In sending this clip along earlier today, Joe Leydon's point was that "back in the day, The Mike Douglas Show had the most eclectic guest lineup of any talk show, at anytime, anywhere on TV. No, really."

Here's Part 4 of Matt Zoller Seitz's epic video essay on Terrence Malick, focusing on The New World.

"This feels like closure to me in some strange way," Seitz says in an email. "The whole reason I got into blogging was to bang the drum for The New World, which has grown in reputation since 2005 but which was shamefully underestimated at the time."

A guy named Sean with a web advertising company asked earlier today if Hollywood Elsewhere would be interested in running an ad for Direct TV. "I can send you $150 via PayPal as soon as an agreement is made," he wrote. I wrote back and said, "What about you keep your money and I give $150 to a homeless guy?"

With all the hoo-hah last week about Warner Home Video's bizarre decision to crop the Barry Lyndon Bluray at 1.77 to 1, it's ironic that impulse buyers wandering around Best Buy won't even see the Lyndon Bluray on the shelves. Or the Lolita Bluray.

That's because of an Amazon exclusive deal for both titles, meaning there's no retail at all. For the time being, that is. I'm sure there was a big kickback arrangement for Warner Home Video, but after all this time....forget it. I've got my order coming to my LA home tomorrow so what do I care?

Adam Curtis's multi-part All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which began last night on BBC2, is flat-out brilliant. Or at least brilliantly composed and sold. I could call it a fascinating, absorbing, well-told story, but it strikes me above all as an unusually perceptive explanation of the '08 global financial collapse, and how its origins stem from the philosophical imaginings of Ayn Rand.

Take an hour and watch this first installment. Really. Take an hour and do this today or tomorrow.

I'm not saying that all the blinding and jolting...Read More

As much as I've always loved James Toback's Fingers, I fell a little bit harder for Jacques Audiard's 2005 remake, The Beat That My Heart Skipped. One reason being that this critically-acclaimed, French-produced film twice used The Kills' "Monkey 23", which for me was the film, at least in a residual way.

I was just sitting here and remembering getting into Audiard's film and "Monkey 23" and The Kills' Keep On Your Mean Side in the sweltering summer of '05, when I was living in Brooklyn. What a time that was. It doesn't...Read More

No one outside of the Tolkien lemming community cares about Peter Jackson's two Hobbitt films....nobody. Nobody gives a toss that the first one (opening on 12.14.12) will be called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, or that the second (due on 12.13.13) will be called The Hobbit: There And Back Again. Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, blah, blah. The old Lord of the Rings gang -- Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving -- feeding at the trough, etc.

"Destined to be together but indecisive and unable to pull the trigger for 20 years" is not my idea of an engrossing concept. It's my idea, actually, of a repellent one. The narration ("...but life got in the way") is very cliched, and the British narrator's speaking style has that same "talking down to idiots" tone that the last trailer had.

So trailer-wise this film has basically gone O for 2 (here's my reaction to trailer #1), and in my book that indicates a possible disaster.

Janice Min's radical revamp of The Hollywood Reporter "seems to be working," reports N.Y. Times media decoder David Carr in a 5.30 article. Over the last year THR's ad revenue has gone up 50%, unique visitors to hollywoodreporter.com have risen 800%, according to comScore, and circulation for the weekly print edition "has inched up over 70,000, which seems small, but it reaches a pretty rarefied demographic," Carr writes.

"It's all very lovely to behold, but of course, that's no guarantee that [Min's Reporter] will be a great business as well," Carr concludes. "It will be several years before we...Read More

Update due to jetlag fatigue: At the close of the five-month mark, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids need to be added to the best 2011 films list. The others are still Win Win, Hanna, Source Code, Cedar Rapids, In A Better World, Meek's Cutoff, Super, Applause and The Lincoln Lawyer.

When I landed yesterday I tweeted that I'd read a draft of The Descendants, the Alexander Payne-George Clooney December release, during the flight. It has this smart, up-close, well-observed quality...a family movie with a solemn meditative anchor. If it's well-handled, I could easily see The Descendants (Fox Searchlight, 12.16) being one of the ten B.P. nominees. Seriously. Or it could just be a good film. I posted the trailer four days ago.

A 5.26 Jason Newman piece about Bradley Cooper being a "polarizing" Hollywood actor set me off on a jag. "Over the last year or so I've developed a small cancerous tumor because of Cooper," I wrote on 2.24.11, "whose appearance on last June's MTV Movie Awards proved that he's a fizzy-souled showbiz whore."

You are the kind of dog you have. I'm a big fan of Golden Retrievers, the love dogs. I'm also partial to Labradors and Jack Russells. It follows that any guy who owns a Cane Corso Mastif that's been trained to kill is some kind of belligerent macho ayehole. If I had any say in the matter of this four-year-old Brooklyn boy who was killed Friday by a Mastif, the boyfriend who owned this killer dog would do serious time.

On Friday I bought two tickets to Through a Glass Darkly, the currently running theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film with Carey Mulligan in the lead role. With my flight landing at 6:20 pm I'd hoped the tickets were for a Sunday 8 pm performance, but I learned post-purchase that they were for a 3 pm show, so I asked Jett and Dylan to go in my place.

Carey Mulligan, Ben Rosenfield in Through A Glass Darkly.

"I've never seen Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly so yesterday's performance was my first exposure," Jett...Read More

A Midwestern book publisher wrote about an old high school friend -- a woman -- with whom "we're indirectly connected professionally through the Linked-In network." He asked how I know her. I don't know her at all, I said. "Linked In is as bad as Facebook in terms of utter meaninglessness," I added. "I could be lying on the side of the road, bleeding to death and begging for an ambulance, and [your former high-school friend] could walk by and look at me and say to herself, 'Wow, somebody who has the time should call an ambulance on their cell' and then walk...Read More

I woke up this morning at 8 am Paris time (i.e, 2 am Eastern) and then woke again at 5 am, or 11 am in Paris. The wifi is working perfectly in the place I'm staying in...very nice. And it rained this morning around 6 am. No screenings today because of Memorial Day. Jesus...Memorial Day. Every time it comes around I feel listless and conflicted.

It's been over 65 years since Americans fought and won an unambiguously "good" war. I know i'll never stop feeling sickened by the thought of over 58,000 guys having died in the...Read More

How much of a Bluray marketing genius do you have to be to not know that the photo of Paul Newman on the new Bluray of The Hustler is from The Young Philadelphians ('59)? And if the Fox Home Video marketing ace who chose this photo did know of its origin, why did he/she use it?

Any fan of The Hustler ('61) would spot the error in two seconds and be mildly irked by it, as I was when I bought this sucker last night at Kim's Video. And any fan of The...Read More

The only Nazi fascist-perversion films of the '70s that I could stand watching weren't exploitation fare -- Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo. A couple of times I've felt a slight urge to see Tinto Brass's Salon Kitty (which is now out on Bluray) but I can't make myself rent it. I just can't. I keep hearing Peter O'Toole calling this Italian schlockmeister, with whom he worked on Caligula, "Tinto Zinc."

It's been a bit more than a year since I saw Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. And now, at long last, it's playing at Manhattan's Film Forum until June 7th. It's another one of those plain but gradually penetrating, long-take Romanian films in the tradition of Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which I can't get enough of.

I love the slow studied atmosphere of these films, and their very subtle pay-offs that seem to strengthen and deepen the more you think...Read More

The Air France flight to JFK leaves at 4:30 this afternoon, and arrives at 6:20 pm. It's time to get back into the stateside swing. Several LA screenings and the LA Film Festival, etc. A Super 8 press junket next weekend. I'm returning with an idea that I have to somehow find an affordable scooter that isn't too dinky-looking. Buzzing around Paris reminded me of the necessity. Scooters are the only way to push through heavy traffic, and LA is the king of that.

I bought tickets incidetnally, to today's performance of Carey Mulligan's Though A...Read More

Here's a hand-held, poor-quality video of the European redband trailer for David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. "The Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas"! Love that Zeppelin.

Roger Ebert has derided The Hangover, Part II for using perhaps the famous Vietnam War photograph ever -- a capturing of a South Vietnamese military guy shooting a Vietcong guy in the head -- for laughs. He called its appearance during the still-photo section at the end "a desecration." But Ebert didn't complain about Woody Allen's using the same photo for satiric purposes in Stardust Memories .

Allen's character, a distracted film director, has a huge blowup of this photo in his living room in the film. It's obviously a much smarter and more satiric...Read More

I've said two or three times that I don't have to equate Lindsay Lohan with arrogant entitlement attitudes and self-destruction and drugs, etc. It was clear in Prairie Home Companion that she's got that X-factor sparked, and it's easy to believe that she leads a passionate life in all respects. She's defintely interesting to stare at and contemplate. But until she does something besides go to court and listen to admonishments from judges then I don't know what.

This video is supposed to invoke Brigitte Bardot and/or Liv Ullman. I would buy LiLo in a remake of...Read More

It suddenly turned cool yesterday. Late May into early to mid October. Jackets, sweaters, scarves. I was hoping that those dark clouds might lead to something because when Paris lets go with a good rainstorm things can get very torrential.

Good clouds facing sixth-floor loft at 9 rue Gassendi -- Friday, 5.27, 4:10 pm.

There's excellent wifi throughout the entire underground Paris metro system.

Joseph Gordon Levitt's 50/50 character has cancer, which means if he gets into the usual chemo and radiation he'll be losing his hair. So...he decides to get a Full Metal Jacket Parris Island buzzcut so he won't have to deal with it falling out in strands and clumps? I admire the brashness behind making a film with this kind of story, but this bit feels like a resignation.

It seems a fairly safe bet that 50/50 not My Life with Michael Keaton.

The pre-trailer intro explains that the story is based somewhat on the experiences...Read More

For me the funniest part of Todd Phillips' The Hangover was the photo sequence at the very end. That's because it (a) revealed what had specifically gone down during the blind-drunk debauchery in Las Vegas, which looked funny, and (b) let us imagine the minute-to-minute action that happened before and after the snapping of each still. Nothing the movie depicted could match our imaginations in this regard.

It's the exact same deal with The Hangover, Part II, which I saw this evening at the Pathe Wepler at Place Clichy. The insanity-depicting series of photos at the very...Read More

A few days ago several fanboy bloggers were shown JJ Abrams' Super 8 (Paramount, 6.10) and allowed to tweet their reactions. With this many cats out of the bag I guess I can say I've seen it too. An "almost there" version, I should add. I signed a non-disclosure form but surely at this stage I can say two brief things: (a) tonally it's definitely a '70s Spielberg trip through and through (although that was obvious in the first teaser), and (b) Elle Fanning, who turned 13 last month, is a real movie star.

Elle Fanning,...

Kenneth Turan and Marshall Fine's dismissal of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, despite almost everyone falling for it in Cannes and a very strong 85% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, tells me it may not figure that strongly in the Best Picture race.

And so what, right? Malick has never made an "Academy film," and Life is probably, as Turan complains, too "opaque" for mainstreamers. It'll be their loss at the end of the day. History will not look kindly. "Meh" was the farthest thing from my mind as I watched the first 40 minutes' worth, and yet I...Read More

According to Variety's Justin Kroll, Michael Mann will probably/eventually direct Go Like Hell, a period race-car film about Lee Iacocca and Carroll Shelby's successful attempt to beat the Ferrari team at Le Mans in 1966. Brad Pitt is reportedly interested in starring but is as yet uncommitted; if he does it I'm presuming he'll play Shelby.

