Great -- heavy rain and wind will begin in the NYC area starting tomorrow morning. Maybe my Paris flight will be delayed and I can miss the Easy Jet flight I'm supposed to take from Paris to Nice two hours after I land at 6:15 Tuesday morning. Yeah!

"I don't know who I am," former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson says to N.Y. Times contributor Tim Arango in a 5.11 piece about James Toback's Tyson, a pared-down but altogether touching doc that will show later this week in Cannes. "That might sound stupid," Tyson continues. "I really have no idea. All my life I've been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop."

The line this most recalls, of course, is the one from Wim Wenders' The American Friend, spoken to Dennis Hopper's Tom Ripley character: "I know less and less about who I am, or who anyone else is."

"I remember seeing Greenwich Village from seven feet up in the air growing up as a kid, because he'd have me on his shoulders and we'd be tripping around. And at a time before underground and independent film became a hot idea, then a dirty word, then a hot idea again as it is nowadays, my dad was making films that influenced a generation of filmmakers.'" -- Robert Downey, Jr., speaking four days ago about his director dad, Robert Downey, Sr., at the "Time 100" celebration at Lincoln Center.

This is an opportunity to pay tribute to "I can crawl again!" -- my favorite line from Greaser's Palace ('72), my all-time favorite Robert Downey, Sr. film. Every now and then that line comes to me and repeats in my head, over and over.

Here's another great scene:

"I'd almost forgotten I existed. Being selected by Cannes has done wonders for me. I thought working again might have a negative effect and I nearly turned it down, but it's been quite the opposite. My heart beats anew." -- British director Terrence Davies, director of Of Time and City, a low-budget, personal documentary about the changes in Liverpool since his childhood, speaking to the Guardian's Jason Solomon.

That's a great line about Davies forgetting his own existence. He's not just saying he'd forgotten or given up on the idea that he existed -- mattered -- as a filmmaker of some consequence within the British film industry, but that he'd stopped thinking of himself as an entity at all -- that he'd so completely surrendered himself to feelings of drift and nothingness that he had actually stopped saying "I am." An amazing thought. Worthy of Kant or Kafka.

Articles by Maureen Dowd, Robert Novak and Bob Ray Sanders are saying either Barack Obama won't ask Hillary Clinton to be his vice-presidential running mate, or would be wise not to.

Clinton's loathsomeness has become the stuff of legend, yes, and her campaign since the start of the New Hampshire inning has colored her reputation for good. But sometimes in politics you have to hold your nose and make an accomodation with people who may be repugnant in some respects if they can provide what you need. John F. Kennedy didn't pick Lyndon Johnson for vp because he loved the guy or admired everything about him. He picked him because he wanted to win.

Obama definitely needs the older, under-educated women who voted for Hillary. I'm not sure he needs (or has a chance to win over) the racist dolts, who will probably go for McCain anyway.

"So how does Obama repay Hillary for running a campaign designed both to unman him and brand him as an unelectable black? Is the most ingenious way to turn the screw by not choosing her as his running mate, or by choosing her?," Dowd wonders. "It is, verily, a sticky wicket."

Steven Soderbergh has been doing his frantic last-minute editing of Che at Post Works, a Soho facility on Varick. ("The best in the world for film and video post-production...no one compares. For real." -- Bob J.) A magazine editor told me over lunch a couple of days ago that he's spoken to a Team Che guy who wonders if they'll finish in time for the Cannes screening on Wednesday, 5.21.

It hit me yesterday afternoon that I had left my passport in my bureau drawer. My flight to Paris leaves Monday at 1:45 pm, so I called Fed Ex and was relieved to hear they could deliver it to my Brooklyn address no later than 8:30 am that morning. So I called the guy who's staying in my place and left a message to please put the passport in an envelope with the Brooklyn address on it, and give it to a Fed Ex pick-up person who would be there between noon and 2 pm yesterday.

Except the guy didn't get the message in time (his phone had a drained battery), and therefore had no idea what the Fed Ex guy wanted when he arrived at 12:30 pm. The apartment-sitter guy finally called around 4 pm Eastern and said he'd do what I asked. So I called Fed Ex back and asked if they could please send someone back to the house between 4 pm and 6 pm. They said they would. They didn't.

The home guy waited until 9 pm Pacific to tell me that the passport hadn't been picked up, which meant I wouldn't be getting on tomorrow afternoon's plane. Panicked, I searched around for an emergency courier service that could pick up on Sunday morning and deliver to NYC the same day or early Monday, but nothing was turning up. The Fed Ex people, who obviously owed me because of their negligence, were amazingly unhelpful. Three people I talked to refused to pass along a referral of any kind. As I pleaded with these bozos, I imagined them roasting over a spit in deepest hell.

I finally found an operation called Action Messenger and a good guy named Jamal, who said they could pick up the passport this morning and get it to JFK for pickup this evening for $275 bucks. I obviously didn't like paying that, but what was I going to do? At least the issue is solved. Here's to Jamal and the professional people everywhere who stand up and do the job. I'll be getting on the A train to JFK around 6:30 this evening.

