Tony Soprano lives on in perpetual dread and uncertainty — unpunctured, undead, and prevailing after a fashion. That, for better or worse, is what the final episode of The Sopranos left viewers with this evening.

And anyone who writes in complaining that I’m spoiling the party by writing this can go stuff it. A comprehensive sum-up piece by the AP’s Frazier Moore went up at 11:50 pm eastern, Nikki Finke ran a negative reaction piece even earlier, and finale details are all over Monday morning’s N.Y. Post.

So far, there seems to be disappointment out there that a hitman’s bullet or at least some sort of bad-karma payback didn’t befall bossman Soprano, although I’d suspected this might be how the last episode would end.

The coolest moment in the finale was the glorious death of Phil Leotardo — not just shot in the head and chest, but his head accidentally squashed like a pumpkin by an accidentally rolling SUV. It was one of the two funniest bits, the other being that orange cat staring at a wall photo of the late Christopher Moltisanti, and Paulie Walnuts getting increasingly pissed at the animal for its odd behavior.

There’s tension galore in the final sequence as Tony, Carmela, Meadow and A.J. gather for dinner at a blue-collar family restaurant. You can feel something bad coming…a hit, probably. Maybe all four family members (good God) getting it at the same time. Guys come in and you wonder if it’s this one or that one who’ll pull out a pistol with a silencer. The tension builds and builds, and then cut to black — no catharsis, no grand finale.

It was, in fact, about as far away from an eye-opening, jaw-dropping finish as anyone could have concocted, and I imagine most people who saw it last night were a bit pissed about this, or at the very least underwhelmed. I myself was taken aback, but I thought about it for a few minutes and decided I respected Chase for having the brass to essentially tell the fans who wanted a “big finale” to go fuck themselves.

The N.Y. Post headlines are a scream — ‘SOPRANOS” FINALE WHACKS FANS….SHOW’S FINALE FIRES ‘BLANKS’…DARK SCREEN CAPS DISAPPOINTING WRAP…PHIL’S GRISLY HIT IS THE LONE HIGHLIGHT.

N.Y. Times columnist Alessandra Stanley put it thusly: “Mr. Chase’s last joke was on his audience, not his characters. Tony, Carmela and A. J. are gathered at a diner in a rare moment of family content that cried out for violent interruption. A shifty-looking man walks in and eyes them from the counter, then, in a move echoing a scene from The Godfather, ominously enters the men’s room. Outside, Meadow is delayed, trying to parallel park, then begins walking toward the restaurant.

“Nothing happens. Credits. What?”

Here’s a trailer for what seems like an above-average thriller called Vantage Point, from director Pete Travis (who comes from TV), about an attempted assassination of a U.S. president (William Hurt) that’s told from five different points of view.

Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, Dennis Quaid and Sigourney Weaver costar. Probably just another jolt movie, most likely. It won’t open until 2.15.08 — eight months from now. The only uh-oh factor is that it’s a Sony Pictures release, and you know the dark-side karma those guys bring to everything they do and every movie they touch. (Except for the fluke of their funding and releasing Mike Binder‘s Reign O’er Me.)

I know how neurotic this sounds, but as far as I’m concerned the whole Al Pacino American Film Institute tribute (which will air down the road) was half-ruined by Pacino’s decision to attend wearing a Fu Manchu moustache. This is not something I feel needs explaining. Either you get the Fu Manchu moustache thing (i.e., they look icky on everyone) or you don’t.

I played hookie from Cinevegas yesterday afternoon by sneaking into a regular-ass commercial screening of Mr. Brooks, the Kevin Costner murder thriller that has managed a mere 55% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

William Hurt, Kevin Costner in Mr. Brooks

I agree with the naysaying 45% that director and co-writer Bruce A. Evans has succumbed to overly dense plotting, and that he totally blows it at the very end (I instantly got up and walked when the “final thing” happens), but I never wanted to leave before that. Mr. Brooks is compulsively watchable, and more enjoyable than I expected. Plus it features Costner’s most intriguing performance since Open Range, and it delivers another exquisite supporting turn by William Hurt, who can do no wrong these days.
Set in Portland, Oregon, it’s about a multi-millonaire named Earl Brooks has a secret addiction to murder. Like a guy with a latent drinking problem who can’t stick to sobriety, every so often Brooks falls off the wagon and goes out and claims a victim, feeling immensely satisfied during the act but reverting into a total guilt mode in the aftermath.
Hurt plays Marshall, his alter ego. Marshall is the madness but also the brains of the operation — the guy who lusts for the thrill of of it all but is also very smart in figuring how not to get pinched. The scenes between Costner and Hurt are worth the price of admission alone — relaxed, subtle, assured, even comforting. That sounds a bit weird, I realize, but it’s nice to have a shrewd partner in life who grins a lot and enjoys a good verbal spar.
New Yorker critic David Denby says it beautifully in his review: “Marshall is a roguish wit, seductive and amused, who knows that he√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s being unreasonable but presses his needs anyway. Once satisfied, he becomes the ultimate kibbitzer. Tucking in his jaw and alternating irony, sarcasm, and mockery, Hurt hits one spinning serve after another, and Costner hits them right back at him. The two have a fine time, as if they had been doing this routine for years.”
For my money (even though I didn’t pay), Mr. Brooks is a nicely absorbing, easygoing piece of high-toned junk, and yet it never put me through any kind of pain. Until the end, that is, and, like I said, I didn’t even deal with it. I just bolted. I don’t want to deal with it now. It’s not worthy of my attention.
The secondary characters are a bit of a problem — an angry grungy creep (Dane Cook) who blackmails Brooks into being taken along on his next killing, and an angry glaring detective (Demi Moore) who’s determined to identify and bust the “thumbprint killer” (i.e. Brooks). They’re both bothersome because their obsessive behavior is snippy and unlikable. I was hoping that both would be killed, and in this respect I was only half-satisfied at the end.
A third supporting character, Brooks√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s college-age daughter (Danielle Panabaker), could have been dropped altogether and the film would’ve been fine. She doesn’t do anything except tease and frustrate.

