Architecture doesn’t make me tear up like movies do, but I can’t suppress this, can’t keep it down any longer: I feel crestfallen when I look at the new Freedom Tower design. The building itself is okay, but that pointy, top-of-the-building thing looks inelegant…like a hypodermic needle drawn by a nine year-old. That off-center, see-through beacon thing that sat on top of the
old Freedom Tower design (i.e., the one announced on 12.20.03) was much more striking for its delicacy and unusualness….it really had something. The newly designed one feels too square and so-whatty.

Tragic Synch

New Line Cinema’s decision to move the release date of Tony Scott’s Domino from 11.23 back to mid-August (which is when the film was originally scheduled to open for several months) may look like an exploitation of a tragedy to some…but apparently it’s not.
I was shocked to learn Tuesday that 35 year-old Domino Harvey, the former model-turned-bounty hunter portrayed by Keira Knightley in Scott’s action thriller, was found dead in a bathtub in her West Hollywood home on Monday night.

Edgar Ramirez, Mickey Rourke, Kera Knightley in Tony Scott’s Domino.

The daughter of late actor Laurence Harvey was facing jail time over drug-dealing charges after feds busted her a month ago. She was charged with conspiracy to distribute drugs (i.e., amphetamines), possession, trafficking and racketeering, and was apparently looking at a possible long sentence.
Domino, based on a sharply written script by Richard Kelly and costarring Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken, is a partly fictionalized story about Harvey’s giving up modeling in the early ’90s to become a bounty hunter.
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New Line bumped the film from its 8.19 date to late November sometime around 5.25, which was about six days after the news of Harvey’s drug arrest hit the papers.
The reason New Line is now looking to push it back to a mid-August release, I’m told, is because another Keira Knightley film, Pride and Prejudice (Focus Features), is moving its opening date to November 11 from a previous opening date of September 23, and such a conflict would only hurt both films.
There’s also some mucky-muck about Knightley’s busy schedule (she’s currently shooting the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel) and her consequent availability for p.r. duties being a factor in pushing up the Domino release date.
Kelly talked to me earlier today about Harvey, whom he spoke with last year “for a couple of hours” during research for his script. “I know she was very troubled,” he said. He called her recent drug bust and death (which looks like a suicide, although no official ruling has come down) “a very sad situation as Tony was close with her.”

Kera Knightley in studio-issed still from Domino.

He said he last saw Harvey during filming of Domino last fall in Las Vegas. Her head was shaved, he said, and she looked a little worse for wear.
“She has a cameo in the Vegas sequence of the film…actually she is in the final image,” he said. He called the footage of her “very haunting, especially now that she is gone, as the themes of life and death and the precarious/arbitrary nature of both are huge themes in the story.”
A New Line spokesperson said nothing would be changed in the film as it’s “pretty much locked.”
Scott, who knew Harvey on a personal basis, said in a statement that she “never failed to surprise or inspire me over the last 12 years. She was a free spirit like no other I have ever known.”
Domino producer Sammy Hadida said, “We were enormously saddened to hear of Domino’s untimely passing. She and I had been conferring about her music to be used in the film only weeks ago.
“Although our film is not intended as a biographical piece, hers was the dynamic personality and indomitable spirit that spawned an exciting adventure, not just on screen but in real life.”

Pulse-Pounder

War of the Worlds is, on a certain level, a close-to-great, sonically haunting, occasionally scary summer superflick…and anyone who dismisses it by saying things like “it doesn’t suck but it’s not very good either” is being disingenuous, really and truly.
There is no way this film won’t deliver most of what you’re expecting, even after reading this sentence, and I realize how presumptuous this sounds but I’m not wrong.

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) carrying daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) as his emotionally and intellectually-challenged teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwick) glares at the world and wonders how to make his mark in his own way…get ’em, Robbie!

