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 is what Cioepley's story implies is percolating out there, is dull.

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.

"GOP heavyweight James Baker III and Democratic strategist Ron Klain couldn't have been more at odds than they were during the disputed Bush v. Gore 2000 election battle in Florida," writes Politico's Jeffrey Ressner. "So it's no small irony that as HBO's telefilm Recount (debuting 5.25) was being readied, the two men both signed off on a completely fictional scene in which their characters meet briefly on an airport tarmac."

(l.) James Baker; (r.) Ron Klain

I'm glad Strong made it up. The scene isn't confrontational or slam-bam, but it hits the right note. It happens at the finale, and after all the haggling and spinning over vote counts for the previous two hours, the viewer is looking for some kind of reflective sum-up. What you get is a few choice words between rivals -- a formal but friendly hello, a foreshadowing of dark things to come from Klain (Kevin Spacey) and a suggestion by Baker (Tom Wilkinson) that there's no right or wrong and that it all boils down to loyalty.

I enjoyed that director Jay Roach made sure that Wilkinson closely resembles Baker, which is mainly accomplished by his wearing a gray-hair wig. It's a little odd, therefore, that despite the real Klain (above) obviously having a decent head of hair, Roach decided to let Spacey play it with his own sparse follicles, which have been retreating like the French Army out of Russia since the days of American Beauty. Why not wig out if it creates a slightly closer resemblance?

Here again is my 4.30 review of Recount.

Cinemorgue, which features listings and descriptions of thousands of death scenes that are alphabetized by the names of actors and actresses, is grim and exhaustive and...valuable, I guess, but also kind of strange. I'd forgotten how many times Elke Sommer has been gruesomely killed on-screen. Two skiiing accidents, shot three times (machine gunned in 1969's The Wrecking Crew, the Dean Martin-Matt Helm movie), blown up, and bludgeoned to death.

Almost all movie deaths, it seems, are brutal, bloody, sudden, ghastly, traumatic and otherwise unpeaceful. Nod-off deaths -- like Sir Cedric Hardwicke 's passing in The Ten Commandments -- have been few and far between over the last 40 years. Is real-life death ever smooth and easy? Only if you do yourself in with pills. James Toback said during a phone chat, which is that (paraphrasing) "almost none of us are going to die as pleasantly as we'd like to...it's always under circumstances we can't foresee, much less plan for, and sooner than we'd like."

Note: all present and future mentions of cinemorgue.com are permanently indebted to Movie City News because Poland linked to it earlier today or last night.

"The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright...campaign, they are simply going to fail." -- a declaration made yesterday by (believe it or not) Newt Gingrich on Human Events, a conservative website.

The DVD of the original 219-minute cut of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate has been available for more than eight years, but even those who mostly despise the film (myself among them) will concede that seeing an allegedly "restored" print on a big screen in a first-rate house like Santa Monica's Aero is definitely the preferred way to go. Kevin Thomas will introduce the 5.22 Aero screening, which will start at 7:30 pm.

History long ago noted that renowned critic F.X. Feeney is primarily responsible for recasting Heaven's Gate as a film deserving of revisionist respect. I never bought into this but Feeney's efforts in this regard are a reminder of what a genuiinely caring and impassioned film critic can do when he/she puts his/her mind to it. Or at least was capable of doing in the old days.

I hated Heaven's Gate when I first saw it 17 and a half years ago, and I couldn't stay with it when I tried it a second time at home about five years ago. I therefore feel it's still worth quoting the famous quip from N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby that Heaven's Gate "fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect."

I attended the second critics screening at the Cinema I on November 17th or 18th (one of those) and stood at the bottom of the down escalator as those who'd seen the afternoon show were leaving. I asked everyone I knew what they thought on a scale of 1 to 10. I'll never forget the gray, deflated expression on the face of journalist Dan Yakir as he muttered "zero."

Lionsgate has decided to open Frank Miller's The Spirit, an adaptation of Will Eisner's heavy-noir comic strip, on Christmas Day 2008 instead of 1.16.09. Pamela McClintock's 5.6 Variety story, quoting Lionsgate theatrical films chief Tom Ortenberg, says the decision to shift the film to 12.25 "came after the project was presented to fans at New York Comic-Con."

Scarlett Johansson as "Silken Floss" in Frank Miller's The Spirit

Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha (Hanway Films), which is playing at Manhattan's Film Forum from now through 5.20, is arguably the best Iraq War foot-soldier drama to have been released thus far. Mostly because it uses the POV of all the sad victims in this wretched episode and presents the particulars in a way that straddles the line between judgment and lament.

