A revised estimate has been passed along about the projected gross for TMNT this weekend. A studio-based marketing guy is now saying it’ll be more like $25 to $35 million (he actually thinks it’ll be closer to $35 million) rather than the $20 to $25 million projection I reported yesterday or the day before.

I saw Lasse Hallstrom‘s The Hoax (Miramax, 4.6.07) last night in Westwood at a “special screening” (i.e., red-carpet photography but no after-party). It’s not without problems (or should I use the word “issues”?), but it’s not half-bad. The seams show from time to time (the budget was lean), but it’s better than decently made. A low-key caper movie-slash-ethical drama, The Hoax never once pissed me off, and that’s saying something by today’s standards.

Richard Gere schmoozing after Sunday night’s “special screening” of The Hoax

Set in the early ’70s, it’s about how author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere, giving one of his vigorous, all-out performances in the vein of Mr. Jones or Breathless) flim-flammed most of the world (including book publisher McGraw-Hill) into believing he’d persuaded reclusive wackjob billionaire Howard Hughes to tell all for a definitive autobiography.

The script is by William Wheeler (Empire, The Prime Gig). Marcia Gay Harden, the always superb Alfred Molina (as Irving’s partner-in-crime Richard Suskind), Julie Delpy (as Nina van Pallandt), Eli Wallach, Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci costar.

An actor named Michael J. Burg is billed as having played Truman Capote in the film — to the best of my recollection this performance isn’t in the film. Milton Buras is also credited on the IMDB for portraying Howard Hughes — his performance must have been cut out.

Irving has been quoted as saying, “I had nothing to do with this movie, and it had very little to do with me.”

When I think of Irving (whom I interviewed in the ’90s — I forget about what), I think of him lying on a sunny beach in Ibiza with Nina van Pallandt. But there’s no Ibiza stuff in the film — almost all of it was shot in and around New York City with some extra lensing in Puerto Rico

I’ll have a technical comment to share about the film tomorrow.

I was okay with Lasse Hallstrom‘s The Hoax (Miramax, 4.6), but — this column is often about the “but” factor — I can’t get over Hallstrom’s decision to let an early panoramic shot of New York City’s lower half (i.e., shot from the roof of a midtown skyscraper in the mid 40s, facing south) that momentarily destroys the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Those of you who know that The Hoax is a period film (it happens entirely in 1971 and early ’72) are probably guessing what the issue is already.

The film begins with a wind-blown Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) and his editor (Hope Davis) standing next to a helipad atop the McGraw-Hill building and awaiting the arrival of a chopper carrying the legendary Howard Hughes, whom Irving has allegedly been interviewing for an exclusive tell-all book. So when the camera takes a look at the lower-Manhattan sprawl, the viewer naturally expects to see the World Trade Center towers, which had been built only two or three years earlier.

But The Hoax was shot in 2005 by guys on a budget, and so they’re not there. As lame as that sounds, that’s what happened. Worse, the same tower-less shot is used in The Hoax again, around the two-thirds mark. Almost as if someone is saying to us, “Were you out getting popcorn when that early missing-towers shot appeared? You were? Well, here it is again. See what screw-ups we are?”

I tried reaching Hoax producer Mark Gordon to ask (a) why Hallstrom or someone else hadn’t pointed out the error and hired a visual-effects house to paste the towers into the Battery skyline, or (b) why Hallstrom didn’t simply aim his cameras west or east or north. But it took the better part of a day just to get Gordon’s publicist’s number — the subliminal message seemed to be “please leave us alone.” So I called Mark Dornfeld at Custom Film Effects, the company that delivered most of the Hoax‘s CG visuals.

Dornfeld, amiable and easy-going, said “there was no discussion” about pasting in the towers — “it never came up” — but suggested that people should cut Hallstrom a break because “he’s not a native.” How much would it have cost if Hallstrom or Gordon had wanted Dornfeld to paste in the towers? “Ohh, I’d say maybe, let’s say, $3500 to $4000. We’re talking about pasting in a still image into a static shot, and it doesn’t have to be too distinct because there’s a lot of haze in the distance of lower Manhattan anyway, so….yeah, $3500 to $4000.”