The film is not without problems — it has four, to be exact, including a stinkbomb of a finale that people will be talking about all across the country for the next five days — but it delivers your money’s worth and then some, and anyone who tries to tell you differently isn’t talking about what this film literally and actually is. Don’t listen to them.
War of the Worlds is surprisingly scary here and there. I thought I was CG’ed and FX’ed out and couldn’t be affected by another grotesquely expensive, broad-assed alien-invaders film…but I was wrong.
It’s not cold or savage or unembroidered enough, but even with its various weaknesses WOTW is the new standard-setter for what it takes to arouse a cynical, distracted audience with I-Pods and Blackberrys in their pockets into going yeah, wow…whoa!!…and sit up and stare and forget about going to the bathroom.
At times it is halfway between being merely visually “impressive” and a genuinely fearful thing to sit through, and that’s no small feat. Everyone’s taken note of the 9/11 recreations (there are several, but the most vivid for me is the powdery gray dust covering Tom Cruise’s head after the first alien attack), and this is certainly part of what the film summons.

Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning

But it’s the sheer flattening force of what the alien invaders do to everything and everybody (and especially the sound of all this carnage) that counts. Make sure you see War of the Worlds in a theatre with a fortified Tyrannosaurus Rex sound system.
Forget all that David Poland stuff about the lack of thematic elements or the metaphor not making it or the narrative threads failing to fuse together and make WOTW into something more than what it is. He’s partly right but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t get it.
I know I’ve hated films that eschew the delicate interior stuff in favor of gross physicality, but this is one of those occasions in which the exteriors are good enough that it’s easy to let the absence of interior values slide. Trust me, this film is as good as this sort of thing can reasonably be expected to be.
Except for four bad things: one mildly bad thing, one puzzlingly bad thing, one irritatingly bad thing and only breathtakingly awful thing.
There’s an opening and closing narration sequence — taken straight from the H.G. Wells novel and spoken by Morgan Freeman — that should have been cut. There are times when paying respect to the original author or the original film is a mistake, and this is one of them.

The narration was passable when Sir Cedric Hardwicke read it in the 1953 George Pal War of the Worlds, but Freeman’s reading sounds too storybooky and “once upon a time”-ish. (People began to snicker almost immediately at the screening I attended.)
I appreciate the urge to have H.G. Wells’ opening line digested, but literary tributes are fairly off-track in a film of this sort. The visuals say it all. We’re living in an age of sub-literacy and as nuts as this sounds, sometimes it’s best for filmmakers to just go with the sub-literate flow.
There’s a very queer idea in this film about the alien tripods not coming down from the heavens but buried and waiting under the earth’s surface for a long time and being activated by lighting bolts carrying aliens or alien vessels or whatever.
This is obviously nonsensical…unless, of course, one throws out credibility and just accepts it as metaphor. We are being destroyed by elements from within. This doesn’t add up, but …what?…malignancies in our systems, ourselves, our souls…waiting to be cut loose by time or fate or some built-in trigger?
Why do the aliens have to come from inside the ground? I suspect it’s because Spielberg fell in love with the idea of a tripod bursting its way out of a Hoboken street (it’s a fantastic thing visually, I have to admit) and said to screenwriter David Koepp, “Make it work.”
I ignored it, waved it away…but it bothered me later. People weren’t buying it outside the Zeigfeld theatre on Monday night, I can tell you. One guy was saying, “What the hell was that about?”