If it happens Go Like Hell will be the second expensive French race-track movie from a major American director, the first being John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix ('66), which I caught for the first time on DVD a couple of years ago. It feels...Read More

I suppose if I want to keep abreast I've no choice but to catch Very Bad Trip 2 (i.e., The Hangover Part II) at the Pathe Wepler this evening. "Largely mirthless...deeply square...cleaves numbingly to the script of the previous movie," says N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. What a thing to do while here.

I flew out of Venice's Marco Polo airport this morning at 9:45 am. I'm now back in the Paris loft. So there's this afternoon, tonight, all day tomorrow and Sunday morning until my Roissy bus leaves for Charles De Gaulle airport and the flight to JFK, almost exactly 48 hours hence. The following pics are my last Venice batch.

Friday, 5.27, 6:25 am.

What I'd forgotten is how dead quiet Venice can be. If you stay away from the tourists in the San Marco district, that is, and keep searching your way into the smaller calles and backwater...Read More

This forthcoming German Bluray of Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks might look a little better than the various public-domain DVDs out there, but otherwise it's a visual sham of a mockery of a mockery of a visual sham.

The basic core elements are in good shape, I'm told, but until complete legal ownership can be re-established by Paramount, this 1961 semi-classic will look mildly shitty. (The Brando family failed to renew the copyright about 10 or 12 years ago, so blame them.) Here's an appreciation that I wrote in '08.

"Lou Stroller made some comment about Mrs. Malick, and Terry was not having it, and beat the hell out of him. In true Texas style -- he was so Texas. Didn't even hesitate, just started swinging. They were down like two buffalo -- they were big guys -- and they were on the ground, rolling around, and Terry just whupped him.

"Oh, I acted outraged -- 'What a breakdown of discipline, this fighting on the set!' -- but I couldn't have been prouder of him. Can you imagine? If more directors would beat up their producers, we'd...Read More

Trust me, when an outfit like Oscilloscope picks up a film that has shown at the Cannes Film Festival, it means that other players with a lot more money were scared that it might not do too well with U.S. filmgoers. It also means it didn't cost an arm and a leg to acquire. Such is the situation with Lynn Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin, which many of us saw earlier this month.

In Cannes I described Ramsay's film as "emotionally speaking, rat poison." I also observed that "as far as Ramsay's film is concerned Kevin (Ezra...Read More

John Carpenter's The Ward (fetching blonde confined in asylum in which a ghost is lurking around) showed at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and nobody said squat. It opened in England last January. It finally preems here in mid-summer, probably on 7.8.11.

Costarring Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker, Mika Boorem, Jared Harris, etc. Screenplay by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen. Girl Interrupted meets Snake Pit, No Exit, etc.

The Hangover, Part II director Todd Phillips likes, I think, Hollywood Elsewhere (he's told me this at least) and doesn't particularly like Movie City News and/or David Poland's stuff. I'm sure sooner or later I'll run into an actor or director or producer who doesn't care for me or my views so there but for the grace of God, etc. Still, this is funny:

I've only been able to listen to 70% of this, but a partial transcript provided by Film Drunk is, to my comprehension, at least partly accurate (and it may be entirely...Read More

They Live By Night's Bilge Ebiri got in touch with an owner of an old Barry Lyndon laser disc from the mid '90s, and "not only is it 1.66 but it specifically says on the disc that it was transferred under Kubrick's supervision." He reported this yesterday.

I'm sorry to say this because I like and respect former actor and longtime Stanley Kubrick assistant Leon Vitali (whom I interviewed by phone about 12 years ago and then ran into by chance at LAX three or four years later), but his testy statements about the Barry Lyndon aspect-ratio debate during yesterday's Warner Home Video press conference in Manhattan don't hold up to scrutiny.

(l.) Leon Vitali; (r.) as Lord Bullington in Barry Lyndon.

I honestly think it's fair to say at this point that Vitali is, at best, a...Read More

Thanks to a 5.20 Criterion Forum posting by "Gregory", we have a few comparison shots showing the 1.66 aspect ratio on the DVD vs. the 1.78 aspect ratio on the Bluray. (The latter adds a sliver of information on the left and right sides.) You can shrug and ask "what's the biggie?" but this is corporate vandalism, pure and simple.

Sampling of Criterion Forum comments: (a) "Christ, the cropping destroys the composition...what happened, where was Leon Vitali?"; (b) "You know what I love about all of the endless Kubrick aspect-ratio...Read More

Sitting in the shade, my chair against a plaster-and-brick wall, canopy overhead, a frutti de mare salad on the way, a gentle breeze, briney aroma from the canal, the battery fully charged and the wifi performing...well, tolerably, this was the most perfect writing experience I've known in a long time.

Every time I see a photo of Lady Gaga, I say to myself, "Oh, yeah, right...that's what she looks like." Because whenever I'm not looking at her photos I kinda forget. All I can ever remember is a sort of opaque severity. Bleached (or shaved?) eyebrows, ultra-sharp cheekbones, alabaster skin, eyes out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The truth? Her features are striking but her face isn't really "there." That's why it keeps disappearing.

Cover of latest Italian Vanity Fair...I think. I saw it this morning on a stand.

If I were to run into Eminem on a...Read More

The Telegraph's Richard Eden reported last week that Peter Fonda, exec producer of the anti-BP doc The Big Fix, used the term "high-powered rifles" while saying that he's urging his grandchildren to revolt against President Barack Obama.

Fonda, in Cannes to promote The Big Fix, was speaking metaphorically but nonetheless managed to sound as if Captain America has evolved into a wacko tea-bagger or NRA wing-nut of some kind.

Fonda's disdain for Obama is probably rooted in the case made against the President in The Big Fix, which is that O has more or less coddled Big Oil since the...Read More

Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and I recorded Oscar Poker #34 the night before last -- she in LA, me in Paris. Mostly about the second half of the Cannes Film Festival. I'd just come back from dinner and had to get up four and a half hours later. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

This kind of thing wasn't available when I was last here in '07. The farther into the city you get, the weaker the Venice "air." The only decent reception, really, is when you're adjacent to the Grand Canal, and even then it's spotty. It's that laughing Mediterranean mentality, but you have to roll with it.

In a 5.23 Some Came Running entry, MSN critic Glenn Kenny said my agitated posting about Warner Home Video's jacket-cover statement that their brand-new Barry Lyndon Bluray has been masked at 1.85 was on the unwarranted and
hysterical side. No, it wasn't. Not as it turned out. It was pretty much dead-on.

Glenn Kenny's snap of his high-def screen showing (he says) a 1.78 to 1 aspect ratio image from the Barry Lyndon Bluray.

Yes, I hadn't seen the Bluray due to obvious limitations (i.e., being on the fly in Europe) but the jacket...Read More

It was announced yesterday that Columbia will distribute Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's long-gestating film about hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden. Until the Navy Seals finally got him on May 1st, Boal's script, which he'd been working on since '08, was, I gather, a procedural without a payoff.

In other words, before Osama bin Laden was killed it was an indie-type thing. But with bin Laden dead, Amy Pascal (a big Hurt Locker fan) and the Columbia guys are down with it. That's pretty much the deal.

Filming will begin in the late summer and open in the fourth...Read More

What's so amusingly "despicable" about my having tweeted last week that I was glad I'd seen Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life but that I'm "not sure if I'll buy/get the Bluray," as New York's latest "Approval Matrix" chart has it?

I was merely saying I wasn't sure if Tree, which seemed to meander and even get a bit doodly after the first levitational 40 minutes or so, would stand up to repeat viewings.

Yes, others wrote that it almost certainly would stand up and that they looked forward to subsequent viewings, but I wasn't sure. I was thinking at...Read More

It's only just hit me that Warner Home Video's Barry Lyndon Bluray (out 5.31) has been masked at 1.85 to 1....storm the barricades! The aspect ratio of Stanley Kubrick's 1975 classic was supposed to suggest the aspect ratio of stately 18th Century landscape paintings, which are on the boxy side and a lot closer to 1.66 than 1.85. Which is why the DVD was presented in 1.66.

And yet WHV execs have decided to whack a chunk of information off the tops and bottoms of the Bluray? Why? Criterion presents the occasional older...Read More

Adam Carolla has posted a podcast chat with Albert Brooks, author of 2030 but more importantly, for me, bringer of a truly enjoyable, hard-edged performance in Drive.

More features and docs than I can recall offhand (Heart Beat, Howl) have explored the lives of the legendary beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady, Burroughs, et. al.) in the late '40s and '50s. And there are few genres more ubiquitous than the road movie. So where can Walter Salles, the maker of arguably the best road movie ever, take us on this well-trod path?

The character names have been changed, but Sam Riley is Jack Kerouac, Garrett Hedlund is Neal Cassady, Kirsten Stewart is playing Mary Lou (a character apparently not based on anyone), Viggo Mortensen is...Read More

An article about the crappy light levels in 2D movies projected at AMC, National Amusements and Regal cinemas has been posted by the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. It's appalling, of course, and yet comforting that Burr came to the same conclusions that I posted on 9.21.10.

The problem is basically due to 2D movies being projected through Sony-manufactured 4K digital projectors, which have a polarizer that cuts down light levels by 50%, Burr reports, and more specifically, as I noted, by a decision by AMC not to swap out 3D lenses when showing 2D movies because it...Read More

Code copied from a Ryan Adams/Awards Daily posting.

"The stock dismissal 'more of the same' has rarely been more accurately applied to a sequel than to The Hangover Part II," writes Variety's Andrew Barker. Todd Phillips' sequel to the 2009 original "ranks as little more than a faded copy superimposed on a more brightly colored background...[it's] rote professionalism verging on cynicism, and, despite some occasional sparks, a considerable disappointment.

"It should have been possible to revive the basic plot structure without slavishly reprising its every beat. This Hangover is longer than the first by two minutes, but at times it feels as though the two could be projected side-by-side...Read More

A friend coming into Paris says he'll be staying at the Park Hyatt Vendome and suggested that we meet there. I asked if we could rendezvous instead at a place with a little Parisian antiquity. Because for me the Paris Hyatt, obviously a flush, first-rate establishment, is at heart a Club Med experience for people with ample funds.

I get that many American travellers prefer the corporate-style comforts that Hyatt hotels provide but why fly thousands of miles to Paris only to stay in more or less the exact same kind of place that you can...Read More

When it comes to animating Ralph Fiennes' Lord Voldemort character in the last two Potter films, director David Yates, a mid-range journeyman if there ever was one, is a huge fan of that madman howl. Which asounds awfully generic to me, and is, by the way, extremely similar to that leopard howl that Charles Ruggles shared with his dinner companions in Bringing Up Baby.

My point, I suppose, is this: if you're going to imitate somebody else's howl, imitate a really creepy one. Like Alan Bates' demonic banshee scream in Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout.

The thought of listening to Tim Pawlenty, the most likely Republican presidential nominee, give dreary speeches between now and the fall of 2012 is draining. He'll put everyone to sleep. ("One, I'm a white Polish-German and two, I'm Bob Dole without the snappish personality.") What this country really needs is a leftie iconoclast (somebody who thinks like Michael Moore or Bill Maher) running against Obama. Then we'd have some real excitement.

Congratulations to Terrence Malick and the Fox Searchlight team on the occasion of The Tree of Life winning the Palme d'Or this evening at the conclusion of the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Fine, okay. No quibbles from this corner.

