Georgia Rule “swerves and spins, taking its predictable plot in some surprising directions,” says N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. ” Working against its maudlin impulses with lively humor, and at the same time undercutting its laughs with some hard, ugly themes, this movie is neither a standard weepie nor a comforting dramedy. It’s an interesting, maddening mess — not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one.”
The “incoherence” of it, Scott adds, is in fact “a sign of life, evidence of an emotional energy percolating beneath the glib ‘very special episode√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù surface. The source of that vitality lies with the actors, and with [director] Gary Marshall√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s inclination to give them space and time to explore their characters√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ idiosyncrasies.”
Scott may be correct in saying that costar Lindsay Lohan “has been subjected recently to the prurient, punitive gaze of an internet gossip culture that takes special delight in the humiliation of young women with shaky discipline and an appetite for fun,” but let’s remember that the brouhaha lastsummer during the shooting of Georgia Rule was not over rumors of this and that, but about Lohan’s temporary boss, Morgan Creek’s James G. Robinson, being fed up with her inability to show up on the set in the morning and do her work because of too much partying.
I would never begrudge anyone having an appetite for fun (unless their idea of fun means laughing really loudly in sports bars….”ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”) but anyone who can’t splash water in their face, change their dress shirt, grim up and conduct himself (or herself) like a pro during work hours is a slouching egoistic lame-o, and deserves every internet rumor that comes his or her way.

David Poland is “a lot more thin-skinned than Sammy Glick,” the L.A. Weekly‘s Ella Taylor observes in a just-up profile. “Like many people who make their living on the attack, he’s better at dishing it out than he is at taking it. Having regularly dumped all over L.A. Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein, he went public on the site with his distress when Goldstein hit back.

“Still, for all the bile of his well-known war with rival Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells — who, on Poland√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s direction, was ordered out of a carful of Poland√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s colleagues on the way to Sundance — he admits to a double-edged appreciation for his equally excitable enemy. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you just want to go to the circus.'”
Oh, I get it — there’s something broadly theatrical about reading Hollywood Elsewhere. Like listening to a carnival barker in a red coat or watching an Indian elephant stand on his forelegs. Okay, fine, but if HE is a carnival, Movie City News is….uhm…well….I can’t think of a good mean analogy just now. Any ideas?
Taylor calls Poland “a genial, self-deprecating motormouth” and opiners pretty plainly that he’s “shilling for the business on whose advertising he depends.” And yet, she adds, he’s “always an engagingly contrarian read” and
that she doesn’t ” know a critic or film journalist who doesn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t check out Movie City News at least once a day, as much for diversion as for keeping up with trends in the business.”
Taylor reports that Poland’s Movie City News “boasts a million visitors a week,” but Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke begs to differ (as well as toot her own horn) with this Alexa graph.

I sat down with 28 Weeks Later director Jean Carlos Fresnadillo last Monday afternoon — i.e., the day that my hard drive froze up and died. Fresnadillo is a quiet, meditative guy with a nicely measured European attitude and what felt to me like a very contained and settled ego. The interview is okay, nothing spectacular; the film is much better.

I would have posted the Fresnadillo thing yesterday afternoon but — no complaining, just fact — I was stopped again when the brand-new hard drive, installed only hours earlier, froze on me. Apparently the computer guy from Brooklyn either installed the wrong kind of video driver or installed the right one incorrectly, and the error caused all wsf ads on all pages to flash like lightning bolts and make the web page jitter up and down, and this caused so much stress on the system that it freaked out and collapsed.

There’s a bottom-line rationale regarding Robert Rodrguez being “in talks” to direct a Warner Bros. live-action feature version of The Jetsons for Warner Bros. Pictures. And it can be summed up in eight words: “Danger! Danger! Retreat to the family safety zone!”
With the Grindhouse financial debacle coloring Rodriguez’s industry aura (on top of the fact that most viewers outside serious gore geeks thought that Rodriguez’s Terror Planet was way, way inferior to Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Proof) and his biggest financial successes having come from directing the three Spy Kids flicks (which came out in ’01, ’02 and ’03), a Jetsons flick is a total dive-for-cover move. The producers are Denise Di Novi and Donald De Line.
The only thing I’ve really liked about Rordriguez’s films since his first and best effort, 1992’s El Mariachi, has been his tendency to cast hot women (Salma Hayek, Rose McGowan) and dress them up in hot skimpy outfits

Aida Turturro (i.e., “Janice” on The Sopranos) briefly mentioned the possibility of a Sopranos feature on Jimmy Kimmel last night with a certain hyper-bunny tone of hope and/or expectation. But whatever chances there may be of Turturro or James Gandolfini or any of the present-day cast members being in a feature version was recently thrown into question by Sopranos producer-writer David Chase.
An MTV.com report quoted Chase as saying that an idea for a Godfather, Part II-like feature — “a story about the Sopranos√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ grandparents first coming to this country” — is “interesting to me.” Naaah, forget it. The idea is way too Coppola and will feel like a retread. I have a brilliant idea, however. How about a Sopranos feature that is actually plot-driven in the William Shakespeare/John O’Hara sense of the term (i.e., a movie in which big things happen and characters face consequences), as opposed to the HBO series which is all about mood, metaphor, minutiae and morose Garden State atmosphere?