The son of Cruise’s Ray Ferrier, called Robbie and played by Justin Chatwin, should have been killed early on and stayed that way.
Chatwin is a good actor caught playing a badly written role. Robbie is a total dumbass. He’s feeling lots of anger and resentment about his irresponsible dad, see…but this emotional posture is unaffected by a smidgen of practical caution or strategic intelligence when the aliens start attacking. But he is sure is emotional!
Robbie and Ray and sister Rachel (Dakota Fanning) are driving through the carnage with one of the world’s last remaining working autos. (The others have had their batteries neutralized by an electro-magnetic pulse.) Ray asks Robbie to take the wheel but tells him to stick to the back roads and avoid crowds for obvious reasons. What does Robbie do while Ray is catching some z’s? You have to guess?
That settled it. Like Frankie Pantegelli barking at Michael Corleone about the hated Rosotto brothers in The Godfather, Part II, I was telepathically text-messaging the same message over and over…”I want this kid dead…mort!”
Then Robbie makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to join the National Guard while they’re trying to stop the aliens from advancing on the populace. Utterly ridiculous, of course, but at least the fucker is gone, I was telling myself. He’s been zapped to death, turned into dust…great!
And then…no, I can’t say it.

Spielberg’s alien tripods aren’t that different from this comic-book depiction from at least 50 years ago, if not further back than that.

The final scene of War of the Worlds is beyond bad. It is so diseased it will send you into grief spasms. There’s a sense of quiet jaw-dropping horror at what Spielberg is choosing to show us and the way he’s gotten dp Janusz Kaminski to shoot it (it’s almost as treacly as the fantasy scene when Anne Baxter waltzes down the steps to meet Montgomery Clift in I Confess) and the actors he’s chosen to cast in this scene.
This is the kind of terrible, terrible finale that only Steven Spielberg is capable of. Jett said as we were leaving the theatre, “Why did he do that? He almost had it!”
Why can’t Spielberg restrain himself on this sentimental shit? If WOTW had been a bit tougher and colder and had excised the emotional cushioning it could have been brilliant. But no…Spielberg has to be Spielberg. He has to pick up that shotgun, he has to put the shells in the chamber, he has to aim it at his left foot and blamm!
I shared this reaction with a director friend yesterday, and he said, “Well, of course…this is Spielberg, the most egregiously sentimental and pandering filmmaker anywhere except for George Lucas.”
This guy, who’s been around for 30 years and knows everyone and all the stories, said that Spielberg is actually a very cold and manipulative guy deep down (Julia Phillips used to say this too), and that he injects sentimentality into his films because he thinks it sells, and he’s right most of the time, but that’s not who he really is.

I don’t know how to go from loathing the last scene back to a sincere admiration of the whole, but that’s what this movie is. As bad as the shitty stuff is, it doesn’t get in the way of the portions that are stunning. I can’t emphasize enough that I was knocked flat and awestruck throughout most of it.
Cruise the Scientology meltdown nutter was out the window and gone in a matter of seconds. The 9/11 references seemed superfluous and unintegrated to me, and it was obvious WOTW would have been better off not referencing it so strenuously.
War of the Worlds could have been 20% better…it could have been staggering if Spielberg had pruned the crap and the sentiment out. It could have been scarier still if Spielberg had tried for a chillier tone and more of a “take it or leave it, life is hard and alien invasions are really hard and brutal…deal with it” type of thing.
But that’s not Spielberg and it never will be. The man is his own worst enemy.

It turns out the Russell Crowe phone-throwing episode was captured on tape. It’s also being reported that Crowe didn’t just throw a phone at Mercer Hotel concierge Nestor “Josh” Estrada, but also a vase. It’s also been written in this “Page Six” piece that what got Crowe so enraged was Estrada saying “whatever” after Crowe repeatedly complained that he couldn’t get an international phone connection. Now I know who the real bad guy is. I’ve dealt with guys like Estrada all my life and their “whatever” attitudes about life’s challenges, and they really don’t belong in service industries. When a celebrity wants you to hop, there is one and only one answer, and that is “how high?” A guy who says “whatever” about anything a valued customer needs is selfish and indifferent and living deep inside his own flabby head. And now Estrada has an attorney, Eric Franz, trying to milk Crowe for all he can…despite Estrada’s having barely been grazed by the flying phone. Estrada is not a man — he’s a girl. He’s the kind of guy who always goes “waaahh, you hurt my feelings….waahh, I’m telling the teacher” when he bruises his elbow or scrapes his knee. Crowe acted in a vulgar and detestable manner by doing what he did but if you’re going to act like a brute, third-raters like Josh Estrada are the best ones to give it to. This column stands four-quare against anyone and anything who says “whatever” in response to any kind of hard-to-figure situation…unless, of course, the using of this term is in some way appropriate.

