This is strictly an L.A. deal, but Maureen Dowd will be at the Skirball Center on Thursday, September 23, to chat about her book Bushworld with New York Times colleague Alessandra Stanley. Writers Bloc is organzing the event. It’ll start at 7:30 p.m.

Oops…sorry. My earlier WIRED line about “L.A. Times TV writer Carina Chocano taking Manohla Dargis’s slot as second-string film critic under Kenny Turan” was wrong. I’m not clear what Chocano’s position is, but Dargis was never Kenny’s second. She was explicitly hired as a lead critic (as she subsequently was for her current slot with the New York Times), and equal in position to Turan.

I love the startling use of a seemingly honest appraisal in Warner Bros. distribution president Dan Fellman’s statement last Monday to Variety‘s Michael Fleming about why the release date of Oliver Stone’s Alexander is being bumped from November 5th to November 24th. “We took a good look at the movie in rough form,” said Fellman, “and if it’s not the best film he’s ever directed, it’s close.” [Italics mine.] A more typical distribution-chief statement would be something along the lines of “it’s awesome…I think it’s his best work ever.” Instead, Fellman is saying Alexander is an extremely fine film, but perhaps not quite on the level of Salvador or Platoon or [insert your favorite Stone film]. You could interpret Fellman’s remark as an “obiter dicta” — words in passing — that reveals more than the speaker intended, or simply a case of unusual (and very refreshing) candor.

L.A. Times reporter Robert Welkos has written an anecdotal piecemeal story about Marlon Brando’s last days and how his family intends to make money (tastefully and respectfully, of course) off his image and legacy. For some reason it was run on the front page of Wednesday’s L.A. Times print edition, and not in the more customary Calendar section. Welkos quotes a Brando friend named Joan “Toni” Petrone about the family’s intention to put out a series of DVD’s based on Brando’s “Lying for a Living” acting classes. Digital tapes of those classes (which involved improvs and drop-by’s by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jon Voight and others) sat around Brando’s house for two or three years without Brando or anyone else taking any kind of stab at editing them together. But now that he’s dead and gone, the family is on the case because it’s time to rake in the dough. A day or so after his death Brando’s body, dressed in a Japanese robe and his favorite red scarf, was put on view at a local mortuary, Welkos reports. A portion of Brando’s ashes (mixed with those of his longtime friend Wally Cox) were scattered in Death Valley, the story reports. The most intriguing thing I learned about Brando post-mortem was the location of a private driveway on Wonderland Avenue that Brando and neighbor Jack Nicholson used to get to and from their respective homes, because it afforded more privacy than using a fairly well-known, security-gate entrance to their estates on Mulholland Drive.

Nobody wants to go back to Hogwarts ever again, but Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is set there, and the one after that, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix (due in ’07, with or without Mira Nair directing), is set there, I think. (Am I wrong?) Hogwarts is confinement…it’s a sentence for grand larceny. Burn it down, blow it up, ransack it, etc. Come to think of it, no one I know really wants to see another Potter movie. The actors love making them because they’re getting paid the big bucks, and Warner Bros. execs will keep making them as long as they keep making money…but nobody of any considered taste or perception wants to see these films anymore. They’re torture, and yet there are several more to come.

Time to grab that hitching post with both hands and bend over…with feeling. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx and slated for release by Focus Features in October ’05, is about a couple of semi-closeted gay ranch hands (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal) whose love for each other goes through some changes and challenges over a 20-year period (during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s…around there). Pic began shooting last May and has presumably wrapped; the script is by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The last time this particular “ride ’em cowboy!” aesthetic played on the big screen was in 1969, I think, when Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys opened in a few art houses. Does anyone remember this thing? It’s sloppily improvised and half-assedly hilarious in a lazy-dopey way. Joe Dallesandro dancing with Taylor Mead to the Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour”….cowboys leaning against hitching posts while doing their ballet warm-up exercises, etc. Not on tape or DVD, apparently…and about as far removed from the ethos of Lonesome Dove as a “western” could possibly be.

