In Nancy Hass’s New York Times profile of producer Scott Rudin (Sunday, 11.7), it’s reported that Rudin “has told a few insiders that he has been offered the top job at Miramax.” Whoa…where did that come from? Is this for real, or is Rudin making a point? “I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I’m not that interested in entertainment,” Rudin (Closer, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) also tells Hass. She also writes, “[Rudin] claims to be driven by what he calls a ‘hugely romantic view of talent’ and the need, at least sometimes, to say ‘something absolutely worthwhile.'”

And yet Hass’s piece also includes a coded journalistic reference to Rudin’s next two adult-themed films, Closer and the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. “Whether Closer, with its searing look at relationships and adultery, or the zany Aquatic, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, will combine emotional depth with box-office magic remains to be seen.” The meaning of the phrase “remains to be seen” is New York Times-ese for “they don’t quite hit the mark.” I’m not saying this is the case (and I hope it’s not), but I know all about namby-pamby Times tippy-toeing.

Four early observations on Oliver Stone’s Alexander (Warner Bros., 11.24), which screened for junket press on Saturday, 11.6: (1) Val Kilmer steals the movie in the role of Phillip of Macedon, Alexander’s warrior father, which is good for Kilmer — this will counter-balance his playing the prophet Moses on stage in that bizarre Ten Commandments musical; (2) There’s a pronounced gay love element in the film — Colin Farrell’s Alexander and Jared Leto’s Hephaestion characters, both “very pretty” and said to be “madly in love with each other,” according to one viewer (one should quickly add that sexual closeness between male warriors in ancient Greece was a different equation than a generic gay relationship today); (3) This aspect may encounter resistance with red-state audiences, especially given the virulent red-state rejections of gay-marriage initiatives, plus the general homophobic current in Bubbaland; and (4) the strongest political echo isn’t in the gay behavior, but, in the view of one major critic, in the notion of “a leader from a priveleged family with a powerful father who goes off and conquers middle-eastern territories.”