I would love to jump into War of the Worlds (having seen it last night) but along with everyone else Paramount publicity insisted on a written pledge that I not review this Steven Spielberg film until Wednesday morning. I think it’s fair, however, to pass along one bit of reportage. The widely-buzzed-about disappointment with the finale, which I passed along in this space two or three days ago, is not about Spielberg’s decision to go with the the original H.G. Wells ending. It is not — not — about earthly bacteria in the alien’s bloodstream. As fantastic and genuinely scary as most of the film is (c’mon…you knew this would be the case), I can tell you that people sitting near me inside the Zeigfeld theatre at 9:05 pm last night were audibly moaning and whimpering when this offending scene unfurled. (It turns out, by the way, that Ain’t It Cool News didn’t break the review embargo — Paramount let them skate on the whole thing.)

The dozens of oddball revisions and reshufflings aside (which are fine — Peter Jackson isn’t doing a Gus Van Sant-folllowing Psycho remake), the new King Kong trailer is actually fairly (emphasis on the “f” word) cool. It’s just that his criteria seems to have been “how can I do this my way, so it doesn’t look like I’m copying?” instead of “how can I take what’s already been done very well and make it better, deeper, spookier…more haunting?” But I love the seeming fact that Jackson has Kong doing his Manhattan rampage in the winter, with snow on the streets…brilliant.

Six or seven bent-over guys wearing ape-pelts around their shoulders and chests are circling a young woman sitting in their center and chanting the chant that goes “Kong!…konnalong- konnalong-konnalong-konnalongalong Kong Kong!!” and beating their chests with each repetition of those last two syllables. They do this two or three times and then suddenly one of them stops circling and stands up and looks at the others and says, “Wait a minute… something feels wrong…it’s not the same.” And the other ape-pretenders wave their ape arms and tell him to shut up, and then they tell him, “It is what it is, bubba. Peter Jackson’s in charge now, not Merian C. Cooper…deal with it.” And then they resume their chanting: “Kong! Konnalong-konnalong-konnalong- konnalong-along Kong Kong!!” And the dissenter says, “You fools! You’re telling me you would’ve been placated and satisfied if Fay Wray, God rest her soul, had lived long enough to be filmed speaking the famous ending line while standing in front of Kong’s dead body on 34th Street, ‘It wasn’t the airplanes…it was beauty who killed the beast.’ That would have been fine with you guys…you would have been cool with Fay Wray saying that line?”

From Roger Friedman’s column a couple of days ago: “Meantime, I’ve got a solid new figure for the budget on War of the Worlds. Are you ready? Not counting promotion: $182 million. With promotion, think more like $230 million.”

Persistence of Crash

Sometime within the next week or two, Paul Haggis’s Crash is going to pass the $50 million mark in theatrical revenue. That’s an extraordinary haul for a film that’s not exactly a downer but is about as divorced from the conventional definition of a feel-good audience hit as you can imagine.
It’s a socially observant thing that ends with a hopeful or balanced view of who and what we are in terms of racial attitudes. It also says that widespread racism has made us all fairly miserable inside the prison of our own skins. And yet people are going for it.

Terrence Howard’s character, a Hollywood filmmaker, during a contemplative, settle-down moment in Crash.

