“Get Smart the movie has precious little to do with Get Smart the iconic TV series from the 1960s, but then again the movie has precious little to do with screen comedy, either,” writes Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt.
“This is a slap-dash effort whose producers threw money and stunts onscreen instead of the satirical gags and one-liners that made the old spy spoof so memorable.
“It’s hard to see how this lame puppy will gain any boxoffice traction other than by waving the banner of star Steve Carell opening weekend. His younger fans, who wouldn’t know Get Smart from Spy, might laugh at the overblown action swirling around their poker-faced hero, but are likely to advise friends to wait for the DVD.” No — the LA to NYC viewing on a 767.

Everyone knew The Incredible Hulk would do well this weekend, and it has. Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is predicting a $55 million-plus weekend with yesterday’s earnings hitting around $21 million. M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening was expected to earn $25 million, give or take, but yesterday $12.8 million haul means it’ll do more like $33 million. Kung Fu Panda will come in third, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan will be fourth and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, fifth.

If you were Barack Obama, wouldn’t you make a point of visiting western Europe, Iraq and points in between now and the August Democratic convention? It would help enhance your foreign-policy credentials (image-wise, at least), and allow you to bask in your reported huge popularity over there, in Western Europe particularly but also in the Middle East. A 6.13 McLatchy report, in any event, says such a plan is probably in the works.

As N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich wrote a week or so ago, “When the world gets a firsthand look at the new America Mr. Obama offers as an alternative to Mr. McCain’s truculent stay-the-course, the public pandemonium may make J.F.K.’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ visit to the Berlin Wall look like a warm-up act.”

“There are certain days when you can feel the air sucking out of Washington’s giant hot-air balloon, and Friday was one of them,” writes the N.Y. Times Mark Leibovich in a 6.15 piece about the news of the passing of Tim Russert.
“News of the Meet the Press host’s death moved entirely too fast, in that unnerving way that these things do in the viral media world, but especially here — the cycle of rumor to ‘did you hear?’ to confirmation (‘it’s online’) to disbelief lasted a matter of minutes. Riders on the D.C. Metro stared into their BlackBerrys, and every politician with access to e-mail was issuing statements, from the president on down.”
It was a whopper for me personally, I can tell you. Heartbreak for his friends, family and colleagues; a loss for the world of political TV coverage; a chill up the spine of every heavy-ish person out there over the age of 40. I felt for the MSNBC team yesterday during their marathon coverage. They were simultaneously reporting and dealing with their own private grief. They couldn’t see any way around not covering it as an all-day, stop-the-presses, death-of-JFK event. They didn’t want to turn it off, and probably couldn’t have if they had a change of heart.
That said, there’s this little voice stating that I understand and respect the rules that govern the observance of the death of anyone famous, particularly one as beloved as Tim Russert, which is that you may not talk about the circumstances that may have caused his life to end and whether or not it could have been prevented or at least delayed.
Type in the words “cholesteral plaque enlarged heart” and tell me what it gradually tells you. I’ve done a little reading for 20 minutes or so, and — I’m saying this as plainly and respectfully as I can — it just doesn’t seem as if a tree just uprooted itself and fell on the guy.

In tribute to what I keep hearing and hearing is James Franco‘s superb comic performance in Judd Apatow and David Gordon Green‘s Pineapple Express (said to be his best since playing James Dean in that Mark Rydell TNT movie), here are episodes #1 and #2 of “Acting with James Franco.” Comedy releases him on some level.

“The largest group of Obamacons hail from the libertarian wing of the movement,” reports The New Republic‘s Bruce Bartlett. “And it’s not just Andrew Sullivan. David Friedman, son of Milton and Rose, is signed up with the cause on the grounds that he sees Obama as the better vessel for his father’s cause. Friedman is convinced of Obama’s sympathy for school vouchers — a tendency that the Democratic primaries temporarily suppressed.

“Scott Flanders, the CEO of Freedom Communications–the company that owns the Orange County Register — told a company meeting that he believes Obama will accomplish the paramount libertarian goals of withdrawing from Iraq and scaling back the Patriot Act.
“How substantial is the Obamacon phenomenon? Well, it has even penetrated National Review, the intellectual anchor of the conservative movement. There’s Jeffrey Hart, who has been a senior editor at the magazine since 1968 and even wrote a history of the magazine, The Making of the American Conservative Mind; and Wick Allison, who once served as the magazine’s publisher.
“Neither man has renounced his conservatism. Both have come away impressed by Obama’s rhetorical acumen. This is a particular compliment coming from Hart, who wrote speeches for both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. They both like that Obama couches his speeches in a language of uplift and unity.
“When describing his support for Obama, Allison pointed…in the direction of a column that his wife (who has never supported a Democrat) wrote in the Dallas Morning News: “He speaks with candor and elegance against the kind of politics that have become so dispiriting and for the kind of America I would like to see. As a man, I find Mr. Obama to be prudent, thoughtful, and courageous. His life story embodies the conservative values that go to the core of my beliefs.”

