“It would be a stretch to say that Tom Cruise needs a hit..what this guy needs is an intervention,” writes N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis in her review of Mission: impossible III. “[He needs] someone who can help the star once known as Tom Terrific return to the glory days, when the only things most of us really knew about him came from the boilerplate continually recycled in glossy magazines, sealing him in a bubble of blandness and mystery. In those days, we didn’t know that inside the world’s biggest movie draw lurked a reckless couch-jumper and heartless amateur pharmacologist . [You] have to wonder if the real mission in his newest film isn’t the search for the damsel in distress or the hunt for the supervillain, but the resurrection of a screen attraction who has, of late, seemed a bit of a freak. The domestication of Ethan Hunt may have seemed like a good idea, a humanizing touch, perhaps, but it only bogs down the action. Worse, it turns a perfectly good franchise into a seriously strange vanity project, as the simpering brunette is swept into a new world by a dashing operative for a clandestine organization. Much like the man playing him, [M:I:3‘s Ethan Hunt works only if you don’t know anything about what makes him tick. Once upon a Hollywood time, the studios carefully protected their stars from the press and the public. Now the impossible mission, it seems, is protecting them from themselves.”

Brandimensions, a firm that tries to eyeball movie sentiments of the 25 to 49 year-old demo by examining internet commentary and chat rooms, is saying that the early summer’s big four — X-Men 3: The Last Stand , Mission: Impossible III, The Da Vinci Code and Poseidon — are benefitting from good buzz and are will almost certainly be gretted with vigorous ticket sales. This is…oh, I’d say somewhere between 50% and 75% accurate prediction, but why quibble over fractions? If NRG tracking is wrong and Wolfgang Petersen’s Posedion makes out despite all the dire predctions, fine. I’ll be glad to see it happen.

The decision to screen Ron Howard‘s The DaVinci Code at the Cannes Film Festival’s Debussy theatre at 8:30 pm on Tuesday, 5.16 — the night before the festival’s de facto launch on Wednesday morning — is, one presumes, in line with Columbia’s decision to simultaneously screen it to the world’s film critics at more or less the same time. This means…what? That Opie’s Dae will screen for New York critics in the mid-afternoon of Tuesday the 16th, and for L.A. critics sometime in the late morning of the same day?

Readers who live in Berlin who plan to see Mission: Impossible III this weekend are urgently requested to write in after they’ve seen it and tell me if there’s a massive installation of windmill generators just outside the city (you know, like the one just outside Palm Springs) and, if there is such an area near Berlin, whether sheep have been known to graze nearby. And if both of these milieus are in fact “real”, can you send JPEGs?

Wednesday night’s (5.206) tracking figures were released today, and the news is again not good for Poseidon, which opens 8 days from now: 77% general awareness, 30% definite interest and 3% first choice. I’m sorry to be the bearer (especially regarding a film I had a really good time with), but the 3% figure basically means it’s as good as dead. Mission: Impossible III (opening tomorrow) has a 98% general awareness, 43% definite interest and 13% first choice. That’s fairly good, but not stratospheric. The DaVinci Code (opening 5.19) has a 95% general awareness, 60% definite interest and 29% first choice. Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand (opening 5.24 to 5.26 worldwide) has a 77% general interest, 51% definite interest and 14% first choice.

“I don’t know if this is going to happen in other countries, but Mission: Impossible III opened in France yesterday (Wednesday, 5.3) and compared to the first Mission films the numbers were alarming: 120,000 admissions in Paris for M:I:3 vs. 244,000 for the DePalma on opening day, and 338,000 for the John Woo. Was the weather too bright and shiny in Paris yesterday, or is a tired-of-Cruise effect starting to kick in?” — Mathieu Carratier , journalist, Paris, France

And now I have to blow things off again in order to see my son Jett run in a track meet in Wellesley, Massachucetts. I was just getting my groove back, but sometimes there’s more to life — my life, I mean — than pounding out stories and items. Okay, okay…I’ll jump in again this evening.

Myself and a few other online know-it-alls — Defamer‘s Mark Lisanti, MCN’s David Poland, Tom O’Neill, MSN’s Gregory Ellwood, Oscar Watch’s Sasha Stone — share predictions with L.A.Times writer Deborah Netburn about the summer films most likely to be the biggest hit, the biggest flop and the biggest sleeper. My calls (in that order): The DaVinci Code, Poseidon and Snakes on a Plane.

One of the reasons I wasn’t able to put very much up yesterday (Wednesday, 5.3) was that I was doing an early pre-Cannes interview with Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (21 Grams, Amores perros) out at Studio City Radford, where he and his team are working on the final sound mix before delivering a finished print to the Cannes Film Festival, where it will screen on or about 5.23.06.

Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu on Wednesday, 5.3, 1:15 pm, outside mixing studio in Sherman Oaks

A tightly sprung, hauntingly composed drama on the page (I’ve read Guillermo Ariagga’s script, but I haven’t seen the film), Babel costars Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal and Cate Blanchett, although many other actors are part of the mix. It’s about intertwining fates and has four concurrent storylines that unfold in three countries — Tunisia, Japan and Mexico. I’ll run the Innaritu interview feature just before the festival begins, but I may let go with a few excerpts between now and that date, which could be Monday, 5.15, or about 10 days from now.

Another reason I was behind the grind on Wednesday is that I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off as part of my preparation for flying last night to Boston. My Jet Blue flight left Burbank around 8:50 pm. I got into Kennedy around 5 ayem, took a shuttle flight to Boston’s Logan airport and MTA’ed out to Brookline around 7:45 am. I worked a bit, piddled around and then crashed on the couch for three hours.

Aspinwall near Harvard Ave. in Brookline — Thursday, 5.4.06, 12:25 pm.

When I woke up the May weather was transcendent. The air smelled like honesuckle or hot dogs or fantastic coffee…a combination of all three, most likely. The blue skies and bright sunlight made the neighborhood look like something out of a 1952 Vincent Minelli film. The trees are budding, the flowers are bustin’ out all over and it was heavenly to just walk around and breathe it all in. A fragrant spring day on the east coast can cleanse your soul like few other stimulants or epiphanies.

It’s taken him years, but George Lucas has finally capitulated to the middle-aged Star Wars purists (i.e., fans who were tweeners or teeners in May 1977, when the installment later known as A New Hope first opened) who hated the “Greedo shoots first” revision and some of the other add-ons.

“Going somewhere, Solo?”

On 9.12.06, the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi will be released as part of a new DVD package that will also include the 2004 digitally remastered versions. Only an insulated Jabba who lives in his own realm would have neglected to offer the original versions a long time ago in DVD. It took Lucas way too long to come around, but at least he came around. It’s possible that the making of large crateloads of money was a major factor in the Lucasflm’s decision to release these versions, but what can you expect from Lucas, the new “I love the indie camp” guy or, if you prefer, the new Gregg Araki.