The jury wiggled out of the Melancholia problem (i.e., would they wimp out over the fallout from Lars von Trier's Nazi comments?) by giving Melancholia star Kirsten Dunst the Best Actress award. In so doing they showed they weren't ignoring Von Trier's film but blew him off personally as well as the film, and thereby avoided pissing off the Cannes Film Festival organizers...a perfect...Read More

The Stanley Kubrick exposition at the Cinematheque Francais is a very thorough, abundantly detailed and absorbing presentation of Kubrick's 54-year career, beginning with his photographer period (which began in 1945 when he took a shot of a newsstand proprietor looking forlorn the day that FDR's death was headlined) all the way through his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, and including exhibits from the three movies he worked like hell on but never made -- Napoleon, A.I. and The Aryan Papers (which was killed by Schindler's List).

Matthew Modine, Stanley Kubrick during filming of Full Metal Jacket....

There's no point in lamenting this weekend's $346.4 million gross -- $90.1 million U.S., $256.3 million abroad -- for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides . But I do nonetheless.

It deflates my soul to think that so many millions of people have deplorable, peon-level taste in movies. Not about this one, of course, as the current numbers are all about marketing and brand recognition and the easy appeal of low-rent commonality and big-budget production design. But you'd think that the third Pirates film -- either the worst or the second-worst of the four, depending on who you talk to...Read More

I love this image. I have nothing more interesting or layered or referenced to say than that. It's better, I think, not to reveal what film it's from. Not The Wild Bunch -- I'll say that much.

The wisest and most exciting choice to receive the Palme d'Or this evening would be Lars von Trier's Melancholia. It would be an artistically respectable decision on its own, but perhaps more importantly the jury would be saying "it's the work that counts, and not the odd press conference remark."

Will De Niro, Thurman, Assayas, Law, To and their jury brethren do this? Of course not. They'd be too afraid that such a decision would be seen as a rebuke to the Cannes Film Festival's decision to excommunicate Von Trier, which of course it wouldn't be. It would be the ultimate non-political...Read More

I'm trying to get past having lost 90 minutes of worth of work due to a sudden wifi reboot by the hotel's server. Otherwise around 1 pm I'll be moving into a sixth-floor place on rue Gassendi in Montparnasse, where I stayed with Jett in '08. Followed by the much-awaited visit to the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Cinematheque Francais. And then, sometime this evening, a get-together with friends, including Santa Barbara Film Festival chief Roger Durling.

Saturday, 5.21, 11:05 am

Saturday, 5.21,...

Like me and almost everyone else, Indiewire's Anne Thompson is a big Drive fan, and has posted a very nicely framed YouTube chat with star Ryan Gosling. She's also included links to various thumbs-up reviews.

My favorite review excerpt is from Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek: "Drive [is] an unapologetically commercial picture that defies all the current trends in mainstream action filmmaking. The driving sequences are shot and edited with a surgeon's clarity and precision, [and] [director Nicholas Winding] Refn doesn't chop up the action to fool us into thinking it's more exciting than it is....Read More

Every Cannes Film Festival I've attended has been front-loaded and all but over after six or seven days. But this year's fest defied that pattern. One of my resultant regrets due to leaving after a mere nine days (ten and 1/2 including arrival and departure days) was missing Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, the latest from one of my favorite directors, Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

And I mean especially after reading Eric Kohn's Indiewire observation it "plays like Zodiac meets Police, Adjective...an analytical brain teaser rendered in patient and sharply philosophical terms.

"At two and...Read More

Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises: "Greetings from the Humungous! The Lord High of the Wasteland...the Ayatollah Rock 'n' Rolla!"

Lifted from a 5.21 post by Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet. The video is a no-go on my iPhone -- laptop viewing only, apparently.

An appealing shot, yes, of Drive's Ryan Gosling and director Nicholas Winding Rfen, but my strongest reaction was/is to Gosling's blue tuxedo. Tuxes shoudn't be gaily colored or frilly or foo-foo or anything but straight black and modestly cut...period. If Cary Grant had worn this kind of tux in To Catch A Thief the film might have bombed.

Ron Dicker is penning a new column for AOL/HuffPo about the financial intrigues of celebrities called The Price of Fame. A tough row, you might think, if his focus ever strays outside the realm of the highest-paid. One thing I've never heard from an actor at a press junket: "I did it because the writing wasn't too bad, but mainly because I needed to put a down payment for the construction of my home in Vancouver." Column suggestion: "The Straight-Paycheck Role: How Much Whoring Out is Too Much?"

In his review of Curtis Hanson's Too Big To Fail (HBO, debuting on Monday, 5.23), Media Life's Tom Conroy notes the "paradox of [how] good historical dramas can be engrossing and suspenseful even when we already know that, for example, Apollo 13 is going to land safely and Mark Zuckerberg is going to wind up running Facebook.

The docudrama "tells a story that might seem unfilmable -- the near collapse of the American economy in 2008," he...Read More

Has it really been 20 years since Michael Tolkin's The Rapture? It's some kind of thinking-man's horror flick (despite the Wiki page calling it "a psychological-religious drama"), and one of the most chilling and profoundly creepy films ever. I think of it now as a marvellous bitchslap directed at Godfreaks and the religious right. Bill Maher should have somehow referenced it in Religulous.

The Rapture weirded me out on a level that I didn't fully comprehend at first. So much so that I've only watched it twice. It's not what you'd call a...Read More

I didn't mention this in Thursday's Driver review, but I felt that Bryan Cranston's supporting performance as Ryan Gosling's mentor-employer is one of the few things in that film that doesn't quite work. His character basically runs at the mouth in the manner of a meth freak (ironic in lieu of Breaking Bad). The first thing that comes to mind when he starts motor-mouthing is "shut up already." On top of which Cranston manages to sound like a British or Irish actor trying to do an American accent...queer.

A year ago Constantin Film AG had the YouTube Hitler parodies removed from YouTube. Some believed it was just as well, that the string had played out. I more or less felt the same, I suppose, and wasn't even going to watch this. And then I did. When they're good, the Hitler YouTubes are one of the few things that can make LQTM types like myself laugh out loud.

I know. How can I compose that protest petition draft and then laugh at something that perpetuates a stupid media meme that was misrepresentational in the first...Read More

I claim crashing and flopping rights after ten days of the Cannes Film Festival. Baked, etc. Australian journalist Sam Cleveland, whom I've written and linked to a few times but have never met, has invited me to a party tomorrow night in southwestern
Paris. And then there's the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Cinematheque Francais (51 rue Bercy). And whatever else.

I'm scratching my head about Colin Farrell, who became reborn when he curtailed the boozing and began providing rich, indie-level character perfs (Cassandra's Dream, In Bruges, Pride and Glory, Crazy Heart, The Way Back), playing a vampire in a remake of a 1985 Tom Holland film. I don't know Craig Gillespie, director of the new version. Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse costar.

Not to mention playing one of three Horrilble Bosses (7.8). I guess this goes with being a character actor. I guess it's called expanding your range and upping your employability, etc....Read More

Those Cannes tweets about Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be The Place, the Sean Penn/aging goth-rocker/Nazi-hunting drama, are fairly negative. Now I see why my efforts to catch a possible early screening on the rue d'Antibes (which sometimes occur for buyers) didn't even get a reply.

"I thin they're keeping it under wraps," a buyer speculated two or three days ago. "Under
wraps?," I replied. "Then why screen it at Cannes at all?"

It's now 12:25 pm. I'm standing in front of my Paris pad at 11 rue Victor Cousin, waiting for Cedric-the-landlord who said he'd meet me at 11:30 am. I...Read More

After double-checking the SNCF train schedule pamphlet and then going the extra mile by revisiting the Cannes gare yesterday and re-confirming with an information-booth person, I had every reason to believe that I'd be able to take a 5:40 am train from Cannes to Nice. But of course, I couldn't and didn't. Because this particular train doesn't run on Fridays, I was told this morning. Thanks, SNCF staffers! So I had to take a cab to Nice Airport, and it set me back 80 euros.

Nice Airport departure lounge -- Friday, 5.20, 7:05 am.

...

Nichoias Winding Refn's Drive, which finished showing about 45 minutes ago, is the violent, Steve McQueen-ish, fast-car crime movie that guys like myself have been waiting for...almost. It's a genre flick and hardly high art, and the truth is that some of the elements are under-cooked. But the things it does right are wonderful, really wonderful. For me anyway.

It's Bullitt in the clothes of a curiously motivated stunt-car driver (a very stoic and charismatic Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a freelance getaway guy. And yes, it has that stripped-down '70s atmosphere in spades. And it delivers...Read More

From David Poland's HotBlog, posted earlier today: "I have to say, it makes me kind of sick to my stomach to think that Lars von Trier, stumbling over his own ideas about being Jewish and German, basically saying stuff that has been said by high school upperclassmen and college freshmen for decades, and having it all reduced down to 'I Heart Hitler!,' leading to Cannes' board meeting and saying that the filmmaker is now 'persona non grata.'

"Seriously?

"As inarticulate as his comments and the tortured path they rambled down were, he never said anything more generous to Hilter than, 'I think...Read More

Posted earlier today by Slant's Ari Arikan...enjoy.

I've only just gotten around to watching this Tintin teaser, which appeared yesterday. It isn't much -- teasers never are.. I could share my opinion but I have to bolt now for a screening. If anyone has a view -- an honest, non-invested view -- I'd love to hear it.

According to N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply, Arnold Schwarzenegger's next film, Cry Macho, in which he'll have his first starring role since setting aside his Hollywood career to become California's Governor, contains echoes of his current Mexican maid paternity scandal.

Boiled down, Cieply states, Schwarzenegger's character will portray a man "working out a complicated relationship with an 11-year-old who unexpectedly turned up in his life," and who "falls in love with a Mexican woman."

Cry Macho "was written as a novel decades ago by the playwright N. Richard Nash, who died in December 2000 at 87,"...Read More

No journalist has tried to organize a Lars Von Trier Cannes-banning protest petition so I guess I'll have to do it, dammit. Or at least I can propose the wording of the statement:

Date: Thursday, 5.19.11
To: Cannes Film Festival Board of Directors
From: Cannes-attending Journalists & Filmmakers
Subject: Decision to Declare Lars Von Trier "Persona Non Grata" In Wake of Inflammatory Statements at 5.18.11 Press Conference

We, the undersigned, recognize the the Board's responsibility to respond forcefully and unequivocally to the offensive statements made on Wednesday, 5.18, by Melancholia director Lars von Trier. You are a political body...Read More

I'm naturally presuming that James Cameron's 3D re-do of Titanic, which will hit theatres in April 2012, will look significantly better than all those cheapo conversions we've been seeing in theatres for the last couple of years. Ask which ones were the worst and everyone defaults to Clash of the Titans, but what were the other lamentables? 2D conversions are a tacky idea to begin with, so this will have to done exactly right. If Cameron can't deliver, no one can.

You know what I'd like to see converted into 3D with the same needlepoint care? George...Read More

Even in the backwash of The Skin That I Live In and Lars Von Trier's banning by the Cannes Film Festival, I'm drawn to a banal observation. When I was a kid my mom would hang the family wash on an outdoor clothesline, and the super-crisp way this made my jeans and T-shirts feel was pure pleasure. Two days ago, after not knowing this wondrous sensation for decades, I re-experienced it after hanging my wash off the patio of my Old Town Cannes abode. Delightful.

The Cannes Film Festival Board of Directors has just issued a statement that not only condemns Melancholia director Lars von Trier for his put-on "I'm a Nazi" comment at yesterday's press conference, but declares that he's officially been shunned.

