at least half-comedic, but it's not. Everyone thought that the hand-puppet schtick would give Mel Gibson the freedom to go really manic and nutso, but he doesn't. Because Foster doesn't want that.

The Beaver is more of "heart" thing about healing...Read More

Life is worship, celebration, current, ecstasy...all in this together. Wearing Adidas sneakers. Doing Katy Perry. Listening to "Civilization," the new single from Justice's second album, out April 4th. Under the visual guidance of Romain (son of Costa) Gavras.

A longtime HE confidante caught a research screening last night of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's Young Adult, which Paramount will release sometime after Labor Day (probably with a kickoff screening in Telluride). I'm not going to share his reactions except to say that (a) the recently-reported-about narration by J.K. Simmons was not heard during the showing in Pasadena, and (b) the film sounds like something of a brave departure for Reitman and Cody in that the screenplay is on the raw and gnarly side in a somewhat "dislikable," non-backrubby Greenberg vein. I mean that as a good thing.

I'm writing...Read More

Here's a reasonably decent short from Ian Albinson for the opening of the SXSW Title Design Finalists Screening, which happened two nights ago at the Vimeo theater in the Austin Convention Center. He should have included more studio-era titles than just the obvious ones. (Wasn't Gone With The Wind's huge horizontal title crawl fairly revolutionary for its time?) And the music by RJD2 doesn't make it.

The Beaver "is not a mainstream movie," director-costar Jodie Foster has told The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Galloway. "It does have mainstream actors, but that's not this film." One guesses/presumes she's partly alluding to a third-act moment in which Mel Gibson's character forges a kind of bond with James Franco's in 127 Hours.

Foster has everyone's admiration for standing by Gibson. "I know that he's got troubles," she says, "and he's not saintly and [has] a big mouth, and he'll do gross things your nephew would do. [But] when you love somebody you don't just walk away from them when they're struggling."

"The...Read More

In his just-up "Rundown" column, MSN's James Rocchi has singled out five South by Southwest films that he considers the "best of the fest -- so far." I haven't seen two of them -- Ben Wheatley's Kill List and Joe Cornish's Attack The Block. And I half-agree with Rocchi's choice of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop -- an agreeable, smoothly assembled profile-of-a-celebrity-comedian piece. But my eyeballs popped out of my head on coiled springs -- boiinnnggg! -- when I saw that Spencer Susser's Hesher and Evan Glodell's Bellflower were ranked third and fourth.

Joseph Gordon Levitt in Spencer...

Cindy Meehl's wise and winning Buck, winner of the 2011 Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary, played yesterday afternoon at South by Southwest. It seems at first like a straightforward portrait of Buck Brannaman, a renowned horse-trainer who was the real-life inspiration for The Horse Whisperer (both the book and the film). But it gradually becomes more of a meditative heart-warmer about healing and parenting.

Like Brannaman himself, with whom I had an agreeable chat after yesterday's screening, Buck has a spiritual, settled-down vibe.

At first I had...Read More

It was 6:45 am in Austin, and instead of posting yesterday afternoon's material before having to schlep down to the Austin Convention Center to snag a front-of-the-line pass for tonight's screening of The Beaver, I watched the first 10-plus minutes of Sebastian Guiterrez's Girl Walks Into A Bar, which is now playing entirely free on YouTube. That indicates something, right?

For a film driven by a series of stories about people conning, scheming and playing each other, it didn't seem half bad. Good but not-quite-Mamet-level repartee. Taut, brittle. Or at least, the...Read More

Yesterday's recording was a mess. First we couldn't find a time that worked for Awards Daily 's Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino and myself. Then the usual recording software didn't work due to a Skype upgrade. And I forgot to bring my headphones to Austin so I was speaking from my cell as I walked down 6th and Congress and Lamar, etc. We discussed South by Southwest attractions and how some people wait until their 70s or 80s to announce that they're gay or like to cross-dress. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

We all get things wrong, and we all have our pet ways of acknowledging error. Whenever I've screwed up over the last 30 years or so I've been saying "I made a mistake" the way Michael Caine says it in this scene from Get Carter ('71). The other Caine/Carter line I do reasonably well is "I would like...to stroke you." I'm nowhere near Coogan and Brydon, of course, but who is?

The Win Win guys -- director-cowriter Tom McCarthy, Alex Shafer, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, co-writer Joe Tiboni -- took a bow after last night's SXSW showing at the Paramount. Here, again, is my all-but-entirely positive 1.22 Sundance review. SXSW publicist Rebecca Feferman is at left in the red sweater. It opens on 3.18.

The other day Marshall Fine called Win Win "a delight...a movie that's smart and emotionally honest about juggling the problems life sends you. It's already at the top of my list as one of the year's...

I ignored Rob Yulfo's 127 Hours Road Runner cartoon when it appeared two or three days ago because it's way too late in the cycle. But when The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit linked to this, he got it wrong in the sub-copy by writing "beep beep." The sound made by this legendary Chuck Jones creation is "meep meep." Listen to it again -- the "b" consonant has never been there.