Crash has performed so surprisingly well that year-end awards and Oscar nominations are starting to seem inevitable. The year-end hoopla will be spurred along by the release of the DVD sometime in the early fall, and a limited theatrical re-release aimed at Academy voters sometime in December or perhaps January.
The cultural-political element seems to have caught on also and made Crash into a shorthand term for crude racial pigeonholing, and, in another sense, a recognition that racism is as pernicious as ever.
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Like Oprah Winfrey spokesperson Michelle McIntyre describing Winfrey’s being denied entrance to that Hermes store a few days ago in Paris as “her Crash moment.”
Or Al Sharpton visiting Mexico president Vicente Fox in late May and slipping him a DVD of Crash to watch.
Or recently elected Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villagrosa referring to the film while making a point about racism during an interview last Monday (6.20) on Ted Koppel’s Nightline.
When Crash opened seven weeks ago — on Friday, 5.6 — the commercial expectations were upbeat but modestly so. Lions Gate had acquired it for about $3.3 million at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and this seemed like an appropriate price. “We thought it would do a minimum of $25 to $30 million,” Lions Gate president Tom Ortenberg recalls.
It’s now in 492 theatres and has taken in over $47 million.

Crash costar Thandie Newton

A sharply written ensemble piece about racial divides in and around Los Angeles, Crash had been generally well reviewed with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and yet it was panned by some big guns — N.Y. Times lead critic Tony Scott, L.A. Times second-stringer Carina Chocano, Jamie Bernard of the N.Y. Daily News, the Boston Globe‘s Ty Burr.
The reactions were very favorable when I showed Crash at my UCLA Sneak Previews class in early April, which seemed significant in that the class is mainly composed of people in their 40s and 50s, who tend to shy away from push-comes-to-shove dramas.
Crash‘s co-screenwriter Bobby Moresco says he knew something was up when he went to see how the film was performing at a Burbank megaplex during the opening weekend. “It was a show in the middle of the afternoon, there was a long line waiting to get in, and the theatre was 80% filled,” he said.
Moresco noticed the same level of response when he went back the next day — i.e., Sunday afternoon.
“It was obvious to us that we had something,” Ortenberg told me yesterday. “The Friday to Sunday trajectory was very strong, there were great exit polls, and business was very good on the Monday and Tuesday after the first weekend.
“And then week after week, it was clear not only that audiences were discovering Crash, but the picture was becoming a water-cooler movie.”
Crash “is really the perfect Lions Gate film,” he said. “Indie crediblity along with commercial viability.
“We opened up at #4, and yet we stayed in the top five for four weeks. Kingdom of Heaven more than doubled our gross on opening weekend, but by the third weekend we outgrossed them. Clearly we had a film that was affecting people.”

Crash star Don Cheadle, director and cowriter Paul Haggis during filming

My opinion is that it’s working with audiences because it hits hard in showing racial incidents but at the same time leaves you with a sense of balance and even compassion.
Everyone in this sharply written ensemble drama is shown to be a racist or a victim of racism, but they’re also given a balancing trait or shown having a moment of clarity and self recognition. Matt Dillon’s beat cop is depicted as racist pig on one hand, but also a guy capable of heroism when he saves Thandie Newton from that car fire and also a guy who grieves over his ailing father…that kind of thing.
“In many respects today’s movie-marketing world is about cookie-cutter distribution and massive ad budgets and the usual usual,” Ortenberg comments. “And so it’s especially gratifying when you have a film that needs TLC to get through and is benefiting from word of mouth and really taking off on this level.
“If I could single out one person at Lion’s Gate who orchestrated this more than anyone else, it would be (exec vp publicity) Sarah Greenberg,” Ortenberg says.
“Sarah did a text book long-lead critic and opinion-maker screening program where she was able to identify the supporters and champions of the film, and get them to come out visibly for the film in a big way. Ebert and Roeper went with their rave fairly early, about two weeks before the release. David Denby at the New Yorker wrote a great review, and he also hosted a New Yorker screening program showing.
“Unlike some of the others who bid on this film in Toronto, we always saw Crash as a wide release movie.” It opened on 5.6 in about 1800 theatres.

