Thanks to the Washington Post‘s Ann Hornaday for the really nice plug in Sunday’s (10.16) edition: “[Hollywood Elsewhere] is the blog of Jeffrey Wells, a Los Angeles-based film writer and critic who offers pithy, insightful observations about the industry as well as smart reviews of movies he’s just seen at advance screen- ings and festivals. A nifty compendium of gossip, reflection and old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, this is the first thing I go to in the morning. A must-visit for cineastes as well as garden- variety fans, Hollywood Elsewhere manages to be lively without being snarky and enthusiastic without being overweening. A rarity and a gem.”

The only film opening this Friday (10.21) that’s tracking to any degree is Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Doom (Universal)…which the elitists have almost no interest in seeing. The only 10.28 openers with decent numbers are Saw 2 and The Legend of Zorro. The likable and smoothly made Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (10/21) snuck last weekend and isn’t tracking…yet. Shopgirl and Stay, both out 10.21, aren’t tracking either. And there’s not much interest in Gore Verbinski’s Weather Man with Nic Cage, Paradise Now or The Dying Gaul, which all open on 10.28.

It’s tough out there but Jesus God, the poor guy…Charles Rocket, the former SNL star, killed himself in Connecticut a little more a week ago. I knew him and worked with him a little bit in ’87 when I wrote the press notes for a truly crappy Cannon film he starred in with Carrie Lowell called Down Twisted. The last film he made came out two years ago…RKO Pictures’ Shade with Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith and Gabriel Byrne. In 2000 he costarred in the TV series Normal, Ohio, which starred John Goodman as a gay guy living in oddball-holmey Ohio. Rocket was 56…what sadness.

I read the Amazon.com info about Matthew Modine’s ‘Full Metal Jacket Diary” too quickly last weekend. It only cost $20 bucks or a bit more, not $63.

Explaining to Time‘s Richard Schickel that sometimes “you have to trust your gut” and go with “a premonition that you can get something decent out of it,” Clint Eastwood is doing something fairly startling. Come February he’ll begin shooting Lamps Before the Wind, a kind of cultural reverse-angle, Japanese-soldier companion piece to his World War II war battle-of-Iwo-Jima drama Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks, due in Nov./Dec. ’06) that focuses on the Marines who raised the U.S. flag on top of Mt. Surabachi. Schickel’s excellent piece (“Clint’s Double Take”) reports that Flags screenwriter Paul Haggis begged off writing the Japanese saga, but recommended a young Japanese-American screenwriter, Iris Yamashita. “Taken together, the two screen- plays show that the battle of Iwo Jima — and by implication, the whole war in the Pacific — was not just a clash of arms but a clash of cultures,” Schickel writes. “The Japanese officer class, imbued with the quasi-religious fervor of their Bushido code, believed that surrender was dishonor, that they were all obliged to die in defense of their small island. Yamashita’s script is much more relentlessly cruel [than Fathers]. In essence, the Japanese officers compelled the bravery (and suicide) of their troops at gunpoint. Only the Japanese commander, Lieut. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (a mysterious historical figure who fascinates Eastwood), and a fictional conscript, Saigo, whose fate Yamashita intertwines with his commanding officer’s, demonstrate anything like humanity as a Westerner might understand it.” Flags of our Fathers (which costars Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Ryan Phillipe, Paul Walker and Barry Pepper) and Lamps Before the Wind will be released simultaneously in late ’06.

Doug Pratt of DVDlaser.com says we should all check out a five-minute video piece by director Sydney Pollack on the new DVD of The Interpreter that explains the importance of letterboxing. “His plea for getting braindead viewers to understand why letterboxing is better is exceptionally well composed and engaging — essentially the best piece ever done on the topic in a DVD supplement,” writes Pratt. “Pollack talks about how he made films in a scope format initially, and then switched to the boxier, TV-friendly format when he saw what happened to his wide films on TV. He then explains why he chose to return to widescreen for The Interpreter, and demonstrates what the viewer is missing when the presentation is cropped. It is a calm and rational explanation, but his passion is communicated with an equal clarity, and the segment ought to be playing in a continuous loop in the video department of every Wal-Mart and Target in the country.”