“Few films have evoked the atmosphere of the Bayou State as strongly as Bertrand Tavernier‘s In the Electric Mist,” writes L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas, calling it “a movie that doesn’t seem to have been filmed so much as distilled, on a creaking porch beset by mosquitos and summer heat, with the rumble of a gathering storm in the distance.

“Adapted from the novel by James Lee Burke, the film stars Tommy Lee Jones as Burke’s popular detective character, Dave Robichaux, here investigating the murder of one Cherry LeBlanc, a ‘fatally beautiful’ 19-year-old prostitute whose mutilated corpse washes up on shore in the film’s opening scene. Not long after that, another body — this one belonging to a lynched black man dead and gone some 40 years — surfaces deep in the swamp, loosed by Hurricane Katrina’s churning tide.

“Since it was first announced, In the Electric Mist has sounded like an ideal project for Tavernier. But it’s become entangled in post-production disagreements between Tavernier and the film’s American producer, Michael Fitzgerald (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). And now two different versions of the movie emerged — an ‘international’ cut prepared by Tavernier, which screened at the Berlin Film Festival and will be released in most countries around the world, and an ‘American’ cut supervised by Fitzgerald that runs 15 minutes shorter and will go directly to DVD in the U.S. next month.

“In comparing the two edits, Variety critic Leslie Felperin deemed the American version ‘brisker but less coherent’ with ‘tacky summing up and [an] ooh!-spooky last shot mini-twist that makes [it] play like a made-for-TV movie.”

“Having seen only Tavernier’s version, I can say that it’s unfortunate American audiences may never get a chance to experience this superior detective yarn on the big screen, in the form its director intended. Unfortunate, but by no means surprising. Indeed, where the default Hollywood position would have been to strip-mine Burke’s source material for its narrative chassis while junking all its atmospheric touches, tertiary supporting characters and curlicue digressions, Tavernier (working from a script credited to the husband-and-wife team of Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski) does exactly the opposite.

“Much like Burke himself on the page, he plays up the bass at the expense of the melody, showing markedly less interest in the identity of the killer(s) than in a long and winding history of Southern injustice that stretches from Jim Crow to George W. Bush. Long ago, Robichaux says in the lyrical voice-over that opens the film, people placed heavy stones on the graves of the dead so as to weigh down the souls of the departed. But in Burke and Tavernier’s world, every time a storm blows through, those stones become displaced, and restless spirits take to wandering the bayou.”

May I say something? In addition to the mauling of Tavernier’s European version, there’s also the ridiculous mauling of the original title of Burke’s book — In The Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. How could anyone chop off those last three words? That’s like cutting down the title of Hemingway’s Across The River and Into The Trees and changing it to Across The River. The loyal, the devout and the worshipful are surrounded by cattle.

CHUD’s Devin Faraci recently took part in a round-table interview with Joaquin Pheonix, and reports that he was anything but spaced or wackjobby. “While Joaquin had been strange in the past, he had never been as loquacious as he was that day — a complete contrast to his spaced-out Letterman appearance. He was talkative, funny, engaging.

“Most interesting was the fact that he never appeared to actually ramble. He’d give long answers [that] would travel a bit off topic, but would never go off course like the answers you might expect from someone who was really high. His answers were good ones, too, not just bullshit blathering, which made me wonder just what the heck we were seeing in action. This wasn’t simply an opportunity to punk a roundtable — Joaquin was delivering a really good interview. Possibly the best I’ve ever seen him give.

“At one point when asked why he had made the drastic change in his appearance he said that he needed his external change to reflect his internal change, then he looked at me” — Faraci has a beard too — “and said, ‘I don’t know what your excuse is,’ but in a very funny, very good natured way.”

“Because of its unusual pedigree, WALL*E now has the opportunity to make Oscar history and be the first animated feature to win big outside the best animated film and music categories,” writes The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond. “Sure, three of its six nods come for the usual areas (music score, song, animated film)), but it has a real shot in the other three categories in which it’s competing: sound editing, sound mixing and, particularly, best original screenplay. It has a decent chance to rack up at least four wins if the Oscar gods are on its side.”

Mickey Rourke is on Charlie Rose tonight — perfect timing. This plus last weekend’s BAFTA triumph could just do it. Maybe. Rourke heads unite! “Yes, Judah…this is the day.”

