To begin his New Yorker review of Leaves of Grass, David Denby has written a diagnosis of what he believes has been wrong with the choices made star-producer Edward Norton. Not a question of talent but judgment, he’s saying. And yet he’s basically saying “move it or lose it.”

“Edward Norton is a good actor and a busy man — a citizen who concerns himself with solar energy, affordable housing, the Maasai wilderness, peace in the Middle East, the High Line, the fate of the Mets’ outfield, and heaven knows what else,” he writes. “But he’s not quite a movie star, or the actor he could be.

“Early on, after a fast, Oscar-nominated start as an altar boy accused of murdering a priest in Primal Fear (1996), Norton played cunning lowlifes in tough little pictures. He was brilliant as Lester (Worm) Murphy, a reckless gambler and nihilist, in Rounders (1998), and then, muscling up, he turned Derek Vinyard, the swastikaed skinhead in American History X (also 1998), into a horrifyingly intelligent native fascist.

“Norton has blue eyes, a long, narrow chin, and an ironic smile that can suddenly turn intimate. He can be retiring and nearly bodiless, falling back from confrontation like a ghost; he can also be menacing and cold, hardening his baritone into a snarl. Like James Woods in films thirty years ago, he appears to think that he’s the smartest person in the room, and, like Woods, he uses that arrogance as a way of exposing the madness of egotistical characters.

“At the moment, movies could use more men like Norton — actors who can spread a little acid or a little light. If such high-domed performers develop an ingratiating way with women, they become stars, like George Clooney; if not, they usually subside into character roles, like Woods or Alec Baldwin. It’s not easy to be the smartest guy in the room.

“Norton, I think, has the charm, the courage, and the dimensions to take on great parts, but his career has wandered around in roles that have been off center without being good. He stood up to Brad Pitt‘s bullying in the nutty cult classic Fight Club (1999). He was the scientist with anger-management issues in The Incredible Hulk (2008), the kind of popping-veins extravaganza every actor should gratefully leave to Jim Carrey.

“Norton was then swanky in cravats, high collars, and an Anglo-Austrian accent in that thick wedge of Hapsburg cheesecake The Illusionist (2006). The accent got even more pinched and refined when he played a British doctor suppressing his personal sorrows and martyring himself to Chinese epidemics in The Painted Veil (2006), a frightfully noble picture that could have been made by MGM in 1940.

“These are not the best choices for an actor with an instinct for contemporary life. Action is apparently not to Norton’s taste, but he’s a natural for calculating power types and intellectuals — gangsters, lawyers, politicians, journalists, corporate and financial operators. He needs to find writers who will create roles for him as intelligent, troubled men, as Clooney has.”

At least 15 major critics and a few feature writers who’ve posted articles and reviews about Tim Blake Nelson‘s Leaves of Grass, a rowdy pot-dealing dramedy about twin brothers (both played by Ed Norton) with radically different attitudes, were surprised to learn today that First Look, the film’s distributor, has pulled the plug on a previously confirmed opening this Friday in New York and Dallas.

I’m told by 42West that “a buyer has stepped in and bought the film” with plans to give it a full-on release “sometime this summer.” A press release about this sudden turn of events will be released Thursday, the spokesperson said.

It’s still way curious for such a move to happen within days (hours almost) of a limited release.

Mark Olsen‘s 3.28 L.A. Times story about the film said it “opens Friday in New York City and Dallas with additional dates to follow,” but earlier today the regional 4.2 opening was removed from the film’s IMDB release-date page, and Box-Office Mojo changed its release status from 4.2.10 to “TBD.” Coming Soon also pulled it from its release schedule.

Amazon has the Leaves of Grass DVD/Bluray set for a 7.20.10 release. That’s obviously out the window with the new summer-release plan.

Here’s what I wrote about Leaves of Grass during last September’s Toronto Film Festival, Here’s Marshall Fine‘s review, and David Denby’s in The New Yorker.

There’s a bothersome element in this trailer for The Expendables (Lionsgate, 8.13). I’m talking about Sylvester Stallone‘s cosmetic eye surgery. I’m particularly referring to one or two shots that suggest the use of eyeliner, which gives his appearance — be honest — a slight La Cage Aux Folles quality. Tell me this doesn’t undermine the machismo.

Last night’s 8pm curtain of American Idiot meant I couldn’t see all of the Clash of the Titans press screening, which began at 6 pm. But I was mainly interested in the quality of the faux-3D, which was finessed after the film was shot in regular 2D. I hate to drop a bomb but what I saw looked too dark. It might not have been intended to look this way, but it certainly did at last night’s showing. Which means, given typical theatrical standards, that it’s likely to be projected too darkly from Augusta to Anchorage starting on Friday.

Clash‘s 3-D doesn’t begin to approach Avatar‘s 3-D presentation levels, and that, in my book, constitutes a burn.

We all know that 3-D films have to be presented with higher-than-normal brightness levels to compensate for the darkening effect that 3-D glasses bring to the viewing. That sounds like a no-brainer to me, but one of three things happened last night — (a) the projectionist running the show at the Lincoln Square didn’t understand this equation on his/her own, (b) he/she wasn’t told by Warner Bros. to increase the brightness levels, or (c) everyone knew exactly what they were doing technically but it didn’t matter because the Titans 3-D experience isn’t intended to be as good as Avatar‘s, and that’s that. Take it or leave it.

