Welcome to the commercially flush world of ultra-violent video games. I once watched my son Dylan play Grand Theft Auto, asking him at one point what kind of sick fuck would dream up the violent stuff in that game, but this is far worse. It’s satanic. I’m asking HE readers to watch this footage (i.e., which is somehow linked to www.projectmanhunt.com) and try to convey in 25 or 30 words how it makes them feel.

The guy who created this needs to be put in a damp dungeon, his leg chained to the floor, a pile of straw to sleep on. For life.

I hereby demand apologies from everyone who felt yesterday’s reaction to that teabag protest photo (“We’re a Christian Nation,” etc.) was excessive. Image is from a Huffington Post-ing called “The Ten Most Offensive Tea Party Photos.”

Digital Bits columnist Bill Hunt has reported that Peter Jackson is preparing to double-dip his Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-ray. Only the theatrical versions will be out on Bluray by the end of the year, obviously leaving room for the release of an “ultimate” Bluray box set of extended versions,which will be released concurrent with Guillermo del Toro‘s upcoming Hobbit films. Repeat the legend until it becomes fact: Jackson is Lucas, Jackson is Lucas, Jackson is Lucas, etc.

Todd McCarthy‘s annual Cannes forecast piece contains some fresh info but for the most part mentions a lot of the same films previously listed by Screen Daily‘s Mike Goodridge in a 2.11.09 speculation piece. The official slate of Cannes ’09 films will be announced on 4.23.

McCarthy and Goodridge have both listed Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces , Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds, Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist, Cristian Mungiu ‘s Tales From the Golden Age, Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock, Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon, Jane Campion ‘s Bright Star, Ken Loach‘s Looking For Eric, Terry Gilliam‘s The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus and Andrea Arnold‘s Fish Tank.

McCarthy made no mention of Gaspar Noe‘s Enter the Void, Fatih Akin‘s Soul Kitchen or Todd Solondz‘s Forgiveness — you tell me. Nor did he mention Ron Howard’s Angels and Insects, which may, I’m told, have some kind of special screening there to promote the film with European audiences. (Why would Howard want to re-experience the terrible reception that The DaVinci Code received in Cannes in ’06?)

McCarthy has listed Francis Coppola‘s Tetro< ./em> (while forwarding the new information that it was shot in black and white), and Werner Herzog‘s Bad Lieutenant 2: New Orleans Port of Call Sweat and Seafood Gumbo (or whatever it’s called). An “almost certain midnight attraction,” he says, will be Sam Raimi‘s Drag Me to Hell.

He also mentions Jonnie To’s Vengeance (i.e., wolf-faced Johnny Hallyday as a hitman-turned-chef who heads to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter’s death, blah blah) , Marco Bellocchio‘s Vincere with Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Filippo Timi in a study of Mussolini’s secret lover and the couple’s son Albino, and Police, Adjective< ?em>, directed by 12:08: East of Bucharest helmer Corneliu Porumboiu.

Plus a whole bunch of Asian films that I’ll get around to mentioning later on. No hurries or worries.

An L.A. Times story by John Horn is basically saying that the audience for smart complex dramas and thrillers like State of Play (which is expected to tank this weekend) and Duplicity isn’t big enough these days, and that the likelihood of more movies being made in this vein isn’t high.

The common element in these films is poor Tony Gilroy, who directed and wrote Duplicity and did a State of Play rewrite. So this trend (if it persists) is a big slap at the Gilroy brand, which of course many screenwriters respect and try to emulate.

Great. Bring on the lowest-common-denominator dumbness. Michael Bay movies, chick flicks, Bourne thrillers, Sascha Baron Cohen dramas, coarse comedies, family-friendly animated features, Roland Emmerich movies, Judd Apatow comedies, etc.

The underlying point of Horn’s piece isn’t that movies like State of Play and Duplicity can’t sell tickets, but that they cost too much for what they’re likely to make. State of Play should have been made for $25 or $30 million instead of $60 million. ditto Duplicity. It’s that simple. No more star salaries.

Horn quotes Universal production chief Donna Langley saying “you are going to find every studio saying, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it’…It will be awhile until there are a lot of really smart dramas.”

It’s not that I’ve always loathed metal, although I have. I also think you have to be a bit of a low-life to play it, much less be a fan…right? What would the ghosts of Gustav Mahler or Chet Baker say about metal bands if they were brought back to life? They’d say, “Can we be dead again, please?” Metal, for me, is still the reigning metaphor for the coarsening of civilization. It’s for primitive, thick-fingered types who get high a lot and don’t want to know any better. Sorry.

