In all the coverage of Sony Pictures refusing to distribute Albert Brooks’ Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, no one has noted the obvious, which is that the title makes it sound like a documentary. We all know Brooks to be a hip and shrewd comic, but doesn’t the movie also sound a tiny bit…what’s the word I’m searching for? Cornball? A little dopey? How sharp and live-wire does anyone expect Muslim humor to be? Isn’t Muslim culture patriarchal and redneck-y and disparaging of women, etc.? I should just shut up and wait to see it, right? Warner Independent has stepped in as the distributor.

I love this line from a review of Capote by Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman, in which he examines the final beat in the relationship between Truman Capote and condemned murderer Perry Smith: “[Philip Seymour] Hoffman
makes Capote’s dissolution a theatrical miracle of devastation. In his final scene with Perry, he’s so conflicted that he does something I’ve never seen on screen: He cries, honestly, and lies at the same time.”

I don’t want to get too excited or lose my mind or anything, but this parody trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is clever as shit, but it also has a dark undercurrent because it perfectly nails the idiot-virus affecting movie advertising attitudes right now. It shows that you can take footage from any drama and lie through your teeth and make it look like a total fluffball movie…and this is what marketing people do all the time, because all they want to do is get people to show up on opening weekend, period. The creators are affiliated with a Manhattan media-advertising outfit called P.S.260.

For a while there, John Stockwell was the director who put soul and character into movies about young people involved in personal struggles and spiritual crises. He did this with crazy/beautiful, about a smart and responsible-minded East L.A. Hispanic teenager who falls for Kirsten Dunst’s alcoholic, self-destructive rich girl from Pacific Palisades, and then with the under-rated Blue Crush, a beautifully-shot, nicely finessed North Shore surfing movie with Kate Bosworth. But now, suddenly, he’s become the go-to guy for exotic outdoor thrillers starring hot-looking 20-somethings. He’s directed Into the Blue (Sony, 9.30), a throwaway diving-for-treasure-and-finding-thrills movie with Jessica Alba, Paul Walker and Scott Caan. And he’s now down in Brazil shooting Turistas, about “a group of young backpackers whose vacation turns sour when a bus accident leaves them marooned in a remote Brazilian jungle that holds an ominous secret.” And what would that be…pygmy cannibals? The hotbod costars are Melissa George, Josh Duhamel, Olivia Wilde and Desmond Askew…terrific. What happened? Stockwell is not Brett Ratner — he’s Curtis Hanson. But perhaps all is not lost. Stockwell has written a screenplay about a high-stakes gambler for-hire called Chasing the Whale and a thing about a 12 year-old criminal mastermind called Artemis Fowl…cool. All I know is, he’s capable of much more than stuff like Into the Friggin’ Blue.

Oh, and by the way? I had an appointment to meet Scott Caan early last July at a hip hotel on Thompson Street in Soho, the intention being to discuss that above-average film he wrote and directed called Dallas 362…and he disappeared. He wasn’t at the hotel, there was no “sorry” message left with the concierge, and no message was left on my cell phone. That makes him a Man of Honor.

Last week’s tracking figures for In Her Shoes, before last Saturday’s sneak, weren’t that hot — 2% first choice, awareness 55%, and definite interest 23%. (The under-25 female awareness was 66%; over-25 female awareness was 68%.) But the sneak has definitely bumped things up, and today’s tracking says first-choice for Shoes is now at 9%, general awareness 66% and definite interest 32%. The second sneak this weekend will bump things up a bit more and so on until the opening on 10.7. For perspective, Flightplan had a definite interest tally of 44% and 14% first-choice the day before it opened.