I purposely never saw The Switch because of the mostly negative buzz, but this deleted scene, taken from the extras menu on the just-out DVD/Bluray, is rather well-written. (The script is by Allen Loeb.) And Todd Louiso, as always, is perfect.

"McCabe & Mrs. Miller: A Video Essay," an impressionistic Vimeo essay by Steven Santos that was re-posted on Awards Daily earlier today by Ryan Adams.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller: A Video Essay from Steven Santos on Vimeo.

Anti-union Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has spoken often of Ronald Wilson Reagan, his personal hero for his tough stance against air-traffic controllers when they threatened to strike in 1981. And yet...

"As pervasive as the internet has become, so has the notion that free content must be free for others to take," read the tag line. The "Blogger Centipede" panel, which began at 5 pm in the Austin Convention Center, was about a general lack of ethics in certain corners of the web, and what, if anything, can be done about it. The panelists were (l. to r.) William Goss, Pajiba's Dustin Rowles, Gordon and the Whale's Kate Erbland, Indiewire's Anne Thompson and the well-regarded Matt Patches.

Knowing full well that very few movie stars have a more toxic image than The Beaver star Mel Gibson, Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are trying to spin the South by Southwest premiere of Jodie Foster's new film (which will screen here on Wednesday night) with a "social action" campaign meant to highlight the various pitfalls and possible remedies for mental illness. What, Mad Mel's? No -- mental illness in general.

The press release reads, "As [The Beaver] depicts the devastating effects of mental illness on one family, Participant designed the Social Action Campaign to provide audiences with tools, resources...Read More

Augustus Owsley Stanley III, by any yardstick one of the key promoters and launchers of LSD use in the mid to late '60s (equal to the influence of Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix's 'Are You Experienced?' album and the Beatles), died yesterday in a car crash in Australia at the age of 76.

Everything you need to know about the hip factor at The Hollywood Reporter is contained in this headline for their Stanley obit.

If you accept, as I do, that spiritual satori by way of LSD in the '60s triggered the spiritual revolution of...Read More

Last night /Film's Peter Sciretta caught Paul Feig's Bridesmaids (Universal, 5.13) as part of a double-feature presentation following a 10 pm showing of Greg Mottola's Paul. Sciretta says that while Feig's film might technically be called a chick flick or romantic comedy, it "reaches levels of hilarity and heart that these types of films haven't reached in over a decade."

Sciretta also says (and this is significant, I think) that last night's film- and tech-geek crowd, which he guesstimates was at least 80% male, "walked out praising [this] Judd Apatow-produced chick...Read More

During last week's initial (and most likely only) viewing of Battle Los Angeles, I kept wondering what those canvas or cloth flaps on the front of U.S. troop helmets were for. I did a little poking around this morning with various search terms, but uncovered no hints or clues. All military gear is about functionality, but I can't imagine what these effing things would be for. "Hey, soldier...where's your rolled-up cloth helmet ornament?" Somebody must know.

Earlier this afternoon I saw Rodman Flender's Conan O'Brien Can't Stop at Austin's Paramount theatre. It's a smoothly assembled, well-honed capturing of O'Brien's 32-city "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television" tour that he embarked upon last year following his sudden departure as the host of NBC's Tonight Show. The doc's undercurrent is explained in this clip of O'Brien's post-screening remarks.

A video clip of no consequence whatsoever -- zilch. I just took it after snagging my passes this morning inside the Austin Convention Center, and after chatting briefly with critic/feature writer Michelle Orange.

In Eric Kohn's 3.13 N.Y. Times profile of Paul helmer Greg Mottola, the bespectacled, bald-headed director of Superbad and Adventureland, describes his latest as (a) "ridiculous" and (b) "silly but also smart" in a "high-low comedy" sense. And yet he's "worried" about the latest Paul trailer portraying the alien "as an extraterrestrial frat boy."

Never, ever funny. In fact, moments like this make me want to puke.

"Probably every puerile joke is in there," Mottola tells Kohn. "They're obviously in a different context in the movie because the character is irreverent. He doesn't respect authority."

So this...Read More

I saw James Gunn's Super (IFC Midnight, 4.1) last night...what a surprise! I went in hoping it might not be too painful and that I might get through it without walking out. I came out singing its praises, admiring the hell out of Gunn and his script, worshipping Ellen Page's balls-out performance and wondering what could be wrong with the critics who dismissed it at last September's Toronto Film Festival.

Super is partly a dark and bracing satire of superhero movies, partly a withering "eff you" to T-shirted ComicCon culture dweebs...Read More

I couldn't land a SXXPress pass for tonight's 10 pm screening of Greg Mottola's Paul (Universal, 3.18), and I haven't tried to contact the film's p.r. reps so the hell with it. I don't want to see this thing anyway. Not with those dumb-ass gags that I've seen (i.e., guys fainting backwards together, Paul referring to Reese's Pieces) in the trailer. So I'm going instead to the 9:30 pm screening of Spencer Susser's Hesher, which has been recut since its initial viewing at Sundance '10. There's also an after-party. Eff Paul.