Yesterday my son Dylan and I visited my mom at an old folks' home where she lives in Southbury, Connecticut. I'd been told by a nice woman who works for the facility that my mom, who's been grieving since the recent death of her daughter Laura, was somewhat upset by the presence of her ashes, which she had been keeping in her bedroom closet. So Dylan and I resolved that we would take the remains down to the family plot in a cemetery in Wilton, Connecticut, where our family lived from '64 to '94, and surreptitiously bury them ourselves.

Nancy Wells at Southbury Deli -- Saturday, 5.10, 1:55 pm

It seemed like the right thing to do. My sister had spoken more than once about the comfort she felt knowing that her final resting place would be alongside our parents, and it's no big deal to deposit ashes in a piece of turf that's been bought and paid for.

So after our visit my mom gave us a plastic bag containing Laura's ashes, and Dylan and I drove south to Wilton. On the way there Dylan composed a beautiful prayer-eulogy on my i-Phone notepad. We borrowed a shovel from a friend who lives in Wilton, and drove into Hillside Cemetery to try and find the unmarked plot. My mom had told us it was about 10 or 12 paces south of where an old friend, Herb Gross, was buried. We asked a kindly older man who serves on the cemetery committee with Wilton's Congregational Church to help us find Gross's gravestone. It took us the better part of an hour to do so.

After the man drove off we went to the trunk and got out the bag and the shovel. Inside the bag we found a silver crucifix (my sister had bought it in Italy during a trip we took together in '03) and a sweater jacket that my sister had bought for $10 dollars. (The price tag was still on it.) But we found no ashes. I called my mom with the news. She said she didn't know where the ashes are. She'd just moved from a large apartment into a smaller living space, and had perhaps lost them in the shuffle. "I don't care about the ashes that much," she said. "It's the spirit of her that counts...how we'll remember her." Of course, I said. You're right, mom.

We returned the shovel to the friend's house and caught the 7:37 train from Norwalk back to the city. This morning I read this Thomas Freidman column about Mothers' Day, and it gave me a little pang.

Amy Poehler's delivery of the "my supporters are racist" line got the biggest laugh and even a little applause on last night's SNL. The other two rationales: "I'm a sore loser" and "I have no ethical standards." Not genius-level or even that funny, really, but who would argue this isn't where Clinton is coming from? It's easy, of course, to go with a spot like this now.

Lena Gieseke's 3-D recreation of Pablo Picasso's Guernica. I'm wondering if any American painters or sculptors have created anything within the last three or four years about the horrors of Iraq? If so, have they appeared at an any galleries?

HE reader Matthew Dessem has sent along a still taken from that first seven minutes of Speed Racer clip that went up last Thursday. He pointed out the numerous duplications that the Wachowski's CG guys copied and pasted to make up the crowd. The same five or six people are everywhere, and nobody is sitting in rows -- they're just thrown together in rough collage fashion. It's no big deal, but I can't recall seeing a frame capture of digital crowd with this many obvious repeats. (Click on the photo caption for a larger image.)

Yellow shirts, red ties, pork-pie hats

After reading Nikki Finke's well-reported story (last updated yesterday morning) about the temporary SAG shutdown of David O. Russell's Nailed, a Washington, D.C.-based comedy about relationships, politics and morality, I reviewed the Amazon.com information about "Sammy's Hill," the Kristin Gore novel that the script, co-written by she and Russell, is based upon, according to Finke.

There are differences between the book and screenplay synopsis, but the attitude and tone of both suggest that the film is going to be sharp and deranged. It seems right up Russell's penchant for the dryly absurd. It doesn't seem to be anywhere near as hyper or schizy as I Heart Huckabees, and doesn't seem that removed from the realm of Flirting with Disaster -- real neurotic people, a recognizable milieu and situations.

The discrepancies between the book's story and what Finke says is the movie's plot are striking, though. The movie literally involves the presence of a nail imbedded in a main character's head, and there's nothing like this in the book, for one thing. Russell's film also seems a bit more sexually attuned. The more I examine the two stories, in fact, the less alike they seem. If anyone has a PDF copy of the script...

Finke writes that Russell's film is about "a naive small town waitress (Jessica Biel) -- the character's name is Alice Eckle, according to the film's IMDB page -- who gets a nail lodged in her head and discovers a new-found sexual drive. When she travels to Washington to fight for better health care for the 'bizarrely injured,' she meets an unscrupulous U.S. congressman (Jake Gyllenhaal) -- the IMDB says his name is Howard Ryder -- who attempts to take advantage of her. James Brolin plays the U.S. Speaker Of The House."

Triptych copied from Finke's page

The book is about Samantha Joyce, "a 26-year-old self-deprecating health-care policy advisor to Robert Gary, a well-respected senator from her home state of Ohio." There's no Samantha on the IMDB page, and no Robert Gary character. There is, however, a Congressional Representative named Pam Hendrickson (Catherine Keener). So -- help me out here -- Alice Eckle is a working-class, less educated version of Samantha? She seems like an entirely different creation.

