The L.A. County coroner’s ruling about Michael Jackson‘s death being called a homicide isn’t specifically worded, to my understanding. The secondary definition of second-degree murder is “a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender’s obvious lack of concern for human life…a middle ground between first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter.” Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s personal physician, had been thought to be suspected of manslaughter. What’s the precise difference between manslaughter and the kind of second-degree murder described above, and what will be the penalties if Murray is charged with the latter?

“My relationship with Don Hewitt was never close,” writes former 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (who was played by Al Pacino in The Insider). “It was marked not just by arguments, but a kind of dance where he would regularly ‘fire’ me during my first decade at the program.

“But it finally disintegrated during a critical period in 1995 when CBS management and lawyers changed the rules, citing a little-used legal concept (‘tortious interference’) to justify killing an investigation of the tobacco industry that I was working on. Hewitt’s acquiescence, and then public justification of management’s decision, was the last straw. That episode convinced me he was willing to abandon the basic trust that a real news organization has to maintain with its most important sources: people who are willing to risk retaliation for telling the truth.

“I never expected that Hewitt would protest publicly. I was dismayed that someone who had so little to lose was unwilling to at least talk back, even in private meetings, to the powers that be.

“I have to acknowledge that working for Don Hewitt taught me how to survive the consequences of my decision to talk openly and honestly about what really happens when powerful interests are threatened by the truth. Seeing him in action over the years prepared me for the consequences of my own decision to try to expose, and hopefully undo, CBS’s decision.

“After loudly protesting my critique of what he did, as portrayed in the 1999 movie, The Insider, Hewitt went on to try to blackball me in the industry. He finally relented — citing advice from his friend, Benjamin Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, who told him, ‘go back to the dugout, sit down and shut up.'”

I wrote the following on 8.19, hours after news of Hewitt’s death broke: “Hewitt’s reputation isn’t 100% sterling due to the depiction of his actions during the Jeffrey Wigand/Brown & Williamson/tortious interference debacle in Michael Mann‘s The Insider. Fairly or unfairly, he was portrayed by by Phillip Baker Hall as a corporate-deferring go-alonger who allowed the reputation of 60 Minutes to be tarnished in what is now regarded as a classic case of corporate interests undermining journalistic integrity.

“Many heartfelt tributes will be heard over the next few days, but The Insider will live on for decades if not centuries. Tough deal, but there’s no erasing it.

These three are contending that Cannes journalists over-reacted to Lars von Trier‘s AntiChrist, and in so doing revealed their emotionally timid natures plus a lack of historical perspective. Poland/Morgan/Gross have seen AntiChrist but had many weeks, of course, to prepare themselves. What were they going to do — agree with the mob? Whatever their motives they’re clearly bending over backwards to be contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. And they’re flat-out ignoring how amateurishly awful Antichrist is. Forget shock value — I’m talking about basic chops.

The slow-mo “baby falling out of the window” monochrome sequence in the beginning is awful. Dragging out any tragic/violent event in slow-mo is one of the whoriest tricks in the book — second-rate directors have been avoiding it for years. The psycho-claptrap that we hear Willem Dafoe speaking to wife Charlotte Gainsbourgh in the aftermath of their loss is stunning. How could any director-screenwriter have okayed this stuff?

The film is brazen — the word is actually shameless — but there are no surprises or odd moves that startle in a knockout way. (Like, say, the church bells ringing at the end of Breaking The Waves.) All through the damn thing you’re muttering “come on…come on.” There’s no psychological uncovering in any of it. The movie is a blunt tool. Boilerplate notions of pacing and gradual building into the forest-cabin madness that leads to the third-act violence are required but absent. It’s a stunningly sloppy thing — ludicrous, appalling, lemme-outta-here.

You can’t review AntiChrist without acknowledging what Von Trier wrote in his “director’s confession” in the Cannes press book: “Two years ago I suffered from depression. Everything, no matter what, seems unimportant, trivial. I couldn’t work. Six months later, just as an exercise, I wrote a script. It was a kind of therapy, but also a search, a test to see if would ever make another film.

“The script was finished and filmed without much enthusiasm, made as it was using about half of my physical and intellectual capacity. Scenes were added for no reason. Images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking. They often came from dreams I was having at the time, or dreams I’d had earlier in my life.”

I lost my original review of AntiChrist an hour or so after the Cannes press screening, but I haven’t backed off an inch from what I wrote later that night after wailing and punching walls with my fist: (a) “It’s an out-and-out disaster — one of the most absurdly on-the-nose, heavy-handed and unintentionally comedic calamities I’ve ever seen in my life” and (b) “easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist in a way that invites comparison to the sinking of the Titanic.

