“The miniature work” in Ronald Neame and Irwin Allen‘s The Poseidon Adventure (1972) “as the ship is overturned by a 50-foot tidal wave is magnificent,” says N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr in his review of the just-released double-disc DVD. Magnificent isn’t the word for the footage of a slow-mo, Nixon-era bullshit “wave” as it engulfs a an obviously modest-sized ocean liner that was about 21 feet long in actuality. (I wonder if Kehr believes that footage of this rowboat-sized craft puttering along the surface of a studio tank during the opening credits is magnificent also? If you don’t believe me, check out this fansite and look at the stills of the 21-foot long ship inside the tank.) “It will be interesting to see how it stacks up to the computer-generated special effects of Friday’s remake,” says Kehr. You would expect, naturally, that 34 years of technical advancement in visual effects would make the effects in Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon way more sophisticated. And they are that.

There’s a significant comment in this Indiewire piece about Polly Cohen‘s stepping into Mark Gill‘s recently-vacated job as president of Warner Independent. It comes from WB production chief Jeff Robinov when he says that “the unit will pursue genre films, which it hasn’t released in the past.” Does Robinov mean genre films by way of Dimension or lionsgate or Screen Gems, which is to say schlock fantasy-horror with teenagers getting eaten or stabbed or chain-sawed to death? I don’t think Robinov means smarty-pants genre films…I think he means he wants Warner Independent to make some money by pandering to the repressed sex-death fantasies of cretin-class under-25s. The mind reels at the idea of the gentle and delicate Laura Kim applying her marketing skills to the selling of some forthcoming Warner Independent bucket-of-blood teen slasher pic.

I don’t feel good about copying anything from WENN, but Audrey Tautou‘s (alleged) comments about her playing opposite Tom Hanks in The DaVinci Code were precisely what I was thinking when I first heard of her casting. The piece says she was on holiday in Mexico when she was first contacted by director Ron Howard to play the part of Sophie, and that she “refused to go to LA and screen test opposite Hanks, as she felt too young to play the part.” But Howard “was determined to have her in the film. WENN quotes Tatou as saying, “I didn’t refuse to see [Howard]. He was doing one day of casting where he was going to meet everyone, but I was in Mexico and I said it’s not even worth it for me to go. I didn’t see how it could work. I thought this character had my strong-mindedness but it didn’t go further than that. And I thought at 27 that I was a bit too young when Ron contacted me. To me, Sophie was older.” Precisely! It was my feeling from the get-go that Sophie should have been played by Julie Delpy. Not only is the 36 year-old Delpy more age-appropriate for the 49 year-old Hanks, but, unlike the situation with Tatou, Hanks doesn’t appear to outweigh her by 70 or 80 pounds.

With today’s hurried theatrical-to-DVD transitions, it’s interesting to consider a situation that may affect Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette, which will open in France and Belgium on 5.24.06 — 15 days from now — but not until 10.13 in the U.S. It’s entirely possible, you see, that the film will be out on DVD in France before it opens in the States. (I don’t know that this will happen for sure, but DVD releases usually occur within four to five months of a theatrical debut.) The historical drama-with-New Order-music-on-the-soundtrack will open in England on 9.8.06.

Oh, and since I excerpted a negative review from a French film critic earlier, here’s a 4-star positive review from another Frenchman…although it’s all in French and the image doesn’t allow me to copy and paste it into Google’s translation tool. I don’t know if the author, Philipe Paumier of Cine Live, is a smart-tough critic in the Glenn Kenny mold or more of a Peter Travers type. I suspect the latter, but if anyone knows his work…

Nikki Finke has filed a follow-up about Mark Ebner‘s report about Scientologists allegedly buying up Mission: Impossible III tickets by the barrel-load at Hollywood’s Arclight theatre. Finke has written that “an ArcLight employee did confirm to me just now that ‘people have been buying dozens of tickets at a time’ for M:I:3, which is definitely an extraordinary sales pattern for the movie theater (or any theater, for that matter).” Ebner’s first report came from “a reliable industry dude” who eyewitnessed the massive Scientology ticket purchase at the ArcLight last Friday. He wasn’t able to get an Arclight spokesperson to comment one way or the other, but he posted what he had last weekend.

The last time Barry Levinson and Robin Williams made something good together, it was Good Morning, Vietnam back in ’87. The last truly high-grade film Levinson directed was Wag the Dog in ’97. The last really good film Williams acted in was Insomnia in ’01. I mention all this because I’ve been told by a friend that a new Levinson-Williams collaboration has turned out quite well. It’s called Man of the Year, a political comedy-drama produced by Morgan Creek. It’s about the host of a late-night political talk show (Williams) who decides to run for President, and wins, and then has to sort out an ethical dilemma after his election. Chris Walken, Laura Linnney, Jeff Goldblum and Lewis Black costar. A Universal spokesperson told me it doesn’t look like an ’06 release (“more likely ’07…they only just finished shooing three weeks ago”). My source, truth be told, tends to be a little nebulous-generous in her estimations of new films. She was also pretty happy with The Sentinel when she was it well in advance, so take this with a grain. But it would be great for both Levinson and Williams if what my friend is saying about their film turns out to be true.