"Between endless work days, a grueling campaign schedule, and frequent trips to the pet store where she seeks advice on caring for her listless Japanese fighting fish, Sammy finds time to obsess over her new boyfriend, sexy speechwriter Aaron Driver." This sounds like Gyllenhaal's guy -- same kind of name, same syllables -- except he's not a Congressman.

"As things heat up with Aaron, Sammy's work schedule takes on a new intensity when Gary becomes the Democratic candidate for vice president. Along the way, scandal clouds both her personal and professional life, and our heroine discovers the often salacious underbelly of life on the hill."

Update from HE reader Jeff Puim: "You and Finke have the whole Nailed premise all mixed up. Nailed is not an adaptation of 'Sammy's Hill,' although both were penned by Kristen Gore. I think the confusion comes from the fact that in the original script Kristen uses the name 'Sammy Joyce' as the lead character, played by Jessica Biel (the character names have since been changed). As you mentioned in your article, she was also the main character in the book. But the stories are entirely different with the exception of the names of the respective heroines. The script is actually very funny. You're right that it's twisted. Very Russellesque."

Nailed is about halfway done, having been shooting in Columbia, South Carolina since April. Finke has reported it was "shut down by the Screen Actors Guild on Friday because of insufficient funds on deposit with the guild."

The shoot "is also in trouble with both IATSE and Teamsters," she writes, adding that "some of those union members have left the beleaguered $25 million budgeted production. Rumors also are circulating that the state of South Carolina could withdraw its incentive monies because of the financing problems. Filmmakers hope to resolve the cash crunch and re-start shooting next week since principal photography is only at the halfway point.

"'I am confident we will finish,' an insider on the pic has told Finke. 'The financing on this like most indies is based on bank loans and bridge loans. This is a matter of waiting on the bridge loan. Hopefully, it will all be resolved.'"

Finke is also hearing, though, that David Bergstein's Capitol Films, the film's main producer, is a "troubled" operation. In 2006, Bergstein "acquired a leading UK-based international sales company which over the years had built a good reputation in the movie biz and made a wide range of commercial and critical successes, including Robert Altman's Gosford Park. But [a source from within] NYC film financing circles that 'a shitload of people are owed a lot of money' by Bergstein. 'I heard this week that his major financing source, a hedge fund, has shut down and left him in the lurch.'"

In his usual perfunctory way, N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has reported on the bad-internet-buzz-chasing-Indy 4 story ("Indiana Jones Is Battling the Long Knives of the Internet"). He's ignored, however, what may turn out to be the most interesting aspect of reactions to the film.

This, as I wrote two days ago, refers to a possible generation gap with older viewers liking it (or at least finding a place in their hearts for it) and younger viewers being less enthused, at least in part because the film has allegedly been infused with an older guy's (i.e., Steven Spielberg's or Indiana Jones' -- take your pick) perspective, which wouldn't be surprising.

According to a good friend of a southern-region exhibitor who passed along some opinions last Wednesday evening, the only viewers at last Tuesday afternoon's exhibitor screening who liked it "were the older guys."

Older vs. younger reactions to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount, 5,.22) is interesting, and also ties in with the subject and theme of the film. Generic "bad buzz," which Ciepley's story says is percolating out there, is a flavor-less story...a yawn.

For years I've made do at the Cannes Film Festival with a regular pink pass, which at least is better than blue and way above yellow. A couple of days ago I found out that I've been slightly upgraded to a pink-with-a-yellow-pastille pass -- the first time this has ever happened despite years of persistent pleading. The highest-grade press pass is all white, but that's a privelege extended mostly (only?) to veteran dead-tree types. Has an online journo ever been granted one? I'm asking.

Toward the end of yesterday's MOMA roam-around -- Friday, 5.9, 5:10 pm.

Am I understanding correctly that Saturday Night Live has just started its political blog? Now they do this? With Amy Poehler's HRC front and center just as the Real McCoy is entering her final cycle? Or is it that people are just starting to notice...?

Accurately or not, the general impression has been all along that Poehler and former SNL costar Tina Fey have been Hillary campers. If we lived in a Balkan country or a banana republic, they'd both be going into hiding right about now. Instead, we live contentedly in a society in which political differences are mostly tolerated and every scummy race-card tactic is regarded as politics as usual, sometimes even lightheartedly. I wonder how Fey and Poehler feel about Hillary's Imperial Wizard strategy?

One of HE's fundamental attitude foundations was, after all, laid out in an excerpt from The Film Snob's Dictionary back in the summer of '05 (even if the book itself wasn't in stores until February '06), to wit: "The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent film buff, the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell-Pressburger movies."

The Film Department CEO Mark Gill has told Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Schuker that "the quality of independent films [this summer] is higher, less bleak and dark, and the studio films are more cartoon stuff and less for a college educated audience. Last summer, everybody in my snobby crowd saw the Bourne movie and loved it, [but] this summer there are fewer of those big blockbusters to go to." Is The Dark Knight not expected to appeal to film snobs? I know for sure that Tropic Thunder will. Iron Man is clearly a hit among know-it-alls. Others in this vein? If the Snob Site wasn't so elitist, this would be right up its alley.

