Roman Polanski issued an official statement earlier today about his possible extradition to the U.S., blah blah, and the only phrase with any meat on it was one that accused authorities here of “trying to serve me on a platter to the media of the world.” I agree with what he’s basically saying — let it go, time already served, Judge Lawrence J. Rittenband was a scumbag, etc. — but after all the months of silence you’d think he’d show a little fire in the gut. I for one am disappointed.

For what it’s worth, the recently posted statement by David Poland strikes me as offensively harsh and absolutist. God protect the innocent man who would stand before Judge Poland, if life and fate had so ordered.

In a 4.30 piece that includes some thoughts about the forthcoming Bluray of George Cukor‘s A Star Is Born (1954), N.Y. Times contributors Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek note that Judy Garland “looks badly used up here” and “is just not believable as a fresh young star.”

In a 4.22 HE posting I wrote that Garland “was born in June 1922, and was between 31 and 32 years old when she made A Star Is Born. That’s fairly young in my book, but she looks closer to 40 in the film, certainly by today’s standards. She certainly doesn’t look like a young actress-singer just breaking through, which is what Esther Blodgett is supposed to be. She looks stressed, worn down and plain with a too-short haircut and her chin starting to disappear — there’s a straight line between the tip of her chin and the base of her neck. Garland had lived a tough life up that point, and it didn’t get any more peaceful. She died in 1969 at age 47 — barely into middle age.”

James Franco‘s Saturday Night, which screened this afternoon under the aegis of the Tribeca Film Festival, is a highly intelligent, interesting, amusing, and very decently assembled doc about how the Saturday Night Live team puts a show together. The problem — mine, not the film’s — is that I wrote a full review a few hours ago only to see it wiped out due to not having saved it when Firefox decided to collapse out of the effin’ blue. And I don’t care enough to re-write it. Not now anyway. Too bummed.

Saturday Night director James Franco (far left) and Entertainment Weekly writer David Karger (far right) during a q & a following a 3 pm screening at the DGA theatre on West 57th Street. That’s Kenan Thompson, of course, in the middle. Many people know the other guy and the girl, I presume — I just don’t happen to be one of them. I only watch SNL sporadically.

I can at least force this out: Franco has shot and cut his film with a sharp observational eye, and seems to have gone with a moderately laid-back, come-what-may, go-with-the flow strategy. Which is more or less how the preparation of the show goes, so it all fits. I came away with a newfound respect for Lorne Michaels and the gang.

The SNL process is a bitch. 50 sketches pitched on Monday, a reading on Wednesday, Lorne Michaels and his producers choosing nine finalists, two days or refining and rehearsals, a full-dress performance before a crowd early Saturday night to see what works and what doesn’t, and then the final airing at 11:30 pm. A day of non-rest for the eternally weary on Sunday, and then right back into it on Monday.

I just can’t get past having lost what I wrote. I’m so angry I can’t think.

Please forgive the quality of these two video clips. I forgot the trusty Canon SD 1400 IS; had to shoot with the iPhone.

Last night I attended a special Tribeca Film Festival screening of Amir Bar-Lev‘s The Tillman Story (Weinstein Co., 8.20) — far and away one of the finest films I’ve seen this year, and a likely contender for the 2010 Best Feature Documentary Oscar. I know it’s early but this movie has the stuff that engages and holds and sinks in deep.

I felt just as stirred up last night — seething, close to tearful — as I was after my initial Sundance viewing three months ago. Because this is not a film about the Middle East conflict but about a stand-up American family and how they responded (and continue to respond) to an orchestrated governmental obscenity that tried to diminish the memory of a fallen son.

I’m speaking, of course, of former Arizona Cardinals safety and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman, and particularly his April 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan — a result of his being shot three times in the head by a fellow U.S. soldier. It happened because of the usual idiotic confusion, and some young intemperate guys who wanted to be in a fire fight and acted foolishly in the heat of the moment. Tillman was enraged that his own fellows were shooting at him, of course, and his last words were an attempt to get them to wake up — “I’m Pat fucking Tillman!”

The obscenity was the attempt in ’04 by the U.S. military and Bush administration to make political hay out of Tillman’s death by manufacturing a bullshit scenario that claimed he was killed by Taliban troops and that he died in an effort save his fellow troops.

Tillman Story producer John Battsek, narrator Josh Brolin following last night’s special screening of The Tillman Story.

Of course, 97% of American moviegoers are going to ignore The Tillman Story when it opens because (a) they’re resolutely opposed to seeing any film that has anything to do with the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan and (b) they don’t much like documentaries anyway, and (c) they just want to chill out and be entertained. The fact that The Tillman Story leaves you feeling angry and alive and engaged with the actual world will most likely have no effect on this determination

Producer John Battsek and narrator Josh Brolin did a q & a following the screening, which ended around 11:40 pm. Brolin, a good hombre, mentioned he’ll be doing Cannes promotional duty for five days, partly for Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street 2 and partly for Woody Allen‘s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

This was taken at last night’s final Tribeca Film Festival party, and in the immediate wake of the mystifying announcement about Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage having won the Audience Award. Why is it that every house DJ at every New York party plays wretched disco jizz? Tracks, I mean, that I would instantly turn off if I heard them on my car radio? The people who throw these parties pay these guys to make people like me suffer.