Next is a 1:45 pm...Read More

The South by Southwest program notes for It's About You, a documentary about John Mellencamp touring in '09 and recording No Better Than This, explain that the film "is told through the eyes of the father/son filmmaking team of Kurt and Ian Markus, neither of whom had ever made a film before." They also say that "the entire 90-minute film is shot on super8, to stunning effect."

I saw It's About You a couple of hours ago, and it needs to be said that the super8 effect is not "stunning" -- the...Read More

I had three reactions to Asif Kapadia's Senna, an absorbing, somewhat affecting doc about the late Ayrton Senna, the legendary Brazilian race-car driver and Formula One champion who was killed during a race in 1994 at the age of 34. They were (a) "well-made film, stirring story," (b) "Senna's death was very sad" and (c) "shit will sometimes happen when you drive at exceptionally high speeds in the pursuit of beating others to the finish line."

I realize Senna is regarded as perhaps the finest driver who ever lived, and that...Read More

Today's SXSW plan is to hit Asif Kapadia's Senna, a doc about Brazilian race-car driver Ayrton Senna, at 11 am, followed by K. Lorrel Manning's Happy New Year, a post-traumatic stress disorder drama, at 1:15 pm. At 6:30 pm Kurt Markus's It's About You, a doc about John Mellencamp's 2009 summer tour and latest album, will screen at the Ritz. The final viewing will be James Gunn's Super, which everyone except for myself and six or seven others saw at last September's Toronto Film Festival.

Sidenote: 4 For Texas is a totally forgotten 1963 Robert Aldrich "comedy"...Read More

Sarah Silverman is one of the wisest, funniest and most valuable people on the planet. I'm not posting this because she discusses a nude scene she did for Sarah Polley's Take this Waltz, in which Michelle Williams also participates. Randoms: "He won...Charlie Sheen won!...'whining!'....that cokey vibe [is] so off-putting to me...I like slow and chill...although he is a sound-bite genius."

Recorded last night (Thursday, 3.10) around 11:30 pm. I felt guilty about weighing as much as I do, and making this poor guy struggle when we were facing slight inclines.

Duncan Jones' Source Code, which premiered at South by Southwest this evening (and ended about an hour ago), is an engagingly trippy, somewhat sentimental and yet spiritual-minded sci-fi thriller that deserves a thumbs-up for several reasons, but I was especially delighted that it hasn't been dumbed down. It's an exciting nail-biter, but is essentially cerebral in the manner of an above-average Twilight Zone episode from the early '60s, and is not what anyone would call fanboy-catering or CG-driven, thank God.

(l. to r.) Source Code costars Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monahan and Jake Gyllenhaal, and screenwriter Ben Ripley (far right)...

A friend just texted me about a half-hour ago that he's heard that a line has begun forming outside Austin's Paramount theatre for the 7 pm showing of Source Code. This is what South by Southwest is (in)famous for -- everyone, regardless of their station, having to wait in the same damn line, and for long periods of time that eat up your day. I tried to get a pass from a Summit publicist, but he's all tapped out, he said. I didn't immediately leap from my chair and sprint down to the Paramount because I don't care enough to go through...Read More

Yesterday Digital Bits editor Bill Hunt posted a discussion with respected Sony restoration guy Grover Crisp about the forthcoming Taxi Driver Bluray (due on 4.5.), which represents a serious restoration effort on Crisp's part, especially given the input from director Martin Scorsese.

I was naturally most interested in Crisp's explanation of the sepia-toned/brown blood shoot-out sequence at the finale. As I put it two months ago, "There can be no legitimate claim of Taxi Driver having been restored without the original natural color (or at least a simulation of same) put back in. The...Read More

Last month the fetching one-sheet for Lone Scherfig's One Day (Focus Features, 7.8) spurred enthusiasm on top of Scherfig's respected rep and the wide acclaim that greeted her last film, An Education. One Day, based on David Nicholls' 2010 novel and costarring Anne Hathaway and Jim Strugess, is one of those delayed-satisfaction relationship tales (i.e., spanning 20 years) in the vein of When Harry Met Sally.

After graduating from a university in '88, Dexter (Sturgess) and Emma (Hathaway) "run circles around one another for the next 20 years," according to one cliche-filled synopsis. That irks me...Read More

And again, I'm sorry to take this tone but I've never before seen actual live footage that looks like a Roland Emmerich disaster film. Horrific as it is, this clip qualifies.

Tsunami Japon from notifuente.com on Vimeo.

Searching Google Maps for Meavy, England, where Steven Spielberg was shooting War Horse a few weeks ago, led to me the ancient village of Wells, about 90 minutes to the northeast. There was a moment in a London office of British Airways 30 years ago when an agent said my last name, and that instant I realized that only the British can pronounce it properly. I had unknowingly mispronounced it all my life. I've tried to convey how it sounds with pheonetical mimicry, but it doesn't quite work.

