Remember that “Trapped in the Closet” episode on South Park that eviscerated Scientologists and especially Tom Cruise for being…how should I best put this?…guarded about his personal proclivities? TV Academy members have nominated the episode for a possible Emmy in the category of “outstanding animated program award.” The meaning of this seems clear. The TV Academy membership hasn’t suddenly turned bold and irreverent. It’s that Cruise is seen as a diminished force in this town and people aren’t scared of him like they used to be. Can anyone imagine this nomination happening five years ago?

Where can A Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox, 12.22) go past the inanimate-objects-coming-alive premise unveiled in the trailer? That’s the question you’re left with after watching it. Pic stars Ben Stiller as a hapless Museum of Natural History night watchman (is there any other kind in a film like this?) who “accidentally lets loose an ancient curse” that blah, blah. It sounds fun, looks like fun…but in a lightweight Jumanji way. Amd keep in mind that the dreaded Shawn Levy (The Pink Panther, Cheaper by the Dozen, Just Married) is directing.

Let’s imagine that an arrangement is made for a good writer to pen an intimate book about N.Y. Times book reviewer Janet Maslin — who she really is, the struggle to write well, her innermost fears and anxieties, her day-to-day life. And the writer hangs 24-7 with Maslin for weeks and months on end, and Maslin finds the courage to confess everything…not just her bright-lady insights about this and that literary or New York-y subject, but the deep-down, inner child stuff.
The book that would result, trust me, would almost certainly resemble Michael Bamberger ‘s inside-the- head-of-M. Night Shyamalan book, The Man Who Heard Voices (Gotham, 7.20). That is, if Maslin has had the courage to really open up with the writer, and if the writer had decided in advance to describe Maslin’s inner life as fully and intimately as possible, and without judgement.
And yet Maslin has viciously slammed Bamberger’s book in her N.Y. Times review as “a new high-water mark for [celebrity] sycophancy…not just a puff article but a full-length, unintentionally riotous puff book.”
Her beef is that Bamberger is too admiring of Shyamalan’s life and lifestyle; that he hasn’t been circumspect or judgmental or smart-assed enough. What she’s missing — dismissing — is that Shyamalan let Bamberger into his insecure inner sanctum without restrictions, and what came of this is, naturally, not surprisingly, a portrait of a vulnerable egoistic guy with problems — a guy with a deep belief in dreams and voices (as all creative types need to be) but with control-freak tendencies and a need for a certain kind of approval that requires being not just rich but fully understood by colleagues; a guy with demons and uncertainties like anyone else, but amplified by the power he’s accumulated as a big-time Hollywood director.
Take off the armor and we’re all scared and anxious and messed up in this or that way, including Janet Maslin. The difference is that Shyamalan has the courage to confess this and Bamberger has the focus and the honesty to just lay it down as he heard and felt it, and all Maslin can write in response is distaste. How very big of her.

It’s funny, but for all HE’s disappointment over Pirates 2 — the film, not the money it’s making — there’s no shaking the enjoyment I’m still feeling about two elements: Bill Nighy‘s octopus-faced Davy Jones (which I singled out in the initial review), and that awesome CG moment when Jones’ ship, the Flying Dutchman, does a submarine dive beneath the waves.

If I were nine or ten years old I would be going back for seconds just to relish stuff like this. But because I’m an adult of some aesthetic refinement, sitting through the entirety of POTC2 in a theatre for a second time isn’t an option. Solution: dig on the Dutchman with my remote when the DVD comes out.

Here’s an intriguing, not-too-flashy trailer for Hollywoodland (Focus Features, 9.8),a noir-like melodrama about the death of George Reeves (Ben Affleck) and the possibility of foul play. It’s supposed to belong to Adrien Brody (he plays a private dick looking into the circumstances) but whatever happens, my hope is that Affleck will get a career bounce out of it. But I’m wondering why we’ve seen no stills of Alleck in that faintly dorky red-and-blue Superman outfit that Reeve wore on the TV series or, even cooler, the black-and-white suit Reeve wore for the show’s monchrome episodes. You know…that posed hands-on-hips shot with his cape billowing and the flag waving? And isn’t it time, by the way, for the film’s official site to be up, less than two months before the opening?

“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
— Macbeth, William Shakespeare, 5-3

Government censors have refused to permit Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest to play in mainland Chinese theatres due to “excessive length, a lack of story tension and an absence of any inner emotional current whatsoever”, local media has reported. Okay, I’m kidding. In all seriousness, China has banned Gore Verbinski’s blockbuster due to “violent and supernatural content,” according to the Beijing News. Specifically, the government Film Bureau “disliked the portrayal of the souls of the dead and of a ferocious ‘octopus-faced’ character” — i.e., Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones. Really, this isn’t a joke. Did the censors find Davy’s face too slithery-liquid-maggot disgusting or…? Pirates could still screen in China “if it passes a second round of examination,” the Beijing News reported two days ago.

Isn’t it a bit redundant for “a source close to” Jim Carrey to tell People magazine that “he’s very happy” about having hooked up with Jenny McCarthy, given they they’re in a relationship that’s only a few months old and therefore still in the hormonal-high stage? What else is Carrey going to feel or confess to? (“I like the sex alot,” “I feel somewhat mezzo-mezzo about Jenny,” “She snores”) This is one of the reasons I didn’t like working at People.

What’s your pirate name? Mine’s Mad Levi. I’m not Jewish so I don’t get it. Oh…mad for Levi 501’s?

The truth is that I’m not much interested in seeing The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a long-in-development animated film that’s based on a Roald Dahl story that Wes Anderson is (or was) planning to direct for Sony, from a script he co-wrote with Noah Baumbach. What everyone wants to see is Wes’s India movie, which I hear is written on paper and pretty damn good. (I don’t know anything else except for the locale.) The reason I’m mentioning the India flick is because plans are apparently afoot to shoot it sooner rather than later, meaning later this year or in early ’07. The India shoot appears (emphasis on the “a” word) to be scheduled to happen at the same time as Drillbit Taylor, a comedy that Stephen Brill (Little Nicky, Without a Paddle ) is going to direct for Paramount with Wes’s longtime ally Owen Wilson starring and Judd Apatow producing. It’s a bit of an either-or, art-vs.-commerce issue for Owen, who wants to do the India pic but likes the idea of Drillbit because it’s a big friggin’ payday. (Uhm, a guy who gets around just wrote in and said Drillbit Taylor “is a funny script…keep that in mind.” But I’m sure he means “funny” in a low, crude Stephen Brill kind of way.)

If it takes a producer longer than five years to develop a script to everyone’s satisfaction, forget it. The Gods are against the idea of it being made. And so, at this late stage in the game, is the audience when it comes to Indy 4, which has been in development since before the Gulf War. That’s because if and when it finally gets made, everyone’s guessing it’ll be about a leathery, stoop-shoulderd old coot (Harrison Ford) who doesn’t get polished apples from the cute girls in his archeology class any more. And people damn sure don’t care if Natalie Portman has been cast or not as Indy’s spirited granddaughter. I remember asking Ford about the progress of the next Indiana Jones film when I interviewed him in a San Francisco hotel room in ’94, when he was pushing Clear and Present Danger. Anyone who’s seen Firewall and watched Ford slug it out with Paul Bettany knows he’s over as an action star…the whole thing is over. Indiana Fogie!

David Mamet‘s Edmond is a harsh but fascinating film…fine… and William H. Macy is great in the title role. First Independent Pictures is opening it in New York City on 7.14. The only problem from this end is that I haven’t heard squat about any L.A. screenings or even screeners being sent out by a local publicist, whoever that might be.