Day: March 17, 2009

Writing from South by Southwest, Variety‘s Joe Leydon is calling Jody Hill‘s Observe and Report (Warner Bros., 4.10) a “shockingly and sometimes discomfortingly funny comedy about an unstable security guard (Seth Rogen) who views himself as vigilant protector — and, occasionally, avenging angel — while patrolling a suburban shopping mall.”

The film starts with a setup “that could have been played for sitcom jokiness and family-friendly slapstick,” and yet Hill “attempts something much darker, if not downright transgressive.” (Sounds like a James Rocchi film! ) The result is a pic that’s “bound to divide auds and critics into love-it-or-leave-it camps when it opens April 10th. It’s a gamble that might pay off handsomely for Warners. Or not.”

Several details about 73 AIG bonus recipients were revealed today by N.Y. State attorney general Andrew Cuomo in a letter sent to House Financial Services chairmanbBarney Frank. The recipients weren’t named, so the option of a torch-carrying, pitchfork-wielding mob congregating in from of their homes with Stephen Colbert leading them on isn’t likely at this stage.

One detail in the letter was that despite a claim from AIG’s topper than over $160 million in bonus payments had to be paid to keep the highly-valued employees from leaving the company, 11 out of 73 recipients are no longer with AIG,and one of the departed individuals received $4.6 million before cleaning out his desk.

The 73 recipients were members of AIG’s Financial Products subsidiary, “the unit of AIG that was principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown,” according to Cuomo.

Cuomo’s letter stated that (a) the top AIG recipient received more than $6.4 million, (b) the top seven bonus recipients received more than $4 million each, (c) the top ten bonus recipients received a combined $42 million; (d) 22 individuals received bonuses of $2 million or more, and combined they received more than $72 million;(e) 73 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more.

MTV’s Josh Horowitz continues to build on his rep at the reigning good-time, fool-around, nervous-laughter GenX-GenY guy with Duplicity costars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts.

People.com’s report about Natasha Richardson‘s ski-accident condition, filed at 1:25 pm by Kathy Ehrich Dowd, is sticking to a diagnosis of “serious condition with head trauma” while other reports — two to be exact, and appearing in the New York Post and Time Out New York — are saying Richardson is now brain dead.

A story in the Montreal Gazette says the same thing but apart from reporting about Richardson being up and around after falling during a ski lesson it leans upon Michael Riedel‘s story in the Post for the brain-dead diagnosis.

Time Out New York reported earlier this afternoon that sources close to Natasha Richardson‘s family have indicated that she is brain dead as a result of yesterday’s skiiing accident, but that she hasn’t passed away. They originally ran with a headline that said “RIP Natasha Richardson 1963-2009,” but have since clarified matters.

“Last night it was reported that the actor Natasha Richardson had critically injured her head in a skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort outside of Montreal, Canada,” their story now says. “Although public reports have not yet confirmed it, sources close to Richardson’s family and friends say they have already been told the awful news: She will not survive the accident, and is currently brain dead.”

Approximately six weeks ago Tintin partners Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were seen in a private taped message shown to attendees of the International Comic Strip Festival in Anglouleme, France, which is on the Atlantic coast. They say they’re just about to start motion-capture photography on the first of two movies, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The video surfaced today via VanityFair.com. Here it is.

Yesterday’s suggestion by a Republican congressman that those AIG bonus recipients should resign or kill themselves was treated as a joke. But this is one of the few times when I’ve found myself relating to a Republican viewpoint. And the people who instinctually laughed at this idea should think again

$165 million is nothing compared to the billions in stimulus money that has gone to AIG, but symbolism counts in times like these. The recipients of the AIG bonuses should obviously not only give the money back but atone in some profound and public way.

Imagine the public reaction if just one of them took his shirt off during lunch hour on Wall Street, knelt down and opened himself up with a knife, and then was beheaded by a colleague. People would be aghast and traumatized, naturally, but imagine the respect that would gradually be showered upon this man and his family after people had taken the time to consider the meaning of such an act. “At least he got it!,” people would say.

One of the failings of American culture is that no one believes in shame, much less showing it in public by admitting guilt. Fewer still, if any, subscribe to symbolically (i.e., ritualistically) setting things right with a display of public humiliation and/or suffering. My suggestion two months ago that Wall Street scalawags should be placed in stocks and pillories was also treated as a joke. But I meant it sincerely. And the inability of people in this country to understand, much less respect, the concept of public penance for past sins is — no question — a sign of moral slackitude.

Ritual seppuku has always struck me as an extremely perverse and appalling practice, but at least it’s tied into the concept of honor — which is clearly not something that’s highly valued by the AIG ayholes who are now rolling in that $165 million in bonus dough and dodging the efforts of N.Y. state attorney general Andrew Cuomo to identify and expose them to the public.