Remember the days when vampire movies didn't need super powers and the ability to fly in order to compete with other CG thrillers? I do. Their peculiarities aside, vampires used to be shlep around and suck blood somewhat normally. No longer. When did they become flying bullets? Was it with Len Wiseman's Underworld? Before? If vampires can stop cars from slamming into people, does this mean they can also stop falling jumbo jets from slamming into baseball stadiums? Can they now theoretically lift ocean liners out of the water and hurl them into space orbit?

Thriller- and monster-movie producers these days don't respect anything. Accepting boundaries or a semblance of within-the-genre genre credibility be damned! The term for such behavior is "professionally sociopathic." All they want to do is put enough cool stuff in their films so kids won't say "the other film was cooler." Directors are just as guilty (i.e., willing). Twilight will make money, but this is malevolent thinking all the same.

In its second weekend, Paramount and Marvel's Iron Man has again taken the #1 position. With my California number-guys currently experiencing REM sleep, Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason is reporting earnings of $14.7 million yesterday with an expected $49 million by Sunday night and 10-day earnings total of roughly or close to $175 million.

Poor Speed Racer, forecast for weeks as a likely disappointment, apparently took in only $6.5 million yesterday and will hit about $23 million by Sunday nigh. This ranks below even Thursday's downgraded projection (based on tracking figures of 90, 29 and 16) of $25 to $30 million. "Normally" I wrote, "a 16 first choice means $15 to $20 million, depending on the demographic, but the family-trade current will kick this one up." Not enough!

Mason, clearly affected emotionally, adds that Speed Racer "may be a disappointment domestically, but it will play very well internationally. The movie's anime origin and the presence of Asian pop star Rain will almost certainly make it among the top grossing films of the year in key markets like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China." And the people who made it are loved by their wives, children, mothers and coworkers.

What Happens in Vegas (Fox) will come in third, having made a little over $6 million yesterday with $17.3 million projected for the weekend. Made of Honor is fourth with an expected $7.83 million for its 2nd weekend, and Baby Mama (Universal) will be fifth with a likely $5.84 million by Sunday night, pushing past a $40 million cume.

David Mamet's Redbelt (Sony Classics) will eanr less than $1 million despite being on 1,300 screens.

...but this is a somewhat clever ad, pushing the idea that it's advisable to see an optometrist now and then. The actor playing the driver/would-be recipient does a very good job. The last shot would, of course, never be permitted on American television. So what else is new?

B'way and 67th around 5:25 pm today

A visual-atmosphere piece at MOMA, created by Olafur Eliasson, that simulates and in fact imposes a monochromatic sepia-tone effect upon visitors, draining everything of color and giving everyone a black-and-white look with gray Addams Family skin.

The George Lois Esquire exhibit at MOMA.

Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet has posted new stills from three major Cannes attractions -- Steven Soderbergh's Che, Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness.

God forbid that the Democratic primary fight goes to the Denver convention (which of course it won't), but watch this climactic scene from Franklin Schaffner and Gore Vidal's The Best Man ('64) and ask yourself which of the two present candidates -- Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- is closer to the character of Cliff Robertson's Joe Cantwell and which somewhat resembles Henry Fonda's William Russell? (Thanks to HE reader John Muller for passing this along.)

Before zotzing Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Warner Bros. management "did look at various permutations of keeping the companies in discussion," the Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein and Borys Kit wrote last night, including having Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and WI honcho Polly Cohen co-manage a merged specialty division, "something the execs agreed to do shortly after the New Line absorption was announced, Cohen said."

"The decision to cease operations was made only about a week ago, and many inside the company were caught off-guard -- including Cohen, who said she was having meetings about a merged division with Berney as recently as Friday. She said she was informed about the decision Wednesday, and she dismissed word that the decision was made earlier than then. 'I doubt they'd pull a whole Truman Show on me,' she said with a laugh. 'I've been at Warners so long they say derogatory things about me in front of my face.'

"'It was similar to what happened at New Line. Warners made both of them (Cohen and Berney) jump through hoops for weeks,' says a Berney associate.

"'They said, 'Will you streamline your staff? -- OK.' 'Will you use the Warner Bros. distribution network? -- OK.' With every obstacle they threw at them, they came back with a PowerPoint presentation on how to deal with it. It's almost like they wanted Bob to quit.'

"'Bob wasn't getting a lot of calls from other studios since the New Line announcement was made, but he was getting a lot from people with venture capital,' the colleague added. 'Now the call volume is getting really crazy.'

Did the cautious-to-a-fault John Edwards say "I just voted for him on Tuesday" or "I just voted for 'em on Tuesday"? The man is a hedger, a tap-dancer, a slick operator, an angler-dangler with no balls.

Here, sequentially, are some of the Cannes Film Festival day-by-day highlights:

Wednesday, 5.14: Fernando Meirelles' Blindness (comp.).

Thursday, 5.15: Pablo Trapero's Leonera and Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (comp.) along with Mark Osborne and John Stevenson's Kung Fu Panda (non-comp), Steve McQueen's Hunger and de Bong Joon Ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry's Tokyo! (Un Certain Regard).