Referencing Ron Rosenbaum‘s searing critique of The Reader that was posted on Slate few days ago, L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein says that he’s “not so sure the film’s moral lessons are quite as black and white as Rosenbaum paints them.”

And that’s it. No full-on or half-assed debate follows. Rosenbaum “does burrow into the film’s greatest thematic weakness,” Goldstein allows, “[in] that it uses its 1950s-era story of the sexual intimacy between Winslet and a young German teenager to create audience empathy for a loyal tool in the Nazi campaign to exterminate the German Jews.

“The best part of the piece details one of those classic, carefully orchestrated Oscar taste-maker screenings, where Harvey Weinstein stops by to say hello and Reader filmmaker Stephen Daldry takes polite questions from the audience after showing the film.

“Like a skunk at a garden party, Rosenbaum brought along a friend who was so outraged by the film that he disrupted the decorous atmosphere, inspiring ‘shocked gasps’ when he tells Daldry that the nudity was a manipulative tool used to create intimacy with an unrepentant mass murderer.

“Rosenbaum doesn’t recount Daldry’s response, though he notes that he received an outraged phone call the next morning from the film’s chief publicist, upbraiding him for bringing a rude ‘interloper’ to the screening and reminding him how important it was, in these tough economic times, for films like The Reader to succeed. Incredulous, Rosenbaum responds: ‘You mean, you’re saying I could be the death of Hollywood?’ If only!”

If only?

I had a brief chat yesterday with the great Steve Coogan to talk about his upcoming gig as emcee of the 24th annual Spirit Awards, which will happen per custom under a massive white tent on the beach in Santa Monica on Saturday, 2.21 — one day before the Oscars.

Coogan has been in Los Angeles since 2.10 and is currently working away with some joke-writer friends, refining and fortifying “the act” as it were.

A gifted comedy actor and the current carrier of the Peter Sellers tradition, Coogan delivers a sort of broad quality — a bit giddy and freaky — in his film roles but comes off a lot dryer and more witty-urbane in conversation. Here’s an mp3 link to our little ping-pong match.

“Peter Sellers became ‘Peter Sellers’ because of Stanley Kubrick,” I said at one point. “I think Kubrick understood Sellers better than anyone else, and gave him his greatest roles. And I’m wondering, given the Sellers comparisons, who your Stanley Kubrick is? Or who, given your druthers, would you choose to fill that role?”

“I’m still waiting for my Stanley Kubrick, ” Coogan answered. “I guess Michael Winterbottom, who’s channelled some very inventive currents into our collaborations…he might be a partner of that sort.” But not quite, he meant. “If you can announce I’m looking for my Stanley Kubrick to realize my Peter Sellers potential, please do.”

I said I thought perhaps Armando Ianucci, who directed Coogan in a brief scene in In The Loop, might be the guy. “He may well be,” Coogan replied. “In The Loop has his exactitude written all over it. He’s great….he never says ‘that’ll do.’ He’s quite purist in that way. I’m more populist than he is, but when we work together a nice sort of blend happens. I’ll be sure and mention the Kubrick analogy when I next see him.”

Speaking of funny, nobody’s more hilarious than N.Y. Times Oscar blogger David Carr (a.a.a, “the Bagger”) when he gets a good grump on. From a posting earlier today:

“This is the Bagger’s fourth season at Kudo Camp and he has never seen such a lack of oxygen. The lack of a best-picture throwdown, combined with a class of nominees that don’t have huge traction at the box office, means that we are spending a fair amount of time talking to ourselves. While doing man on the street interviews in Times Square earlier this week, the Bagger discovered that many people thought they might have already taken place.

“Sasha Stone, a bit of den mother in the Ninny Kingdom, lavishes praise on all five films this year, but then finishes with this: ‘The five Best Pictures this year, admittedly, are nothing to write home about, meaning, none of them will really set the world on fire in ten year’s time.’

“Gee. Kind of interrupts the seance about excellence a bit.

“The Biggest Movie Event of the Year, so far, seems like a little bit of a non-event. C’mon people, careers are at stake, there is studio loot on the line, bloggers are getting tired of capping on each other for attention. It’s time to snap to and start paying attention or we just might have to…um, oh, never mind.”