“I read the World Trade Center script a few weeks ago, and Andrea Berloff‘s comment — ‘it’s a boy down the well saga with no politics’ — is pretty much the entire film in a nutshell. The guys (Nic Cage, Michael Pena) are buried under the rubble by the end of the first act, and remain there for over an hour of the film. In many ways, the structure is like that of Apollo 13, cutting away from the guys and their fear of losing their families and wives, and then to wives on the outside, freaking out and not getting any answers. Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s character is showier in this light than Maria Bello‘s, as she is pregnant and on edge much more throughout. There was a bookend device that I really hope gets tossed, something akin to the one used in Saving Private Ryan, putting it in a ‘now’ context that [struck me as] irritating. The only spots where it could become anything resembling an ‘Oliver Stone movie’ is when the script takes these slightly trippy routes of surrealism, as Cage’s and Pena’s characters slip in and out of delirium thinking about the last time they saw their wives. These could be played out as interesting fantasy elements. One thing is certain — this won’t be the ‘collapse of the towers’ film many may expect. In fact, the actual collapse occurs from the guys’ point of view in the lobby, amidst mass confusion while they consider the explosion to be a car bomb. And it’s a little while after that where we get a shot of the towers collapsing on CNN or something whern some character is watching the tube.” — Kris Tapley

I didn’t mean to misunderstand, but Josh Lucas is not going to get his head cut off (and some FX prosthetics guy down the road is not going to have to create a severed Lucas head) for a movie about murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl , which will be based on the Bernard-Henri Levy book “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?” Lucas will play a guy investigating Pearl’s killing. Kip Williams (The Door in the Floor) will direct for Beacon Pictures next fall, working from a script by Peter Landesman that uses a fictionalized Pearl character. (Beacon reportedly doesn’t want to infringe on a film project based on a book by the journalist’s widow, Marianne Pearl). Pic will shoot Morocco, Dubai, India, Libya and Tunisia.

“Let’s be honest: There is no theatrical movie business any more, and there hasn’t been for a long time. Except for the biggest Hollywood movies and sleeper independent films, theatrical is a loss leader. You get reviews and publicity and generally lose money or break even if you’re lucky. It’s all about DVDs and the other so-called ancillaries.” — publicist, public speaker and streetcorner provocateur Reid Rosefelt responding to Robert Cort‘s “Straight to DVD” op-ed piece in Saturday’s New York Times.

Let no one suggest that the new website for Paramount’s World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.9) isn’t extremely tasteful. You gotta figure that Oliver Stone‘s movie will be in this groove also. That piano music on the site’s soundtrack seems to be promising this. And God help us. Allah, make it not so. “Delicacy” is not what anyone wants from Stone. You go to a Stone film, you’re looking for probing, provocation and the jangling of nerves. I’m still flinching over screenwriter Andrea Berloff ‘s comment that the film — the story of a couple of firemen, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), who got trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9.11.01 — is “a boy down a well saga with no politics…this is a small story…we’re in the hole with these two guys for practically the whole movie.” I’m thinking right now of Leonard Frey‘s “Harold” character in The Boys in the Band, and his proclamation, “Give me librium or give me meth.” To me, Stone is essentially a meth-head who’s been straightjacketed into making an apparently librium-minded 9/11 movie (I don’t mean boring or low-energy — I mean not edgy or jittery or politically provocative) because he had to somehow demonstrate his commercial viability after the failure of Alexander . (Apologies to Andrea Peyser for zoning out earlier today and using her name instead of Berloff’s.)

A DaVinci dispatch from a journalist friend called “Deep Pope,” to wit: “I have a pet theory that The Da Vinci Code may be in some kind of trouble. At the very least, Sony seems to be worried about it.

The studio is shopping around an inordinate number of advance interviews for the film, it seems to me. Paul Bettany, Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina and Akiva Goldsman are being offered to journalists for interviews, but the catch is, you can’t see the movie yet. So you have to ask questions based on knowledge of the book and what you’ve see in the trailer. Suggests to me that maybe Sony doesn’t want the movie compared to the book too soon. Plus members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are being shown 35 minutes of the film tomorrow (i.e., Monday, 5.8). They’re then getting a sit-down with Tom Hanks — don’t know if it’s a press conference or round table. Is it necessary to stroke the HFPA members outside of Golden Globes season? Why the preferential treatment for this film? Surely no one at Sony thinks there will be any Oscars out of Da Vinci Code? Or are they just trying to goose whatever global press the HFPA can scare up before word gets out on the movie? Does any of this seem normal to you? They didn’t do this for Spider-Man, as I recall.”