I've never visited Wells, but when I...Read More

Update: The SXSW coupon credential software screwup has been solved, or at least overridden and put to bed. Thanks to all concerned.

Previously: "Wells to SXSW press office: I find it mildly idiotic that SXSW insists that credentialed SXSW journalists fill out a form in order to redeem a coupon that excludes them from having to pay $500 or whatever for the privelege of covering SXSW. I presume you know that no other film festival in the world requests this kind of thing.

"In any event I filled everything out and tried to do it as correctly...Read More

Videos of the Japanese earthquake-tsunami tragedy have a quality that disaster-fetishists like Roland Emmerich have never been interested in. Commenting on the visual aesthetics of a terrible devastation like it's an entertainment of some kind may sound offensive, but this has always been my first reaction when videos of this sort appear. CG-infected Hollywood is more interested in amplifying and intensifying -- in making the ComicCon culture go "kewwll!" --than recreating the truth of nature's wrath.

The Pacman-style graphics are appropriate for the new Hobo With A Shotgun game/app. I don't know why I'm paying attention as I didn't even like Hobo With A Shotgun that much. Nobody did. But everyone still loves the title and the metaphor.

"From producer Steven Spielberg," it says at the very beginning. At the 59 second mark it says, "And director JJ Abrams." As if people needed to be told. Super 8 (Paramount, June 10) is Abrams' heartfelt, highly assured homage to Classic Spielbergland as it used to exist in the late '70s and early '80s. It's Close Encounters + E.T. plus scary threat. It's Abrams saying to audiences, "Remember when Spielberg held mountains in the palm of his hand?"

Small-town America, misunderstood kid with dreams on his mind, dad doesn't get the...Read More

Never in all my years of reading blogerati coverage about South by Southwest have I seen actual pictures and/or video of Austin places and happenings and pseudo-landmarks. Well, Hollywood Elsewhere is here with a Canon Elph SD1400, and that shit stops tonight. But what is Austin on Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 10:27 pm? I don't know. I'm just at some bar on Sixth Street, nursing brewskis and uploading photos on my Toshiba. It's dark and loud and noisy and packed with hee-hee 20somethings, like a thousand other bars in cities all over America and Europe and Southeast Asia.

...

I've never been a major worshipper of director MIchael Winner, but I've enjoyed and will always respect three of his early '70s films -- The Nightcomers, Death Wish and Scorpio. They're screening this weekend at Santa Monica's Aero. Variety's Steven Gaydos is handling the q & a with Winner. South by Southwest prevents my attending.

What has Will Smith done since the failure of Seven Pounds? Nothing, which is another way of saying he hid for two years and then boldly reemerged last year by committing to Bad Boys and Men in Black sequels. The man is basically George Lucas, talking a diversionary game about wanting to make non-corporate, content-driven movies while doing nothing except going for the safe "brand" money. I'm saying this because he obviously needs to do something that isn't about growing his bank account, and one good way to do this would be to play Senator Barack Obama in Jay Roach and Danny...Read More

If I hadn't been working yesterday on my usual rundown of stimulating articles (including two reviews) and running around trying to get one of those Medeco bolt-lock keys copied (forget it) and trying to return that Sony Bluray player before leaving for Austin, I might have posted a South by Southwest preview article similar to the one by Movieline's Jen Yamato.

Like everyone else I agree that Jodie Foster's The Beaver, Duncan Jones' Source Code (Groundhog Day with a bomb), Greg Mottola's repulsive-looking Paul and Billy Bob Thornton's Willie Nelson doc top the list. That's not saying much, is it?

Here's...Read More

I have a sentimental attachment to Burbank (i.e., Bob Hope) airport, and am therefore looking at a Phoenix connection on my way to Austin and South by Southwest. Two laps = six hours, not counting drive-time to and from both airports, or roughly a seven-and-a-half to eight-hour journey. That's almost what it takes to fly to New York. If I'd flown out of LAX I'd have a one-way flight that would've shaved two or three hours. Brilliant.

Jonathan Leibesman's Battle Los Angeles (Sony, 3.11) is the work of a moderately talented, second-rate whore with really fast hands. I didn't mind it that much as I watched ("It's all right, it's tolerable," I told Jett on the phone), but it's been plummeting in my head ever since. Impressions of decent to pretty-good films tend to maintain initial levels, and very-good to excellent films always gain.

It's a panoramic, heebie-jeebie, fast-break battle flick about a massive alien attack upon the world and particularly Los Angeles that's happening because it looks cool and will sell a lotta...Read More

I spoke today with The Princess of Montpensier director-cowriter Bertrand Tavernier at a luncheon thrown on his behalf (and also on behalf of Potiche costars Catherine Deneuve and Judith Godreche) at the Beverly Hills home of the French Consul General. It was my first talent-publicists-and-journalists mixer since arriving in LA a couple of weeks ago, and a pleasant one at that. Thanks to Fredel Pogodin for the invite.

