The trailer for Alex Kurtzman‘s People Like Us (DreamWorks, 6.29) suggests a James L. Brooks-like relationship drama about romance, values, happenstance. But what sticks is the sound of Elizabeth Banks‘ nasally voice in the intro. In the mid ’40s Howard Hawks told the struggling Lauren Bacall to lower her voice — to make it sound smokier and huskier. She did that and the rest is history. Banks needs similar guidance. Or she needs to de-nasalize, at least.

Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, 3.31) in London, a reading of Orson Welles‘ script of Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness by actor Brian Cox (and presumably others) will be live-streamed starting at 5:30 pm. (9:30 am in Los Angeles, 12:30 pm in NYC.) The reading is being staged by artist Fiona Banner with the use of “a riverboat installation modelled on the Roi des Belges, the vessel Conrad captained on his journey up the Congo in 1890,” the Telegraph‘s Tim Robey reports.

Heart of Darkness is the project that RKO, which had signed Welles to a two-picture deal, declined to finance in late 1939 or early ’40. The Wiki page says Welles “planned to film the action with a subjective camera (a technique later used in the Robert Montgomery film Lady in the Lake). But when a budget was drawn up, RKO’s enthusiasm cooled because it was greater than the previously agreed limit.” This and another RKO turn-down (a film called The Smiler With the Knife that would have starred Lucille Ball) prompted Welles to move on to Citizen Kane.

In tomorrow’s performance Cox will play — as Welles intended 72 years ago — both Marlow, the narrator-protagonist, and Captain Kurtz, the corrupt ivory trader who was transformed into Colonel Kurtz in Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now.

As anti-Obama hitjobs go, this one is fairly clever. Then again, what’s so heinous about stating an obvious fact? If and when Obama is re-elected next November he will have more flexibility. He’ll have more freedom to do and say whatever the hell he wants. What do righties think he meant when he said this to Dimitry Medvedev? “Don’t worry, bro…after I’m elected I’ll capitulate all over the place and you guys can do anything you want”?

The newly revealed Man of Steel logo (which looks like something mounted on the wall of an executive conference room) emphasizes the somber, downish tonalities first revealed in that August 2011 shot of Henry Cavill in his blue-gray Superman suit with the rose-colored cape and the knife pleats. But what about the decision by Man of Steel director Zack Snyder and producer Chris Nolan to have Cavill run around with a hard-to-ignore wad in his pants — a bull-elephant package that would make any Chippendale’s dancer envious?

I don’t know how “big” all the other Supermans were (and I don’t want to know) but over the last sixty-odd years — from George Reeves to Chris Reeve to Brandon Routh — Superman has always worn a disciplined jockstrap that suppressed any hint of exceptional heft or tumescence. But that modest aesthetic is now out the window, I’d say, based on these photos.

A decision has clearly been made to accentuate (or at the very least not hide) the fact that Cavill is well-endowed. That or he happened to be in a state of arousal when his shot was taken.

Man of Steel (Warner Bros., 6.14.13) costars Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Kevin Costner as Superman’s adoptive father and Laurence Fishburne as Daily Planet editor Perry White (“And don’t call me chief!”).

I for one feel Superman’ed out. Superman is yesterday’s superhero. Too innocent and upstanding and true-blue for our times. Introduced in the 1930s, ascended big-time with the TV series in the early ’50s, re-ascended with the Salkind-Lester films in the late ’70s and early ’80s, brought back yet again with the Bryan Singer version of 2006. It’s over. No steam left. Move on.

In a 3.26 Esquire piece called “War Against Youth,” David Marche explains how the degree to which Boomers (and, to some extent, older GenXers) have stuck it to GenY is really without historical precdent. No generation has ever robbed and undermined another generation quite like this. In fact, when has an American generation ever made things worse for a younger one?

“Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human potential has been consistently growing, generating greater material wealth, more education, wider opportunities — a vast and glorious liberation of human potential,” Marche begins. “In all that time, everyone, even followers of the most corrupt or most evil of ideologies, believed they were working for a better tomorrow. Not now. The angel of progress has suddenly vanished from the scene. Or rather, the angel of progress has been sent away.

“Nobody ever talks about generational conflict. Who wants to bring up that the old are eating the young at the dinner table? How are you going to mention that to your boss? If you’re a politician, how are you going to tell your donors? Even the Occupy Wall Street crowd, while rejecting the modes and rhetoric and institutional support of Boomer progressives, shied away from articulating the fundamental distinction that fills their spaces with crowds: young against old.

