Radar’s Jeff Bercovici and Daniel Riley are reporting a friendly-money connection between Sheriff Lee Baca, the Los Angeles law-enforcement glad-hander who ordered Paris Hilton released from jail after serving only three days in her 45-day sentence, and her grandfather William Barron Hilton, who last year contributed $1,000 to Baca’s election campaign.
A grand is the maximum amount allowable under California campaign rules. Baca became a worldwide laughing stock yesterday for deciding to let Hilton serve out the remainder of her sentence under house arrest, in apparent defiance of the orders given by the judge who sentenced her last month. Baca was quoted as saying that he let Hilton go home with an ankle bracelet because she was suffering from a “medical condition,” an explanation that resulted in universal scoffing.

Tony Soprano’s “pompadoured henchman, Silvio Dante, is barely breathing and full of holes,” begins a story by Reuters’ Arthur Spiegelman and Rick Gorman…obviously assholes who have no regard for the hundreds of thousands Sopranos fans who want to keep themselves clueless about last Sunday’s episode!
Get some guys together, hunt down Spiegelman and Gorman, take ’em out behind the Reuters building and make ’em feel it…right, HE readers?
“His brother-in-law Bobby is dead and Soprano himself is left in a darkened bedroom, clutching a machine-gun like a frightened child holding a teddy bear,” they’ve written.
“He is so abandoned that even his long-conflicted therapist has dropped him as a patient after being convinced by colleagues that “the talking cure” doesn’t work on sociopaths.
“In case you haven’t figured it out, the end is near — on Sunday, to be exact — for one of television’s most riveting programs and maybe for its chief character, North Jersey mob boss and all around family man, Tony Soprano .”

People are whooping and cheering on my street in West Hollywood. Strangers are bear-hugging each other. Well, not really…but it’s lots of fun to imagine this because this is truly a day to kiss the sky. Paris Hilton — God bless those courageous L.A. city attorneys! — has been sent back to jail in Lynwood to serve out her 23 (or is it 45?) days minus five, even though she’s done only three. Ding-dong, the empty dumb bitch is back in the slammer!

TMZ reports that Hilton left the courtroom in tears, screaming, “Mom, Mom…Mom!” Good! Hilton was also heard saying “It’s not right.” No, no, it’s very right — the rightest thing to happen in this country in a long, long time. A witness said that Paris was “physically escorted” out of the courtroom by a female deputy, and that her mother was later seen pacing the hallways and telling reporters, “I’m paralyzed right now.” Good! In fact, have a stroke!
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo issued this statement to TMZ in response to Judge Sauer’s decision ordering Hilton back to jail: “This decision sends the message that no individual — no matter how wealthy or powerful — is above the law. Today, justice was served.” If the Wizard of Oz Munchkins were to sing a song to Delgadillo about this, one of the lines would go, “We thank you very sweetly for doing it so neatly.”

Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is no friend of shooting movies on digital — or not now, at least. He explains precisely why to Jamie Stuart in this Filmmaker magazine piece. His Univisium system, which uses a 2 to 1 aspect ratio, has “three-perforations per frame and uses the maximum negative space available,” he says. This means the density and fullness you get with film is still way, way richer, he says, than you do with any high-def digital video system.

” We’re talking minimum 6000 x 3000 information, or eighteen-million,” he explains. “With a video camera, any subject, the maximum information is roughly 2000 x 1000, which makes two-million. Whatever you’ve got in front of the camera, in one, you’ve got eighteen-million; in one, you’ve got two-million. In one, you’ve got at least 32-bits; the other one, normally you record at 10-bits.
“Film has already proven it can last a hundred years. The electronic system, or digital, has to improve its longevity — particularly, it has a very short longevity. The systems are changing very fast, the material is not very strong. People are very ignorant in this area — they still believe that digital is permanent. That’s a major mistake. Major. So, in my opinion, the system should be used, because if you don’t use the system the company doesn’t have the chance to improve it. It should be improved till it reaches a much better level.
“But at the same time, I think we should be aware of the different levels, so you can use one or the other according to the kind of project that you’re doing.”