Director Bertrand Tavernier at home of French Consul on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills -- Wednesday, 3.9, 1:05 pm.

(l. to r.) Variety's Steven Gaydos, TheWrap's Sharon...

I've finally seen Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier (IFC Films, 4.15 in theatres, 4.20 on demand) after missing it at last year's Cannes Film Festival. The initial response was not wildly enthusiastic, so I was rather surprised to find that this historical drama of intimacy, set in 16th Century France during the Catholic vs. Huguenot wars, is one of the most intriguing erotic trips I've taken in a long while.

Partly because the occasionally undressed lead, Melanie Thierry, performs in a way that feels rather prim and Grace Kelly-ish, an all-but-extinct vibe...Read More

To judge by this review of Red Riding Hood, the not-very well known bloggers B. Fatt & Lazy are coarse and sexually frustrated GenX animals -- one of the many confirmations of the devolution of film criticism and the human species as a whole. But they know how to write fairly well, and they're blunt and "funny." A voice is telling me I shouldn't flatter them further, but another voice is saying that films like Red Riding Hood (Warner Bros., 3.11) were made for guys like B. Fatt & Lazy to rip into.

This isn't...Read More

Surreptitiously videotaped comments by senior NPR exec Ron Schiller that described Tea Party faithfuls in blunt but -- let's be honest -- more-or-less accurate terms has led to his dismissal along with the resignation of NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller (i.e., no relation). The male Schiller was recorded saying that Tea Party-ers are "weirdly evangelical...white, middle America, gun-toting....seriously racist, racist people."

Gaffes are called gaffes not because they're untrue, but because they've been spoken in the wrong mixed company and deemed impolitic or insensitive.

Tree of Life visual effects supervisor Dan Glass has spoken to Trevor Hogg of Little White Lies and said the following: "I can confirm that there are dinosaurs [in the film]." The guy who actually delivered the beasts was Mike Fink of Frantic Films, although Bryan Hirota of Prime Focus reportedly worked on the dinos for several months before that.

On the way back from this evening's Battle: Los Angeles screening I stopped by the newstand on Robertson between Wilshire and Olympic. The latest New Yorker plus a pack of Trident, the guy said, would be $8 and change. Something snapped like a twig. "Eight dollars for a magazine and a pack of gum," I said with a tone of resignation. He laughed. I'm not likely to submit again.

"Elektra Luxx is a cartoon -- it's shot in vivid candy colors -- yet it's not wholly cartoonish," writes Movieline critic Stephanie Zacharek. "[Director Sebastian] Gutierrez isn't out to make any serious pronouncements about the porn industry. But he's not looking down on his subject, either. The picture is rambunctiously affectionate; Guiterrez may go for the broad joke, but never the cheap one."

Two years ago I saw Guiterrez's Women in Trouble, which, like Elektra Luxx, also toplined Carla Gugino. It wasn't offensively bad, but it certainly wasn't any kind of grade-A (or grade...Read More

All my life I've managed to avoid reading Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", but I'm going to dash through it this weekend to see if the book, published in 1847, is as morose and chilly and constipated as all the various film adaptations have been. I'm 98% sure that it is, but I want to be able to say that I've absorbed it first-hand.

I saw Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre (Focus Features, 3.11) last night, and it's full of authentic, high-toned period highs. All the performances (including those from costars...Read More

Didn't the original Cars ('06) become something of an unmentionable, not just in the general animated realm but also in Pixar circles? I look at this thing and I want to take gas.

Attention must be paid to the just-posted words of HitFix's Drew McWeeny: "The ugly truth is that the industry is chasing a fanboy audience that perhaps they need to stop chasing. I spent so many years at AICN complaining that no one was making films that catered to my interests, and now I find myself thinking that perhaps I don't need to be catered to in quite so naked and craven a fashion." Bravo! Especially coming from McWeeny, who, let's not forget, wet himself over Sherlock Holmes.

"I would happily give up the non-stop barrage of superhero films and fanboy 'favorites' if...Read More

He shouldn't have taken the bloody wig and earings off. He should have hung in there and toughed it out.

As everyone knows, Tony Curtis played at least 65% of Some Like It Hot in drag and speaking in a woman's voice. What's less widely known is that on a special edition DVD interview Curtis admitted he couldn't quite make his Josephine voice sound right so another guy dubbed him. The guy, according to co-screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond, was actor-singer Paul Frees. You'd think that this very significant information would would be in Taschen's SLIH coffee-table book, but it's not.

Newark Star-Ledger critic Stephen J. Whitty recently traded online fisticuffs with Kevin Smith...heard this one? Whitty drew first blood by noting "how angry Smith seemed lately," he recapped today, "and how he's been far too willing to immediately take to Twitter to lambaste any perceived attackers. Which prompted Smith to rip into Whitty on Twitter, calling him "old [and] out-of-touch" and faling to get what he's trying to do with his self-distributed release of Red State.