But there is God and spirit in the playing and savoring of all music, even metal, and the love that the fans feel for it, however pathetic, is as genuine as my love for The Who, Patti Smith, Queen, Joni Mitchell, the acoustic sets of Kurt Cobain, early (’63 to ’66) Rolling Stones tracks and Bernard Herrman‘s score for North by Northwest.

And I have to say, late as I am to the table on this, that Anvil!: The Story of Anvil — which opened last Friday in select cities — is one of the saddest (as in funny-sad) and most recognizably human, emotionally touching rock-music documentaries I’ve ever seen. Seriously.

It’s about a has-been metal group that I’d barely heard of (mainly because they never really made it commercially), and an attempt by the now-50ish members — Steve “Lips” Kudlow, Robb Reiner and Glenn Five — to get their lives going again. They were admired by some but their albums were reportedly poor sounding and they never tapped into any real money. And now they’re grappling with intimations of mortality, bald spots and ticking clocks, but they have to give the career-restart thing a go anyway. How can anyone not love that?

We first encounter them living rural, dead-end lives and trying to gradually make things happen again. Sisyphusian and then some. We see them going through some fairly anxious moments, often, as well as some depressing ones, and also some that warm your heart. And some that are close to hilarious — loser humor that only guys who’ve actually gone through the doldrums coudl come up with. (Talking to the camera about a European tour in which many things went “drastically wrong,” Lipps adds that “at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on.”)

There’s also a moment that’s damn nice in a familial way. And the ending is pure Hollywood.

I mean it about the heart-warming element. Lipps and Robb are nice-enough guys, but they’re basically apes playing ape music for the ape masses (let’s face it), and you can’t help but root for them. Theirs is a passion play for the ages — a universal never-say-die parable about the water that we all long for. The size of the fight in the dog and all that. Listen to this riff about the ticking of time,, initially voiced by Lips and seconded by Reiner. The whole film, in a way, is in this one passage.

In the wake of Billy Bob Thornton‘s psychotic interview on that Toronto radio show last week, it seems timely to note the 15th anniversary of the premiere of George Hickenlooper‘s Some Folks Call It A Sling Blade. There’s a complicated back-story about the short-to-feature transition, but the bottom line is that Thornton differed with Hickenlooper, grabbed the reins and directed the Sling Blade feature, which launched his career as a big-time hyphenate.

The short, too dark and softly focused for my taste, was uploaded to YouTube yesterday for the first time. The above clip is Part 1, of course. Here are part 2 and part 3. And here‘s a clip (the same scene at the beginning of the short) fromThronton’s feature-length version.

There’s a belief in some quarters that Thornton defrauded the Academy when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Screenplay, having claimed it was based on his own play “Pearls Before Swine.” The play, I’m told, never actually existed, and was instead a one-man show in which the Karl character was one among many many characters. The reality is that the feature was based on the HIckenlooper’s short. I’ve understood that to be the case for years, and I don’t see how it’s disputable.

The above clip is Part 1 — here are part 2 and part 3. And here’s a clip (the same scene at the beginning of the short) fromThronton’s feature-length version.

The cast of the short includes Molly Ringwald, Suzanne Cryer (who later became the ‘yadda, yadda’ girl on Seinfeld), the late J.T. Walsh (the only one recast in the feature), Ron Livingston (who later starred in Office Space) and Jefferson Mays.

Elizabeth Warren, the Obama-appointed chairperson of the five-person TARP oversight committee, offered soothing words last night for Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

I’ve fallen into the small-talk habit of asking people at social occasions (parties, screenings, lunches, interviews) if they have a Bluray player. I’m not talking about MTA employees. I’m talking about folks with semi-sophisticated palates and attitudes — filmmakers, publicists, screenwriters, online entrepeneurs, etc. The point is that each and every one has said nope. Last week I asked a world-famous, absurdly rich actress if she was a Bluray person — ditto. The night before last I asked Diane Sawyer if she owns one, and she wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about.

They all have high-def TVs but for whatever reason Bluray isn’t part of the picture. I understand being behind the curve on this or that lifestyle indulgence, but I don’t get people of comfort and sophistication not having Bluray players. Not in early 2009. I actually find this mind-blowing.