As the Warren Beatty AFI tribute the night before last, Shampoo scriptwriter Robert Towne recalled that it took nine years to get that 1975 film made. ‘I’ve never known you to hold a grudge, reveal a secret or forget a phone call,’ he said to Beatty. ‘In 45 years you never opened yourself up. After all these years I’ve come to consider you as wise as Benjamin Franklin, who [was] also a ladies man. You’re part Fellini, part Machiavelli.'” — from Anne Thompson‘s Variety-blog account, which I should have linked to yesterday.

I’m just going to put this out there because it matters to me. A lot. I once saw with my own eyes a one-sheet for The Presbyterian Church Wager, which is what McCabe and Mrs. Miller was called before it was renamed. The poster showed Beatty and Julie Christie standing next to each other, and a photo (I think) of the unpainted church that was built over the course of the film, and which caught fire at the finale.
The poster I saw was a professionally composed piece of promotional art, and was therefore part of a limited print run. (It was probably used for display at exhibitor conventions.) Somebody, I’m guessing, has probably seen this poster somewhere, or at least heard about it. I’m looking to persuade an owner of ths poster, if I can find such a person, to let me make a high-quality xerox of it. I’ll then persuade Beatty to sign it for me, and then I’ll frame it and hang it on my wall and blah-dee-blah.

In a June 2nd address to the World Newspaper Congress, MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton said that, in his estimation, 19 of the top 50 U.S. newspapers are losing money. And, he warned, “that number will continue to grow.” Speaking later to Businessweek‘s Jone Fine in a 6.12 article, Singleton said “it’s reality…you can’t get to the other side of the river unless you face reality.” (Thanks to MovingPictureBlog’s Joe Leydon for passing this along.)

A friend spoke the other night to a guy who’s familiar with the comings and goings of Vincent Maraval‘s French-based Wild Bunch, the financier of Steven Soderbergh‘s two-part, 260-minute Che, which screened at Cannes to sharply divergent reactions. My friend’s first question to the guy, naturally, was, “So what about a U.S. sale of Che?” The guy, he said, “just looked” at him.

Ticket for Che party in the hills of Cannes that I never got to.

When he finally spoke, the gist was that he doesn’t believe the film will sell to a U.S. distributor “until Soderbergh cuts it.”
The odd thing, my friend said, is that the guy conveyed a kind of laissez-faire, “que sera sera” attitude about this. Wild Bunch’s mindset, he seemed to suggest, is also somewhere in the vicinity of “well, okay…whatever…we’ll see.”
Soderbergh, who is currently shooting The Informant, a corporate skullduggery drama with Matt Damon, isn’t working on cutting the Che film. Another source close to the action told my friend that Soderbergh “hit a wall” in the cutting of it prior to Cannes, and that whatever its final shape and length, fixing the Che situation is not a major Soderbergh priority as this moment. Not while The Informant is shooting, at least.
I don’t know that this is true, but if it is….it seems weird. As if Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch half almost given up on Che as far as the U.S. market is concerned. I’m not saying they have, but they seem to be putting out signals that they don’t precisely know what to do at this stage.
I’m not the only one who feels that Che is close to a masterwork. It breathes and seethes with political realism, you-are-there immediacy and high drama that doesn’t feel like “drama” — which is what makes it so brilliant. I felt levitated by it when I caught it in Cannes. But it wasn’t universally admired, and so the only move that makes any sense to me is to try and build a head of critical esteem by entering the fall awards derby, which will kick off in September. So Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch have to get it into theatres somehow this fall — no ifs, ands or buts.

Matt Damon during recent filming of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant in Los Angeles.

Even if they decide on an HBO small-screen deal, which will assure the showing of the entire thing and put to an end all talk about cutting it, they need to structure the sale so the film will go out theatrically first and then into the HBO airings. I don’t care about all the previous HBO deals which have demanded an HBO premiere. The awards derby is absolutely vital. Soderbergh’s direction is certainly deserving of a nomination. Ditto Benicio del Toro‘s performance as Che Guevara, Peter Buchman’s screenplay, the cinematography, etc.
Che has been pre-sold to most (all?) foreign territories, but with a negative cost of a reported $61 million or thereabouts. The Wild Bunch guys were reportedly demanding somewhere between $10 to $12 million for U.S. rights during Cannes. But if you’re talking about separate releases of the two films that comprise Che — The Argentine and Guerilla, which even Soderbergh has said will be the way to go after it plays as a special event movie that audiences will see all in one sitting — you’re talking a marketing budget of at least $12 to $15 million, if not more.
Add it up: $10 or $12 million plus $12 to $15 million equals a tab of $22 to $27 million.
The problem is that the likelihood of Che recouping anything close to this figure is highly unlikely. A prominent director told me after the Cannes showing that “this movie is going to make $5 million [theatrically] in the U.S….if that.” The solution, it seems, is that it has to be sold to HBO, but that its value will be diminished if it doesn’t first compete in the derby. Which means that someone — Mark Cuban? – has to put it out theatrically before 12.31.08.
If I were calling the shots, this, at least, is how I would be assessing the situation.