"The Festival de Cannes provides artists from around the world with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation," the statement reads. "The Festival's Board of Directors, which held an extraordinary meeting this Thursday, 19 May 2011, profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and...Read More

At this morning's The Skin That I Live In press conference, Pedro Almodovar explained that his creepy comic melodrama is a result of his being "in a thriller mode." He's also called it "a horror story without screams or frights." Well, okay, but I wouldn't go to this film expecting to be thrilled or scared. It's more of a wicked-camp thing. More than a few times the crowd I saw it with erupted in giddy chuckles. And yet Skin, after a fashion, is played more-or-less straight. Always the best way to go with a wink-winker.

Elena Anaya, Antonio...

An engaging sum-up of the last two or three days at the Cannes Film Festival from L.A. Weekly critic Karina Longworth and Indiewire critic Eric Kohn, moderated by Film Society of Lincoln Center's Eugene Hernandez.

FilmLinc: Karina Longworth and Eric Kohn Talk About Cannes by FilmLinc

One final full day left before packing it in and flying to Paris. Up at 6:30 am, Pedro Almodovar's The Skin That I Live In at 8:30 am, the Pedro press conference at 11 am, writing time, Hogn Sangsoo's The Day He Arrives at 2pm, more writing time, back home to pack and write, Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive at 7:30 pm and then final composing and clean-up. It's 12:15 am right now.

A couple of hours ago Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn described his film, which costars Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, as a "kind of fantasy" thing that was partly inspired, he said, by the vibe of driving around and listening to great music on the car stereo. He also said that in one sense it's "almost a John Hughes film."

That scared the hell out of me. My initial impression had been that Drive is a lean '70s flick in the vein of Michael Mann's Thief featuring a quiet hero in the mold of Steve McQueen,...Read More

During an American Pavillion q & a this afternoon, I asked Melancholia costar Stellan Skarsgard if anything that indefatigable game-player Lars von Trier said during this morning's press conference was sincere. Skarsgard said VonTrier was sincere when he said his next film would be a porno, although most likely not with Kirsten Dunst (as the director had playfully implied).

Melanchola costar Stellan Skarsgard at American Pavilion -- Wednesday, 5.18, 4:15 pm.

Meanwhile, Sony Classics has announced its North American territory acquisition of Lars von Trier and Martin Scorsese's The Five Obstructions: Trier vs. Scorsese. The collaboration doc, modelled...Read More

I tried to see Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre, one of the biggest festival favorites so far and a possible Palme d'Or winner, at a noontime Salle de Soixentieme showing. I didn't make it in so that's that. I'll see it when I see it.

A taxi from Cannes to Nice airport costs a fortune -- 70 or 80 euros, or over $100 bills. And there's something in me that just seethes at this. So my plan on Friday morning is to get up at 4:30 am and catch a 5:40 am train that will get me into "Nice Ville" (i.e., the main "gare") by 6:20 am. That gives me a comfortable 40 minutes to find a cab and get down to Nice airport by 7 am. My plane for Paris leaves at 8:05 am.

"For a long time I thought I was a Jew and I was happy to be a Jew," Melancholia director Lars von Trier said this morning, "then I met (In A Better World director) Susanne Bier and I wasn't so happy. But then I found out I was actually a Nazi. My family were German. And that also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler...I sympathize with him a bit."

(l. to r.) Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Lars Von Trier, Kirsten Dunst at this morning's Melancholia press conference.

"I don't mean...Read More

So Ed Harris is going to be a convincing John McCain in Jay Roach's Game Change, an adaptation of John Heileman and Mark Halperin's book which began filming last month. But am I to presume that the characters of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will not be appearing in the film? No actors have been announced as playing these two in press stories.

Is it okay if I say that no-Barack-or-Hillary strikes me as totally whacked? How do you do this film with actors playing McCain and Sarah Palin (i.e., Julianne Moore) and no one playing...Read More

Lars von Trier's Melancholia is a morose, meditative in-and-outer that begins stunningly if not ecstatically and concludes...well, as you might expect a film about the end of the world to wrap itself up. Von Trier's ensemble piece "isn't about the end of the world but a state of mind," he said during this morning's press conference. My thinking exactly.

But Melancholia is a much more striking thing for where it starts and what it attempts than how it plays.

And yet I believe it's the best...make that the gloomiest, most ambitious and craziest film Kirsten...Read More

The social engineers who arranged the Big Fix after-party at the Schweppes beach bar opposite the Carlton apparently figured it would take guests 45 minutes to walk from the Salle de Soixentieme screening to the after-party. Except it took EW's Dave Karger and myself about 12 or 13 minutes, taking our time; we arrived there at 10:20 pm. Despite this the Big Fix people told their goons not to let anyone in until 11 pm. Charming!

Team Big Fix deserves a firm slap across the chops. "Please come to our party...and we're sure you won't mind having to...Read More

Embed coding boldly copied from Brad Brevet's Rope of Silicon.

If you thought the prospects for a relatively stable, healthy society were doomed after seeing An Inconvenient Truth and then extra-double-doomed after seeing Collapse, Josh and Rebecca Tickell's The Big Fix is the whipped cream and the cherry on top. It'll make you feel triple-screwed, deflated, poisoned, abused, tattooed and up shit creek.

And it's all perfectly true. I've heard and read every last soothsaying, doom-predicting word it delivers in articles, books and yaddah-yaddah, and it's all on the money.

The Big Fix begins as an earnest but mild-mannered doc about the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon...Read More

A journalist friend with some inside knowledge of the character of this Cannes jury says the following: (a) chairman Robert De Niro is not the most knowledgable guy in the room; (b) DeNiro is also a comme ci comme ca type who's not likely to try to lobby for personal choices or views, (c) Chopsocky director Johnnie To has a somewhat myopic, know-nothing view of other films or filmmakers -- he pretty much lives in his own realm; (d) the hippest and most knowledgable jury members are Linn Ullmann (journalist daughter of Liv Ullmann) and director Olivier Assayas (Carlos).

Cannes...

In a Tree of Life review that he had the luxury of building and refining over a few days, having seen it last week in Los Angeles, Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy says that Terrence Malick's film "is hardly a movie for the masses and will polarize even buffs, some of whom might fail to grasp the connection between the depiction of the beginnings of life on Earth and the travails of a 1950s Texas family.

"But there are great, heady things here, both obvious and evanescent, more than enough to qualify this as an exceptional and major film. Critical...Read More

I heard from a trusted source yesterday that Sean Penn's part in The Tree of Life, which is barely there with maybe ten lines of dialogue, if that, was fairly substantial in earlier cuts, but like Adrien Brody's character in The Thin Red Line, it was gradually cut down to nothing. Penn is here but didn't attend the Tree of Life press conference because...ask him.

"You betrayed me over a decade ago with the maid? Okay, that's it...marriage over!" I get it, of course, but at the same time...c'mon. It's been an industry legend for a long time that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a hound. The odd part is that he reportedly told Maria Shriver only after leaving the governor's office, or more than a decade after the housekeeper affair happened. I presume he didn't offer this information -- what sane person would? -- but was busted.

Every year I try to do my best in covering the Cannes Film Festival. I think I do an above-average job. But what I really excel at is missing the debut showing of at least one stand-out film. Each and every year about halfway through the festival I fail to make an 8:30 am screening that turns out to be exceptional. This year, apparently, that film is Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre.

"The Artist is no longer the best crowd-pleaser in competition at Cannes," Indiewire's Eric Kohn tweeted a while ago. "That honor goes to Kaurismaki's sweet...Read More

A 5.12 Badass Digest piece by Moises Chiullan complained that the forthcoming, all-bells-and-whistles Citizen Kane Bluray package includes only a DVD of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons ('42) and not a Bluray. A high-def Ambersons would be welcome, of course, but I've never gotten the fervor so I'm not all that put out.

I've twice seen the general-release, famously-truncated version of The Magnificent Ambersons -- Welles original 135-minute cut is gone forever -- and the second time was a bit difficult to get through...sorry. Everyone loves the production design and the first 20 to...Read More

All my filmgoing life I've had a special regard for Sophia Loren's bedroom striptease scene in Vittorio DeSica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow ('63). Or stills from this, rather. And then two or three years ago I saw the film for the first time. And I learned that sometimes frame captures should be valued for their own merits. YT&T, which costars Marcello Mastroianni, comes out soon on Bluray.

By declaring an instinctual resistance to including made-for-cable movies into the Oscar realm, a genuinely good and brave idea passed along by director-screenwriter Paul Schrader, I regret to say that Roger Ebert has painted himself into a nostalgic 20th Century corner.

"Why not?," he says in a 5.15 Newsweek/Daily Beast article. "It's tempting, Paul. I could relax before my big eight-foot home-theater screen, and the work would come to me. The problem is, that goes against my grain. A movie is shown in a movie theater, and I like to sit there and see it. That's how it's supposed to be....Read More

The sound of Tintin alone grinds into my soul. A young adventurer character with a small dog is a problem right out of the gate. Steven Speilberg directing, as always, is a problem. The hand of Peter Jackson being anywhere near this thing only compounds the problem. Jamie Bell as Tintin is a nonstarter. The impossibly hammy Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock is an all-but-guaranteed problem.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as "bumbling detectives named Thomson and Thompson" obviously reps a huge problem. Plus another appearance by Daniel Craig, who may be on the verge of...Read More

Terra Nova is clearly a second-tier, hand-me-down bullshit adventure fantasy casserole using elements from Avatar, Jurassic Park and Lost. The authoritative drill-sergeant tone used by Stephen Lang as he says "Welcome to Terra Nova, folks!" has a familiar ring.

And exec produced by Stephen Spielberg? I've explained this before but here goes again: You can't direct Tintin and exec produce Terra Nova and be that kind of guy (you know what I mean) and expect to make the right kind of film about Abraham Lincoln.

I'll be leaving for Paris at dawn on Friday morning, so there's today, Wednesday and Thursday. And there's no bus leaving early enough, I've just discovered, to get me to Nice airport by 7 am. Plus I'm having some trouble -- an internal debate -- about the drive and desire to see Aki Kurasmaki's Le Havre.

Carlton beach pier.

L.A. Weekly critic Karina Longworth, Brigade publicist Emily Lu at today's N.Y. Film Festival party at Stella Artois/Carlton beach.

Lincoln Center Film Society...

Sasha Stone and I recorded Oscar Poker #33 yesterday at the Hotel Aldo in Juan les Pains. It was pre-Tree of Life, of course, but otherwise we covered most of the Cannes Film Festival bases. Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

Tree of Life star Brad Pitt is quite thoughtful and considerate when it comes to signing autographs. The last time I saw him at the Cannes Film Festival was in '07, when he was here with the Ocean's 13 gang. Like today, he signed in the Salon de Presse Conference and then lingered in the lobby doing the same for those who couldn't get into the q & a. Doesn't hesitate; always signs.

I was standing in the right-rear section of the orchestra when The Tree of Life ended and didn't even hear the booing, which reportedly came from the upper balcony. In any event I think it's beastly to boo a film as hauntingly beautiful and immensely ambitious and spiritually directed as this one, and which is so dazzling and transporting during its first half-hour to 40 minutes.

I understand the frustration, mind, because The Tree of Life does lose itself in its own impressionistic quicksand after the first half-hour. It begins to drown, sink, swallow itself. The center...Read More

Tip of the hat to Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta for posting this work-priint version of an alternate ending to Alexander Payne's Election, etc. Horrible!

