It was 9:30 pm and Viacom CEO Tom Freston was in a good mood, sipping a beer and playing pool and applying chalk to the tip of his stick when all of a sudden…whack! Someone clobbered him with the blunt end of another pool cue. Freston’s eyes rolled into his forehead, his legs gave out and a second later he was on the floor and out cold. The upshot is that the poor guy’s out of a job. Freston’s former boss, the always assertive Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, made the call because of “a weak stock price and increasing questions about the company’s online strategy,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. The 83 year-old Redstone replaced Freston with “personal adviser” Philippe Dauman; he also rehired a former lieutenant, Thomas Dooley, as exec vp and chief administrative officer. The shakeup “bore striking similarities to a similar executive overhaul at Viacom in 1996”, the Jounal story says.

In a “Big Picture” column piece about how Gridiron Gang director Phil Joanou has put demons and career disappointment behind him, L.A. Times guy Patrick Goldstein mentions that Joanou’s Entropy, “an autobiographical film” that was finished in ’99, went straight to video, implying it was a piece of shite.
What Goldstein perhaps should have mentioned is that this low-budget effort, in which Stephen Dorff plays a smart, obsessive, emotionally torn filmmaker precisely modelled on Joanou, is an above-average, not-half-bad film. People on the skids tend to take any work they can get, and there’s no doubt that six or seven years ago Joanou was grappling with a cloudy rep and having trouble getting choice film-directing jobs, and yet he made a fairly interesting piece about his own screwed-up career and love life, in what seemed to me like extremely frank terms.

On the other hand, the Hollywood Reporter‘s Ray Bennett says that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men is “a gripping new thriller [that] takes the classic movie formula of a cynical tough guy required to see an innocent party to safe harbor, and shoots it to pieces .” Succeeding “both as a thriller and as a satisfying political and social drama, it should prove a winner at the boxoffice in all territories.” Bennett also notes that star Clive Owen “carries the film more in the tradition of a Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda than a Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. He has to wear flip-flops for part of the time without losing his dignity, and he never reaches for a weapon or guns anyone down. Cuaron and Owen may have created the first believable 21st-century movie hero.” Flip-flops? Does he also wear a fanny-pack belt?

Miami Vice was a financial slapdown for Universal — it hurt and it stung — and L.A. Times writer Lorenza Munoz examines the details. Michael Mann‘s undeniably entrancing crime pic cost at least $235 million to make and market, and pulled in a lousy $63 million theatrically in this country…not good. “The studio underestimated the inherent challenges of translating ‘Miami Vice’ to the big screen,” Universal chairman Marc Shmuger tells Munoz. “As a commercial proposition, it had a familiar title but not a really deeply appealing connection to the larger audience.”
And then there’s the beef about talent getting overcompensated. “The biggest winner in the case of Miami Vice could be Mann, who will make at least $6 million, plus a percentage of the box-office receipts, before Universal makes a dime, according to people familiar with his deal,” Munoz reports. Miami Vice is symptomatic of a malaise in the industry,” media analyst Harold Vogel contends. “The industry is undergoing a transition in terms of business models. For the first time in many years, they are encountering strong head winds against whatever they throw up against the screen.”

Variety critic Todd McCarthy susses the just-wrapped Telluride Film Festival, and reports in the final graph on the skunk that got into the 70mm screening of Jacques Tati‘s Playtime: “At about the hour-and-45- minute mark, a great rustling commenced on the Galaxy Theater’s main floor, followed by outright panic and a stench that was unmistakable: A skunk had somehow made its way into the cinema and was scurrying around under the seats — another Telluride first that would be hard to reproduce anywhere else.” And by the way, here’s McCarthy’s Little Children review.

“Proving to be a late summer sleeper, The Illusionist summoned an estimated $8 million at 971 venues over the extended weekend, its first nationwide. Like Little Miss Sunshine, the $16 million period drama has maintained a high per theater average with each expansion, suggesting broad appeal and strong word-of-mouth, and, with a $12.1 million gross in 17 days, it has already exceeded the rosiest of expectations prior to opening. Producer Bob Yari will expand The Illusionist to around 1,400 theaters on Sept. 8.” — from Brandon Gray‘s “Box Office Mojo” report on 9.4.06.