“Every movie probably suffers from logic flaws,” notes Artful Writer Craig Maizin in a piece he posted on 6.8. “The goal, of course, is to avoid crossing the threshold of tolerance. There are some flaws in The Godfather, for instance. If Tessio can figure out where Michael is meeting The Turk and have enough time to plant a gun, why can’t he plant a few guys in the back kitchen? Or in a back alley? Have them do the murders, and not put Al Pacino‘s Michael on the hook?

“But the logic flaws in The Godfather simply don’t cross the threshold of tolerance. Because they don’t, no one really gives a damn. In fact, many people will instinctively argue that the logic flaws aren’t flaws at all. So we gloss by logic errors in films that don’t cross the threshold of tolerance, because they haven’t done enough damage to shake the illusion of intention.
“But you can only suffer so many shots below the waterline before the ship starts to sink. If the audience’s illusion of intention is repeatedly or grossly challenged by logic problems, they will revolt.
“Make up any rules you’d like for your fictional system, but adhere to them. For instance, in the latest Indiana Jones film, the crystal skull is presented as an object so magnetic, it can literally attract metal shavings out of the air from hundreds of feet away. But sometimes, it doesn’t seem to be magnetic at all. Like when it’s in a jeep. Or near guns. Or bullets.

“That was a glaring logic flaw that pulled a lot of people out of the moment, including myself. On the other hand, the filmmakers were smart to include a fast shot of the words ‘lead-lined’ on the refrigerator that Indy climbs into just before the nuclear blast goes off. That’s enough to satisfy the Logic Nazi.”
But not me. Indy locking himself inside that lead-lined refrigerator was my first big logical break with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The reason — very simple — is a universally recognized law that says anyone who crawls into a refrigerator and closes the door shut is locking him or herself into a tomb and will soon suffocate to death. I’ve been taught that since I was five friggin’ years old. I don’t care if the refrigerator is blown a mile or so into the desert by an exploding atom bomb, banging and rolling around like a ball bearing. The door will never open unless you pull the latch handle. Once you’re inside, you can’t get out.
A big logic problem for some in M. Night Shyamnalan‘s The Happening is that everyone responds to the plant toxin effect, which has destroyed the natural human instinct to self-preserve, by deliberately killing themselves in all sorts of different ways. It’s been argued that a loss of the self-preservation instinct would more likely result in people offing themselves in much more casual (i.e., not immediately homicidal) ways — absurd binge-drinking, family arguments escalating in to homicides at the drop of a hat, Mad Max-style speeding on the freeway resulting in all kinds of fatal pile-ups, a resurgence of unprotected ’70s and early ’80s-style gay bathhouse sex, people binging on Ben and Jerry’s, etc.

This didn’t bother me as much as it did others because I (like Shyamalan himself) was so taken with all those chilling images of bodies falling from buildings and hanging from trees.
I’ve always said that James Cameron‘s T2: Judgment Day should have ended with a completely illogical occurence that nonetheless would’ve worked emotionally. As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg is saying goodbye to Eddie Furlong as he deliberately lowers himself into that steel-mill inferno, a single tear should have leaked out from the corner of one of his lifeless eyes.
The movie clearly has established in an earlier scene that Arnie’s cyborg can’t cry and in fact has no idea what crying is. (Schwarzenegger asks Furlong at one point to explain it.) But Schwarzenegger has also been learning certain phrases and social habits from Furlong (hand slaps, “eat me,” “hasta la vista, baby”) so it’s conceivable that a resourceful super-robot might have somehow generated the ability to weep by the end of the film. Illogical, yes, but it would have worked.

Having recently seen Jay Roach‘s Recount, Cinemascopian‘s Yair Raveh has posted a reminder about Spike Lee‘s We Wuz Robbed, a ten-minute 2002 doc that relates many of the same basic points that the two-hour HBO feature does…only shorter.

We Wuz Robbed is included in the anthology movie 10 Minutes Older: The Trumpet, which Raveh calls “a true masterpiece of documentary storytelling and political filmmaking told in breakneck speed.”