Claire Sutherland‘s just-posted review of Australia is obviously coming from the obsequious side of the room — she doesn’t strike me as tough-minded in the slightest. Here, however, is The Australian‘s Michael Bodey — “intermittently brilliant, largely good but ultimately erratic.”

N.Y. publicist Sophie Gluck has announced that Guillaume Canet‘s Tell No One, which is still playing at the Cinema Village, has now passed $6.2 million in U.S. domestic box office, making it the highest grossing foreign-language film of the year. The DVD and Blu-Ray will come out in the first quarter of 2009.

Persistent European adventurer Jett Wells, taken in Madrid two days ago.

No, Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex doesn’t romanticize terrorism, as the Guardian‘s David Cox seems to believe. It’s angry and provocative, yes, and very well made, but not all that sexy. Not in a way that got me going, at least, as I explained in 9.30.08 review.

I called it “a strong but bleak account of the impassioned but self-destructive insanity that took hold among radical lefties in the late ’60s and ’70s, and which manifested with a particular ferocity and flamboyance among the Baader-Meinhoffers. [It] mainly sinks in as a revisiting of a time in which a small but dead-serious sector of the left-liberal community temporarily lost its bearings and in some cases jumped off a cliff in order to stop what they saw as a form of absolute establishment evil.

“I’m glad I saw it, I’m glad it was made, I respect and admire the contributions of everyone on the team (Edel, producer-co-writer Bernd Eichinger, exec producer Martin Moszkovicz and cast members Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Bruno Ganz, Nadja Uhl, Jan Josef Liefers, Stipe Erceg, Niels Bruno Schmidt, Vinzenz Kiefer, Alexandra Maria Lara), and I’m glad it’s doing well commercially in Germany and elsewhere.

“But The Baader Meinhof Complex is a gripping but awfully strange and even weird story about some very extreme, go-for-broke people who didn’t know when (or how) to chill out and seemed, in the final analysis, to be more than a little in love with death.”

I’ve lived in Los Angeles since the ’80s, and I’ve never seen a sight quite like this. A friend who lives in Mar Vista says the scent of burnt wood is everywhere. So strong it woke her up, she says.

“If Valkyrie succeeds, even moderately, MGM wins a modicum of credibility in image-is-everything Hollywood,” Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply have written in today’s (11.17) N.Y. Times. “A failure brings fresh sniping that the studio does not know what it is doing, making the job of attracting top-notch talent even harder.

“Financially speaking, the stakes are considerable. With a stated production budget of $75 million — competitors insist it is closer to $90 million — Valkyrie is the most expensive film made for distribution by MGM under Harry Sloan‘s watch. The studio will now spend about $60 million to market the movie — if nothing else, to make the point that it can play in the big leagues.

“(Quantum of Solace was much more costly, but it was co-financed and co-distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The movie sold $70.4 million worth of tickets in North America in its first three days of release, the biggest opening ever for a James Bond film.)

“Valkyrie will also test the mettle of [the film’s star), the 46-year-old Tom Cruise: If it fails, his status as a superstar, damaged by a rough parting with Paramount Pictures in 2006, slips another notch. And this time United Artists — clipped by a Cruise flop last year in Lions for Lambs — slips with it.”

Articles like this one are not going to stop, and the only way for MGM to spin things in a more favorable direction is to show it to select journalists and perhaps assemble a few positive reactions. In today’s environment, of course, it’s presumed by most marketers that once you screen a high-profile film the word will seep out no matter who promises what or how trustworthy they are.

But right now, and especially in the wake of Barnes and Cieply’s article, there’s probably more upside to showing Valkyrie and, let’s face it, a likely continuation of more downside whispering if they keep it hidden.

A week ago I was sent an e-mail detailing the Che release plan and passed it along. Most of the information was correct but the part about Guerilla (i.e., part 2) being released on 2.20.09 wasn’t. If IFC had simply launched a Che website all ambiguity would be removed. If such a site exists it’s a well-kept secret. In any event here’s the correct info:

The full-length roadshow version Che (composed of Che, Part 1:The Argentine and Che, Part 2: Guerilla) will be released as a special one-week event on 12.12.08 in New York City at the Ziegfeld Theater and in Los Angeles at The Landmark. (Had that right.) Che will re-open on January 9th in New York and Los Angeles as two separate admissions. A national rollout will follow to the top 25 markets on January 16th and 22nd with further expansions planned. The two parts will be released simultaneously in each market.