Shot in purposefully ragged docu-drama style with non-actors and deserving, I feel, a solid 8 on a scale of 10, Haditha will certainly be avoided en masse by those brave citizens who don't want to know from that conflict, and who will absolutely dodge a dramatization of the infamous November 2005 Haditha massacre in which 24 Iraqi men, women and children -- 15 of whom were confirmed non-combatants -- were slain by U.S.Marines on a revenge bender.

As the Wikipedia page explains, it has been alleged that the killings were retribution for the attack on a convoy of United States Marines with an improvised explosive device that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

I won't strenuously argue with the belief of Salon's Andrew O'Hehir that it's "the closest thing this conflict has produced to a Paths of Glory or an All Quiet on the Western Front" or Robert Koehler's view that it summons memories of Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers." It does visit similar tragic turf, and does, for the most part, offer a convincing simulation of the hell fires consuming that cursed country right now as well as those that propelled several regular guy GIs to do what they did two and a half years ago.

The only serious beef I had after seeing in Toronto last September was that "the improvised dialogue feels a little too blunt and on-the-nose at times," although I said without qualification that it's "absorbing, bracing stuff." But because of some of the actors' delivery and my resistance to some of the dialogue, I wasn't completely swallowed by it and so the the emotionality didn't quite kick in.

Coming Soon's Ed Douglas has posted a straightforward q & a he did with Broomfield a few days ago.

Interested New Yorkers might want to catch tonight's 8 pm show at the Film Forum, as it will be followed by a q & a between Broomfield and actor/former U.S. Marine Elliot Ruiz.

Huge exhale and good riddance. Barack Obama wailed in North Carolina and lost Indiana by a nose hair, and that, ladies and gentlemen and undecideds, is finally the end of Hillary Cinton. Tim Russert said this morning that every political player now accepts that Obama will be the party's nominee in Denver. Politico's Mike Allen wrote this morning that Obama "won't push her out -- he'll let her get her coat, and walk to the door. But he's talking to the whole country now -- not just to Democrats, and not to individual states."

In the wake of this morning's breaking news that Clinton has loaned her faltering campaign another $6.4 million on top of the $5 million loan she admitted to earlier this year, her perplexing determination to push on (clearly obnoxious, arguably sociopathic in nature) will only hurt her future prospects. As Politico's Roger Simon wrote late last night, "She has options, but only if she manages her endgame carefully. If she becomes known as the candidate who was willing to destroy her party in order to gain the nomination, she is likely to lose not just the nomination but also her political future."

In the meantime, here's irrefutable proof of the validity of my earlier suggestion that a Dumbass Amendment be added to the Constitution requiring states to give prospective voters short written quizzes to make certain they're at least somewhat knowledgable and semi-intelligent before being granted a voice in choosing the nation's leadership.

Chicago Sun Times reporter Lynn Sweet has reported that yesterday morning "about 50 people were eating breakfast at [the Four Seasons] restaurant in Greenwood when Obama walked in at 7:40 a.m. He went from table to table, chatting briefly with patrons about the economy and gas prices before sitting down to breakfast.

"One of his first encounters went poorly. He approached a man sitting alone at a table and was waved away. The man told me afterward he had no interest in meeting Obama. 'I can't stand him,' he said. 'He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned.'"

Cue John Mellencamp's "Ain't that America?"

Forced to simulate indications of seasoned intelligence and sensitivity during a recent visit to Keith Olberman's "Countdown," Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo star Kal Penn was, by any fair standard, fairly convincing.

National Public Radio news media reporter David Folkenflik following an interview we did in NPR's 42nd Street studio this morning about the dwindling, dying profession of dead-tree film criticism. The piece will also include comments from other authorities (including, I'm told, former N.Y. Daily News film critic Jack Mathews), and will air sometime Wednesday afternoon. The online link will be clickable on the NPR site Wednesday evening.

Happy bubbleman at corner of Broadway and Prince Street

Jones Square, 42nd and 7th Avenue, facing east.

Possibly as a result of catching yesterday's Oprah tribute, Sumner Redstone has amended his position on Tom Cruise (or told his wife to stop kvetching) and has been laying down a welcome mat in hopes that a Mission: Impossible 4 might happen down the road. (S.R. and Cruise dined together in March, it says here.) "I consider Tom Cruise a great actor and a good friend," Redstone said during a business conference in South Korea. "And if Paramount decides -- and they will make the decision -- to move ahead with him, I will not object."

The Swedish Hancock trailer is supposed to be ruder than the American one? The beginnings and middle of both are pretty much the same. I'm not sure about the final thirds.