I heard Darren McGavin died early today, but the big news sites weren’t on it. The IMDB still doesn’t have it as I write this at 8:45 pm on Saturday. It was only Ain’t It Cool News, and apologies to Harry but I didn’t quite feel safe. So I called McGavin’s son Beau and his daughter Graemme (whom I’ve known pretty well since ’82) and nothing. Then Beau just called back and confirmed. Very sorry. A memorial service is set for Sunday, March 5, at Hollywood Forever.

A smart and funny N.Y. Times piece by Allison Hope Weiner on the tribal customs of Oscar partying. I’ve been given a very hard time by dates in the past for not introducing them at parties when I’m speaking to some big-name actor or director or studio guy (they’re right — it’s a bit thoughtless), but Weiner’s first rule of Oscar party etiquette (“an oxymoron,” someone says) is “IF YOU’RE SOMEONE’S DATE, DON’T EXPECT TO BE INTRODUCED.” She says that “no one cares about spouses, relatives and arm-candy at Hollywood parties. You could be a Nobel laureate, but if you’re a plus-one during Oscar week, no one will want to meet you. And your significant other probably won’t introduce you. Don’t take it personally.”

Poor Daniel Craig, whom the old-line fans despise for having been cast as James Bond in the currently-shooting Casino Royale, is getting more support, this time from
Die Another Day villain Toby Stephens who calls hiring Craig to play 007 “inspired” and says he takes the character “back to its roots.” Craig is “a serious actor and doesn’t look like a traditional Bond,” said Stephens. “He’s a very dark actor and a very interesting one, and I think he will be brilliant. It will reinvigorate the whole thing. It is not going to be to everyone’s taste but that is the thing when you take over a role…you are not going to please everyone.” Pierce Brosnan is also calling Craig “a very fine actor,” adding that “these are rocky waters and [anti-Craig contingent is] going to get him one way or another, but I think he will have the last laugh at the end of it.”

Hey, this Robert Koehler Variety review of Richard Donner‘s 16 Blocks (Warner Bros., 3.3) makes it sound pretty good. “The last chance of an aging cop” — Bruce Willis — “to redeem his soured existence provides the sturdy frame…closer to a compact film noir than to the many gimmicky entertainments of [Donner’s] past…not up to the level of Sidney Lumet‘s Gotham police pics, [but] it does raise the banner for the tradition of the textured urban cop drama…told mostly in real time, pic sticks to its guns as a spare account of how a routine transport of a witness to a courtroom turns into a chaotic cat-and-mouse chase, with police criminality at its core…Willis playing a worn-out cop will present commercial challenges in snaring a youth-oriented opening weekend crowd, but vid should pick up the slack.”

Liam Neeson, whom I spoke to twice last summer about making his Abraham Lincoln voice sound just right when he finally starts shooting that Lincoln biopic for Steven Spielberg, “tried out his Lincoln chops before a live audience last week on C-SPAN,” reports “Page Six” in the N.Y. Post. “The Irish actor brought the crowd at the Library of Congress to its feet with his rendition — brogue-free — of the Gettysburg Address. The ‘Lincoln Family Album’ reading, narrated on-air by N.Y.-based Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, drew a big audience and will be rerun by C-SPAN in April. Holly Hunter” — who’s apparently been cast in the role of Mary Todd Lincoln — “read alongside Neeson.” Despite Spielberg spokesperson Marvin Levy telling me a while back that the Lincoln biopic doesn’t have a locked start date, there seems to be a plan for shooting to begin sometime in the spring. (And by the way, check out the third paragraph in this Wikipedia biography of actor Raymond Massey. It says that Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926) “heard Massey perform and was struck by the close similarity of Massey’s speaking voice to that of his father.”)