On January 21, IFC will also make the separate parts available on IFC In Theaters, its video-on-demand platform. The two parts will be available in 50 million homes nationwide on all major cable and satellite providers in both standard and high definition versions.

“There are times when the limitations of the printed word come into focus,” writes N.Y. Times columnist David Carr in today’s issue. “Like when there is a need to convey how it sounded when Robert Pattinson, who stars as the vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the forthcoming movie Twilight, stepped onto a riser at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia [last] Thursday evening in front of more than 1,000 mostly teenage girls.”

“In collective pitch, frequency and volume the sound would make a shuttle launching seem demure, a Jack White guitar solo retiring, a jackhammer somehow soothing. To reach into history, it may have approached Beatles-at-Shea-Stadium loud, replete with the weeping, swooning and self-hugging, and only the ambient flutter of cellphone cameras and furious texting by way of modern update. All of it was arrayed over a mostly unknown British actor who plays a character in a movie that will not be released until Friday.

“‘What’s with all the screaming?’ Mr. Pattinson asked when he came out. He absently ran his hand through his hair. Pandemonium ensued. He tugged at his white T-shirt in response, ever so nervously. Oh, boy. Then he laughed good-naturedly at the absurdity of it all. The smile was just a bit too much. A girl in a ‘Team Edward’ shirt fell into the arms of her friend. ‘I can’t stand it!’ she said.”

Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez wrote this morning that last weekend he “had a private talk with LA Film Fest director Rich Raddon, a Mormon member of the film community” (and, of course, director of the L.A. Film Festival) “who was drawn into the spotlight late last week after it was revealed that he donated $1500 to the campaign in support of California Prop 8” — the measure that banned gay marriage.

A rally for marriage equality in New York City two days ago. (Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE)

“Rich is a longtime friend within the film community and I agreed to speak with him off the record,” Hernandez writes, “so I can’t detail the substance of our conversation. However, I can relate that he is in the midst of a painful and emotional process as his personal and professional worlds collide rather publicly.” No shit?

“During our talk, I expressed my own disgust over the tactics of his church and reiterated how offensive the campaign against equality is to so many people, especially within the film community. Raddon is already hearing this first hand from many people around him, so I also listened carefully as he expressed his own hope that the goals of both sides can be achieved peacefully and harmoniously going forward.”

I agree with producer Christine Vacchon‘s statement to Hernandez that “it’s fucked up when the left starts acting like the right.” Hernandez also quotes Vacchon’s Facebook statement, which she posted last Friday night: “I wish Rich Raddon did not support prop 8 — but he is entitled to his opinion and he’s entitled to put his money where his mouth is.”

“‘Where do you draw the line?'” Vachon added, “decrying a ‘witch hunt’ and rhetorically wondering whether all employees would be vetted for their political beliefs.”

But what exactly is Raddon envisioning when he says that “the goals of both sides can be achieved peacefully and harmoniously going forward”? To have supported Proposition 8 is to have supported bigotry — no ifs, ands or buts. Raddon is obviously entitled to stand by his convictions, and I suppose that letting this one pass and turning the other cheek is in keeping with the spirit of Barack Obama.

But would Vacchon be saying “too bad but comme ci comme ca” if Raddon had given $1500 to a more universally (i.e., more widely understood) heinous cause? Indeed — where do you draw the line?

Obama-Lincoln or Obama-FDR? I’m sensing that he’ll turn out to be some kind of hybrid of the two. Here’s hoping, at least. Most semi-educated people out there (who may or may not constitute more than 50% of the over-18s) as well as those who read weekly news magazines (which is what,10% or 15%…if that?) probably prefer the former. BHO’s giving the absolutely traitorous Joe Lieberman a pass is one indication of a Lincoln-esque temperament. Personally I’m more of a send- your-enemy-a-dead-fish-wrapped-in-a-newspaper kind of guy. I realize Obama’s way is probably wiser and more productive.

The current covers of Newsweek and Time.

“The theme of Obama’s Inauguration is taken from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: ‘A New Birth of Freedom,'” the Newsweek story reads at one point. “Asked in January by CBS anchor Katie Couric which book, aside from the Bible, he would find essential in the Oval Office, Obama answered, “Team of Rivals.” Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s 2005 bestseller recounts how Lincoln surrounded himself with advisers who were better educated and more experienced and who made no secret of coveting Lincoln’s job.

“Goodwin, who has spoken with Obama about her book, thinks he has absorbed the deeper meaning of Lincoln’s leadership style. ‘I think he’s got a temperamental set of qualities that have some resemblance to Lincoln’s emotional intelligence,’ Goodwin tells Newsweek.”