That said, the scrappiest and most unequivocal reaction to the AIG bonus scandal was posted yesterday by Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, to wit:

“AIG executives will walk away with $450 million in bonuses,” he wrote, “at a company that was such a colossal failure that it lost $99.3 billion last year and required a $170 billion taxpayer bailout. Worse yet, the executives in the division that caused this epic meltdown will get $165 million in bonuses. I can’t get over the injustice of that.

“But don’t worry — we are told that Tim Geithner ‘was really upset by the news’ and ‘berated them’ over the phone. What a joke! Wow, that tongue-lashing must have really stung. I wonder if their several million dollar bonus will help cushion the blow of being yelled at.

“Geithner is responsible for setting the rules in the first place. It’s all in the rules. If you let people take the money, they will. If you don’t allow it as a condition for receiving the money, they can’t. As the politicians scurry to find someone to blame, they should look in the mirror. They’re the ones that set the rules of this game.

“Now the same politicians who brought you this piece of injustice will claim ((a) there is nothing that can be done and b) will pretend to be outraged and then not fix the underlying problem. The politicians will huff and puff and probably do nothing. So, after all this fake outrage, will this happen again? If this broken incentive system is not fixed, of course it will. You can bet your bottom dollar on it. In fact, you already have.”

There are no particulars about the “tragic” skiing accident suffered by 45 year-old actress Natasha Richardson, and which has reportedly resulted in a “traumatic brain injury.”

Richardson is currently at the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal. She was initially being taken to Hospitalier Laurentien, which is close to Quebec’s Mont Tremblant ski resort where the accident occured. Here’s hoping for her survival and recovery. Support and condolences offered to husband Liam Neeson and their kids.

Duplicity, which I saw again at last night’s Zeigfeld premiere, goes down much more easily and understandably the second time. My ex-wife Maggie, who saw it with me, said that with one relatively minor exception she found it engrossing and unconfounding. Julia Roberts more or less looks her age in the film, which is fine, but she was luminous last night, especially with the blonded hair and a slightly trimmer physique. Director-writer Tony Gilroy offered some gracious and spirited pre-screening remarks, thanking everyone but particularly (i.e., lastly) his wife.

Julia Roberts at last night’s Duplicity premiere at Manhattan’s Zeigfeld.

At the MOMA after-party I spoke to screenwriter William Goldman (All The President’s Men, Marathon Man), who’s known Gilroy “since he was ten years old.” I spoke also with Brothers director Jim Sheridan (who said, by the way, that Brothers probably wouldn’t be going to Cannes, partly because “Tobey [Maguire] doesn’t want to go there”) And with Duplicity editor John Gilroy, who’s now working on Phillip Noyce‘s currently-shooting Salt. Universal/NBC honcho Jeff Zucker, screenwriter Stephen Schiff and Tribeca Film Festival honcho Geoff Gilmore also attended

I noticed Fox 411’s Roger Friedman attempting to speak to Roberts and getting quickly hissed at and shut down. Indeed, Friedman wrote about this today: “When she saw me last night, Roberts didn’t hesitate to cut me dead,” he said. “She was rude, downright nasty and dismissive. She snubbed me in front of other people to make her point, and later cut in between me and Gilroy to make her point. Her behavior was unexpected and chilling.”

Whatever Sam Mendes‘ Away We Go (Focus Features, 6.5) actually is, this just-posted trailer sells the impression of a wise and witty upscale family comedy with a truth-sadness undercurrent. It’s about an expectant couple looking for the ideal place to live. My only concern is the casting of The Office‘s John Krasinki and SNL‘s Maya Rudolph in the leads. This will sound odd, but as I watched I was saying to myself, “They look too much like real people.” I didn’t even recognize Krasinki with the beard. Not that he’d be Mr. Charisma without it.

Click on the Rope of Silicon link or click-through to the full page for the trailer — for whatever reason the trailer doesn’t seem to want to load on HE’s front page.

In my passing-of-Ron Silver piece two days ago I said that “history will not judge him kindly” for becoming a 9/11 Republican and supporting Bush Cheney in ’04. But the final graph in Bruce Weber‘s N.Y. Times obituary, which appeared in yesterday’s print edition, amends this assessment somewhat. Silver’s brother Mitchell tells Weber that the actor voted for Barack Obama last fall.

Mitchell Silver, who lives in Newton, Mass., said that his 62 year-old brother’s “acting awed them, [but] his conservative streak confounded them.” His quote: “Ron’s politics, as far as I know, were not shared by anyone he knew, except for the people he knew because of his politics.” And yet “he told me that he did vote for Barack Obama in the end.”

As HE reader Matthew Morettini notes, “Perhaps he was coming out of his 9/11 haze.”