How supportive and enthusiastic are Warner Bros. publicists on behalf of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which comes out on 9.21, or right after the Toronto Film Festival? I won’t name names or publications, but a definite foot-dragging attitude has been detected by reasonable moderate men as far as long-lead requests for various forms of assistance in slapping together Jesse James coverage.
It’s no secret that Warner Bros. execs have been less than fully ecstatic with Andrew Dominik‘s western, which producer Tony Scott has described as a Terrence Malick-type feature. The rumble all along is that WB toppers and marketers consider the film some kind of loss leader (i.e., more or less doomed with the people who loved Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean, and who just can’t wait for Evan Almighty). People like me, of course, can’t wait to see it and are inclined on general principle to support it, unless it turns out to be indulgent garbage.
I’m not saying that this or that WB publicist is, in fact, slacking off on Jesse James, but that studio’s upper-level marketers have long had reputations of being chillty or clueless when it comes to movies of a layered artistic bent. Remember the stories about them scratching their heads and throwing up their hands when they first saw Letters From Iwo Jima? Their decision to keep The Departed out of the Toronto Film Festival (i.e., I never believed producer Graham King‘s story about the film not being ready in time for that festival)?
How come the Assassination of Jesse James website is exactly the same now, content-wise, as it was six months ago? The film opens in three and a half months. Shouldn’t the people running this site be turning the heat up right about now?

The bad guy who let Paris Hilton out of jail — the idiot who determined after hearing about her alleged suicide threat that “there’s a medical issue and it isn’t wise to keep a person in jail with her problem over an extended period of time and let the problem get worse” — is L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca. Hilton went back to court this morning and may wind up back in the slammer if Judge Michael T. Sauer sees merit in L.A. city attorneys’ challenge to Baca’s decision to release her. The God of Righteousness is a cheap myth, but I want to believe him Him/Her once again because I want Hilton back behind bars before the day is out.

What is it about the fact that “the hinterland Bubbas despise Hilary Clinton, and because of this she will lose the ’08 general election” don’t Hollywood Democrats understand?

It’s Friday, June 8th, and you’re wondering what, if anything, should you see? That’s easy — go rent Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time or Sidney Lumet‘s Prince of The City or Shohei Imamura‘s Vengeance Is Mine. The lower-animal-impulse choice in theatres, obviously, is Hostel: Part II. The knockout performance experience (i.e., Marion Cotillard‘s) can be found in La Vie en Rose — it can almost be guaranteed Cotillard will be a Best Actress Oscar nominee. The Big-Ass Blandathon (and I never thought I’d ever be calling it this) is Ocean’s Thirteen.

There are some who feel I was remiss in not including Robert Zemeckis‘ animated Beowulf on HR’s short list of highfalutin’ fall-winter must-sees. I never considered including it for a single instant. Why should I? Why should anyone? Due respect to the 10th Century English poem it’s based upon, but this is basically Eragon territory, especially when filtered through the greedy-ass, Lord of the Rings-aping combine. And that, to me, to anyone over the age of 13 or 14, means “instantly dismissable.”

“I know full well I’m expected to Suspend My Disbelief. Unfortunately, my disbelief is very heavy, and during Ocean’s Thirteen, the suspension cable snapped. I think that was when they decided to manufacture a fake earthquake to scare all the high-rollers on opening night. How did they plan to do this? Why, by digging under the casino with one of the giant tunnel boring machines used to dig the Chunnel between England and France.” — from Roger Ebert‘s 6.7.07 review.

“You live in a free country, you put up with crud like Hostel Part II,” writes the Chicago Tribune‘s Michael Phillips. “It truly is crud, though. The film is the definition of torture porn, and regarding the Motion Picture Association of America’s business-friendly, brain-free decision to give it an R rating: If this film gets by with an R, then what is left to warrant an NC-17?”