Jeffrey Wells

You can’t be rude and coarsely sexual with women. It’s vulgar and insensitive, and it never works. But I dearly loved — love — this moment. Lightning usually strikes only once, but filmmakers haven’t even tried to make this sort of guy — raunchy, paunchy, borderline infantile but civilized — into a cliche.

We reached the outskirts of Baltimore (spiritual home of John Waters, Barry Levinson and The Wire) around 5 pm, after leaving midtown Manhattan around 1:13 pm. The Megabus schedule pledged a four-hour, 30-minute journey, or an approximate 5:30 pm arrival in Washington, D.C. It’s now 5:40 pm, traffic on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is crawling in fits and starts, and we’re looking at 40 to 45 minutes more, bare minimum.

A new short from Dylan Wells, who never fools around. Perfect timing.

“Cathy I’m lost I said though I knew she was sleeping / I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why / Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike / They’ve all come to look for America.”

London Boulevard, director-writer William Monahan‘s romantic crime drama with Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley costarring, finally has a trailer. I’ve been writing about this groaning wounded bear of a film for months, tracking how it went from being a high-expectation British noir (based on Monahan’s exalted Departed rep + his very good screenplay) to a “what happened?” disappointment looking for a way out of hell.

Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet posted it earlier today.

London Boulevard will presumably be released stateside sometime next spring, or perhaps during the dumping ground of late August, by FilmDistrict, a “multi-faceted acquisition, distribution, production, and financing company” co-run by GK Films chief Graham King, former Apparition leader Bob Berney and GK Films president Peter Schlessel.

On 8.22 I ventured a guess “that Monahan’s superb screenwriting talent hasn’t fully translated over to directing, and that his inexperience combined with anal tendencies caused problems on the set (or so says a London source), and that reactions to the unfinished film were such that extra shooting was deemed necessary (ditto), and that King has decided to pull the plug on a fall awards-campaign release and punt instead for 2011. Again, some reporting but I’m mainly guessing.”

London Boulevard is a London-based crime drama about an ex-con named Mitchell (Colin Farrell), just out of the slammer, who falls in love with Charlotte (Keira Knightley), an actress who’s fallen into a odd kind of career slumber, while running afoul of some gangster guys (Eddie Marsan or Ray Winstone or both). Costars include David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Ophelia Lovibond, Ben Chaplin, Sanjeev Baskhar and Jamie Campbell Bower.

“We’re in hell, gentlemen…that’s where we are. In hell.”

Yesterday I wondered aloud why a screening of Peter Weir‘s The Way Back had happened in Los Angeles on Tuesday, 10.216, but no options to see it in NYC had been offered by the film’s p.r. reps. Well, it turns out that the screening was arranged independently by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond for his KCET Cinema Series.

“It wasn’t set up by 42 West as an official screening but directly with the producers by me,” Hammond explains. “In fact the publicists wanted it to be shown much later [in the season] but it was the only date I had available as my series is way overbooked and the producers were terrific in letting me make it happen so early since the film doesn’t even open for Oscar consideration until Dec. 29th.

“In fact when I initially set it up that opening date wasn’t even set and it was still expected to open wide Jan. 21st. It played extremely well for my group, and we had exec producer and writer Keith Clarke, producer Joni Levin, exec producer John Ptak and star Ed Harris for the q & a.”

So how’s the film?

“It was second time I’d seen it,” Hammond replies. “I think it’s a great epic in the David Lean tradition, the kind they don’t make anymore. Weir did a remarkable job considering it was made on an indie budget ($29 million) which is amazing for a film of this scope and ambition. Stunning and challenging. fine Russell Boyd cinematography and a great, spare score too.”

Today is everyone’s Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Sanity/Fear Rally travel day. My Washington, D.C.-bound Megabus leaves midtown Manhattan at 1 pm. I’ll be arriving around 5:30 pm. And I’ve just downloaded the Sanity/Fear App on my iPhone.

I’ll have wifi on the bus, but I’ll probably spend a good part of this evening sitting in a cafe somewhere and posting. Okay, and maybe wandering around and taking pictures. I’m determined to relax and socialize for at least an hour or two later tonight, although I know not where as I speak.