A couple of days ago I picked up a copy of Graydon Carter ‘s Vanity Fair’s Tales of Hollywood: Rebels, Reds, and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 Iconic Films (Penguin), an anthology deal that came out two months ago. It includes Sam Kashner‘s account of the making of Sweet Smell of Success, which first appeared in an April 2000 issue. And when I got to page 87, I nearly collapsed.

The above excerpt makes it unnecessary to summarize or describe except to say that the anecdote came from the late Ernest Lehman, who shared screenplay credit with Clifford Odets.

This is not an endorsement of Burt Lancaster‘s indicated behavior or attitudes about women. The guy was obviously a bit of a pig in this regard. But there’s something hilarious about a man of great force and accomplishment — an actor-producer with a rep that everyone respects and admires — sounding like an asinine 15 year-old, an unregenerate lout. I can imagine him beaming as he said this, the same way he turned it on time and again for the cameras. I suppose that the humor comes from being reminded that actors really are children deep down.

According to a press release from Warner Home Video, a “director’s cut” of Hal Ashby‘s all-but-forgotten Lookin’ To Get Out (’82) will be available in England from Warner Home Video on 5.26.09. Presumably it’ll also be available stateside, but who knows when? In any case, friend-of-HE Jon Voight was a prime mover behind the release.

A ramshackle, loose-shoe hustling-and-gambling comedy starring Voight, Burt Young and Ann Marget, Lookin’ to Get Out was shot in ’80 but held up for two years. It cost $17 million to make and was a spectacular wipeout when it finally opened, grossing a total of $832,238 in the U.S. (per the IMDB).

It’s the only film to costar Voight, his then-wife Marcheline Bertrand (who died in late ’07 and has a walk-on part in the film) and 5 year-old Angelina Jolie, who made her screen debut here as “Tosh.”

In the WHV release Voight, who co-wrote the script with Ashby and someone named “Al Schwartz” (a nom de plume?), explains the backstory: “For various reasons, the film we released didn’t really represent Hal’s best work. I knew every version of the script and every cut, so I was understandably excited, but I also didn’t want to be disappointed. But when I saw it, I knew instantly it had Hal’s touch. The way he took all the elements and made it his own, it was almost like we were working together again. Because when Hal cut his films himself, it was magic.”

Here’s a link to Vincent Canby‘s 10.8.82 review in the N.Y. Times, and an excerpt: “As the film progresses, a terrible sort of chill sets in. One begins to grow uneasy in the realization that all of these frantic turns by Mr. Voight, Mr. Young and the others are going nowhere. It has the look of improvisation that won’t quit. There’s a lot of energy being demonstrated on the screen but, being without focus, it seems merely flatulent. It’s also exhausting.”

This doesn’t stop me. My faith in and admiration for Ashby requires a looksee. The original running time was 105 minutes. The WHV release doesn’t give a running time for the director’s cut but, as Voight indicates, perhaps the upcoming version is more about re-ordering and re-shaping rather than new footage.

Lookin’ To Get Out is being released as part of a package called Directors’ Showcase: Take Four. Three other wipe-outs (i.e., critically derided, box-office tanks) are included along along with David Cronenberg‘s M. Butterfly.

The biggest calamity title is a new director’s cut of Hugh Hudson ‘s Revolution with Al Pacino — easily one of the biggest bombs of Pacino’s career. Also included are John Boorman‘s Beyond Rangoon (which features Patricia Arquette giving one of the least convincing performances as a doctor in motion-picture history), and Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Zabriskie Point — an interesting and rather spooky oddball film set in the late ’60s, but one of the master’s lesser works.

As long as WB is putting out ’80s movies that tanked or suffered critical slings and arrows, why aren’t they releasing a DVD of the original “flashback” cut of the late James Bridges‘ Mike’s Murder, which was a rock-solid film to begin with? Jack Larson, Bridges’ longtime partner, has made it clear that all the materials exist to make that possible.

HE reader Marc Edward Heuck suggests that a Take Five edition of this series could feature Mike’s Murder alongside Claude Lelouch‘s Les Miserables, James Toback‘s Love and Money, Bill Gunn‘s Stop, and Richard Rush‘s Freebie and the Bean. Hey, why not?