An Open Letter to the Three Amigos (i.e., Alfonso Cuaron, Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro): Last night at Cinevegas I finally saw a film that popped through — an emotionally probing, sexy-jazzy French nouvelle vague recipe called Once Upon a Time Maria (Eros Una Ves Maria), by a 31 year-old Mexican filmmaker named Jesus Magana Vasquez (although his business card just says “Jesus Magana”).

Ana Serradilla, star of Once Upon a Time Maria

If you were to tell me “watch this very good erotic Mexican film,.” I might say, “Erotic film? Made by whom? The Mexican Zalman King?” The answer is that Magana is emphatically not Zalman King…not even close.
Once Upon a Time Maria may lack what most of us would call a “commanding narrative” (not out of inattention but a deliberate casualness on Magana’s part), it may be a little bit erratic (but only here and there), and eros, yes, is a constant flow factor, but the main current is about deep-down hurtin’ — emotional closeups, intimacy, intimate behavior, vulnerability and a constant river of pulsing, half-mad sex.
Once Upon a Time Maria is not a monumental film but a very enchanting groove, and I believed almost everything in it. It is, I feel, much more sexy, sweaty and unruly than Sex and Lucia. It never seems cheap or cloying or teasing. It’s not an Almodovar film; it plays its cards like something made in early ’60s Paris by Jacques Rivette or Francois Truffaut, or an imaginary, more randy Eric Rohmer.
Vasquez’s script is about a TV director named Tonatiuh (Julio Bracho) and his relationships with four or five or six different women called Maria. The hottest, craziest and most passionate Maria — an actress, of course — is played by an immensely enticing ball of fire named Ana Seradilla.

Jesus Magana following last night’s screening of Once Upon a Time Maria.

Tonatiuh is a hound with a tendency to drink too much, but Seradilla’s Maria has gotten through to him more than the others, and the film is largely about how this damaged, destroyed relationship has affected his life in all sorts of ways. The narrative uses a loop-dee-loop over under sideways down strategy. You can call the it “fun” or “light” or some other mildly demeaning thing, but I think it’s much better and fuller than that.
Bracho is a likable attractive actor with a deep voice, good looks and superb teeth, but the film’s emotional center belongs to 29 year-old Seradilla, or more particularly the performance that Magana gets out of her. The feelings of intimacy and vulnerability that she conveys to the camera are way exceptional. I would call what she does in this film Jeanne Moreau-like, a la Jules et Jim.
And the music by Giovanny Escalera and Hector Ruiz is fantastic. Some of it is jazzy, bluesy 4 o’clock in the morning stuff that reminded me of Gato Barbieri‘s work in Last Tango in Paris.
I swear to God, Magana has it. He looks a little bit like Paul Greengrass, only with darker hair. I loved what he said last night about where he’s at right now, which is that right now he wants “to play games and be happy with what I make, and then maybe later on I will do the other thing.” You guys should get to know him and help him make a film some day. A guy who has it has his future mapped out. Magana’s next film is going to be better and then next one even better and so on. It’s in the cards.

Jesus Magana, Cinevegas director Trevor Groth — 6.9.07, 11:05 pm

Cinevegas director Trevor Groth first saw Once Upon a Time Maria at the Guadalajara Film Festival, which wrapped a couple of months ago. Jesus’s company is called Sorbrevivientes Films.
Once Upon a Time Maria has never played before at a U.S. film festival. I think somebody should acquire it. If Sex and Lucia can make money in the States, this one can also.

“I must…say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things like the men and women serving our country in Iraq and other places around the world.” — a statement attributed to Paris Hilton, but which of course was written by her handlers, who are basically saying we should direct our strong feelings elsewhere.
The Paris Hilton hate storm is not about what she “had done”, but what she hasn’t done. Not who she personally is as much as what she is and what she represents and how the legal system always seems to cut breaks for celebrities.
“When an L.A. judge ordered Hilton back into jail just 24 hours [after she’d been unexpectedly sent home], causing the 26-year-old socialite to sob, ‘It’s not right! Mom!’, it was as if the biggest bouncer in Hollywood had folded his meaty arms and turned a whiny VIP away. I’ll admit, I kind of…liked it. The same way you like watching the head cheerleader fall off the pyramid.” — from a 6.9.07 piece by Time magazine’s Rebecca Martin Keegan.