A speed-the-plow version of Anne Thompson‘s Telluride impressions on her Risky Biz blog: (a) Little Children (New Line, director-writer Todd Field) — Telluride reaction was “decidedly mixed…some people don’t buy this movie”…a “deglamorized” Kate Winslet has solid shot at a best actress nomination; (b) The Namesake (Fox Searchlight, director: Mira Nair) — “Strong stuff”, “positive” Telluride reaction, pacing needs to be tightened; (c) Venus (Miramax, director: Roger Michell) — Telluride reaction: “The folks loved it but critics may be mixed: the movie is a smart, well-made, conventional crowd-pleaser. Oscar Watch: No question that Peter O’Toole will move the aging Academy.” (d) The Last King of Scotland (Fox Searchlight, director: Kevin Macdonald) — Good Telluride reaction, Best Actor buzz for star Forrest Whitaker; (e) The Lives of Others (Sony Pictures Classics, director-writer Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck) — Telluride reaction was “rapturous…if Germany submits the film for Oscar consideration, it should land a nomination”; (f) Catch a Fire (Focus Features, director: Phillip Noyce) — “Good” Telluride reaction, and star Derek Luke “could prevail in an unusually weak year for leading men, but the movie will need brilliant marketing from Focus Features and huge critical and audience support to survive the competitive Oscar season”; and (g) Infamous (Warner Independent, director: Douglas McGrath) — Telluride reaction was “positive”, but star Toby Jones “can’t go up against the memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman, last year’s Oscar winner, nor will Sandra Bullock erase Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. But Daniel Craig‘s powerful performance as Smith has a shot as supporting.” Wells comment: This will never, ever happen — Craig is a fine actor, but is seriously miscast here.

One of the late Steve Irwin‘s contemporaries, cameraman and spearfisherman Ben Cropp, has spoken to a cameraman friend who was nearby when Irwin was killed yesterday by a sting ray tail and has seen the footage. Here’s Cropp’s description, as passed along to The Australian on Saturday night:

“Steve was up in the shallow water, probably 1.5 meters to 2 meters deep, following a bull ray which was about a meter across the body — probably weighing about 100 kilograms — and with quite a large spine. And the cameraman was filming in the water.”
Cropp said the stingray freaked when he felt cornered by Irwin and the cameraman. “Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead, and [the animal] probably felt there was danger and it balked. It stopped and went into a defensive mode and swung its tail with the spike. Steve unfortunately was in a bad position and copped it.
“I have had that happen to me, and I can visualize it — when a ray goes defensive, you get out of the way. Steve was so close he could not get away, so if you can imagine it — being right beside the ray and it swinging its spine upwards from underneath Steve, and it hit him.”

“I’m on my way back to L.A. from Telluride, and without question the biggest find of the fest was The Lives Of Others, a German-made from first-time director Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck, who worked six years on the film and it now being courted by all the agencies,” a friend wrote early this evening.
“Sony Pictures Classics picked it up last May, and it’s set for a February ’07 release. This should be the German Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, from which a nomination is all but assured, and perhaps even the Oscar itself.
“The story’s basically about the last days of Stasi, the diseased East German Secret Police, as things were falling apart in ’89. It’s about a Stasi agent (Ulrich Muhe) eavesdropping on a playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his actress wife (Martina Gedeck), and the stuff that comes to the surface when they begin to intreract.
“Philip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire also was getting good buzz on the street and many were calling Mira Nair‘s The Namesake her best ever (although I missed it).

I watched the trailer for All The King’s Men for the eighth or ninth time last night, and I’m starting to seriously doubt my ability to watch the full-length feature version of this Steven Zallian film with anything close to a neutral and receptive attitude. Sean Penn‘s squealing, vocal-chord-shredding delivery of that stump speech (“Yo’ weel is mah strength!”) at the end is driving me up the wall. It’s chalk-on-a-blackboard time. “They want to take from yew…and ahh weeyull not let theyemmmm!”