I don’t know what else to say, guys. I didn’t go into The Hoax with an attitude, waiting to slam any errors I could find. It’s not a bad film at all, but if you show any audience from any country in the world a visual of lower Manhattan they’re going to look for one thing and one thing only — the twin towers if the film is set before 9.11.01, or the absence of the tower if it’s set after. Very simple, slam dunk, no discussion.

“Page Six” says the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s rating s board “just might flip out” when they see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez‘s Grindhouse (Weinstein Co., 4.6), a wink-wink exploitation movie in quotes that’s being sold as a tribute to the cheeseball sex-and-violence flicks that used to play in urban downmarket movie theatres in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

Wait a minute…”might” flip out? As in “they haven’t seen it yet”? A little more than two weeks before opening? I don’t think I believe that. The Weinsteiners are looking for an R rating but “some of [the film] is so graphic and outrageous for a major Hollywood studio, there’s no question it’s headed for an NC-17 without big cuts,” says a ‘Page Six’ operative who got a sneak peek at the most over-the-top footage.”

So the risque footage may show up on the DVD instead of in theatres? I think most of us understand that system and are actually quite accustomed to it.

The same”Page Six” item also mentions that between the two Grindhouse movies (which are either called Death Planet and Terror Proof or Death Proof and Terror Planet or Planet Proof…same difference) — will be broken up by an intermission composed of a series of fake trailers “for such fictitious titles as Werewolf Women of the SS, directed by Rob Zombie. and another, directed by Hostel‘s Eli Roth, called Thanksgiving, “in which a town’s celebration of Turkey Day is interrupted by a mad slasher.”

Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.

Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse-themed programming schedule of ’70s and ’80s exploitation films at L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema omits one of the ugliest and most repellent s & m sleaze movies of all time — Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S..

Why did Tarantino omit this one? It stinks, it’s diseased, it was produced and performed by untalented people and it makes you feel skanky…why not?

Dyanne Thorne‘s Ilsa — a big-breasted blonde Nazi with a voracious sexual appetite straight out of David F. Freidman‘s libido — died at the end of this wretched film, but this didn’t stop Thorne and the producers from making three more Ilsa films — (1) Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, (2) Ilsa, The Wicked Warden and Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia. Anchor Bay has issued a reasonably good quality DVD box set featuring the first three — Siberia not included.

Ilsa came out of a ’70s sub-genre of grindhouse cinema that blended Nazis, riding crops and perverse sex, otherwise known as Naziploitation. (I remember the term “homosexual Nazi chic” included in a piece by critic Andrew Sarris in the late ’70s.). The genre began with two exercises in upscale perversity– Luchino Visconti‘s The Damned and Liliana Cavani‘s The Night Porter. But before you knew it the gates were down and the inmates were running the asylum with films like Salon Kitty (directed by Tinto Brass) plus Love Camp 7, Gestapo’s Last Orgy and Beast in Heat plus “Ilsa-clone” films like Elsa, Fraulien of the SS and Desert Foxes.

Tracking indicates that TMNT (Warner Bros,., 3.23), the jacked-up CGI’ed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick, is going to take the weekend. It’s at 83, 25 and 5, but you always have to figure higher with kiddie movies because phone surveyors don’t talk to six year-olds. It could do between $20 million and $25 million.

Close on the turtles’ heels will be Antoine Fuqua and Mark Wahlberg‘s Shooter (Paramount) — 59, 37, 10. It could do $12 to $15 million, maybe a bit more.

Everything else opening this weekend is looking weak. Mike Binder‘s Reign Over Me is at 56, 34 5 — good reviews so far, but the dogs aren’t eating the hamburger. The 5% first choice is better than last week, but when you’re four days away from opening you need to be at 10% or 12% or you’re dead meat.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is at 74, 26 and 7 — marginal. Robert Shaye‘s The Last Mimzy, which was previewed last Saturday night, is at 48, 24 and 5. Pride (Lionsgate), the swim-team movie with Terence Howard, is at 36, 29 and 2.

