Yesterday afternoon Nikki Finke tore into Sony Pictures Classics’ Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, calling their operation “clueless about getting attention for itself and even its Oscar-nominated films for years.” Today Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale zinged her back on Barker and Bernard’s behalf, and quoted three responders on Nikki’s site who had done the same.

I met director Marc Rocco 14 years ago during post-production on Murder in the First. Rod Lurie provided the introduction, as I recall. (Lurie’s current producing partner Mark Frydman was a Murder producer.) I honestly never thought that Murder in the First was all that great a film, and a certain dialogue error and one or two technical ones I noticed told me that Rocco probably wasn’t going to turn into Michael Mann. Anyway, the poor guy has been found dead. I’m very sorry all around. Kris Tapley has done the reporting.

Holmes: No, no. I’m not criticizing. Obviously you work out. You look good, man. Really.

Watson: Thank you.

Holmes: How’s that chick I saw you with the other night?

Watson: Which one?

Holmes: Dark eyes. Italian-looking. Nice ass.

Watson: Ramona.

Holmes: Right, Ramona. You good with her?

From a 5.6 USA Today spread; I couldn’t figure how to copy them so I borrowed pic from Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily.

Watson: Possibly. I think so. One day at a time and all that. But sure, she’s lovely. (Two beats.) Why?

Holmes: No reason.

Watson: No, really. Why?

Holmes: She’s a sweet girl. Smart. Good for you.

Watson: Christ. You’re thinking about taking a poke.

Holmes: Me?

Watson: You fucking hound. It’s so fucking obvious.

Holmes: I don’t do that, dude. You’re my friend. And that’s where it stays.

Watson: Wow!

Holmes: Where are you getting this?

When’s the last time that a film proclaimed the creator, the title and the top star on a single “card” in the opening credit sequence? This hasn’t been done since the early to mid 1930s, at the latest. The title card in this three-minute clips says “Francis Coppola’s TETRO starring Vincent Gallo.”

“Neither disastrous misfire nor bold reinvention, J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek ultimately works as an entertaining diversion and little more. For that reason alone, it might strike some as a success in the face of impossible expectations. But it’s really just an average accomplishment. The movie simultaneously reveals Abrams’s directorial strengths and weaknesses: He can craft sensational action sequences and tell an immersive story, but not at the same time. As a result, Star Trek soars for 45 minutes before devolving into a familiar spectacle, albeit an impressive one.” — from Eric Kohn‘s recently-posted review on movingpicturesmagazine.com.

Last January I asked why the promise of Ryan Reynolds — i.e., that he might one day become the next Robert Redford — didn’t seem to be happening. And yet it could, I thought at the time. Reynolds has the looks, some decent chops and a certain planted quality that could put him into a special realm (perceptually, at least) if he were to land the right parts.

But now that Reynolds has been announced to star in his own Deadpool movie in another 20th Century Fox X-Men spinoff, I think that’s all she wrote. Reynolds’ upgrade into classic movie star status isn’t going to happen. Because this feels like a low-rent move. Box-office aside, Wolverine has weakened the X-Men brand and you just know (or strongly suspect) that a Deadpool film will almost certainly bring about further diminishment

Reynolds isn’t shifting into the big-time, I wrote, because “he’s basically a faux star — an agreeable lightweight lacking serious hunger and possibly lacking the necessary gravitas — trying to launch himself (or at least make it work in a limited way or…you know, hang on) in a degraded environment. He seems to be doing all he can to make it happen — engage, excite, arouse — but it’s just not coalescing.”

This poster is amiable and easy, but Larry David just pantomining the title…I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like enough. Shouldn’t poster art crank up the intrigue levels a tad more? Shouldn’t it add context and counterpoint? I’m asking.

Whatever Works is “partly stiff and unconvincing and perhaps a bit too mean-spirited, even for a film about a bitter misanthrope,” I wrote on 4.22. “And yet it turns around and goes easy at the end, which I oddly liked and didn’t like at the same time. It sure as hell isn’t about realism, and yet the fakeness of Whatever Works is pleasing. And I was often delighted that the people-are-no-damn-good humor is as scalding as it is.”

Senior Sundance Film Festival programmer Trevor Groth is taking John Cooper‘s gig as director of programming for the Sundance Film Festival, effective immediately. The word around the campfire had been that both Cooper and Groth were trying to land the top Sundance job in the wake of Gilmore’s departure, although it always seemed a fait accompli to me that Cooper would be named successor, by virtue of seniority. Groth will hang onto his other job as Artistic Director for the CineVegas Film Festival, which he’s been doing since ’02.

Mia Farrow‘s Darfur-related hunger strike is brave and admirable. She’s trying to get President Obama to stop “lagging” about making moves that will somehow allow the 16 aid agencies which have been kicked out of Darfur, Sudan, to return. The expulsions have been ordered by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted for war crimes in March by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But how far will Farrow take this? What does she need to see happen?

It just hit me that Brad Silberling‘s Land of the Lost (Universal, 6.5) will be gradually boosting its media presence over the next few weeks, and deserves… well, a semblance of acknowledgement. The final two weeks of hype will commence near the end of the Cannes Film Festival, and then during my annual 9-day roamaround so my attention will be compromised. Except there’s nothing to say about something like this…is there? The less said the better. Just shut up.

Big-studio effects-driven comedies are all the same mish-mash. They pay the bills and nobody cares. Will Ferrell + Silberling (whom I wrote off 14 years ago after suffering through Casper) + Danny McBride + CG dinosaurs means big box-office and a mass coast-to-coast bendover. It’s the kind of of movie in which you need to cut a hole in the bottom of the cardboard popcorn container and do a Mickey Rourke-in-Diner move, just to get a reaction. From anyone. Because films like Land of the Lost have a tendency to make the world seem flatter and less full. I’ll pay to see it if I miss the screenings because I’m as much of a slave as anyone else.

“I don’t really have a plan, because [I] don’t know what the next 18 months will bring and I don’t want to think that much about it. I like not having a safety net. I like the risk of not knowing. But I will be involved in all kinds of great things.”

The preceding was spoken by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and published today in a N.Y. Times piece by Jennifer Steinhauer about this time and influence in Sacramento beginning to wind down. The quote is disingenuous in certain ways. It got me all the same because it reminds me of something I once read in one of Henry Miller‘s books from 1930s Paris, and because I myself tend to think this way from time to time.