If Terrence Malick could somehow swing it, I'm sure, The Tree of Life wouldn't be about to screen in 70 minutes' time. (It's now 7:20 am.) However good or great or whatever it turns out to be, there's a certain satisfaction in one of the most prolonged hiding-from-the-world acts in modern cinematic history about to come to an end. I briefly discussed it last night with a friend. Friend: "So how sucky is the Malick going to be, do you think?" Me: "It might not be what some want, but it can't suck -- it's Malick."

Earlier today I tried to catch a 5:15 pm screening The Snows of Kilimanjaro at the Salle Bazin. This is what I saw when I arrived 15 minutes before showtime. I went to the end of the line and stood and waited and stood and waited. I knew I'd never get a seat but I toughed it out to the end. And then I said "eff it" and got on the train to Juan-les-Pains.

Late this afternoon I took a quick ride between Cannes and Juan-les-Pains, except the train decided not to stop at Juan-les-Pains and dropped me off at Antibes instead. So I impulsively asked Sasha Stone and her daughter Emma to join me there, and we had a pretty good time detoxing and sipping rose and roaming around the marina area and contemplating the Picasso museum exterior.

Any and all theories about why Paul Feig and Judd Apatow's Bridesmaids exceeded expectations this weekend to earn an impressive $24.4 million are hereby requested. The expectations were between the low teens and $16 or $17 million. So what happened? Was Saturday Night Live's" Kristen Wiig the big selling point? The girlie poo-poo humor? Or what? And what were the gender and age breakdowns?

The film's B-plus from Cinemascore is a result of it not being a start-to-finish laugh riot so it'll probably drop at least 40% next weekend, but still...

Here's an excellent analysis of John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. Spoiler whiners are hereby advised that Scott reveals the third-act secret in this 49 year-old film.

Have you read my review, Cedric? I put the word "minor" in the headline. Lord...please don't let me be ignored.

Two days ago Deadline's Michael Fleming reported that Ryan Gosling will star in and direct a remake of Taylor Hackford's The Idolmaker ('80). Gosling will be playing Ray Sharkey's role, I presume, which was based on rock-music promoter and manager Bob Marcucci.

The first two-thirds of The Idolmaker are brilliant. It's probably my favorite Hackford film, closely followed by Against All Odds. Marcucci discovered and managed Frankie Avalon and Fabian, among others.

Michel Hazanavicius' much-anticipated The Artist, which just finished showing in the Grand Lumiere, is a winning "success," and at the same time a half-and-halfer -- a film that delivers beautifully but also leaves you wanting in certain ways. It's a black-and-white silent drama with dashes of humor (i.e., I wouldn't call it a dramedy) that's first and foremost a tribute to the lore and sheen of 1920s Hollywood. And that much is fine.

If you're any kind of film buff it'll work for you and then some, but I'm not so sure about the under-45 set. Monochrome...Read More

Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid With The Bike, which I saw early Saturday evening, is being reflexively praised here and there because (a) it's a low-key but entirely competent teenaged kid-desperate-for-paternal-support film, but (b) mainly because the Dardennes are highly respected big wheels within the Cannes journalistic community.

If The Kid With The Bike had been made by an unknown younger director and shown under Un Certain Regard or Semaine des Critiques, positive reviews would result -- it's an honest, well-made film -- but it wouldn't cause much of a stir.

Believe me, The...Read More

There isn't much time with the Dardennes brothers' The Kid With The Bike starting at 7:30 (i.e., 85 minutes from now) but the absolute best film I've seen at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival is a somewhat chilly, jewel-precise study of an Austrian child molester. Markus Schleinzer's Michael (pronounced "miKAYel") isn't "pleasant" to watch, but it's briliiant -- emotionally suppressed in a correct way that blends with the protagonist, aesthetically disciplined and close to spellbinding.

Because the titular character, a 30something office worker (Michael Fuith) is an absolute fiend and because the film acquaints the audience...Read More

Approaching the Debussy theatre, the second largest within the Grand Palais, along rue Jean de Riouffe. I stumbled over something or someone at the very end. There's a nice little cafe on this street that I pass by every morning; I'll sometimes stop in from a quick cappucino before an 8:30 screening.

I've been feeling completely adjusted to European time, so I was surprised a few minutes ago to find myself suddenly waking from a nap while sitting on the outdoor balcony of the Grand Palais. Okay, I was slumping but more or less in an upright position in a chair with my Macbook Pro and camera in my lap, and my open black tote bag at my feet. (I'm not presuming that any journalist would take advantage but you never know.) It's a very strange feeling to wake up from a dream in the sunlight, sitting, dressed, surrounded by others..."what?"

I hate frivolity. I despise escapist "fun." I loathe corporate-supplied nothingness. And I abhor CG movies in which anything can and does happen and no rules apply and people fly through the air like winged squirrels and everything is meaningless eye syrup. I agree somewhat that Rob Marshall's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which I caught this morning, is a little more like the first one and therefore more tolerable, etc. But I mostly hated the first one, you see.

Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz

So how did I get through the damn thing (i.e., all two...Read More

Do I have the character and resolve to "just say no" to this morning's 8:30 am screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides? Which a critic friend told me is "awful"? I'd like to think I have the character to shine it, but I guess I don't. But journalists were talking about sleeping in on Saturday morning last Tuesday night. The damn thing runs 2 hours and 17 minutes. Bottom line: if I can get my hate on, it'll probably make for a half-decent piece.

The Paul Bowles version of what I was trying to...Read More

One of two clips captured of Weinstein Co.'s Harvey Weinstein at this evening's Martinez Hotel product reel & mike-time presentation. Black-and-white silent footage from the highly-anticipated The Artist was shown. Sarah Jessica Parker introduced a five-minute reel for I Don't Know How She Does It. The Wu Xia gang showed up and took a bow. But there was no Iron Lady footage!

After it ended I retired to the Martinez Hotel bar/lounge to upload videos and photos. This is definitely one of the Hot Babe meccas. They stride through the lobby in groups of twos, threes...Read More

Let's have a little understanding and...well, I was going to say "compassion" for Osama bin Laden's penchant for porn. Even mass murderers have libidinal longings, etc. Day in and day out at that grungy Pakistan compound...you can imagine the frustration. Sexual hunger has always been a great leveller, and now -- hallelujah! -- the Great Dead Fiend has been revealed on a certain level as just another middle-aged bearded guy with a bone-on.

But which porn stars did he like exactly? Or what types? Western blondes, down-home Southern girsl in cutoffs, veiled Muslim wives? To think that Osama bin Laden and...Read More

The legend is that the prolonged stress of shooting John Huston's The Misfits ('61), and particularly the delays caused by the relentlessly insecure and drug-dependent Marilyn Monroe, basically killed Clark Gable. The 60-year old Gable suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended and died ten days later. But he also smoked like a crazy man and reportedly drank a lot.

The Misfits was also the last completed film for Monroe. She was dead of a barbituate overdose 18 months after it opened in February '61. The Wiki page says just about everyone involved disliked The...Read More

Nanni Moretti's Habemus Papam, which screened this morning at 8:30 am, is about a newly-chosen Pope (Michel Piccoli) feeling overwhelmed and depressed and unable to pick up the sceptre. The tone is basically one of dry, highly restrained farce. Moretti told a journalist earlier this year that it "contains a painful core but [is] wrapped in a light tone." That about says it. It's simultaneously gentle and whimsical and melancholy, and a bit silly.

I suppose Habemus Papam will be seen in some Roman Catholic circles as a impudent tweaking of the lore of Vatican City,...Read More

Variety's Dave McNary is reporting that the Weinstein Co. has acquired U.S. distribution rights to The Iron Lady, the Margaret Thatcher biopic directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Meryl Streep. The intention is to release it later this year and -- count on it -- mount a front-and-center Best Actress campaign for Streep.

The main Lady issue concerns the one-two combo of director Lloyd, whose handling of Mamma Mia! makes her seem an unlikely provider of a presumably solemn-minded drama about Thatcher's tough times at 10 Downing Street, and Iron
Lady rewriter Abi Morgan, whose description of herself as...Read More

Keith Allen's Unlawful Killing, an examination of the death of the former Princess Diana in Paris on 8.31.97, showed to Cannes press (myself included) at the Olympia plex at noon today.

Style-wise it's a slick, tabloid-level doc -- one of those the hit-and-run, flash-and-dash TV reports that use reenactments (as this one does). And content-wise it's all sizzle and no steak. Allen's film doesn't begin to prove a cover-up by the royal-favoring British establishment over the death of Princess Diana. It asks interesting questions here and there and raises suspicions, but this sort of...Read More

Leave it to George Lucas -- as deaf, dumb and blind as ever -- to revive memories of the despised The Phantom Menace and particularly Jake Lloyd -- giver of arguably the most reprehensible child performance in the history of movies -- with the box-set cover of the forthcoming complete Star Wars saga on Bluray. If I were Lucas I would do everything I could to squelch memories of this film, and in fact all the prequels. I would ballyhoo Parts IV through VI and hope that the public might be willing to forgive, etc.

The just-out Some Like It Hot Bluray "is an absolute pleasure to watch in high definition," declares a nameless Blu-ray.com writer. "There's little brightness flickering, no major print damage, and -- here's the biggest relief -- no hints of excess noise reduction or edge enhancement. The film's grain structure is intact, and the image looks entirely natural, free from any after-the-fact boosting or tweaking. Cloth and skin textures look more finely resolved and there's a greater degree of detail all around."

For me, Henry Hooper -- the 19 year-old son of the late Dennis Hopper -- was the big takeaway from last night's screening of Gus Van Sant's Restless. Yes, the movie is somewhat precious and Harold and Maude-like, but I got an unmistakable sense that Hopper has more in his quiver than what the material has asked of him. Partly because Restless is a bit too gentle and alpha for its own good, but also because Hopper seems to be holding back for some reason. Which, to me, feels interesting.

Restless star Henry Hopper and professional colleague --...

Certain female critics and bloggers (including Stephanie Zacharek) have either dissed or gone "meh" on Bridesmaids, to which I can only respond "what?" (Here's my 5.3 review.) But thank God for balance and general perception's sake that N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has come down positive. Because this movie strikes new ground with wit, courage and flair. And okay, with a sprinkling of grossitude.

"It would be easy to oversell Bridesmaids," she writes, "though probably easier if also foolish to do the reverse. It isn't a radical movie (even if Melissa McCarthy's character comes close); it's formally unadventurous; and...Read More

Gus Van Sant's Restless screens at 7:45 pm (i.e., 45 minutes from now) and then, just for fun, I'll be catching a 10 pm screening of Jerry Schatzberg's Puzzle of a Downfall Child. Well, not too much "fun", I suppose. I have murky memories of a rep house viewing sometime during the '80s and particularly Faye Dunaway's character suffering much angst and disorientation; I also remember Schatzberg's schizoid cutting style.

Since I post these exact same photos each and every year, I thought I'd get them out of the way during my break. An hour on the bed and then two films back-to-back -- Polisse and then Gus Van Sant's Restless. I just talked to a journalist who'd seen the GVS. Me: "So whadja think?" Journalist: "I don't want to get in the way of your viewing. You should just see it clean." Translation: It's a problem.

Thursday, 5.12, 1:45 pm.

Thursday, 5.12, 2:05 pm

Judd Apatow to Karina Longworth, posted yesterday: "I love your new head shot. You are officially cast in Bridesmaids 2. We needed a sour girl."

Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin is a beautifully painted, radiantly colored, anti-verbal horror film about a sociopathic monster -- Ezra Miller's Kevin -- and how his hatefulness and alien-ness has...well, not much but something to do with his mother (Tilda Swinton ) and father (John C. Reilly), but mainly his mom, who's bothered by certain proverbial undercurrents but nothing too off-the-charts.