This anti-Hilary Clinton You Tube ad (i.e., “Hilary 1984”), which went up fairly recently, has been disavowed by spokespersons for Barack Obama‘s campaign, who are saying they had “nothing whatsover” to do with it. It’s a fairly stunning attack ad — stunning for its anger and the obvious fact that its creator sees Clinton as some kind of liberal Big Brother figure. It’s a sampling, of course, of the classic Apple 1984 ad that ran way back when. Fact is, it’s fairly brilliant.

A San Francisco Chronicle piece by Carla Marinucci that ran yesterday says Hilary 1984 “may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate — one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising.

The creator of Hilary 1984, which lasts 74 seconds, flatly declares his/her allegiance to Obama at the very end, and yet no one knows (or will confide) who cut the ad together. And yet the piece seems to be about more than just a preference for Obama over Clinton — it seems to be making a profound point about online vs. broadcast television as a source of general information, news and ads.

The spot represents “a new era, a new wave of politics…because it’s not about Obama,” says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. “It’s about the end of the broadcast era.”

“But some say the ad is just the latest attempt by outside activists to influence political campaigns,” Marinucci writes, “or the newest way for campaigns to anonymously attack their opponents.”

They’re live! “Screaming Huckabees”is live! “Get ’em while they’re hot before Russell’s lawyer (or Tomlin’s) swoops in and takes ’em down. Tomlin is more aggressive in this clip, no question. (She’s funny, though.) Russell doesn’t sound like the aggressor until the very end of the second clip….then he goes blooey.

It’s a shame that those two YouTube videos of screaming matches between director David O. Russell and costar Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees have been yanked. It’s now 1:30 pm Pacific, and at least one of them was “live” and downloadable between 30 and 45 minutes ago. Toronto Star critic and blogger Peter Howell watched Huckbees #2 about 30 minutes ago, he just told me, but when I clicked on it at 1:15 pm Pacific it had been pulled. Both are gone…erased.

Did anyone copy these clips (called “Screaming Huckabees #1 and “Screaming Huckabees #2)? And if they did and can make them viewable to the Hollywood Elsewhere community, could they please get in touch? People yell at each other on sets all the time…big deal. Tomlin and Russell have long since moved on…who cares? I live for stuff like this.

“Screaming Huckabees 2” was shot on an indoor set, and “Screaming Huckabes #1” (involving Tomlin, Isabelle Huppert and Jason Schartzman) was shot in a car. Howell informs that the former clip was apparently posted three days ago by a dude named Alec Brownstein, an advertising copywriter. Here’s a YouTube profile of the guy.

And yet “Screaming Huckabees 2”, Howell notes, “has only 530 views so far, so I guess word suddenly broke this afternoon and Russell moved to put the kibosh on it.”

Links to both YouTube videos appeared a little while ago on Defamer and wwtdd.com (i,.e. What Would Tyler Durden Do?).

Some kind of award ought to go to the quickdraw attorney (working for Russell?) who got to YouTube and had these clips pulled. Fast footwork deserves publicity! Good pit-bull types are hard to find.

Defamer‘s Mark Lisanti provided context for the Russell-Tomlin shout-matches with this excerpt from Sharon Waxman‘s Rebels on the Backlot book, to wit:

“July 24, 2003: The Car Trip….

“So far, the actors have been remarkably tolerant of Mr. Russell’s mischief. As Ms. Huppert later observed in a phone interview, the actors knew Mr. Russell was intentionally trying to destabilize them for the sake of their performances. ‘He is fascinating, completely brilliant, intelligent and very annoying sometimes, too,’ she said. They also know he has created superb films from chaotic-seeming sets before. Besides, he’s the director and the writer; now that they’ve cast their lot with him, they really don’t have a choice.

“But on what is meant to be the last take of the day, Ms. Tomlin, who recently ended an exhausting run of her one-woman play, collapses into Mr. Hoffman’s arms crying and doesn’t stop. As he embraces her, the wails grow louder and louder, and finally it becomes clear that she is not in character. After long moments, Ms. Tomlin breaks the tension by shouting at Mr. Hoffman: ‘You’re driving a hairpin into my head!’ Everyone collapses in laughter and the take is trashed.