“A man whom I’ve admired and respected for many years has lost his mind for the time being, or at least lost it while he was writing and shooting the film. I just can’t fathom how the director of Breaking The Waves and Dancer in the Dark and Dogville could have made something so amateurishly awful. The decent and compassionate thing would be to forget Antichrist and to forgive Von Trier. To put it aside and move on on all fronts.”

Still looking for distribution, Alejandro Amenabar‘s Agora will show at the Toronto Film Festival. In my Cannes reaction, posted on 5.18, I called it “a visually ravishing, intelligently scripted historical parable about the evils of religious extremism. And I don’t mean the kind that existed in 4th century Alexandria, which is when and where this $65 million dollar epic is set. I mean the evils of the present-day Taliban and the Neocon-aligned Christian right, and the way Agora metaphorically exposes these movements for what they are.

“As Adam Curtis‘s The Power of Nightmares wisely explained, these two extremist faiths are similar in their loathing for liberalism and militant yearning to turn back the clock and to above all hold high the flag of religious purity. The 9/11 attacks kicked off their holy war against each other — a war that fortified their positions in their respective cultures during the Bush years.

“And now comes Agora, dramatizing how purist zealotry among 4th Century Christians led to the persecuting of Jew and pagans, to the sacking and burning of the great library of Alexandria, and to the murder of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), the first widely-noted female scholar who taught philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. (Note to whiners: Noting a well documented event that happened 1600 years ago can’t be called a spoiler.)

“Amenabar’s film, an English-language Spanish production that was shot in and around Malta, seems to me like the most thoughtful and intellectually-talky big-screen epic ever made, although there’s a fair amount of strife and sword-stabbing and mob violence all through it. The intense conflicts, exacting and cultured dialogue, dashing visual energy and top-notch performances from Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Rupert Evans, Ashraf Barhom, Rupert Evans and Michael Lonsdale make Agora more than gripping for its entire 141 minutes. I was surprised, really, that it moved as fast as it did.

Some are calling it too talky or insufficiently emotional, which translates into the imprecise term known as “boring.” It isn’t that, trust me, although I admit it’s hard to imagine the U.S. fans of sludge entertainment being keen to see it. You need to be keyed into what it’s saying about our world and to be rooting against the bad guys (i.e., old-time Christians) to really get into it, I suppose, although the high-quality sheen is unmistakable in every department. It’s well worth it for the CG alone.

Is it an Eloi costume epic? Does it have a muscular macho figure like Brad Pitt in Troy or Russell Crowe in Gladiator driving ther narrative and kicking ass? Does it have an intense erotic relationship as an emotional centerpiece? No — it’s a stirringly shot epic that is essentially cerebral in nature. After looking at the above trailer internet trolls have been calling it boring, stillborn, a tank waiting to happen, etc.

On what planet could a 53% second-weekend drop be considered “solid”? This is how box-office analyst Steve Mason has described the projected Inglourious Basterds fall-off this weekend, based on yesterday’s figures.

In the old days a 25%-to-30% second-weekend fall-off was considered a decent hold, a 40% fall-off was thought to be worrisome and a 50% fall-off was a major “uh-oh.” But in today’s era in which some highly-touted films have fallen off 60% and even 70% on their second weekends, a 50% drop is now considered par for the course as in “not great but not catastrophic.” Perspective is all.

Warner Bros.’ 3D The Final Destination brought in $10.5 million yesterday, and is projected to top out Sunday night at $26.3 million. Rob Zombie and the Weinstein Co.’s Halloween 2 earned $6.9 million yesterday (#2 for the day), and is looking at $16.8 million for the weekend. Inglourious Basterds is in third place as we speak, but it’s projected to reach $17.7 million by Sunday night for a ten-day cume of $71.4 million.

I’m not at all pleased to report that Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock (Focus) is already dead. I’m not much of a fan, but I feel badly for Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus, whom I like and admire. It will pull in slightly less than $4 million by Sunday night, averaging $2800 in 1,393 situations.

The decent, obliging thing to do if you’ve seen Robert Siegel‘s Big Fan is to give it a pass. If you care about independent cinema and you’d like to see at least a trickle of blunt, feisty, low-budget character dramas turning up at Sundance and Toronto and Cannes for years to come, you’ll put away the things that bothered or half-bothered you and just say, “Okay, very cool! Love that pudgy Patton Oswalt angst and the whole lower-depths, lower-middle-class Staten Island loser thing…love the grayness, the bleakness and the spirit-deflating self-loathing…love the shitty story…love the whole package.”

But I can’t do that, man. Because Big Fan wound up frustrating me all to hell.