(l. to r.) Ezra Miller, Lynne Ramsay, Tilda Swinton during this morning's press conference for We Need To Talk About Kevin

(l. to r.) Moderator Annette Insdorf, John C....

A guy I know caught a research screening of Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs remake the night before last at the Rave Cinemas (Howard Hughes center) and forwarded a highly positive review save for one complaint that seems premature because there's time to do some finessing, etc.. Where's the online trailer that was supposed to be up today?

Kate Bosworth, James Marsden.

"Firstly, Lurie has assembled a dynamite cast: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods and even Walton Goggins (who is absolute nitro-glycerin in FX's Justified) has a small role. The fact that Lurie was able to attract...Read More

Nobody has been slower to post the Horrible Bosses trailer. I have many good excuses -- well, one big one -- but I'm definitely the caboose.

Earlier today Matt Zoller Seitz posted Part 2 of a Terrence Malick appreciation piece, focusing solely on Days of Heaven and in tribute to the imminent appearance of The Tree of Life.

Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty, which just finished showing at the Debussy, is a highly refined, carefully poised erotic mood piece with oodles and oodles of milky nudity. It's definitely a LexG movie, and I'll tell you right now I'm kinda sorry I just wrote that. I only know that all through it I was saying, "This thing is candy for guys like LexG...a bag of Halloween candy. But that's not what you're supposed to think."

Emily Browning's Lucy is a student who does this and that to make ends meet -- high-end prostitution mostly, but she...Read More

There's no fair-minded way to put down Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which I'm calling a relatively minor piece that works very well by way of charm and humor. The key phrase, of course, is "works very well." When a film does this then words like "minor" or "trifle" go out the window because a film that knows what it's doing is by definition substantial and not minor. It may not be the startling world-class masterpiece you're looking to see, okay, but a success is a success.

You can complain like Indiewire's Eric Kohn, but you'll...Read More

The advance buzz was correct: Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris is a goodie. I don't think it's possible to discuss it without using the terms "thinking man's fantasy film" or "time-trip movie" or "a down-the-rabbit-hole excursion" so I'll just say it's his most charming and engaging film in this vein since The Purple Rose of Cairo...how's that? And certainly his overall best since Match Point.

On one level it's almost a trifle except that it's thoughtful and reality-based (whatever that term may be worth in this context) and very funny...although in a way that requires the viewer to be at least glancingly...Read More

In this odd sliver clip from Alexander Payne's The Descendants (Fox Searchlight, 12.16), George Clooney's Matt King character doesn't run like a guy who runs in the morning for exercise, but like an ostrich. Plus Clooney is back to his Good German weight. Plus the ukelele on the soundtrack. All in the details.

The LA-NY film journo gang got together last night at La Pizza and traded the usual high-spirited patter & chatter & razmatazz. Spirits were raised about Woody Allen 's Midnight in Paris and lowered somewhat about Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be The Place due to its being slated to screen on Friday, 5.20 -- a dead-last slot that sometimes indicates that the Cannes programmers had somewhat mixed feelings about it when they planned the schedule. But maybe not.

Indiewire's Anne Thompson, Brian Brooks, Dana Harris during last night's dinner.

The revellers included Indiewire's Anne Thompson, Eric Kohn, Dana Harris,...Read More

For nearly my entire life I've been on extremely familiar terms with John Robie's (i.e., Cary Grant's) mountaintop home in To Catch A Thief. Yesterday Sasha Stone and her daughter Emma and I actually visited the place. It's located on the main road leading up to the medieval village of Saint Jeannet, and it's absolutely dead real -- relatively unchanged from when Alfred Hitchcock shot his classic 1955 film -- with only the addition of a driveway gate and a tall thick hedge in front.

Villa Robie - Tuesday, 5.10, 3:35 pm.

...

Michael Cieply visiting the Louisiana shoot of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has produced the funniest N.Y. Times headline for a movie-location story in years. And the funniest quite in the story is from Russian-based director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted), whose animalistic sensibilities are an industry legend: "What Lincoln did was like what Jesus did 2,000 years ago -- he freed people."

It's 6:15 am and I've been up for nearly four hours, unable to feel even a little bit sleepy. I crashed around midnight after a very long day and after four or five glasses of wine at the La Pizza gathering, and I awoke less than three hours later. I know how this works. The blueish early-morning light is starting to give way to straight sunlight and the seagulls are swooping around and cawing -- that and the distant buzz-saw roar of scooters makes for a curiously soothing dawn symphony.

The festival's first screening -- Woody Allen's...Read More

By my usual cheapo standards, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday and I are paying a lot of dough -- 1600 euros, or roughly 160 euros or $224 US per day -- to stay in our pad at 7 rue Jean Mero. Okay, I guess $112 US per day each isn't so bad. On the other hand it's indisputably the most attractive place I've ever rented during the Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes apartment 2011 from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

The building was apparently constructed sometime in the mid 1800s. White plaster walls, overhead beams, cute shuttered...Read More

During last January's Sundance Film Festival, I wrote that Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood's's Magic Trip (Magnolia, VOD 7.1, theatrical 8.5) "offers fascinating color footage of the original 1964 coast-to-coast bus trip of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and tells the legendary story more or less completely with two glaring exceptions.

"One, there's no mention whatsoever of Tom Wolfe or his book that almost single-handedly sculpted the Kesey/magic bus legend, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." And two, there's only one mention of the word 'enlightenment' in the whole film and no down-deep discussion at...Read More

My Air France flight landed at Paris Charles DeGaulle airport at 5:55 am. I couldn't bring myself to take Ambien for fear of a black-dog hangover, and so I bagged about 90 minutes' sleep, if that. The flight to Nice is just about to leave. I'm tapping this out on the iPhone from seat #22D.

I can't embed links but Pirates of the Caribbean received its first bad review from the Guardian. Arnold and Maria Schwarzenegger are separating. Rod Lurie is directing a hostage thriller. Hitfix's Drew McWeeny is on my Nice flight and in fact sitting one row in front of me....

My Air France flight to Paris leaves four and a half hours from now so it's time for re-packing and hitting the bank and last-minute whatevers before taking the A train out to JFK. Thanks very much, Air France, for not offering on-board wifi. (If shlubby-shleppy Delta can offer it, why not they?) As far as I understand they don't even offer AC plug-ins for computers and phones...nice. I might manage a couple of final posts from the airport lounge before the plane leaves, but then again maybe not.

Flight #23 will arrive in Paris at midnight New...Read More

After reading Jonathan Alter's Vanity Fair profile of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ("Woman of the World," June issue), I've decided that it's time to completely bury my Hillary-hating attitude from the '08 primary campaign and to support her for President in 2016, when she'll only be 68. It's way past time for a female chief exec, and there's no one tougher or more experienced than she.

I was talking yesterday with Jett about creating a Hollywood Elsewhere iPad2 app. "Forget it -- it's not necessary and you can't afford it," he said. But a voice is telling me I can't stand still and that I have to move into the iPad2 realm. "The site is fine as it is," he replied. "The site is totally fine. It has a voice and a niche. You don't need to do this."

But with a larger iPad format I could introduce a permanent link to all the Oscar Poker podcasts with fast links to each one. "Okay," he said. "I like the...Read More

Fox Home Video's Bluray of Robert Rossen's The Hustler, an absolute essential, streets on May 17th. Monochrome Scope (2.39 to 1) is the format for me so I don't have a choice in the matter. I won't have a chance to see it until I return from France at month's end (hello, James Finn!) but here's a just-posted DVD Beaver review.

I'm saying right now that I'm not especially looking forward to Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid With The Bike, which is playing in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. For one thing I don't like movies about red-haired kids with high-pitched voices who wear red T-shirts. I don't much care for movies about kids, period. I once had a place in my heart for this kind of thing but no longer. Especially with kids like this in the lead. I'm just being honest.

I have news for all young kids dealing with absent or abusive...Read More

A few weeks ago I wrote the great Albert Brooks and offered to do what I could to heighten awareness of his new book, "2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America." I suppose if I'd really wanted to help I would have written the St. Martin's Press publicist and gone from there, right? Except book publicists are sketchy people these days with the book industry in decline, and it seemed somehow simpler to write Brooks because we've spoken a couple of times and he knows the column, etc.

Brooks completely ignored me. I might as...Read More

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the one 70mm film I've never seen on DVD or in a theatre. Reason #1: I've never cared. Reason #2: Any film starring Dick Van Dyke is verboten on general principle. When and if the original car sells for $2 million, the buyer will be a rich Arab in his 50s or 60s.

On May 1st the New York Post's Ann Karni reported that the Freedom Tower (i.e., the main tower at 1 World Trade Center) "has reached 64 stories and is growing by a story a week." So it's now at 65 stories, I gather, since today is May 8th. Karni wrote that the Ground Zero skyscraper is now visible "from the New Jersey Turnpike, the West Side Highway, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry."

Freeedom Tower is the building to the right of the taller, squared-off one, and behind the one in front. Pic taken on...

On 8.30.10 CBS News reported that a poll showed that a clear majority of respondents felt that Mel Gibson's character issues were not a significant factor in determining their interest (or lack of) in seeing a film in which he stars.

But why exactly? The love...okay, the like for this thing was more than...Read More

I think we all understand that Bad Santa was at best a minor influence upon the making of Bad Teacher (Sony, 6.24). I think it happened mainly due to innumerable reports of sexual indiscretion on the part of God-knows-how-many-TILFS-and-MILFs in high schools over the past few years. Fate dealt me a bad hand, I feel, by not arranging for one of these women to teach one of my seventh, eighth or ninth-grade classes, and that's probably the main reason why I want to see this Cameron Diaz comedy.

Not to sound a disrespectful note but on a certain level this trailer for Michael Winterbottom's The Trip (IFC Films, theatres 6.10, On Demand 6.22) is a greater achievement than the film itself, which is mildly funny and actually rather good in a steady and confident and unforced way. But the trailer is funnier...sorry.

Rob Brydon's Woody Allen is perfect save for the fact he doesn't sound like him. "I want a room with a view...I want to see a tree."

An HE reader is looking for copies of Memphis (Paul Greengrass's draft), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lord of Salem, Triple Frontier, Rock of Ages, Dark Shadows, Aryan Papers, Wartime Lies, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (Scott Burns), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Lincoln (Tony Kushner draft only), The Talking Cure (a.k.a A Dangerous Method), Ant-Man (Edgar Wright) and War Horse. So am I. Anyone?

This guy has copies-to-trade of Cogan's Trade, Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg), Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson), Silence (Jay Cocks/Scorsese), The Last Photograph, Moneyball (latest draft by Zaillian and Sorkin), Drive, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Irishman (Steven Zaillian/Scorsese),...Read More

I had a Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders/"My City Was Gone" moment last night when I caught a ghastly, bad-LSD-trip performance of Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy at the "renovated" Westport Country Playhouse. The awfulness of the play induced only brief nausea spasms and isn't worth ripping into at length, but the destruction and erasure of the old Playhouse is permanent and sickening -- an act of high aesthetic criminality.

The "real" Playhouse began as a tanning factory in the early 1800s. It was transformed into a community theatre in 1930 or '31. When I first knew it in...Read More

Indiewire's Peter Knegt has reported that Jodie Foster's The Beaver "opened in 22 theaters across North America Friday night to dismal box office returns. A kind of half-dramedy, half downer-with-a-touchy-feely-undercurrent piece (i.e., Mel Gibson as a clinically depressed toy company CEO who finds solace through a beaver hand puppet), the film grossed an estimated $30,000 on its first night of release, averaging just $1,364. That should amount to roughly $100,000 over the weekend for distributor Summit Entertainment, with an average of $4,500."