All this time I’ve been assuming that the rally will take place on the National Mall in front of the picturesque Lincoln Memorial, which is where the Glen Beck rally happened. But no — the Sanity rally is happening on the eastern end of the National Mall near Seaton Park, which is next to the National Museum of the American Indian and not that far from the Capitol building.

Yesterday a film-critic friend told me he’d be going down with his wife. But today he said nope. “It looks like we’re not making the trek tomorrow after all. I have to spend the day unpacking the contents of a moving van full of stuff that arrived from my late mother-in-law’s house.”

“That sounds a very amiable and helpful and cooperative-husband thing to do,” I responded. “You have my respect and understanding. But it’s a capitulation to the mundane.

“What if someone offered that excuse not to attend Martin Luther King‘s 1963 ‘I Have A Dream’ speech on the National Mall in 1963?

“Son: “Hey, dad, what was Martin Luther King’ s speech like? You went to that rally, right?” Dad: “I actually didn’t go to the rally, son. I stayed home and spent the day unpacking the contents of a moving van full of stuff that arrived from my late mother-in-law’s house.”

There are always boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. There have always been boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. There always will be boxes of stuff from your late mother-on-law’s house to unpack. But moments in history happen only once.

The Hollywood Elsewhere comment-post problem (i.e., Movable Type software blocking readers from posting comments) was fixed around 1 am last night. The problem was caused by a certain fellow’s attempt to create a new HE column called Woman on the Verge, which is still in flatline mode as we speak. Everything this guy did followed normal procedure for setting up a new blog, but he copied aged coding in order to do so and the javascript was accidentally overwritten. But the fault, I’m told, is largely due to Movable Type.

They’re bad people, the Movable Type crew. Trying to communicate with them is slower and less efficient than trying to communicate via Morse code with British solders in India during Rudyard Kipling‘s day. They’re slow, their operation is covered in molasses, and they hide behind walls. Their refusal to install an instant-chat function or charge extra for certain customers to have phone support if needed is intolerable. This is the end of Movable Type. I can’t wait to get rolling with WordPress.

Admit it — Inception has been doing a very slight fade, certainly in terms of its Best Picture contention. Not that it won’t end up as one, but last summer was last summer, etc. But pushing the red button and hearing that Han Zimmer/Edith Piaf chord got me going again.

Lionsgate’s just-released Rabbit Hole poster is highly intriguing. Congrats again to co-marketing chief Tim Palen. The hanging tire suggests a kind of emptiness by way of the absence of a child who once played with it. It also suggests a kind of purgatory. A body isn’t hanging from the rope, but something is stuck and twisting in a world of hurt. I also like that the poster doesn’t resort to the expected cast faces (Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, etc.)

The near-total shutdown of Hollywood Elsewhere’s comment-response capability over the last 24 to 36 hours has killed my willingness to stay with Movable Type, the software that I’ve been using to publish this column. I despise their tech support system with the same saliva-spitting fervor that Sessue Hayakawa expresses in The Bridge on The River Kwai when he says “I hate the British!” Write them about your problem and they’ll get back to you 36 or 48 hours later…or not at all. They don’t even have a live-chat option. As soon as I can afford to switch over to WordPress, I will. Dingbats.

Many thanks to VanRambling’s Raymond Tomlin for his very generous assessment of Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily gruel. He also compliments the commenters, calling their remarks “first-class, thoughtful, well-considered and informative” and “sometimes screamingly funny.”

Tomlin’s appreciation, he says, “has grown since the recent debut of his and Sasha Stone‘s iTunes podcast, Oscar Poker.

“Both Jeff and Sasha are incredibly well-informed about film, the film market, and the work of prominent actors and directors past and present. Their rapport on Oscar Poker is utterly relatable, natural and becoming, informed and compelling. Honestly, Oscar Poker’s two commentators come across as if they’re lovers, their affection for one another so deep, abiding and respectful.

“Despite Jeff’s propensity to be curmudgeonly, which Sasha only laughs at with a knowing affection for Jeff because he’s outrageous but right, Jeff and Sasha come across as generous and thoughtful commentators and human beings — these are people you’d actually like to get to know, to discuss ‘the movies’ with over a beer.”