Tyler Perry‘s Madea’s Family Reunion, which would have gotten killed by critics if Lionsgate had been dumb enough to show it to them (they weren’t and they didn’t), took in $10,169,000 yesterday (Friday, 2.24) on 2194 screens, and will end up with something like $30 million for the weekend. (My source believes “they had about 800 screens they didn’t need…some of those theatres are like bowling alleys.” Len Klady at Movie City News says Madea took in a bit more — $10.5 million.) The other two wide releases, Doogal (Weinstein Co.) and Running Scared (New Line), both tanked. The former, which did under a million on Friday, will probably do only about $3.4 million for the weekend. And Wayne Kramer‘s action-thriller, playing on roughly 1600 screens, will end up with $2.7 million. And Gavin Hood‘s Tsotsi (Miramax), did about $3600 a print in 6 theatres, and will finish the weekend with $70,000, give or take. By the way, here’s a very on-target and fairly balanced review of Perry’s film, by the Toronto Star‘s Geoff Pevere.

George Clooney and pal Les Moonves intend to re-do Network on CBS. One assumes they believe that Paddy Chayefsky‘s dialogue can be performed better than, say, what Bill Holden, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway did with it in this scene from Sidney Lumet‘s original 1976 feature. (It’s lifted from the new Network double-disc DVD, which has a very fine making-of doc and a great-looking transfer — like the film just came out of the lab.) I don’t care what Clooney and Moonves think — this can’t be improved upon, and if they want a challenge they should take an old movie that was only so-so and make it better.

Universal chairwoman Stacey Snider is almost certainly going to take “a significant pay cut” to run the Paramount-based DreamWorks, with a task of overseeing four to six films instead of the sixteen to eighteen she watches over at Universal each year. And she’ll be able to spend more time with her two daughters… great. But who really cares about this development, outside of those whose jobs and movies will be affected? A nice woman is going to switch jobs…big deal.

When it comes to burning one’s flesh, context is everything. In Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole‘s willingness to singe his fingertips indicates a curiously likable apartness…a certain charisma…especially when he says that the trick is “not minding” that it hurts. When Hal Holbrook talks about Gordon Liddy having held his hand over a candle at a Washington party and offering the same answer when someone asks “what’s the trick?”, it indicates a slight nutter mentality — somebody you don’t want to get too close to.

The Guardian‘s Sharon Krum takes another look at how women directors are faring these days, or rather the view of same by “guerrilla girls” (www.moviesbywomen.com) Kathe Kollwitz and Tara Veneruso.

I missed this yesterday, but Ain’t It Cool’s “Quint” is hearing that Eric Bana is in negotiations to play the Van Heflin role (the good guy) in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, in which Tom Cruise is reportedly hot to play the Glenn Ford villain role. A few minutes ago I asked director James Mangold whether the Bana thing is likely or half-true, but he didn’t answer my Cruise question yesterday so I guess we’ll have to wait for Variety‘s Michael Fleming to announce it.

Zap2It‘s Daniel Fienberg again, this time about my riff about industry attitudes and hurdles commonly thrown in front of women filmmakers: “You’re gonna get plenty of angry e-mails regarding your comments about female directors, but the point is this: white male filmmakers don’t need to go out of their way to tackle issues important to white males, because there are oodles of films out there showing just how darned difficult and complicated it is to be a white male. Somebody like Curtis Hanson can step outside of his personal interest group to direct an In Her Shoes because he can sleep knowing that his issues as a white male are being adequately represented by many other films. But if Jane Campion went to somebody at Paramount and said, “I want to direct a Jim Carrey movie,” they’d say, “Well, we already have a certain Generic Male Director interested, but we have this Mandy Moore movie where she gets cancer, if you want it.” At that point could you blame her for preferring to just go make her own movie? It’s much more difficult being a female director than even an African- American filmmaker. It’s taken decades to get to the point where a black filmmaker can make a movie without African- American themes. When a Spike Lee gets to make an Inside Man or F. Gary Gray makes an Italian Job, that’s a step forward. Heck, John Singleton doing Without Remorse is a sign of progress.”