Friday, 5.16: Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte de Noel and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Uc Mayman (comp.) along with Allison Thompson's The Third Wave (Seance Speciale) and James Toback's Tyson (Un Certain Regard).

Saturday, 5.17: Walter Salle's Linha de Passe, and de Jia Zhangke's Er Shi Si Cheng JI (comp.) along with Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and de Na Hong-jin's The Chaser (non-comp.), and Daniel Leconte's C’est dur D’etre Aime par des Cons (Seance Speciale).

Sunday, 5.18 Matteo Garrone's Gomorra and Brilliante Mondoza's Serbis (comp.), plus Steven Spielberg's non-comp Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Indiana Jones et le Royaume du Crane de Cristal) at 1 pm, plus Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time Redux (Seance Speciale) plus Raymond Depardon's La Vie Moderne and Antonio Campos' Afterschool (Un Certain Regard).

Monday, 5.19: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Le Silence de Lorna and James Gray's Two Lovers (comp.), plus an hommage for Manuel de Oliviera, plus Pierre Scholler's Versailles and Ruben Ostlund's De Ofrivilliga (Un Certain Regard) plus Marco Tullio Giordana's Sanguepazzo, referred to parenthetically as Une Histoire Italienne (Seance Speciale).

Tuesday, 5.20: Clint Eastwood's Changeling and Kornel Mundruczo's Delta (comp.) plus Emir Kusturica's Maradona by Kusturica (non-comp.), plus Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and Terence Davies' Of Time and the City (Seance Speciale), plus Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos and Jean-Stephane Sauvaire's Johnny Mad Dog (Un Certain Regard).

Wednesday, 5.21: Steven Soderbergh's Che and Lucrecia Martel's La Mujer Sin Cabeza (comp.), plus Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance (non-comp.), plus Quentin Tarantino's Lecon de Cinema (Seance Speciale) plus Bent Hamer's O’ Horten and Matheus Nachtergaele's A Festa da Menina Morta (Un Certain Regard).

That's eight days' worth -- enough for now. I'll get to Thursday and Friday's films (5.22 and 5.23) tomorrow or later today. They include Phillipe Garrel's La Frontiere de L'Aube, Atom Egoyan's Adoration, Charlie Kaufman's Syndoche, New York, Laurent Cantet's Entre Les Murs, Wim Wenders' Palermo Shooting, and Abel Ferrara's Chelsea on the Rocks.

The Cannes Film Festival official screening schedule went up yesterday with the press screening schedule expected to post sometime tomorrow.

The rundown identifies Steven Soderbergh's The Argentine and Guerilla as a single film called Che that runs 4 hours and 28 minutes. Meaning, obviously, that as far as Cannes is concerned, the two-movie concept is out the window in favor of presenting a single epic-sized film with an intermission.

Che is showing to the press on Wednesday morning, 5.21 -- a relatively late berth as the hot-ticket films tend to show at the festival within the first five or six days. Soderbergh presumably asked for a late-as-possible slot in order to give him extra time for final tweaks, as the the film's inclusion at Cannes was in doubt until the last minute due to an editing crunch. The black-tie public viewing will happen that evening at 6:30. With all the introductions and applause moments, it will finish close to five hours later. An after-party will follow.

Thanks to Variety's Anne Thompson for the initial YouTube post/link, and kudos to dialogue (i.e., subtitle) writer and stand-up comedian James Adomian. This isn't as funny as the collapse of HD-DVD video, but it's close.

Hitler/Clinton: "The superdelegates were supposed to trump the fucking voters! And now you tell me those fat fucks are waddling over to worship that dandy Obama, lke he's the second coming of Jimi Hendrix? Meanwhle what do we have to show for the millions wasted on get-out-the-vote? A bunch of old-fuck retirees and illiterate dropouts too stupid to punch a ballot with their fat little fingers?"

"You should't blame the voters," an adviser warns.

Hitler/Clinton: "They are losers...marshmallow-shaped dykes!" Adviser: "It doesn't look good to attack your supporters." Hitler/Clinton: "My supporters are the dumbest fucks in the country! Still bitching about NAFTA. I'm so sick of drinking whiskey with those pigs! What other working-class photo ops do they expect nme to do? Take a shit in a fucking outhouse? The DNC has thwarted my destiny! That faggot-loving Howard Dean blocked my path at every step! I'm the one who said from the beginning we should set Dean up with a hooker sting, like they did to Spitzer!"

Agreeable, moderately talented guitar guy singing well and playing basic chords at Art Land, a friendly and inexpensive hole-in-the-wall joint on East Williamsburg's Grand Street -- Thursday, 5.8.08, 9:55 pm. In the world of New York watering holes and moody nocturnal distractions, paying $4 for a bottle of Budweiser is a very cheap deal.

That "All Things Considered" interview I did with NPR media reporter David Folkenflik two days ago will be linkable online by roughly 7 pm this evening. It's not just me talking -- it's three or four movie critics including, I think, former N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Mathews. The piece is called "Movie Critics Disappearing from Newsrooms."

