“I wrote a story last summer [for the Toronto Star] about Tom Cruise that sparked a lot of email and walk-up conversations from women. Every single one of them, young and old, said they no longer liked Cruise. Many expressed the belief that he’d gone crazy. It was surprising to me how firm and how consistent they were in their opinion. I’ve talked to many women since, and their view of Cruise hasn’t mellowed one iota. He’s damaged goods as far as women go, while men never had that much time for him anyway. I find off-the-cuff reactions from people to be a much better judge of things like this than so-called experts or bogus surveys.
It’s that magical thing called ‘buzz,’ and it cuts both ways.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how M:I:3 does. It will have to attract a sizeable number of women — those guys all need dates — if it is going to do socko numbers.” — Peter Howell, critic and feature writer, Toronto Star

So what’s the deal with the extremely low profile apparently being sought by the makers and promoters of The Celestine Prophecy (Celestine Films), which is opening on 4.19 in San Francisco, and then in Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Berkeley and other mid-size cities later in the month? Based on James Redfield‘s famous best-seller, directed by Armand Mastroianni and costarring some good and respectable actors (Matthew Settle, Thomas Kretschmann, Sarah Wayne Callies, Annabeth Gish, Hector Elizondo, Joaquim de Almeida, Jurgen Prochnow), Celestine is a film about spiritual matters, to go by the trailer. It may be a piece of shit, but you’d think it would appeal to the people who liked What The Bleep Do We Know?. It’s not a hardcore born-again or Jesus flick in the Passion of the Christ vein, or even one about conventional faith or religion, but it’s clearly one of the many films coming out this year that are aimed at spiritually-minded moviegoers. And yet it wasn’t even mentioned in Scott Bowles‘ 4.14 USA Today piece about these films, nor was it mentioned in the sidebar that listed all the spiritual-religious films opening this year. Publicist Corinne Bourdeau of 360 Degree Communications says that a specal Celestine Prophecy screening will happen in Los Angeles on May 2nd, and that film will eventually play in New York. She says that “quite a few distributors wanted it but we wanted to go a non-traditional route,” meaning, in part, that “we haven’t reached out to reviewers.” The likely translation is that they know they’ve got a movie that’s going to get creamed by the big guns so they’ve decided to play to all the New Agers out there and, for now, bypass mainstream entertainment journalists and the the usual New York/Los Angeles launch strategy. Bordeau says the film is “going to speak to a broader audience” than the kind who usually read the New York Times or the trades or smarty-pants online columnists like myself. Celestine had a showing not too long ago in Los Angeles, she says, at the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City. This smells like a huge problem movie because even if you’re looking to reach people outside of the L.A.-N.Y. axis there’s no downside to opening in those cities unless (a) you’re broke or (b) there’s a likelihood your film is going to get critically butchered. I’m interested in this film because I know Settle, having sat down with him for a long chat once in ’04 at the Farmer’s Market about a short film I’d written.

“There have been three actors in Hollywood history that I can think of …Douglas Fairbanks, Burt Lancaster and Jackie Chan…who’ve done their own stunts, but they all had either a natural facility or training of some kind. I think that for Tom Cruise to announce that he’s doing his own stunts on Mission: Impossible 3….for a movie star of his calibre to do this, that can only come from a wild insecurity on his part.” — “name” guy who likes anonymity

This sound file is taken from the opening five or six minutes of HBO’s Too Hot Not to Handle, a global warming doc that will debut at 7 pm on 4.22 — “Earth Day.” It’s smart, absorbing…a very thorough rundown explaining how bad things have been getting, and how much worse they’ll get if we don’t do something about C02 emissions and greenhouse gases.

Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto (Touchstone), an ancient-history metaphor piece about a civilization destroying itself, has abandoned its August 4 release date and will now open on December 8. So either Gibson and Disney distributors have decided Apocalypto has year-end awards potential, or they didn’t like the idea of opening in the same late-summer period as Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center and Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of our Fathers, or they decided they need a lot more time to get it ready.

I guess I misheard that insider’s analogy between the Chicago Tribune‘s first-string film critic Michael Phillips and the recently deposed (i.e., downshifted to second-tier position) Michael Wilmington, so let’s try again. Phillips “is indeed an elegant writer, but I don’t think he and Wilmington are coming from the same aesthetic place. Wilmington runs hot and enthusiastic. Phillips runs cool and measured . Wilmington has lived and died for flickering lights in dark rooms his whole life. Phillips is more detached and analytical and a converted theater critic, albeit one with previous experience with movies as well, and is therefore more likely to reference real life than a Renoir film .”

Scary Movie 4 is estimated to do around $44,379,000 for the weekend, or $12,320 per print. Seriously…what does it say about American culture that this dumb parody film did as well as it did? How unhip do you have to be to really enjoy this? Ice Age: The Meltdown is off 41% from last weekend and estimated to earn $19,059,000. Benchwarmers is down 50% for a $9,797,000 haul. The reportedly very expensive Disney animated film The Wild, directed by Steve “Spaz” Williams, is a fourth-place disaster…$9,094,000 at $3180 a print. Take The Lead is down 38% for earnings of $7,490,000. Inside Man is being projected to bring in $6,505,000, off 29%. Lucky Number Slevin , a very tedious film, is down 30% and earning $4,508,000 for the weekend. Thank You for Smoking added 705 situations for a total of 1015, and will take in about $4,435,000.