“But the drama is not over. The car scene takes several more hours to shoot, and as the sun fades, the accumulated tension erupts. Ms. Tomlin begins shouting at Mr. Russell: she is unhappy with the way she looks. She wants to try the scene a different way. She taunts him with a few expletives and curses at the other actors too. Their patience worn, the other actors laugh at her outburst.

“Later, unfolding himself from the back seat of the Chevrolet, Mark Wahlberg jokes that his next project will be a nice, easy action film.

J”uly 31, 2003: Candid Camera…

“The production has moved from the dried-up swamp to the set of the detectives’ office. It is hot and cramped, and the hour is getting late. To pass the time while a shot is set up, Mr. Russell treats the crew to a description of a baby passing through the birth canal.

“And then Ms. Tomlin is berating Mr. Russell again.

“This time, the director turns on her angrily, calling her the crudest word imaginable, in front of the actors and crew. He shrieks: ”I wrote this role for you! I fought for you!” Mr. Russell ends his tirade by sweeping his arm across a nearby table cluttered with production paraphernalia. He storms off the set and back on again, continually shouting. Then he locks himself in his office, refusing to return. After an uncomfortable, set-wide pause, Ms. Tomlin goes in to apologize, and Mr. Russell returns to the shoot.

“Unbeknownst to both of them, a member of the crew has videotaped his tirade. The recording makes its way around the Hollywood talent agencies. Asked about the incident later, Mr. Russell says: ‘Sure, I wish I hadn’t done that. But Lily and I are fine.’ For her part, Ms. Tomlin admits that both she and Mr. Russell lost control. ‘It’s not a practice on his part or my part,’ she says. ‘I’d rather have someone human and available and raw and open. Don’t give me someone cold, or cut off, or someone who considers themselves dignified.'”

Premiere.com is running a gallery of choices for the 25 best (i.e., most striking, innovative, eye-catching) movie posters of all time. I could argue or qualify or nominate my own all-time best, but that would occupy two or three hours of my time…forget it. Suffice that a wider and richer assortment (at least 125 posters with comments) can be found at this British site.

But I can’t let this go without a brief tip of the hat to this amazing Downhill Racer one-sheet. The spartan/oblique simplicity of the concept (a wintry backdrop that doesn’t allude all that strongly to skiing, with the dominant image being an arty, black-and-white shot of a couple about to kiss) is obviously aimed above and beyond a mainstream popcorn sensibility. This kind of poster would be totally unimaginable by today’s ad-art standards, which demand an upfront visual directness that any eight year-old can would not only respond to but feel utterly unchallenged by.

All right, agreed, I should have linked last weekend to Glenn Kenny‘s response (appearing on his newish blog, “In The Company of Glenn”) to Peter Bart‘s 3.15 Variety column. The following passage is especially savory. Mort Sahl said it: the cruelest jokes are the funniest:

“Bart says, because A.O. Scott and Kenneth Turan hated 300, and because Stephen Holden didn’t much care for Night at the Museum, and because no critic found anything nice to say about Ghost Rider, movie reviewers ought to ‘consider a sabbatical until September, when movies aimed at their quadrant magically reappear.’

“By this point in the article many might be wondering just why they’re reading it; then Bart tips his hand and shows us his reason for writing it. A joke he clearly loves so much he can’t keep it to himself: ‘And, by the way, if you’ve ever met a film critic, you”ll know they’re not big on either the pectoral, deltoid or other muscle groups.'”

“A less refined and kindly critic than myself would here note that Bart isn’t exactly a body-builder himself, and further note that Bart might want to make a point of avoiding drinking establishments which feature dwarf-tossing contests, lest he be mistaken for the entertainment. But I am more refined, and kindly, than that. And now, I have to get to the gym.”

Regarding the ongoing discussion about CG-enhanced performances (i.e., Jennifer Connelly and Jeff Okun‘s CGI tear in Blood Diamond) , reader Jack Price has passed along this www.lookeffects.com reel. He suggests paying attention to the third-to-last shot, before Passion of the Christ and Southland Tales.