In early April I wondered if anyone cares enough about Carol Reed's Outcast of the Islands (1951) to put it out on DVD. Those dedicated wackdoodles at the Criterion Collection, say. Well, hail hail rock 'n' roll because Outcast will air on Turner Classic Movies come Friday, August 22. August is traditionally TCM's one-star-per-day month and that day will be devoted to Outcast star Trevor Howard. The complete August schedule (with some other interesting rarities) is viewable here.

After reportedly trying to forge some kind of amicable, foward-looking merger between Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Warner Bros. management has suddenly thrown up its hands and is getting out of the "dependent" business altogether, it was announced about an hour ago.

WB president & COO Alan Horn released a statement that seems to translate, when you boil the snow out of it, into the following: "Sorry, but we've come to realize that running a Fox Searchlight- or Paramount Vantage-type operation just isn't our bag. Our hearts were sort of into this, but now they aren't. Things change. Besides, we've got New Line for the smaller stuff. We're into maximizing revenue and building broad genre franchises, and...you know, making or releasing movies for people who read reviews and enjoy provocative subject matter just isn't worth it to us."

The actual statement reads that "with New Line now a key part of Warner Bros., we're able to handle films across the entire spectrum of genres and budgets without overlapping production, marketing and distribution infrastructures ...after much painstaking analysis, this was a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the reality of a changing marketplace and our need to prudently run our businesses with increased efficiencies. We're confident that the spirit of independent filmmaking and the opportunity to find and give a voice to new talent will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros."

So except for Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino and the occasional lucky-accident movie that may rank as award-worthy, Warner Bros. seems to have basically taken itself out of the quality-driven prestige movie business.

I wonder what really happened? What led to the breakdown of the merger talks?

It turns out that Defamer's Stu VanAirsdale was fairly close to the money when he reported that Picturehouse may soon be shut down, and that Anne Thompson's Variety story about the same situation was less correct, especially in reporting that Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and Warner Independent prexy Polly Cohen are "likely" to accept a bicoastal power-sharing arrangement that will preside over a merged operation," i.e., Warner Indiepicturehouse.

Glenn Kenny, one of the country's finest film critics and a brilliant writer to boot, has been cut loose by Premiere.com. "What this means for this blog is still up in the air," he wrote this morning. "I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions. I very much hope to keep this blog going...and get some good freelance work, quick. Anybody with ideas in this area should contact me at glennkenny@mac.com. Hope to be in touch again soon. Thank you, you're the best goddamn audience a blogger could ever have."

Speed Racer (opening Friday) is running at 90, 29 and 16, which looks to me like $25 to $30 million, at best. (Normally a 16 first choice means $15 to $20 million, depending on the demographic, but the family-trade current will kick this one up.) What Happens in Vegas is running at 87, 32 and 18. David Mamet's Redbelt is going wide this week with 20 general, 24 definite interest and 2 first choice. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (opening 5.16) is at 96, 42 and 14. Sex and the City (New Line, HBO, 5.30) is at 84, 23 and 6, but among over-25 women the first choice is 14, so it'll probably play The Devil Wears Prada.

"In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation." -- filed this morning by CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry.

Yesterday's Grand Wizard award went to Hillary Clinton for blatantly using the term "white Americans" in a USA Today interview written by Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said, citing an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

''Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history,'' W. director Oliver Stone has told Entertainment Weekly . ''I think history is going to be very tough on him. But that doesn't mean he isn't a great story.

Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks as George and Laura in Oliver Stone's W.

"It's almost Capra-esque, the story of a guy who had very limited talents in life, except for the ability to sell himself. The fact that he had to overcome the shadow of his father and the weight of his family name -- you have to admire his tenacity. There's almost an Andy Griffith quality to him, from A Face in the Crowd. If Fitzgerald were alive today, he might be writing about him. He's sort of a reverse Gatsby.''

Again, my reactions to Stanley Weiser's fine script.

I wasn't going to say anything and just wait until the 5.18 screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in Cannes, but since Ain't It Cool has run a neg review from "ShogunMaster" (and since Hollywood Wiretap has linked to it), the cat is out of the bag and I may as well share something of my own.

Last night I heard from a guy I've known for years who's quite friendly with an exhibitor from the southern region, and this guy passed along some comments after seeing an exhibitor screening two days ago. The exhib's taste in movies tends to be fairly generous and populist (enjoyed Iron Man, even liked Speed Racer), but he wasn't especially taken with Indy 4, my friend says.

The most interesting thing my source passed along was his friend's sense that "the only ones who liked it were the older guys." This ties in to an older-younger, march-of-time theme that is certain to seep through. Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones is obviously older, Steven Spielberg is an older guy who is proud of shooting and cutting action films in a somewhat old-fashioned (i.e., classic, non-Matrix-y) way, and now -- maybe -- a hint that the film itself may play older, or on some level embody older-ness. Cool.

A Hollywood screenwriter guy is telling me that "people" -- he didn't say younger or older, but let's presume the latter -- "are really liking it." He claims there was another exhibitor screening last week, and that some feel "it's the best of the sequels." It has, he's been told, a kind of reflective, summing-up quality that has echoes of Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade.