"Somali pirates, Gaddafi's son, now bin Laden -- do NOT fuck with Obama, he's gangsta!" -- Bill Maher about four days ago.

Michael Corleone: "My father's no different than any other powerful man. Any man who's responsible for other people, like a Senator or a President." Kay: "Michael, do you know how naive you sound?" Michael: "Why?" Kay: "Senators and Presidents don't have men killed."

It's just been announced that Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, currently facing a sentence of six years in prison and a 20-year employment ban because their work offended the Tehran mullahs, are coming to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival with two politically-charged autobiographical films. Update: The festival press release stated the above by any rational understanding of the English language, but others have deduced that festival staffers didn't mean to suggest that Panahi and Rasoulof would physically attend the festival.

Rasoulof's Goodbye, which will screen on Friday, 5.13 as an official Un Certain Regard selection, is about "a young lawyer...Read More

I've watched this Ed Schultz "Lean Forward" MSNBC spot six or seven times now. How it is, all right. Who could/would dispute? The basic truth is that the right supports the economic disparity and corporate favoritism in the name of free-market, laissez-faire determinism. Insane.

Last night Jett and I caught the Ben Stiller-Edie Falco-Jennifer Jason Leigh B'way revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves. Okay, I was a bit wary after N.Y. Times critic Ben Brantley roughed it up. Brantley was being a bit of a piss-head, it turns out. Call me an easy lay (I'd never seen Guare's play until last night) but I was pleased, aroused...no beefs. The performances (Stiller and Falco's especially), staging & set design, theme and general pizazz are penetrating and exceptional.

The...Read More

A new trailer for Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs will go out attached to Priest (Sony, 5.13). After a release-date delay that has lasted for eons, I've been eager to see an indication of how Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 classic (which 99% of the mega-mall sophistos have never heard of) might play. Sony is presumably unwilling to let the trailer out prior to 5.13 so here's the oldie-but-goodie.

Update: I'm told that the new Straw Dogs trailer will be online "a few days" before 5.13.

From Israeli movie columnist Yair Raveh: "If you're collecting Cannes hints, here's another one: Shlomo Bar-Aba, the lead in Joseph Cedar's Footnote.

"Bar-Aba is one of Israel's better known stage and TV comedians -- a truly wacky performer in the Robin Williams sort-of-way. (I had the privilege of writing some of his material in the past.) He rarely does movies and here he is at his most quiet, subdued and disciplined role. But just like when Peter Sellers or Jerry Lewis did a straight role you can feel the chaotic energy bustling underneath....Read More

Yesterday's big Twitter meme was "Terrence Malick's Thor." You always know something is cool if Matt Zoller Seitz and James Rocchi are on it. But 24-plus hours later "Malick Thor" brings up nothing on Google. No art, no tweet compilations, nothing. The next step, of course, is a mashup video linking dialogue, themes, obsessions, etc. But is this thing even taking off?

The two main sources of 2011 Hollywood agony are (a) the studio bosses and underlings who are afraid to make anything other than comic-book movies, sequels or reboots of old franchises, no matter how lame or disconnected from the zeitgeist these remakes might be, and (b) the millions of moviegoers out there who refuse to patronize anything other than comic-book movies, sequels or reboots of old franchises.

If I could get away with throwing all the afore-mentioned studio bosses and execs into a burlap bag filled with rocks and then throw the bag into a lake in...Read More

Last night's flight was hell. The agony of sitting in a too-small seat and almost sleeping but not really (i.e., sporadically dozing on the surface of the pond rather than slipping below and sinking to the bottom) was more acute than usual. The price for an exit-row seat was having to sit between two big guys. One was large-bellied and a bit of a wheezy breather and wearing poolside flip-flops (why do people who don't believe in pedicures do this?), and between his girth and my broad shoulders it wasn't a good fit.

I'm staying in a...Read More

"I enjoy your writing. I enjoy your themes. But your 'community' of commenters are like the worst idiots from a Union Square or Santa Monica cafe where the wifi works and the coffee is cheap. I've tried only reading your bits but it doesn't work. If I see you in Cannes I'll say hello, but I'm afraid I won't be coming back here." -- Mark Tierney, producer, photographer and general get-around guy, in an email received at 2:16 pm Eastern.

My response: "I share your pain but what precisely pushed you over the edge? Something today or yesterday? What comment in...Read More

With the exception of one or two apparent omissions (i.e., where is the Wednesday, 5.11 morning press screening of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris?), this looks like one of the coolest online screening schedules for the Cannes Film Festival I've ever come across. Almost the whole magilla. (I think.) Now, if someone could throw together one of these plus a cool-party schedule...

"A Cannes hint: watch out for Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist -- a silent movie that will make a lot of noise!" -- HE reader Deydou.

"Released a few weeks ago in the UK, TT3D: Closer To The Edge is a documentary following three young motorcycle riders as they tackle the world famous Isle of Mann TT. It's beautifully shot and cut, uses 3D sparingly and only to enhance the sensational race scenes, and in Guy Martin (one of the riders) has found a genuine star -- think Northern English Wolverine, complete with sideburns.

"The most exhilarating film I've seen since C'etait Un Rendezvous." -- Dylan Glover, London.

It was the early '90s, and I was tooling along Santa Monica Blvd. on a nice, sunny afternoon in my relatively new but not quite super-hot Nissan 240 SX. But I felt the car looked and felt pretty damn good, and I was in a pretty good mood. Then I saw a '60s muscle car of some kind (a yellow '65 Mustang convertible?) with whitewall tires pull alongside me. It had a FOR SALE sign in the rear window. A very pretty...okay, hot girl was at the wheel, and her passenger window was rolled down.

I pulled up alongside at a red...Read More

Today is a packing and clean-up and last-minute runaround day before my 11:30 pm flight to NYC. So that's all she wrote until I arrive around 10 pm at LAX. Speaking of which is there anything more hopelessly gauche than people who travel with oceanic steamer-trunk-sized suitcases? Every time I see a family with 275 pounds of luggage I roll my eyes.

Here's a nice story from about how Pasquale and Louise Buzzelli & friends celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden last Monday. In an up-with-life, community-hug sort of way, I mean.

Pasquale and Louise Buzzelli are standing at far right.

It's significant to me because (a) Buzzelli was the Port Authority guy who was in a stairwell on the 22nd floor of the WTC North Tower on 9.11.01 when it came crashing down and who somehow survived, awaking a couple of hours later on a concrete slab with only bruises and scrapes and a broken foot, and...Read More

Now this is my idea of a fast-car, supercool, Steve McQueen-y car movie. None of that idiotic Fast Five horseshit. Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver moonlighting as a getaway driver, etc. Dodge the fuzz, play it smart, keep it real. I can tell already that Justin Lin isn't fit to shine of the boots of director Nicolas Winding Refn. Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Oscar Isaacs, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Ron Perlman costar.

Here's the conclusion of a brief q & a between TheWrap's Brent Lang and Michael Moore about the killing of Osama bin Laden:

Lang: "Do you think Osama was really buried at sea because of his religious beliefs?"

Moore: "That's bullshit -- 'He was buried at sea according to Muslim tradition.' I've got many Muslim friends where I live in Michigan. When I go to a Muslim funeral in Detroit, we don't hop in a chopper after the ceremony and drop the body into Lake Erie. We're so worried about upsetting the Muslim world. We just shot him in the fucking head...Read More

Variety's Diana Lodderhose is reporting that Bill Murray will play Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson. And here's the kicker: Richard Nelson's script, based on his British radio play, is about the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to President Roosevelt's upstate New York home, called Hyde Park, in 1939. In other words, Murray is going to play host to Colin Firth and Helena Bonham-
Carter...right?

Because it won't quite work to have someone else play the British royal couple...will it?

This is going to be...Read More

A friend has some Twilight Zone action figures from "The Eye of the Beholder" and "To Serve Man." Created in '02, they're not an ongoing product line and are therefore rare. The "Beholder" doctor and nurse are going for $225 on Amazon. The "Serve" alien (one of a race of "kanamits") is priced in the same range.

The weird 60 degree angle of the doctor's right arm is wrong.

The fascistic leader ranting on the flat panels during the "Beholder" finale is a vision of a right-wing tyrant. Nativist...Read More

Bloody death photos of Osama bin Laden will come out sooner or later, but not officially. President Obama decided yesterday that the photos would only agitate and wouldn't prove anything, etc. But photos of other guys killed in the compound, posted yesterday by the Guardian, offer the viewer a pretty good idea of how Osama's corpse probably looked.

There's no dignity in being ripped apart by bullets and then photographed in repose. No dignity at all.

Last night N.Y. Times guys Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti reported that last Sunday's Navy Seals' assault upon...Read More

The professional film dweeb fraternity has been up in arms about Dan Kois's "Eating Your Cultural Vegetables," which ran in last weekend's N.Y. Times Sunday magazine. But allow me to remind that I posted a somewhat similar piece 12 years ago, called "A Little Bit Boring." Here it is:

"Quality movies flirt with being boring from time to time. A good kind of boring, I mean. Nutritional, Brussels-sprouts, good-for-your-soul boring.

"It's important to understand the degree of boring I've speaking of here. I don't mean sinking-into-a-coma boring. Or regular boring. Or even mildly boring. But a little bit boring.

"All John Sayles...Read More

Mary Murphy's Hey, Boo (opening 5.13 at the Quad Cinema) is one of those gently incisive personal-portrait documentaries that covers all the bases except the one you want to know the most about. It's about Harper Lee and the creation and lore of To Kill A Mockingbird, and is quietly absorbing and perceptive and nicely composed. But how does anyone (especially a writer) cruise for 51 years, doing essentially nothing, after writing one very moving and popular book?

Lee never wrote anything of any size or ambition after To Kill A Mockingbird....Read More

Nobody but nobody is going to remember the title of Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene (Fox Searchlight, 10.7.11). They're going to call it "Martha May Mary...something." Yes, the word-of-mouth will be very good and it'll be necessary for everyone to carefully inspect Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the Loathsome Twins.

But there's still the matter of that ending, and Durkin really needs to fix it over the next two or three months. This is a movie about a malevolent cult and residual brainwashing and suppressing bad memories. It ends with the bad...Read More

EW's "Inside Movies" columnist Adam Markovitz has posted a Fox Searchlight clip from Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. It's basically a dreamy suburban yesteryear thing with three kids chasing Jessica Chastain around with a live lizard....the spirited reveries of adolescence, etc.

The Tree of Life was seen and considered and dismissed by the distribution community last year, and it's going to be screened all over the world concurrent with (or immediately following) the Cannes screening. So seeing it in Cannes isn't going to feel all that special to anyone who's flown thousands of miles to...Read More

I reviewed Jodie Foster's The Beaver on 3.16 from South by Southwest, and am re-posting a portion of the piece to synch with Friday's opening.

"The Beaver is more of 'heart' thing about healing and family and forgiving," I said. "And it uses lots and lots of closeups of Mel Gibson's lined and weathered face and his graying, thinning hair. What he does about 70% of the time is look forlorn and gloomy and guilty about his shortcomings. Foster is making a film, after all, about putting demons to bed and climbing out of our personal...Read More

With the appearance of this poster, the intrigue factor among Cannes journalists for Bertrand Bonello's L'Apollonide has risen slightly. Why deny it? A drama about prostitutes shutting themselves off from the world after one of their own is disfigured by a client, period pic runs 122 minutes and cost $4 million to make. It costars Hafsia Herzi, Jasmine Trinca and Adele Haenel.