Magnolia is opening James Gray‘s Two Lovers, which screened nine months ago in Cannes, tomorrow in theatres and on VOD on 2.16. Here again is my Cannes review, which is fairly well written and comprehensive if I do say so myself:

Joaquin Phoenix, Vinessa Shaw in James Gray’s Two Lovers.

Two Lovers is attractively composed and persuasively acted but, for me, a slightly too earnest and on-the-nose drama about romantic indecision. But it’s not half bad — a little Marty-ish at times, maybe a bit too emphatic here and there, but nonetheless concise, reasonably well-ordered and, for the most part, emotionally restrained and therefore believable.

Unlike Gray’s The Yards and We Own The Night, there’s no criminal behavior in Two Lovers, and the absence of this — no resorting to gunplay, car chases or fist fights — has naturally led Gray in a gentler, quieter direction. It’s mainly a mild-mannered borough family film, and fairly decent in that regard. I’m not a lockstep Gray fan — I was mostly okay with The Yards but disliked We Own The Night. But for what it’s worth, I think Lovers is his best yet.

Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely, less-than-worldly, recently suicide-prone guy, reeling from a busted relationship and living with his parents (Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rossellini) and working for his dad’s dry-cleaning store. The movie kicks in when he finds himself torn between Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a sweet, wrinkle-free Brooklyn girl who wants to get married and do the usual-usual, and Michelle (Gwynneth Paltrow), a scattered, impulsive blonde who lives in Phoenix’s parents’ apartment building and is obviously “trouble” from the get-go.

Guess which one Leonard has the major hots for? Naturally.

Elias Koteas, Gwynneth Paltrow and Pheonix.

Leonard’s passion for Michelle is partly due to her being hot shiksa material, but also because she’s very much the big-city girl. His sincere but less passionate feelings for Sandra are precisely about her being a home-and-hearth type — stable, loyal and not exciting enough. As Leonard is also a fairly decent photographer, he understandably sees Michelle as spiritually linked to the big “out there” where his talent may some day be recognized — a place where people may see more value in his work than his family and neighborhood friends, who look at his stuff and say “yeah, pretty good” and then ask him to photograph weddings.

I was disappointed that Gray didn’t touch on a general rule-of-thumb when it comes to nice girls vs. crazy girls. As Woody Allen and other men of the world will tell you, the crazy ones are better in bed. This isn’t an absolute fact, thank fortune, but my experience on the planet has taught me it’s more true than not. I regard this as one of the great unfair conditions about life. It is certainly something Gray should have gotten into, and the fact that he doesn’t even flirt with this is, for me, strike #1.

Strike #2 is the casting of Shaw as Sandra. She’s too Fairfield County pretty, poised and delicate to be a borough girl. There are exceptions galore in real life, of course, but men and women from Brooklyn and Queens (i.e., those born and raised) tend to exude a slight coarseness. A coarseness that’s often vibrant and agreeable (I know New Yorkers and it’s not a cliche), but is also saddled, I feel, with a lack of interest in other realms. A wanting for worldly finesse. An Adrianna-from- The Sopranos quality. Not to mention that happily hunkered- down attitude about being “borough” — a life of eating pizza, not quite dressing the right way and failing to learn to speak French or play piano. Not to mention the distinctive ethnic features and honky accents. (I’ve known exactly one woman in my life who was raised in Brooklyn but doesn’t look it or talk it.)

James Gray

Shaw, simply, looks and talks like a girl from Greenwich or Westport or the Hamptons or Pacific Palisades. I’m a huge fan of this actress (as HE readers well know), but she’s too finishing-school to be believed here. Plus Gray and co-writer Ric Menello haven’t given Sandra enough in the way of distinctive ticks or weirdnesses. (Which everyone has.) They’ve settled for making her warm, generous, full of support and understanding. In short, a fantasy.

That said, I admired Pheonix’s performance — his best since Walk The Line, I feel. He convinced me that Leonard is just hermetic and naive enough to fall for a girl like Paltrow’s Michelle and not realize what he’s getting into. I think it’s fair to say that he’s starting to look vaguely 40ish — jowly, slightly chunky, filled-in. This is fine from an acting perspective, but a little curious given that he’s only 33.

2.12 Update: Pheonix is 34 now and look at him — a jowly, slightly chunky, bearded member of the rapping Taliban.