I love movies that have gotten hold of something genuine and uncomfortably realistic, as Siegel has done here with the life of a sad, pissed-off fat guy named Paul (Oswalt) who works in a parking garage and lives with his braying mom in Staten Island and who lives for New York Giants games (which he can’t afford to attend so he watches the games in the Meadowlands parking lot outside the stadium with a friend, Sal, played by Kevin Corrigan), and who especially lives for his radio time on a sports talk show in which he goes into a vigorous rap about how great the Giants are and how lowly and contemptible the competition is.

Paul and Sal are these wonderfully tasty hopeless-loser characters, and the film is all about this great downbeat, going-nowhere milieu that makes the not-far-away world of the Sopranos seem like the land of Gene Kelly and Brigadoon. Big Fan is basically a very believable thing in just about any respect you’d care to name except — I’m sorry, have I mentioned this? — the story starting in the second act. That’s when it goes off the rails.

It happens after Paul and Sal happen to spot Giants player Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) coming out of some low-rent house in Staten Island where he was probably scoring drugs. They tail Bishop to Manhattan and then to a Scores-like club, and follow him inside. They eventually go over to his table to say hi and, like the clueless assholes they are, mention the Staten Island sighting. Which of course makes Bishop angry and defensive, which leads to his flying off the handle and pounding Paul and putting him in the hospital.

So far, so good. And the next turn — Paul so invested in Giants worship that he refuses to press charges against Bishop or sue him for damages, even though he has a solid case and could probably collect big-time, especially with Paul’s ambulance-chasing attorney brother offering to handle the case — is interesting also. But the failure of Bishop to get in touch after Paul lets him off the hook, or for anything of a vaguely positive nature to happen due to Paul’s refusal to hurt the Giants in any way, is immensely disappointing. I simply didn’t believe that Bishop wouldn’t do or say something, and I knew as the story froze and gave up the ghost that Siegel had just…I don’t know what he was doing but I knew he wasn’t doing it.

The story just runs out of gas at this point because there’s really nothing at stake and nowhere to go. It comes to an end with a bizarre incident in a Philadephia bar that felt to me like just another reiteration of loser-dom.

N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has written that the point of Big Fan is that a life filled with so much generous love needs no pity. Oh, yeah? The vibe in the beginning is one of half-articulate nihilism and self-loathing plus stupdi footbal love. The second act vibe is about the same thing. The third and closing act is about half-articulate nihilsm and self-loathing mixed with depression and fanatical stubbornness. What is anyone supposed to do with this? What is the appropriate response if you’re not a film critic? Drive out to the middle of the Verrezano-Narrows bridge and jump off?

“The tragedy of Tarantino is that he could have been so much more than the Schlock and Awe merchant that he has devolved into,” writes London Independent columnist Johann Hari. “If he had stopped mistaking his DVD collection for a life, he — to borrow a phrase from a real film, etched with real pain — could’ve been a contender.

“When I remember the raw force of Reservoir Dogs, I still hope that he will. It’s not too late. He could do it. How about it, Quentin? Step out into the big world beyond celluloid, and use your incredible talent to tell stories about it. As Mr. Blonde says, ‘Are you going to bark all day, little doggie — or are you going to bite?'”

I was writing post-Jackie Brown comedown pieces like back in ’98 and ’99. It’s hard to think of ’99 as ten years ago but it was. In any event, as I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have a crying need to keep the Tarantino/Inglourious Basterds hate going but Hari’s piece is well written and I like the ending and…what am I making excuses for? Because of the scolding stridency of the pro-Basterds brigade. Well, they’d better grim up and deal with reality. In a way the folks who shouted “FAIL” after Inglourious Basterds premiered at Cannes are like the French resistance. They’ve gone underground since it opened big last weekend, but they’re still holding meetings and planning stealth attacks.

Susan Siedelman‘s Smithereens, which I saw at a Daily Motion/Cinetic rooftop party last Wednesday night, is now streaming free all weekend. Susan Berman ‘s Wren is one of the most self-involved, alienating lead characters of all time, but the film is a mildly diverting time-capsule thing. It’s cool seeing the young (i.e., 32 year-old) Richard Hell again.

Is Steven Seagal: Lawman an actual A & E reality series? “The show’s real real…this is not a joke,” Seagal says in the clip. No script, no stunt double, no second chances. It’s getting to a point in which everything is suspect. Nothing is “real” and everything is in quotes. Even if several news sites are writing about it with a straight face. I trust no one. This must be a put-on…no?