(l.) Kevin Smith; (r.) Newark Star-Ledger critic Stephen J. Whitty

"But I didn't say Smith's idea was...Read More

My brand-new Time Warner internet began delivering 1997-level DSL service after six days on the job, and it took me over two hours to arrange for a tech guy to come by tomorrow to fix the problem. I had to fart around with billings and payments and figure out stories to write, and I needed to talk with friends and family. I had to find a trustworthy cat sitter to come in and feed the guys while I'm in Austin for South by Southwest (for which I leave on Thursday, returning about eight days later). And it just went on and on like...Read More

Warner Bros.' decision to formally whack and totally fire Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men was, from a corporate perspective, unavoidable. Maybe they figured he'd destroyed his credibility as a semi-relatable human being. He'd gone too "tiger" and gone over the waterfalls. Sic semper shark-jumpers. Or the suits just thought about it long and hard and decided there was more downside than upside in Sheen staying on.

If it had been my call I would have given Sheen another go. I would have said, "Okay, no more insane coke rants, no more Tiger Blood...none of that. You've gotta calm...Read More

This morning a friend who lives in West Los Angeles (north of Barrington/Wilshire) begged off attending a screening later this week at the Writers Guild theatre (100 yards south of Wilshire/Doheny) because "it's not in my neighborhood." What? "From your house to the WGA is a hop, skip and a jump," I replied. "20 or 25 minutes. Okay, a half-hour." Nope. After 5 pm and until 7:30 or 8 pm that drive takes an hour, he said. "I know that traffic has probably gotten worse since I left in '08," I admitted, "but I can't believe it takes that long...c'mon." It really does,...Read More

Every week there are movies I need to see that I know (forget "strongly suspect") will be deflating to sit through. Especially during the March-April doldrums. Because this is a time in which films seem to take things from you rather than give. They sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Which is why it's a good time for Blurays and DVDs of oldies and obscura and films like...say, Roger Vadim's Pretty Maids All In A Row or Blurays of Buster Keaton's The General or Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Battle: LA represents one kind of ordeal (i.e., unrelenting shakycam +...Read More

I saw Rango tonight and the ravers aren't wrong. It's too subtle and referenced and movie-savvy for kids, but it's great for tweeners and and any adult who knows from Sergio Leone and Chinatown and Apocalypse Now and yaddah-yaddah. It's the smartest and most enjoyable mainstream animated feature since Toy Story 3, and an agreeably hip western that's satiric and yet "sincere."

Sunday, 3.7, 9:40 pm

Well, semi-sincere. You're supposed to smirk and chortle, and to be honest I didn't really chortle all that much. But I was smiling now and then and generally glad...Read More

It's all about the present and the future now -- no more looking back. Awards Daily 's Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino and I talked this morning about Rango, that American Idol idea for the Oscars, Matthew McConaughey and The Lincoln Lawyer, Battle: LA, Charlie Sheen and I forget what else. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

"Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

"Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

"Let me say...Read More

I'll be seeing Gore Verbinski's Rango in an hour or two. Partly because Phil Contrino mentioned earlier today that it has several Chinatown echoes. David Poland has written that "it's a western homage ranging from High Noon to Star Wars with plenty of Budd Boetticher in the mix...[it] freely steals from every corner of film and culture." And yet, according to Contrino and others, it's gotten a lousy C-plus grade from CinemaScore audiences. Adults, in particular, didn't enjoy the ride, with 25-and-overs giving it a C. What's going on here?

The naysayers, I'm guessing,...Read More

I was told this morning that the Hollywood blogerati have seen Battle: LA (Sony, 3.11), but are review- embargoed. The L.A. all-media happens on Tuesday. I'm presuming it will at least rank as a passable alien-invasion flick with suitable, or possibly better-than-suitable, CG. The presumption about content, on the other hand, is that it's going to be a thought-free, spook-cut, herky-jerky wankathon that will spin your brain and eyes and leave you vibrating. I thought Aaron Eckhart might make a difference, but this is a Harvey Dent payday.

I'm a bit skeptical (forgive...Read More

"If Charlie Sheen had an Air Force, he would be Qaddafi." -- Gloria Steinem on the most recent (i.e., currently airing) episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.

Six days ago Time's Richard Corliss reprised a suggestion originally made by Jamie Stuart (posted as a Hot Blog comment on 9.1.09) that the Oscar show "needs to adopt a Top Ten, American Idol-like framework, gradually counting down from #10 to #1 throughout the program to create suspense."

We all know why this idea will never fly with the Oscar-show producers. One, the makers of the films to be eliminated early on would feel insulted (despite the obvious honor of being Best Picture nominated in the first place), and two, the Academy would be indicating proportionate vote tallies by staging...Read More

For the last couple of years I've been using a Canon PowerShot SD 1400 IS for fine-quality 14 megapixel stills and 720p video. But I've been waiting all along for the next one with 1080p video, and now it's here -- the Canon PowerShot 300 HS. It has 12.1 megapixels but with a slightly more sensitive processor, a high-speed burst capability when taking stills, a zoom capability while shooting video, and slow-motion video. It'll ship in less than two weeks.