Crash Larenz Tate, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.

“I have gotten more calls and e-mails from colleagues…more calls congratulating Lions Gate for picking this movie up and doing well with it,” Ortenberg remarks. “And we always got similar reactions from screening programs around the country.
“Our two worst reviews in the country came from the New York Times and the LA Times . There were naysayers, there always are…but the film really did well at the end of the day.”
The movies that tend to connect are the ones that prompt a sense of basic recognition. I think people are privately acknowledging their feelings of racism when they see Crash. Remember what Randy Newman said a long time ago about us all being rednecks, etc.?
I think people are also responding to the film’s optimistic view of this common failing. It says that we’re flawed, yes, but we’re not that bad, and we’re capable now and then of being noble and kind.

Earnestly

I wrote this up in the WIRED section late last night but I’m feeling emphatic and I don’t care if I’m repeating myself: I was blown away by Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) at a screening last night, and I found this surprising since I was told a few months ago by a filmmaker in a position to know that it might not be all that much.
As murder mysteries go (and it does fall under this category…sort of), this Focus Features release may be too thoughtful and complex and emotionally subtle to play big with younger audiences, and we all know that Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are not marquee names. But trust me when I say it’s very high-quality merchandise with a decent shot at year-end awards and Oscar noms.
This is easily the best theatrical adaptation of a John le Carre novel since The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1966).

Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz in Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener.

I expected something fairly good, as anyone would from the director of the magnificent City of God, but I didn’t expect The Constant Gardener to be quite this smart and impassioned and as pointedly political.
Why is it that American directors (Oliver Stone and Warren Beatty excepted) never seem to deliver films with hard political content? Meirelles seems to understand this story about poor Africans being exploited by rich drug companies because he’s made a film about poor Brazilians coping with similarly oppressive conditions.
It’s a combination love story and whodunit wrapped inside a realistic political drama that feels as raw and teeming as City of God and then some. Set mostly in Kenya, its about the murder of activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz ) and the efforts of her mild-mannered diplomat husband Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) to find out why she was killed and who did it.
The only disappointing aspect is the casting of Danny Huston in a supporting role as yet another morally compromised scumbag.
I’m not quite sure why Focus Features is opening this exceptional film in very late August, which is kind of a dumper period. It seems as if October or early November would be a better time to open it, but maybe they know something I don’t.
Here’s the trailer.

Delayed Action

I have to put things on hold for a few hours, but I promise to do what I can to tarnish or call into question the reputation of March of the Penguins (Warner Independent, opening today) when I return.
This French-made nature doc is a bore and a con and I’m not buying it, and neither should you unless you’re a sucker for the general cuteness of penguins. Women love this film but there are times in life when sentimentality must be resisted, and this is one of them.

David Straitharn as legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck.

One of the stories I’m especially cranked about is the apparent intention of Warner Bros. to put George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, a modestly budgeted black-and-white feature about the 1954 battle between CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Straitharn) and the anti-communist demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy, into theatres in October or November.
The idea is apparently for the film to play either the Venice or Toronto or New York film festivals, or perhaps all three. I know nothing at all about the quality of Straitharn’s performance, but one presumes he will be quite good in the role. When has Straitharn ever not been exceptional?
I have to cut out in order to attend an NYU Pre-College Orientation class that starts at 2 pm. Jett should be attending this but he’s taking his last two finals at Brookline High School today so I’ll be there with my notepad.
I’ll put up the remaining material tonight and tomorrow morning.

Armond Says…

When New York Press critic Armond White rips into someone, he really goes to town. If I were Nora Ephron I would grab a hard copy of this Bewitched review and frame it and put in on my wall, as a way of showing my friends (and myself) what a good sport I am.

Here’s a photo and here’s the online page link
I’m thinking of something Joseph P. Kennedy once said about his son Robert: “The kid hates like I do.” I don’t think of White as any kind of junior-level presence (quite the contrary), but he does tend to assign notions of almost Biblical-scale evil to certain mainstream filmmakers, and I’ve always found this endearing on a certain level.