Kansas congresswoman Lynn Jenkins yesterday tried to backpedal her 8.19 remark about fellow Republicans seeking a ”great white hope” to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012. The woman was obviously caught in a Freudian slip and is a flat-out liar for saying the remark has been misunderstood or taken out of context. There’s no shortage of ugly in this country. There is in fact a bottomless well of the stuff, most of it coming these days from the white hinterlands. (I should have posted this yesterday.)

“I just watched Guillermo Arriaga‘s The Burning Plain with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger on VOD last night,” entertainment journalist Lewis Beale wrote this morning. “I was surprised it had suddenly popped up on my local cable system, so I went to the IMDB and found it had gone the festival route (Venice, Toronto, Seattle), and that the official TV premiere release date was 8.21.09.

“Okay, it’s not that great a film. Another one of those circuitous, three-stories-that-come-together-eventually plotlines that Arriaga seems obsessed with, except in this case a linear approach would definitely have been more effective. But sheesh…a film with two female Oscar winners doesn’t even get to play the IFC Center or whatever? What happened here? Any interest in looking into this?”

The Burning Plain has a theatrical opening set for 9.18. It says so on the official website and on the IMDB.

But I didn’t have to “look into it.” I saw The Burning Plain at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, and it was clear to everyone that while it was a mildly intriguing heavy-cat drama in some respects (Theron’s promiscuous restaurant hostess tries and fails to suppress teenaged traumatic memories of having unwittingly caused her mother’s death), it just wasn’t laser-beamed or emotionally affecting enough to warrant impassioned reviews or any kind of limited-hang-out awards campaign.

There’s something a little too schematic and bluntly telegraphed about Theron’s past coming back and insisting that she face up to things. We know where stories of this sort are going and that it’s all going to come out in the wash, and so a half-hour into it you’re muttering to yourself, “Okay, all right, what else can you show me?” But there’s nothing else. The story is the story. And you have to ride it out.

Plus there’s a sense in watching it that the spaghetti-narrative trick that Arriaga used with collaborator Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu in Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel has been overworked and is maybe running out of steam. The Burning Plain performances (particularly by Theron, Kim Basinger and Joaquim de Almeida) are very good, and I don’t see any way to fault it craft-wise but there’s not just enough oomph and pizazz to make it a must-see drama.

In short The Burning Plain — a not-bad, half-decent film in some ways — fell between the cracks esteem-wise, and so the Magnolia guys took a hard look, got out the calculator and figured it would make sense to do a VOD and a limited theatrical thing around the same period. (Some kind of limited theatrical opening is set for 9.18.09.) I wish I could have felt more positively about it. It’s far from wretched; it works in some respects. Everyone involved was clearly trying to make something solid and truthful and earnest.

Bizarre as it may seem, the comic material in Grant Heslov‘s The Men Who Stare at Goats (Overture, 11.6) is based on reported truth, or more precisely Jon Ronson‘s 2004 non-fiction book about the U.S. Army’s exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal. Does the trailer convey a verite element? You tell me.

Trailers always rely on the crudest and broadest selling points, of course, but this one is clearly suggesting that the tone of Heslov’s film may be on the unsubtle and slapsticky side, almost in a Blake Edwardsy sense. Okay, in a sort-of dry and deadpanny vein. The straight-up, no-funny-business look on George Clooney‘s lean and moustachioed face tells you that.

But what about that shot of an animatronic goat tipping over and falling on its side? That’s an Eloi joke on the level of I Love You, Beth Cooper. And the fact that the Kevin Spacey-Jeff Bridges courtroom confrontation about girls and drugs isn’t funny? And that guy running into a wall? And while I’m sure there’s a no-big-deal explanation, why are formally uniformed Army guys shown wearing long sideburns and facial hair in a wedding reception ceremony? This sets off an alarm bell.

All I can tell you is that before watching the trailer, I was semi-pumped about seeing this film in Toronto. I had presumed Heslov, a very smart guy on Clooney’s wavelength and vice versa, would play down the inherently bizarre material and keep it real and let the wackazoid stuff speak for itself. But now, having seen the trailer, I’m feeling a little bit worried. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe this is just a matter of the Overture trailer guys looking to bring in the dumb-asses.

Heslov directed from a script by Peter Straughan. Ewan McGregor costars with Clooney, Spacey and Bridges. Set in Iraq (but filmed in New Mexico and Puerto Rico), it’s about Bob Wilton (McGregor), a reporter working on a story about Lyn Cassady (Clooney), who claims to be a former secret U.S. Military psychic soldier re-activated post-9/11. Bridges is Bill Django, the founder of the psychic soldier program and Lyn’s mentor. Spacey is Larry Hooper, a former psychic soldier who runs a prison camp in Iraq.