I love this. Especially having been pummelled by Speed Racer last night. I would love it, I mean to say, if Indy 4 winds up providing a window into the Spielberg- Lucas-Jones mindset -- i.e., we're obviously grappling with the world as it is and giving it hell, but we're still older guys and very comfortable, thank you, with doing things in our own tried-and-true way.

Let's leave it alone for now, but the two downbeat responses suggest that a Da Vinci Code-like mauling could happen -- maybe, possibly -- when Mr. Jones turns up at the Grand Palais on 5.18. I'm thinking again about the statement that producer George Lucas gave to USA Today's Scott Bowles, the one about it "not" being "the Second Coming...it's just a movie, just like the other movies."

This may turn out to be a good thing, in a way. If this talk keeps up expectations will be slightly lowered by the time it shows in Cannes (and in domestic media screenings) on the Sunday after next, and the responses may therefore fall under the heading of "pleasant surprise."

Decompressing from Speed Racer at Leow's IMAX -- Wednesday, 5.7, 8:55 pm

"The big question if Clinton stays in the race is this: Just how will she campaign? Yesterday, there were no negative TV ads or attack mailers. But Clinton did stress that she can win the general, implying that Obama might not be able to.

"'I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,' she told USA Today, citing her support with white working-class voters. It's comments like that one that might drive more supers toward Obama pretty quickly. Why? Because they know the math, but they don't want her to spend three weeks making a case that Obama can't win. It will only weaken him.

"Here's what Obama backer Chris Dodd said yesterday, per NBC's Ken Strickland. 'You're going to be asking a bunch of people [in West Virginia] to vote against somebody who's likely to be your nominee a few weeks later? And turn around and ask the very same people a few weeks later to reverse themselves and now vote for [Obama] on election day?'" -- from this morning's edition of MSNBC's First Read.

I admire and respect the moves and the intent of Speed Racer (Warner Bros., 5.9), which I saw last night at the Leow's IMAX near Lincoln Center. Right away I was saying to myself, "All right, this is out there....infuriating but brilliantly out there." But it offers almost nothing in the way of genuine personal charm (except for the monkey, Chim-Chim) and I began looking at my watch starting around the 45-minute mark. Honestly? More like a half-hour in.

This is a deranged, steroid-cranked family-action movie...the work of madmen -- undeniably brash and looney and, I feel, desperately in need of a quaalude. Speed Racer is a piece of very audacious, high-quality....I was going to say "torture" but it's not. It's extremely nervy filmmaking, clearly, but the Wachowskis are way too caught up in fulfilling their "we're cooler than any of you!" vision and in being at least two if not three giant steps in front of everyone else in terms of creating a new film vocabulary in order to explore and shake the cage while ostensibly telling a story, and a lame-ass one to boot.

The Wachowskis are so zonked by the design dreams in their own heads that they've delivered a new kind of monster-budget insanity. They've made this movie for themselves, first and foremost, and for open-minded (or at least fair-minded) critics, and certainly for film history...but they haven't concurrently "served the corporation" and made a film that people over the age of 8 or 9 can settle into very easily or comfortably. Or even settle into with some effort. I didn't sit there consumed with loathing for this thing. It's too fascinating for that. But it's also a movie that's saying over and over, "Look at us! Look at what we're doing!" It's too breathtaking to really entertain. And as pleased as I was by the verve-and-moxie element, I was dying for it to end.

You have to throw out the rule book and accept that this movie is using an entirely different kind of spaceship and orbiting the earth in a way that is going to vaguely piss you off but at the same time dazzle you. Or certainly intrigue you. The refusal to conventionally cut or fade or wipe from one scene to another -- awesome. But it's not done in a way that gives any sort of familiar, recognizable pleasure, and as square as this sounds, you really do need some of that in a movie. You have to keep feeding and massaging the square guy while introducing the new hipster, and there's very little square-massaging going on in this thing.

Speed Racer certainly isn't pleasurable to sit through, character-, theme- or story-wise. In subjecting their audience to the same old pure-hearted individual contender vs. the corrupt corporation horseshit, the Wachowskis are showing their elitist-sadist colors. If it was good enough for Japanese anime and and other graphic media in its day, they seem to be saying, it's good enough for us right now...and if you don't like it, tough! Watching it is a bondage-and-discipline game -- you feel trussed up and bound with Andy and Larry (or whatever his name is now) applying the cool whip.

But it's more than a little ironic that for a movie that trots out the evil-corporate-mogul business for the 189th time, Speed Racer is drenched in synthetic splendor that's been bought and paid for by corporate cash. And it's way, way too long. It should have been a 95-minute deal, tops, but it goes on for two hours and 9 minutes.

The racing sequences are insane. You never have any idea about what's going on. Shots don't build or match up or pivot off each other. They collide in a kind of surreal cartoon madness. The geometric/spatial relationships between the racing competitors are almost always a complete mystery. Off with the editor's head! And the martial arts combat sequences are nothing -- fatally boring, by my book.