The better films will sometimes wait until the last few minutes to allow a flawed character to redeem himself in some way. The unusual (and I think great) thing about this scene is that Anthony Quinn's redemption comes too late to matter, and all that's left is devastation. I've said this kind of thing 100 times, but you couldn't end a film today with the lead character finally realizing that he's been a thundering asshole and has totally screwed himself. The last film to try this was Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown.

One of the best riffs ever written by Awards Daily's Ryan Adams: "One reason [Oscar co-host James] Franco fell flat is because he was already in postmortem mode, doing an instantaneous mental autopsy of his onstage oblivion, already seeing his tiresome lines shrivel and wither on the vine...before bothering to prop them up with any game-face grinning facade."

"No matter how many flashy autotune gimmicks the producers concoct to drag the Oscars into the 21st Century, it's all just slapstick lipstick on a 3D pig without re-tuning the writing to bring it up...Read More

Nine years after opening in theatres, John Lee Hancock's The Rookie arrives on Bluray on 3.29. You can count the number of G-rated, family-friendly films that are as good as this on one hand. "Remember the Titans was entertainment, using every trick and ploy to stir the emotions, " I said in my original review. "The Rookie works its magic without seeming to milk, shovel, or pull anyone's chain."

It's obviously tragic when a good and gifted man takes his life, especially when alcohol has played a part. This is what happened with poor Phil Ochs, the folk-and-protest troubadour who composed and performed famously in the '60s but gradually lost the thread and then his reason for living. He hung himself in 1976, at age 35. Partly because of bipolar affliction and depression and booze, but also because he couldn't find his way out of disappointment with how '60s activism evolved, and because he failed to find a new musical groove that worked for his audience.

I didn't disagree with Arianna Huffington's recent remark about unpaid Huffington Post contributors threatening to strike, which was basically "go ahead...no one will notice." At the same time I couldn't help chuckling at the similarity in tone between this and a line spoken by Oscar Werner in Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold:

If I was Aaron Sorkin I would want my John Edwards movie, an adaptation of Andrew Young's "The Politician", to appear before Jay Roach and Danny Strong's Game Change. Sorkin's intention to write and direct for theatrical was announced last July. The latter is a forthcoming HBO adaptation of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's best-seller that reports in depth about Edwards' presidential campaign and concurrent affair with Reille Hunter.

Sorkin's Oscar-winning, West Wing-fortified brand is such that his film could follow Roach's and everything would be more or...Read More

All the elements look immaculate in a quasi-Malicky sort of way. Every shot, line, garment and prop has been carefully selected, and shot just so. Nothing slapdash. But a voice is telling me to be a little bit suspicious of films with trailers that try to underscore things with delicate piano music and choirs. It opens on 4.22.

Update: Nothing gives me more pain and regret that posting a sentence that is grammatically incorrect. I'm not going to repeat the error that was up yesterday (i.e., Friday), but I do apologize.

Mark Harris's New York 3.3 piece about the over-exposure and self-immolation of Charlie Sheen is on-target and nicely written, etc., but Darrow's illustration kinda says it better. Sorry.

To go by the trailer and a clip, Barry W. Blaustein's Peep World (IFC Films, 3.25) might be moderately decent or perhaps even good. A cool, high-pedigree cast (Michael C. Hall, Rainn Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Stephen Tobolowsky, Taraji P. Henson, Judy Greer, Alicia Witt, Lesley Ann Warren, Ron Rifkin), snappy dialogue, dysfunctional family, etc. But the narration style is awful. And the word on the film isn't so hot.

Michael Rechtshaffen's Toronto Film Festival review said it "very much wants to be The Royal Tenenbaums when it grows up." And...Read More

I'm firing the Sony S380 Bluray player I bought it last weekend. It's finished. I'm taking it back to Best Buy on Sawtelle this afternoon, and I'd love to punch it a couple of times and then throw it against the wall for dramatic effect, and then kick it and spit on it. I hate brand-new machines that fuck with you because their designers are assholes.

There's nothing wrong with the picture quality at all, but the bugger gave me all kinds of trouble with aspect-ratio control. I had to struggle and call around and ask questions...Read More

HE regulars know that I make many mistakes at many film festivals. And one of my errors at last September's Toronto gathering was missing James Gunn's Super (IFC Films, 4.1). Not because I heard it was stupendous, but because a film that "looks and feels like a weird mixture of a feature length SNL digital short, Kick-Ass and a Troma Film," as Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta described it six months ago, is probably better than Kick-Ass. And that would be welcome.

I missed a Manhattan...Read More

Criterion's ten-year-old Rififi DVD is one of my all-time black-and-white faves. It was like seeing this 1954 classic for the first and only time...what clarity! I saw it projected at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a few years ago when Jules Dassin dropped by for a visit, and their print wasn't nearly as rich and detailed and super-silvery as the DVD.

