Jeffrey Wells

Why is the Cannes Film Festival press-screening The DaVinci Code, a movie that lasts about 150 minutes, at 8:30 pm on Tuesday the 16th rather than, say, the slightly more workable hour of 7 pm? Especially considering that a good portion of the viewers will be jet-lagged Americans? Because Sony publicists have arranged for Ron Howard‘s film to be shown to Cannes press at more or less the same time that New York and Los Angeles journos will be seeing it. The Gotham screening, I gather, will happen around 2:30 or 3 pm (a film critic for a major weekly told me that the Cannes screening will actually begin “a half-hour earlier” than the Manhattan screening). By this logic the Los Angeles showing would obviously be happening around noon, although a press pal says that the only LA press screening for DaVinci he knows about is set for Wednesday, 5.17, at 7pm at Hollywood’s Arclight .

There’s a launch party happening at the Columbus Hotel in Monte Carlo on Tuesday, 5.16 — the night before the Cannes Film Festival begins — to announce the International Emerging Talent Film Festival , which hopes to begin each year a few days before Cannes. American Cinematheque’s Margot Gerber is handling U.S. publicity. Participating supporters include producers Tricia Van Klaveren (Lying, Edmond), Bruce Cohen (Big Fish ), and George Litto (The Crew). I’d go but that The DaVinci Code press screening at 8:30, man…it’s a toughie.

I heard last night from a seasoned director-writer who’s something of an aficionado of fantasy flicks and has no agenda against Bryan Singer that I know of, and his message said that “an agent at UTA is referring to Superman Returns as Heaven’s Cape.” I get the thought but not the analogy. Singer puts passion into his films, but he’s never been and is nowhere near the wildly indulgent egomaniac that Michael Cimino reportedly was, etc. The import of this crack, obviously, is that the “okay, let’s trash this sucker sight unseen” mentality is extending beyond the geeks who’ve been gunning for this film for months and into the “suit” ranks. The reason I’m running it is because I didn’t like that too-positive “plant” review that ran on AICN a while back. If WB is smart they’ll stage some early screenings with people like me to try and elicit some counter-views.

I’ve been gift-ticketed into a performance of Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner‘s The History Boys this evening, so I guess I won’t be seeing the PBS documentary John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend that airs tonight at 9 pm. It’ll screen during Cannes, however, and will be included, as previously announced, in the big fat Ford-Wayne DVD box set that Warner Home Video is releasing on 6.6. Here’s Brian Lowry‘s review in Variety.

The fearless Ross Johnson on the parallels (or lack of them) between Hollywood’s own accused wiretapper and alleged hit contractor Anthony Pellicano and (a) Pablo Escobar, (b) Charles Bronson (and particularly Bronson’s character in Breakout), (c) Sonny Barger, (d) Suge Knight, (e) Alphonse Capone and (f) Shelley Winters.

Congratulations to Kevin Smith and the Clerks II gang for their film having been chosen to show at the Cannes Film Festival as an Official Out-of-Competitioner. It’ll show at midnight towards the end of the festival. (Smith’s p.r. guy Tony Angellotti has told me that Clerks II will have an earlier-in-the-day press screening for poopheads like myself who hate staying up until 2:30 or 3 a.m.)

The news came down around May 5th (I don’t know why the Cannes programmers took so long to come to their decision) and the plan was to hold until an official announcement on Monday, 5.15, but the news broke today so here it is. I’m hearing, by the way, that Smith’s film might open in July rather than August. Considering it was going to open on 8.18 opposite Snakes on a Plane, I’d say that’s a smart move. Smith will be in Cannes for the Southland Tales competition screening, an AMFAR benefit that Harvey Weinstein has something to do with, and his own Clerks II debut on 5.26.

Robert De Niro‘s The Good Shepherd (Universal, 12.22), a drama about the evolution-devolution of a CIA superspook (Eric Roth‘s script is based on the life of James Jesus Angleton), has gotten a mixed response from a couple of AICN correspondents. The responses to perfs by Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie are fine, but the film has otehrwise been described (and obviously it’s early in the game for December ’06 release) as long (around three hours), “boringly filmed” and that it “needs a lot of work.” It costars Alec Baldwin, Joe Pesci, Keir Dulleau and De Niro.

The Tom Cruise pile-on is getting merciless. I know he brought all this upon himself, but still…whew. Here are some pals who expect to do business with Cruise down the road — Paramount honcho Brad Grey, Universal chief Ron Meyer, C/W partner Paula Wagner — looking to take some of the sting out of that USA Today/Gallup poll that showed Cruise’s favorability rating has dropped 23 points since last summer.

We’ve been culturally “disaster”-ing for the past couple of weeks — new Poseidon out Friday, old Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno just out on DVD, two 9/11 disaster movies in theatres (one now, the second in August). And nobody ever seems to mention or remember in articles about ’70s disaster flicks that only one, Richard Lester’s Juggernaut (1974), was truly satisfying. This modestly proportioned British-produced film was ten times the film that The Poseidon Adventure tried to be. The irony is that the producers thought they were paying for just another piece of schlock (or so I read somewhere), but Lester managed to make something fairly good and clever and adult and underplayed.

The premise of Used Guys is fairly clever, with honest-to-God social observation and metaphor behind it. Set in a matriarchal society in which male clones are bought and sold like used cars…wait a minute, this sounds like The Island. The story revolves around two guys (Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey) who somehow cut themselves loose from the assemby line and try to sort out what being a man has come down to. Emily Mortimer will costar as Stiller’s love interest. (Carrey is going stag?) The only cautionary — okay, disappointing — note in this 20th Century Fox pic, which stars shooting in June, is that Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers/Parents, the Austin Powers films) is directing. That means Used Guys is guaranteed to be right down the middle. It’ll be hip and smart, and it may be funny or very funny or even marginally touching, but it’ll be right down the middle…you know what I mean.