Jeffrey Wells

Blockbuster has had a rough year and its execs are feeling blue. That’s a good thing, right? Aren’t they the bad guys?…the Wal- Mart of home video?…corporate thugs?…Orwellian homogenizers and discouragers of too-particular tastes?…the great film culture Satan?

Congrats to Bennett Miller’s Capote and Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s Murderball for being named Wednesday night as the year’s Best Feature and Best Documentary at the annual Gotham Awards. Miller also received the org’s “Break- through Director” award.

I realize this will put a dark cloud over Kris Tapley’s world and I’m not entirely sure how industry-significant this may be in a heavy-duty sense…it is signficant in and of itself, of course, and good for the good guys and all that…but last night the British Independent Film Awards (sort of the London Spirits…right?) gave Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardender its Best Film prize, plus a Best Actor and Best Actress award for the film’s two stars, Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Weisz and Meirelles weren’t in London to accept as they’re here in Los Angeles to push Gardener with journos and keep it as front-and- center as they can with all the awards-season crap heating up right now.

Karyn Kusama’s Aeon Flux (Paramount, 12.2), the superhero action chick flick with Charlize Theron, is opening without any critic or all-media screenings whatsoever. Quality! No word-of-mouth, no tell-your-friends…just a shitload of ads and a wing and a prayer. And yet Kusama’s last film, Girlfight, showed lots of personality and emotional focus. It was a tight little character-driven film about a female boxer with its attitude completely worked out. And so what happens? Kusama moves up and takes on a big-budget popcorn movie and wham….a flurry of jabs and body blows…right cross, left hook…down for the count.

It’s King Kong night in Manhattan tonight (Wednesday, 11.30)! Peter Jackson’s three-hour ape flick is showing to junket press at Leow’s Lincoln Plaza (i.e., the one with the big IMAX screen) right about now (7:40 pm NY time). I’m told that members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are also attending. Working New York press screenings will begin in Manhattan next Monday, as they will in Los Angeles at the Arclight. The very first Los Angeles Kong screening will actually happen Sunday night (12.4) for Academy members, at the Academy theatre on Wilshire and La Peer.

Here are the Spectrum, Frontier and Midnight selections for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, as passed along by IndieWIRE. Two Spectrum selections have caught my eye: (1) Stewart Copeland’s Super 8 documentary about the adventures of The Police in the ’80s, “from CBGB’s to Shea Stadium,” and (2) Brent Hamer’s Factotum, the latest indie feature about the honestly grimy, up-and-down adventures of L.A. poet and ribald boozer Charles Bukowski (called Henry Chanski in the film, and very well played by Matt Dillon). I saw Factotum in Cannes last May and it’s a definite recommend. Lily Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei

Here it is 11.30.05 with six weeks to go before the start of Sundance ’06, and I still haven’t put myself into a Park City crash pad that I’m happy with. It seems like I do this every year. I need a share with a bed, a desk, a chair and at least a phone line for dial-up. If anyone wants to talk about anything, please get in touch.

I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear this audio clip with any clarity, but it’s Syriana director-writer Stephen Gaghan telling an oddly humorous story during an interview a couple of nights ago with Variety editor Peter Bart. It’s about a visit Gaghan made to the home of high-level conservative and Iraq War-supporter Richard Perle in early 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq, and what happened when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped by, and how Perle’s dog (whose name is “Reagan”) related to Netanyahu, and how Netanyahu responded.

Why is Julia Roberts still “perceived” as the highest-paid actress who pulls down $20 million per film? Back in the days of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, okay…but now? Isn’t she starting to be over, winding down, etc.? No big movie roles on the horizon, on the mommy track, doing a New York play next March called “Three Days of Rain”, etc.? Roberts’ alleged standing is contained in a special piece by Hollywood Reporter‘s Christy Grosz about the town’s most highly-paid actresses. Nicole Kidman is listed as #2 with a payday in the realm of $16 to $17 million. (Hold up… didn’t I read a few months ago that the triple whammy of Cold Mountain, The Stepford Wives and Bewitched had turned Kidman into a shark jumper?) Reese Witherspoon is said to be the third highest earner with a $15 million fee….okay, deservedly. Next is Drew Barrymore at $15 million (even though her movies almost always stink, because people go to see them anyway…. brilliant). Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz are both pulling down $10 to $15 million per project. (Tell that to the Fox execs who met Diaz’s fee for In Her Shoes.) Jodie Foster is earning $10 to $12 mil- lion a pop, Charlize Theron is getting $10 million, and Jennifer Aniston $9 million.

It bears repeating that Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (12.9) is one of the only two December releases that are tracking really strongly now, the other being King Kong. I usually bypass those Saturday daytime all-media screenings because family films are bad for my spiritual health, but I don’t think there’s any choice as far as this weekend’s Narnia showing at the Arclight is concerned. Honestly? If I could clap my hands three times and make this film disappear (which would thereby release me from any obligation to see it), I would clap my hands three times. Especially considering Narnia‘s running time of two hours and 15 minutes without credits. (“It’s nowhere near as long as Return of the King,” a friend said this morning…great!) But this is going to be a huge red-state movie, and duty calls.

Steven Spielberg’s Munich (Universal, 12.23) will run about 2 hours and 40 minutes with credits, according to Universal and DreamWorks sources. (Terrence Malick’s The New World, which opens on 12.25, runs about the same.) Spielberg’s spokesperson says he’ll be vacationing starting around 12.20 or so and isn’t planning on doing any dog-and-pony-show appearances in Los Angeles to promote Munich, but the word for some time has been that “we’re letting the film speak for itself”). Spielberg does have a history, however, of enjoying Time or Newsweek cover stories to promote his important films (which he got from Time for Saving Private Ryan). The word is that one of these two rags (Time, most likely) will have a Munich cover on the stands next Monday…unless some big news event pushes it off.

A certain industry observer was working last week on another story about Oscar bloggers, and then along came Patrick Goldstein’s thing yesterday in the L.A. Times so who knows? Maybe this other piece might get changed around over said journo’s concerns about not being first or following Goldstein or whatever.