Grabs

Wednesday’s Mare photo tweaked by Ken Bell of Graphic Planet.

I’ve thought and thought about what to call this photo, and I’ve finally decided upon “Cement Guy.”

Sign hanging on chain-link fence bordering far eastern barrier of Ground Zero.

Latest in a series of R.O.T. photos. I relate to R.O.T., or rather the spiritual condition alluded to by this acronym.

The Ground Zero crucifix made out of a remaining portion of a steel framework that was part of one of the towers.

Back by popular demand! Many people (okay, guys) have sent in compliments. A director friend told me yesterday he believes this photo deserves to be hung in the Museum of Modern Art. I completely agree.

For the last two or three days there’s been a ripple effect coming off that press-junket screening of War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29),and specifically one cutting remark in particular about the conclusion being underwhelming or otherwise not cutting it because it doesn’t deliver a big crescendo-ish blowout but ends rather quietly and internally…in a bacterial realm. I won’t be seeing the film until Monday night but this is the ending that H.G. Wells used in his original novel and more or less the same one used in the 1953 George Pal movie with Gene Barry. Wells intended WOTW was a metaphor about British militarism and colonial takeovers, and how the invader will always be defeated by natural organic elements. You can interpret the Spielberg film as a metaphor about U.S. occupation of Iraq, or, as screenwriter David Koepp has explained, as primarily being about Tom Cruise’s character evolving from a state of distracted selfishness to one of unqualified readiness to do anything to save his children…but there is certainly nothing wrong with an alien-invasion film looking to avoid the cliche of a big wham-bam finale and deciding to end it on a quiet note, for God’s sake. Whether this ending works or not is another matter, but the concept behind it is completely valid and sounds, if you ask me, refreshing for its avoidance of the usual-usual.

I was blown away by Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) this evening. I don’t know how popular it will be (it may be a little too complex and sophisticated for the schmucks) but it’s very high-quality merchandise with a decent shot at year-end awards and Oscar noms. I expected it would be at least pretty good, considering how extraordinary Meirelles’ City of God was, but I didn’t expect it to be this smart and impassioned and as strongly political. This is easily the best adaptation of a John le Carre novel since The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1966). It’s a combination love story and whodunit wrapped inside a realistic political drama that feels as raw and teeming as City of God and then some. Set mostly in Kenya, its about the murder of activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz ) and the efforts of her mild-mannered diplomat husband Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) to find out why she wss killed and who did it. Did you know drug companies can be as ruthless as arms dealers or corrupt dictators? The only disappointing aspect is the casting of Danny Huston in a supporting role as yet another morally compromised scumbag. Here’s the trailer.

For years, Anita Busch was like Old Faithful. Every time I saw her at a screening or a party, she always gave me a vaguely dirty look. Every…damn…time. Which is one reason why I enjoyed…no, not enjoyed…why I didn’t especially grieve over Nikki Finke’s respectful vivisection and entombment of the former entertainment journalist in this just-posted L.A. Weekly column. The subhead reads, “Pellicano charges are vindication for the former Hollywood reporter, but we’ve already buried her.”

What…are you kidding? This is fantastic. You can tell right away that Elizabethtown has a nicely seasoned mood, a tone that’s not quite this, that or the other thing but is definitely alive and absorbing and trying to dig down. You can feel the whimsy, humor, gravitas, regrets. Kirsten Dunst seems…I don’t know…hotter and more emotionally come-hither than in anything she’s acted in before, and something tells me this will be Orlando Bloom’s home run. (Or something approaching this…a triple?) This easily overrides the effect of those moderately dull school yearbook cast photos that appeared on the Elizabethtown site a week or so ago. Jane Fonda is advised not to click here — it’ll only depress her. Everyone else, feel free.