White House press secretary Jay Carney laid out the Osama bin Laden facts earlier today: (1) Bin laden didn't use a woman as a human shield, (2) Bin Laden's wife "rushed the [Navy Seals] assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed"; (3) "Bin Laden was then shot and killed, and was not armed"; (4) "Another woman on the first floor was killed in crossfire," which may have led to assumptions that a person in Bin Laden's bedroom was shot and killed with him.

Paul Feig's Bridesmaids (Universal, 5.13) may not be as screamingly, howlingly funny or fast-paced as some might prefer (especially if you think like Variety's Joe Leydon) and is perhaps a bit sadder and darker than you might expect, but it's way, way deeper, smarter and more realistically grounded and character-driven than any female ensemble comedy since...ever.

And it's the best straight-up female-relationship movie since I-don't-know-when. And it's wiggy and a bit strange and scatalogical. And riddled with knowing tough dialogue. And about as naked (in the Mike Leigh sense of the term) as this...Read More

Congratulations to the Focus Features marketing team for creating a trailer that has instantly killed any interest I had in seeing Lone Scherfig's One Day (8.19). I was into it initially because (a) Scherfig is an excellent director, (b) how could the woman who made An Education go wrong?, and (c) my constant enjoyment of Anne Hathaway.

The two decisive factors that changed my mind were (a) the patronizingly old-school, talking-down-to-idiots tone used by the trailer's narrator and (b) the use of the slogan "the enduring power of love." In other words, they're...Read More

I'm as blown away as the next guy by today's revelation that Badassdigest honcho Devin Faraci has a costarring role in Cameron Crowe's We Bought A Zoo. The unmistakable visual proof was posted a few hours ago by none other than Zoo director-writer Cameron Crowe.

Sepia-toned, Mathew Brady-simulating shot of We Bought A Zoo costars Scarlett Johansson, Devin Faraci and Patrick Fugit.

If anyone has news about what part Faraci is playing or how big the role may be or whether his character has sex with Scarlett Johansson, please advise

"James Purefoy's strong leadership against Paul Giamatti's cement-handed villainy has enough edge and seriousness to prevent Ironclad from ever sliding into campiness," Thefilmpilgrim's Stefan Jenkins wrote two months ago, "and the brutally exhilarating battle sequences make it solid yet shallow popcorn fare.

"Director Jonathan English, however, is notably a name to watch, his skill at balancing budget, style and fearlessly brutal action will surely make him desirable property in years to come." When Jenkins says "style" he means "shakycam."

I honestly prefer the German-language version of the trailer for this British-funded action epic, which opens domestically on 7.26. Here's the...

"May the 4th Be With You" is a reasonably cool slogan. But all it refers to is a plan to announce the particular contents of the six-disc Stars Wars Bluray package that comes out on 9.16.11. A slogan and a build-up to promote a press release?

I realize that the consensus view about Alexandre O. Philippe's The People vs. George Lucas is that it trashes a corrupted emperor who deserves it big-time but without uncovering anything new. And a doc that's essentially driven by outrage over the three Star Wars prequels is way out-of-time in 2011.

Nonetheless The People vs. George Lucas is the second theatrical motion picture featuring MSN's Glenn Kenny (i.e., as a talking head), it does open on 5.6 at Manhattan's Cinema Village, and then at L.A.'s Nuart on 5.13.

I've been in the...Read More

The word got around yesterday afternoon that poor Yvette Vickers, former 1950s bombshell blonde, B-movie actress (Attack of the Giant Leeches, etc.) and July 1959 Playboy playmate, was found dead on 4.27 in her Benedict Canyon home.

Since the body was mummified it was speculated that Vickers might been dead for as long as a year. I guess dead is dead and it doesn't matter much to the deceased if his/her body is attended to a day or a year after leaving the planet, but the mummy-like state of Vickers' remains means she didn't have...Read More

The Lisbon-based Portugese distributor Zon Lusomundo Audiovisuais had scheduled a Thursday, May 5th screening of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. This would have been yet another violation of the Cannes Film Festival exclusivity assumption. Portugese journalists getting a looksee two days from now would have meant reviews written in advance of Cannes and in all likelihood tweets and whatnot appearing prior to the big unveiling.

But this morning I heard from a Lisbon-based journalist friend who said that "I've just received news of the cancellation of our screening by 'international imposition'. According to the Portuguese distributor,...Read More

ABCNews.com's Jake Tapper is reporting "top source" White House information that President Obama and his team are discussing the possibility of releasing a photograph of Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse later today.

(l.) the corpse of Moe Green in Francis Coppola's The Godfather; (r.) one-eyed Bugsy Siegel on the couch after his 1947 murder.

"The photograph, according to sources who have seen it, is bloody and gruesome with a bullet wound to his head above his left eye," Tapper writes.

Wait...above the left eye? I read yesterday that OBL was hit dead...Read More

I sent an email this morning to various journo pallies, but maybe I forgot to cc some others. It reads as follows: "Just assuming that the usual La Pizza get-together is happening on Tuesday, May 10th, at 7:30 pm. I understand there's a plan to use La Pizza's upstairs flat screen for a post-dinner karaoke session. I know a local guy who rents mikes, speakers and pignose amps for a reasonable fee -- perhaps we could all chip in a couple of euros? Shouldn't be much."

When I talk on the phone with personal assistants I don't know or who don't know me, I still get asked "what newspaper or magazine do you write for?" or "Hollywood Elsewhere...is that a weekly?" Either old concepts die hard or people are a lot thicker than you might think. I always answer politely and patiently, of course, but my inner smartass wants to go all David Letterman and say, "I run one of those newfangled doohickey online whachamacallits..."

The only thing that Justin Kroll's just-posted Variety story has that I didn't have this morning about Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's Kill Bin Laden script is this: Boal's script "will definitely include the 40-minute firefight at the compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was found and shot to death Sunday."

Except a military analyst said today on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" that it probably wasn't a 40-minute firefight but a two-minute firefight -- 38 minutes of casing the joint and landing the choppers and figuring the angles and preparing the line of attack, and then two minutes...Read More

A six-day-old draft of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained arrived in my inbox this morning. I haven't read much but it has the same old Kentucky-yokel misspellings (to Tarantino the plural of the word "dragon" is "dragon's"), the same racial bluntness that was in Pulp Fiction (the word "nigger," etc.) and it's 168 pages. Figure a good two and half hours. Who's gonna tell QT to compress or cut it down?

I love that our Secretary of State is the kind of person who doesn't sit impassively but reacts emotionally when she sees, feels or senses violent activity. I mean, you can tell from Hillary Clinton's hand-over-mouth gesture that something hairy was going on when this photo was snapped during the White House national security team's "live-time" witnessing of Sunday's attack upon Osama Bin Laden's Pakistan compound.

Hillary, in short, reacted like an average cultivated woman with a normal civilized aversion to violence. And that's cool. I want a person who's somewhat appalled by violence representing this country's...Read More

I've done a little follow-upping on Mike Fleming's 5.2 Deadline story about Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's Kill Bin Laden project, which they've been working on since '09 if not earlier.

Oscar-winning Hurt Locker screenwriter-producer Mark Boal and I had dinner in downtown Manhattan a couple of years ago, and as we said goodbye he mentioned he was off to meet some commandos about something or other. That was the Bin Laden project.

The casting of Joel Edgerton, the 36 year-old Australian actor who played Stanley Kowalski opposite Cate Blanchett's Blanche DuBois in the Read More

The second-to-last Oscar Poker before Sasha Stone and I fly to Cannes, etc. (I was wrong in describing this weekend's Oscar Poker as the last domestic one for a while -- we'll be recording #33 here in Los Angeles next Saturday. and #34 in Cannes.) Here's a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

So Osama bin Laden didn't quite live to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which is only four months and 11 days from now. Tip of the hat to the Navy Seals guys who reportedly put bullets in him...or whatever. That's all I can muster at this juncture. This is a very, very big death. Can we go home now?

"President Obama's announcement late Sunday that Osama bin Laden had been killed delivered not only a long-awaited prize to the United States, but also a significant victory for Mr. Obama, whose foreign policy has been the subject...Read More

"Mr. President, look at your hair! If it gets any whiter the Tea Party is going to endorse it." Look at Trump's reactions -- a grumpy dick.

As I was re-watching Reds yesterday, it occured to me that Patton Oswalt bears a bit more resemblance to the real John Reed than Warren Beatty did in 1981. I'm not saying Beatty's performance doesn't work or that Oswalt could have pulled it off if he'd time-tripped back to the late '70s and been cast by Beatty, etc. I'm saying Beatty resembled Reed as much as young Peter O'Toole resembled the real T.E Lawrence.

(l.) John Reed, Louise Bryant; (center) Patton Oswalt; (r.) Warren Beatty as John Reed in...

It's a tough deal with three grandchildren of Muammar el-Qaddafi's along with his son having been killed yesterday in Tripoli, but war is cruel. As you sow so shall you reap. Qaddafi is a fiend and an insect and must be exterminated. Forgive me but NATO didn't kill his grandchildren -- he did.

Justin Lin's Fast Five, a movie that is nothing but ludicrous, high-throttle macho crap with ass-play undercurrents and an absolute devotion to blocking engagement and believability among guys like myself, is expected to earn $86.5 million by this evening and $165 million worldwide. It's the right package that arrived at the right time, okay...and an emergency shipment of anti-depressants is being messengered to the Movie Godz, who are stumbling around and moaning and crashing into walls as we speak.

A powerful image can yield a thousand words. I'd say there's at least 500 words to be typed or spewed or otherwise thrown around in response to this photo of SNL's Seth Meyers and whatsername at last night's White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C.

I find the "s" in Meyers' name needless and bothersome. He should be called Seth Meyer. Anyone can change their last name at the drop of a hat. Didn't Keith Richard drop an "s" from his last name at one point in time, or add an "s" or something?

A week ago an anonymous IMDB guy claimed to have seen The Tree of Life and posted some reactions. Dismiss him if you want (his writing is awkward and he doesn't punctuate like he should), but some of his impressions square with what I've heard elsewhere (i.e., Sean Penn not really being in it much and barely speaking a line of dialogue) so there's reason to half-consider this.

Here, also, is an apparent review, originally written in French by "Julien," a contributor to Les Echos Du Cinema.

Spoiler-sensitive types are advised to PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION before reading these...Read More

There's something deflating about a Cannes Film Festival competition entry being offered as an Amazon DVD/Bluray pre-buy (with a French release date of 7.15) two weeks before its world premiere at Cannes. This obviously undercuts that elite hooplah, special-moment-in-time atmosphere that always accompanies a Cote d'Azur premiere.

Face it -- Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is feeling more and more like damaged goods, especially when you add the back-and-forth about Icon wanting to open Malick's film in England on May 4th (now over and done with) plus the bothersome buzz about the film...Read More

Yesterday morning the great Peter O'Toole, 78, had a damp-cement moment in front of Grauman's Chinese theatre. The ceremony was done in concert with the now-somewhat-devalued TCM Classic Film Festival, which I've come to see as a very pleasant, efficiently run but corporate-minded control-freak festival, run by people who regard serious press coverage as a mild problem, and which is primarily intended for over-50 tourists.

I interviewed O'Toole in London in December 1980, although with great difficulty. I had an interview scheduled for a GQ piece...Read More