USA Today‘s Susan Wloszyna reports that the long-awaited filming of The Fantastic Four, based on the Marvel comic about three guys and a girl who acquire special powers after “getting caught in a cosmic storm in outer space,” is underway in Vancouver. The stars are Chris Evans (Cellular) as the Human Torch, Ioan Gruffudd (King Arthur) as Mr. Fantastic, Jessica Alba (TV’s Dark Angel) as Sue Storm and Michael Chiklis (The Shield) as the Thing. The director is Tim Story (Barbershop) and…whoops, there’s already a warning light flashing. It’s indicated by a sentence in Wloszyna’s story, to wit: “Alas, the Thing’s trademark stogie might be stubbed out, due to PC concerns.” An action-fantasy movie that’s afraid of cigars? What ass-clown decided to ban one of the central thematic acessories of the Schwarzenegger administration? This is the blade of grass revealing the mediocrity of the entire lawn.

The must-see reputation of that romantic zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (opening 9.24) is a bit overblown, I regret to say. The first third has delicious wit and invention, but the second two-thirds don’t sustain this. The Ain’t-It-Coolers have been far too obsequious in kissing this movie’s ass. Director/co-writer Edgar Wright and writing partner Simon Pegg’s script is about two London slacker-somethings in their late 20s dealing with an onslaught of flesh-eating ghouls. The problem is that the zombies aren’t theatening enough. They walk and react way too slowly, so no live humans are in any kind of serious jeopardy (well, some but not enough) and so the story tension suffers and it all goes down a notch or two. “We are on the cutting edge of zombology,” Pegg claims. And they are, I suppose…in a sense. Especially if you equate “cutting edge” with “check your brain at the door once the second act begins.”

Open call to those interested in sending in VISITORS submissions: in typical fashion, I’ve allowed my haphazard work habits to affect my editing duties, and so I’ve mislaid at least one interesting submission and possibly two. Please send them in again, and to anyone considering sending in something fresh, please do!

False alarms have been sounded before, but Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda (Fox Searchlight) has struck at least one critic (Screen Daily‘s Jonathan Romney) as a seriously commendable comeback flick. An intriguing concept — i.e., cutting back and forth between comic and tragic versions of the same story — and a “career best” performance by Radha Mitchell (along with Will Ferrell’s appealingly low-key turn as a Woody-esque nebbishy sort) are the stand-out elements. “After a run of lightweight comedies that caused even hardcore supporters to lose patience, Woody Allen achieves a heartening return to form with his most idiosyncratic and substantial film in some time,” Romney proclaims. “[Pic] finds Allen stretching himself more, and clearly enjoying himself more, than in any film since 1999’s Sweet And Lowdown. Its complex structure and speculative seriousness mean that Melinda and Melinda is closest in Allen’s canon to such heavyweight ensemble pieces as Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah And Her Sisters.” Melinda was shown at the San Sebastian Film Festival, but won’t open in the U.S. until 3.18.05.

I’ve heard a little something about Mike Nichols’ Closer (Columbia, 12.3), an eagerly awaited adaptation of Patrick Marber’s wonderfully written play about four romantically-linked Londoners in their 30s (Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Nathalie Portman, Cilve Owen). I personally can’t wait to see the Nichols film (Marber’s play reads like pure silk and seems to drill right into the heart of why lovers put each other through such hell), but it’s been seen and plays “a little cold.” I’ve also been told “it was supposed to be shown earlier but they’ve been tweaking it and tweaking it some more.” I didn’t want to hear this. “But the play is fantastic,” I said to the guy who passed this tidbit along. If you really liked the play, he answered, then you’re probably going to like the film.

New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman is said to be an admirer of I Heart Huckabees writer-director David O. Russell, but her portrait of him in Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section (9.19) didn’t do him any favors. A diary-like observation of what Russell went through during the Huckabees shoot, Waxman’s piece describes a guy who’s a little bit nuts, living on sheer moment-to-moment impulse and, the reader is led to believe, barely in control of himself. (The Chris Nolan headlock story alone will drive this impression home.) For what it’s worth, this is not the David O. Russell I’ve heard about for years and come to know very slightly. The view expressed during a luncheon for talent/press at the Sideways junket in Santa Barbara this morning is that Waxman’s piece was a friendly sandbagging.