The performances are okay, but I found more fascination in the face of Chim-Chim than anything the humans came up with. I loved that fucking monkey, and began to really dislike -- hate! -- the Wachowskis for only using him for typical animal-reaction cutaway shots. If they'd only dwelled on his facial reactions for seven or eight seconds at a time (or more!). But no -- over and over they do a quick Chim-Chim laugh cut and then back to Emile Hirsch or John Goodman or Christina Ricci or Susan Sarandon or the mugging, heebie- jeebie supporting players. Fuck! (And I don't like to use profanity unless it fits.)

Ain't It Cool's Drew McWeeny was on the record with his Speed Racer rave yesterday, before David Poland. I should have acknowledged this when I posted my 5.7 piece at 1:19 pm. "I think critics are forgetting that part of our job is to not only say what we like, but to review a film based on the intent of that film," he says. "Comparing Speed Racer to Andrei Tarkovsky or serious adult cinema is a sucker's bet. Of course they don't compare. But it's one of the most outrageous visions in kid's cinema since George Miller's Babe: Pig in the City. A good thing, in my book."

First Showing's Alex Billington also posted positively yesterday.

"I'm actually glad to hear that you mildly enjoyed it," he wrote this morning, "as I was expecting most people to hate it, especially with all of the commentary you had written previously. I really do think it's a hard movie to like if you can't step out of your own age and attempt to appreciate it for the kids movie it is. But then again, it does have its flaws and it's impossible to get around those especially when it brings the movie down in some big ways."

"In his victory speech after the smashing North Carolina results came in, Barack Obama went directly after both John McCain and the media. '[McCain's] plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election,' Obama said. 'Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along.'

"In the end, Obama's challenge to the media is as significant as his challenge to McCain. All the evidence -- and especially the selection of these two apparent nominees -- suggests the public not only is taking this election very seriously but is also extremely concerned about the state of the nation and tired of politics as usual. I suspect the public is also tired of media as usual, tired of journalists who put showmanship over substance...as I found myself doing in the days before the May 6 primaries.

"Obama was talking about the Republicans, but he could easily have been talking about the press when he said, 'The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. You see, I didn't get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.'" -- from "Obama's Game Change," a 5.8 essay by Time's Joe Klein.

Come July 9th, this is the guy I want standing on my desk. I'm going to lay out the money right now. Heath Ledger wasn't a friend (hardly) but he always smiled and gave me a "hey" wave when we made eye contact at parties or press gatherings, and he always gave me two or three minutes when he wasn't being swamped. For what it's worth and in a weird sort of way, having this guy on my desk will be, for me, a way of burning a candle for him.

Modest and likable and decent though he may be (okay, is), this is not the real John McCain. Or it is and it's not enough. A charming, low-key guy selling misguided, outmoded, old-school medicine. Nice to talk to, but inwardly snarly and obstinate and, in a decent-American-on-a-Sunday-morning sort of way, blind.

There is nothing wrong or suspect about liking a film that almost everyone else hates. On the contrary, it is the mark of a critic who's probably worth reading ...as long as he/she doesn't go all Armond White on disliked or discredited films too often. That said, it's a bit of an eye-opener (or is it a dark omen?) that MCN's David Poland has given a fairly hearty thumbs-up to Speed Racer (Warner Bros., 5.9)

With tracking looking dicey at best and a Rotten Tomatoes positive rating of 37% (as of Wednesday afternoon), this animated Wachowski brothers action film needs all the friends it can get. I do know that Poland has been totally in the Wachowski tank from the beginning, and that his enthusiastic and persistent praise for both The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were divorced from the reality of those films that I came to know. (Yes, I was warm on Reloaded at first, but it faded upon reflection and then the curtains parted when I saw it a second time.)

For all I know Poland is on the money, and again, he has my respect for going against the grain. That said, I had a much better time (as I frequently do) reading Anthony Lane's New Yorker review, particularly this opening paragraph:

"Gluttons for Duck Soup will remember the scene in which Groucho is faced with an official document. 'Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report,' he says. 'Run out and find me a four-year-old child.' My sentiments exactly, as I sat in a cathedral-size auditorium, wreathed in the ineffable mysteries of Speed Racer. This is the latest offering from Andy and Larry Wachowski, bringers of The Matrix, and, if it is about anything, it is about the quest to overwhelm a particular stratum of the masses. A four-year-old will be reduced to a gibbering but highly gratified wreck; an eight-year-old will wander around wearing a look that was last seen on the face of Dante after he met Beatrice. But what about the rest of us? True, our eyeballs will slowly, though never completely, recover, but what of our souls?

"I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of Speed Racer to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning 'of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.'"

Forever partial to the films of Abel Ferrara, the Cannes Film Festival is offering a special screening of his latest, a doc about a certain storied Manhattan hotel called Chelsea on the Rocks. Screening on Friday,. 5.23, it'll include "interviews with residents past and present" such as Milos Forman, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper and R. Crumb, plus vintage music, archival footage and re-enactments of famous Chelsea episodes -- Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious, Janis Joplin -- performed by Bijou Phillips, Jamie Burke, Adam Goldberg, Giancarlo Esposito and Grace Jones.

The press screening is at 11:30 am at the 60th Anniversary Theatre inside the Palais, the press conference is at 3:15 pm, and the official screening is at 7:45 pm. Ferrara, Phillips, Burke and Hooper will attend.