When I took my glasses off the light levels on the screen (which are measured in foot lamberts) seemed okay. Not up to SMPTE standards of 16 but maybe somewhere in the vicinity of 10 or 12 foot lamberts, I’m guessing. But when I put the glasses on it was like I was watching the film through Korean Rayban ripoffs — everything seemed diminished by low light and layered in a faint murk.

The solution, I guess, is to watch the 2-D version and forget the stereoscopic.

Avatar‘s great-looking 3-D created a steroscopic boom, but crummy-looking 3-D flicks like Clash of the Titans hurts everyone. It takes the bloom off the rose, especially with greedy exhibitors charging $14.50 to $20 a pop.

Titans itself isn’t as bad as others have been saying. It’s a decent thing as far as this sort of dopey, kid-level cinefantastique stuff goes. It’s certainly better than the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, that’s for damn sure. I watched about 55 minutes worth standing up (arrived late, no seats) and muttered to myself, “This isn’t too painful, could be worse, the dialogue isn’t atrocious, the actors aren’t bad, Worthington retains some dignity, the effects are reasonably okay, whaddaya whaddaya,” etc.

In other words it’s not, you know, a “good” film but it’s okay if you adjust your standards and put on your Robert Rodriguez hat and say “fuck it, I don’t care, bring on the Kraken” as the lights go down.

Complain all you want about the metaphor of blue-collar losers succumbing to nihilistic downswirl in American Idiot, the soon-to-open Green Day musical based on the 2004 album that Michael Mayer (partnering with songwriter/frontman Billie Joe Armstrong) has directed and co-authored. But you must acknowledge that the intense vigor, bullwhip discipline and visual-glam audacity that comprise the presentation of the show are knockout-level and totally top-tier.

American Idiot is something to argue about in terms of its vision and to perhaps feel irked by (a 23 year-old reminded me after last night’s performance that semi-hip pop-music lovers from his corner of the room despise Green Day, and that he doesn’t like the way the play portrays his generation), but it’s clearly a show and a half.

American Idiot opens on April 20th — three weeks hence — and will probably be well reviewed by a good chunk of the critics, and will obviously sell high-priced tickets hand over fist.

Call it a 21st Century rock opera that’s part Tommy/Quadrophenia, part Vegas flash, part Spring Awakening, part Rent and part shock-and-awe on a multi-media trash-culture set that rises a good 55 or 60 feet in height, and which features a large ensemble cast (under 25, energy to burn, backed by an onstage band) performing 21 Green Day tunes, some Twyla Tharpish dance moves, a striking aerial ballet on wires….forget it, okay? There will be no “meh” responses to the spunk and razmatazz of this thing.

American Idiot is going to be tour-bus Eloi central for the next several months, and a thing that pretty much all musical lovers will need to check out and confront. It’s a road show waiting to happen, and almost certainly a filmed musical in two or three years.

Going in I knew only that the show (based, as noted, on Green Day’s socio-political rock opera) was about three blue-collar guys with nothing in their hearts or skulls except a yen to submit to something strong — big-city distractions, heroin addiction, Iraq War combat, couch-potato vistas, early parenting — as a way to escape the nothingness of small-town life.

Green Day’s Tre Cool, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt.

Johnny (John Gallagher, Jr.), Tunny (Stark Sands) and Will (Michael Esper) aren’t creators or pathfinders. Building a life out of dreams or grit or drive (or at least a search for something transformative that might happen through college or travel or what-have-you) never occurs to them. They’re just three “let us outta here” bozos who get outta there and then get busted up and turned around, and who finally wind up back in their home town living lives of quiet tedium.

They reminded me on some level of the three fellows who go off to Vietnam in The Deer Hunter, suffer the odd horrors of that conflict and end up singing “God Bless America” over Thanksgiving dinner. Except the American Idiot guys (only one of whom actually serves in Iraq) end up singing “wow, we blew it…we thought we were bold and clever and different, and we’re not. We’ve become the complacent American idiots we started out despising.”

All through the 90-minute, intermission-free show I was saying to myself, “Wow…a primal, kick-out musical that I’m having a pretty good time with, and which feels at least moderately hip in its eagerness to provoke and not placate — a show with the nerve to make hay out of aimless American-youth ennui among the post-9/11, Iraq War-fighting generation.”

This nihilism gives American Idiot a kind of integrity, I feel. The show may misrepresent in this or that way, but it’s not my idea of a “lie.” I know a little about how things feel among suburban guys living lackluster lives (my late brother essentially died from this), and I can only presume that things are worse for uneducated “whatever, man” types from the thousands of backwater towns out there. It’s a bit of a drag to think about life in these terms. I wasn’t “with” these three characters, but I don’t have the stones to tell Mayer or Armstrong that they’re wrong — that things aren’t this grim for millions from this milieu.

In his 10.10.09 review of the Berkeley Rep production of American Idiot , N.Y. Times critic Charles Isherwood wrote that “mournful as it is about the prospects of 21st-century Americans, the show possesses a stimulating energy and a vision of wasted youth that holds us in its grip.

“And to ring a variation on the Woody Allen joke about sex being dirty if you’re doing it right, the only thing sadder than wasting your youth is not wasting it.”

Mayer and Armstrong deserve credit for hanging tough in their particular fashion. And here’s a standing ovation for Gallagher, Sands, Esper, and costars Tony Vincent, Rebeca Naomi Jones, Christina Sajous and Mary Faber.

Further cheers are earned by choreographer Steven Hoggett, music supervisor Tom Kitt, set designer Christine Jones, costume designer Andrea Lauer, lighting guy Kevin Adams, sound guy Brian Ronan, and video and projection designer Darrel Maloney.