Went to The Aristocrats at a multiplex just of Union Square on Saturday night, and it was just about sold out and damned if the audience wasn’t laughing its ass off, particularly a couple of girls who were sitting right behind us. The ThinkFilm release averaged a bit over $10,000 per screen last weekend at 72 situations, and has earned $1.5 millon so far. But don’t pop the champagne just yet because the red-state rurals aren’t expected to be as receptive as the city slickers have been, according to conventional wisdom.

No biggie but vaguely bothersome: two days ago Dark Horizons linked to Thursday’s story in the N.Y. Daily News (actually in Rush and Molloy’s column) that Steven Spielberg will be directing Liam Neeson as Abraham Lincoln in a biopic starting in the spring ’06. I ran the Neeson-Lincoln story a day before Rush and Molloy, having spoken to Neeson about it at a Constant Gardener party last Monday.

Jack Matthews has supplied a heartfelt, nicely-written profile of Brothers Grimm director Terry Gilliam in today’s N.Y. Daily News. There’s no reading this and not falling in love all over again with Gilliam’s scrappy way of dealing with studio chiefs like Miramax’s Bob Weinstein, who was in Gilliam’s face over this and that during the ’03 Grimm shoot. That said, Matthews’ piece is also a reminder that the charm of Gilliam’s rambunctious personality and the filmmaking experiences he goes through and subsequently passes along to journalists are sometimes (often?) more intriguing and inspirational than the films he makes. I mean no disrespect when I say that my favorite Terry Gilliam movie, far and away, is Keith Fulton and Luis Pepe’s Lost in La Mancha, an ’02 doc about the disastrous non-making of Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. That is because it is simply more engaging in terms of human charm and rooting interest than Brazil, The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, et. al. Gilliam is an auteur with a creative signature that is recognizable and totally respected around the word, but his movies are always about applying his brushstrokes in precisely the right Gilliam-esque way first and then enchanting movieogers second. The scripts he goes with are never as well developed as his elaborate production designs. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing Gilliam’s Tideland at the Toronto Film Festival and especially the pleasure of speaking to Gilliam and hearing his latest regalings.

What’s the first thing anyone does when they go into a DVD store? They head for the rack with the just-out releases to they can scan the jacket covers, etc. Everyone in the world does this, but there is no DVD-fan website I know of that displays jacket cover art of the latest DVDs at the top of its main page. All the major DVD sites list new releases, but you have to search around for them…which is not analagous to your typical DVD store experience. That said, DVD Journal is my favorite because the main page gets right down to business with the new titles listed on the middle-left margin. They also have a prominent Release Calendar option right at the top of the navigation bar, and the reviews (read Mark Bourne’s piece about Fox Home Video’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) are always perceptive, knowledgable and sharply written.

It sounds way unlikely, but Nicole Lampert of London’s Daily Mail is reporting that Russell Crowe is “expected” to pay an out-of-court settlement of 6 million pounds to Nestor Estrada, the candy-assed porter who suffered a traumatic nick to the cheek when Crowe threw a phone at him last June during a stay at Manhattan’s Mercer hotel. This column doesn’t support big-name actors who can’t control their tempers, but it also deplores, at the same time, hotel employees who use the term “whatever” when a guest is unsatisfied with some aspect of the service. And particularly hotel employees who hire attorneys for the purpose of financially extoring celebrities because they know they’ve got them over a barrel. Bad tempers are bad news, but guys weenies like Nestor Estrada are just as bad in their own snivelling, little-girlish way.