It’s easy to be skeptical about that Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes fluid exchange that’s supposedly happening, according to Cruise’s publicist (and sister) Lee Anne DeVette. My first instinct was to paraphrase Woody Allen and call it “a sham of a mockery of a mockery of a sham.” And I lurrrve Kyle Smith’s analysis of why it all seems like staged bullshit. Of course, people always hook up because they believe the other person will do something for their life or career, and Cruise and Holmes are naturally thinking along these lines. But I don’t believe it’s complete theatre. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but a person in a position to know once told me that the Tom-and-Nicole thing was fairly genuine…emotionally, anyway. You have to guard against being too cynical in this town, but I have to say I laughed out loud at that recent comment about that Cruise-Holmes appearance in Rome on Defamer, to wit: “Excuse us while we figure out a way to press our naked eyeballs onto the burners on the electric stove.”

There will be, it appears, at least a mild titillation factor for Stanley Kubrick fans in Brian Cook’s Color Me Kubrick. The story’s about a real-life guy named Alan Conway (John Malkovich) who went around London telling everyone he was Kubrick and getting away with it, to some extent…even though he didn’t look much like him. But the teaser on the film’s website (which has nothing on it except the teaser, which raises red flags right off the bat) feels a bit lame…it doesn’t say anything other than the fact that Conway pretended to be Kubrick, etc. And that Conway was gay. No twist, no angularity, no cushion shot of any kind. Something deep down is telling me the movie is underbaked. Maybe it’s the incest angle, since both Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin worked for Kubrick (Cook as an assistant director on Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut, Frewin as a personal assistant). The French trailer says it’ll open in France on 5.4.05, so I guess I’ll be able to take a train to Nice during the Cannes Film Festival and pay to see it in a regular theatre. If anyone in England has seen Kubrick or knows if it’ll be shown at a “market” screening on the rue d’Antibes, please let me know. I’d like these premonitions I’m feeling to be proved wrong.

Kevin Smith has seen Star Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith and LOVES IT. (he’s posted an early review, with spoilers, on his website.) Can this really be? After Willow, Howard the Duck, and the atrocious last two Star Wars flicks, can Lucas really be poised for redemption? Part of me wants to believe. (“Who’s the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?”) The rest of me remembers the unforgivable acting in “Attack of the Clones” and prepares for seppuku. I think fans should plan a massive Jonestown-like suicide party, just in case it does suck. Can you imagine the coverage of the line of stormtrooper corpses piled in front of the WRONG THEATER? Silent Bob’s review gives me hope, though. “You’re all clear, George! Now let’s blow this thing and go home.”