So I'm thinking of buying the recently released, region-free Gaumont Bluray version when I'm in France for the Cannes Film Festival. yeah, even without English subtitles. Because the same black-and-white high...Read More

I didn't even look at this Jimmy Kimmel Show-produced video when it popped up three or four days ago. Bush...blurp. But I finally caught it this morning and realized that it contains the most winning performance Mike Tyson has ever delivered. Easygoing, light-hearted, etc. Like he's channelling Jamie Foxx or something. James Toback's Tyson, a superb doc, revealed the ex-fighter's sad, soulful side, but this (starring a noticably thinner Tyson) shows mirth and merriment.

For nearly 20 years Matthew McConaughey has under-achieved. The few good films he's been in have been mostly ensembles (Dazed and Confused, U-571, We Are Marshall, Tropic Thunder) while many of his top-billed or costarring vehicles have been romantic dogshit, especially over the last decade. Now comes The Lincoln Lawyer (Lionsgate, 3.18), the first completely decent, above-average film McConaughey has carried all on his own. By his standards that's close to a triumph.

Lawyer doesn't reinvent the wheel. It's basically a high-intrigue trial drama with an unusual lead character -- McConaughey's...Read More

Boiled down, The Adjustment Bureau (Universal, 3.4) is about a team of cosmic fate orchestrators doing all they can to prevent David Norris (Matt Damon), a rising New York politician, from marrying or committing to a longterm relationship with Elise Sallas (Emily Blunt), a gifted dancer. These two have met and fallen for each other in that dippy, lost-in-each-other's-gaze sort of way, but they can't partner up because this will somehow hinder or block each other's progress in life (including a possible occupation of the White House by Damon).

This, at least, is...Read More

My 13" MacBook Pro froze this morning for the first time since I bought it about a year ago. There was nothing to do but to shut it down, and in so doing I lost a fairly good review of The Adjustment Bureau that I'd been writing for nearly three hours. (I'd have been okay if Movable Type 4.0 had an auto-save function.) And then HE crashed again, and the stooges at Softlayer/OrbitThePlanet told me I needed to double the site's memory again, after doubling it from 2 gigs to 4 gigs on Monday (at their suggestion) after Sunday night's Oscar...Read More

Over the last four days two director pals have told me the same thing: "I have to make an action film next." To make some money and keep their cred up with the bottom-liners, they mean. If two guys are saying this you can bet plenty of others have the same strategy. We all have to make a piece-of-shit, Eloi-friendly sequel/action/CG ComicCon popcorn confetti-fart movie. Because if the word gets around that we're mostly into original and/or "quality" material, we may never work in this town again.

Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff had an L.A. screening on 2.23, which I missed. There's a press day with Reichardt on 4.15. Screenings are set for 4.6 and 4.12, but according to a 42West rep there are no screenings scheduled for the entire month of March. I asked, "Do you guys have a screener I can watch?" No, I was told. That's Oscilloscope Pictures for you -- big spenders.

I couldn't go back to my 36" Sony analog, so yesterday I sucked it in and paid $575 for a 50" Vizio plasma. Vizio makes fairly well respected lower-priced plasmas, LCDs and LEDs, but the price seemed a little cheap. The seller, a guy from East LA named Marcus Lopez, said his units cost a bit less because they've been judged as discards due to some minor shipping dents. He also said plasmas are cheaper because no wants them -- everyone wants LEDs and LCDs.

So I liked the price but...Read More

Cameron Crowe's The Union, a doc about how Elton John nursed and goaded Leon Russell out of obscurity and back to recording and performing, will open the Tribeca Film Festival on 4.20. John will perform live after the free outdoor screening. Is it worth it to spend $400 or $500 bills to fly back, not to mention lodging, food and cat-sitting costs, so I can catch this and the festival (which runs from 4.20 through 5.1) en masse? I fear not.

With all the Oscar hurly-burly and being back in LA I didn't notice that Universal Home Video's long-awaited Out of Sight Bluray is on the shelves. (Calling Evan Fong!) Those DVD Beaver captures of Clooney gave me a jolt. He looks 26. He was actually 36 when they shot it in '97.

Capturing from livethesheendream.com. And here's the new twitter page.

The grunt, I presume, is staring at an alien mother ship in the Battle: LA poster. Which looks to me like the same alien mother ship, with modifications, that appeared at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Which also inspired the industrial-spoke design of the mother ship in District 9. And to some extent the look of the super-tanker Nostromo in Ridley Scott's Alien. Would it kill production designers of these films to design spacecraft that looks like it came out of a 1936 Flash Gordon serial? Or out of Forbidden Planet?

I never got around to mentioning the other thing that happened on Oscar night. I was so beside myself with frustration at HE's traffic-overload slowdown (and also Tom Hooper winning the Best Director Oscar) that I stupidly squirted some blue minty mouthwash into my left eye. The burning sensation was so intense that I almost collapsed on the floor of the Starbucks I was sitting in. The mouthwash was in one of those little plastic mini-bottles that they sell in liquor stores. They feel the same and are roughly the same size as a bottle of Refresh that I had with me.