“David Frum, former George W. Bush speechwriter, had the guts to acknowledge that the Tea Party’s combination of expensive entitlement programs and tax cuts is something entirely different from a traditional political program: “This isn’t conservatism: It’s a going-out-of-business sale for the Baby Boom generation.” The economic motive is growing ever more naked, and has nothing to do with any principle that could be articulated by Goldwater or Reagan, or indeed with any principle at all. The political imperative is to preserve the economic cloak of unreality that the Boomers have wrapped themselves in.”

So Woody Allen‘s To Rome With Love will open theatrically in Italy 22 days from now. Which apparently means Allen’s film is a no-go for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Update: To Rome With Love “is definitely not going to Cannes,” a friend confides. “It never was.”

Idea: I arrive in Cannes around noon on Tuesday, 5,15. If Allen’s film is still playing three weeks after opening (which it should be), maybe I could rent a car at Nice Airport and drive to San Remo, Italy — roughly 30 minutes east of Nice — and catch it at a local cinema. It would be nice if Sony Classics would consider showing To Rome With Love to Cannes-bound journalists in order to spare guys like me the cost of renting a car and all that. Maybe a screening in NY/LA concurrent with the Italian debut?

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and his wife April Smith, married last weekend, flew to Rome a couple of days ago for their honeymoon. They’re staying in a historic district apartment provided by Giuseppe Amorisi, a guy I know who sublets cool pads to me and certain friends. Yesterday afternoon I sent Giuseppe an email: “Did Kris and April arrive in Rome yet? Are they okay?” Giuseppe back to me: “Kris arrived and everything was fine for them. They are nice people. I’m sure they’ll enjoy Rome and the apartment.”

When a lead character in a big-studio franchise has a longer hair style in the second film it’s because the actor happened to grow his hair and didn’t feel like making it short again, and because the director and the producers didn’t give a shit either about hair continuity. Hence Sam Worthington‘s “Danny McBride perm” in Wrath of the Titans.

Eff the audience if they don’t like my longer hair. I wore it short for Clash of the Titans because my Avatar character had short hair and it hadn’t grown out. Or because I was in a short-hair groove at the time. Or whatever. Deal with it.

Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt has a Marine-style buzz cut in the first Mission: Impossible, and then he returned in the sequel (the Notorious-style one with Thandie Newton) with longish rock-star hair. It didn’t matter. Nobody cared.

Mark Hamill‘s Luke Skywalker had longish mid ’70s hair when he made Star Wars. When he returned for The Empire Strikes Back three years later his hair was slightly shorter. Why? Because men’s hair stylings in ’79 or ’80 were slightly shorter — no other reason. Hamill had a still shorter, vaguely combed-down executive cut in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

Mcworthingbride (thanks to HE reader Dennis Pagoulatos — a.k.a. “Padre la Tiempo”)

You have to hand it to the designers and distributors of these one-sheets. They’ve made it clear which film is worthwhile, and which is the toss-away. The characters played by Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami and Cosmopolis are not dissimilar. Alone, aloof, not overly concerned with ethical behavior, etc.

Tarsem Singh‘s Mirror Mirror (Relativity, 4.4) is a visually appealing but low-energy comic farce that never leaves the ground. I didn’t laugh once. I didn’t guffaw. I didn’t titter. The pacing is too relaxed or something. It plays a bit like the medieval chapter in Woody Allen‘s Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sex…and that wasn’t funny either. I didn’t hate it exactly, and I was charmed by Armie Hammer‘s performance as the hunky prince, but I was checking my watch every 15 minutes or so.

The best part, as I noted last night, is a Bollywood-style song-and-dance sequence during the closing credits.

The main story points in the classic Snow White tale are kept, but with lots of satirical tweaking. (The script is by Melissa Wallack and Jason Keller.) The basic strategy is to start with classical trappings and characters and then devolve or downshift into 21st Century cultural-colloquial. On a certain level Mirror Mirror plays as a metaphor about the arrogant 1% — represented by Julia Roberts‘Queen Clementianna — hogging all the money and wallowing in splendor, and causing the 99% to suffer and struggle.

The mean queen wants to stay beautiful forever but has serious cash-flow problems due to her squandering, and so she wants to marry the much younger Prince Andrew Alcott (Hammer) because his kingdom is flush. He’s initially smitten with the beautiful Snow White (Lily Collins, the daughter of Phil Collins) but the queen slips him a special puppy-love potion that makes him pant and wag his tail and slobber all over her. I’m forgetting why Snow White leaves the castle…either she was banished or wanted to commune with her subjects…but she eventually hooks up with the seven dwarves and…and…and…I’m losing interest in this. As I was last night in my seat.

Collins does pick up a sword a couple of times and engages in acrobatic derring-do near the end, which synchs up with the Snow White-as-warrior concept in the other film with Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron. And instead of Snow White succumbing to a poisoned apple and going into a coma and the prince bringing her back to life with a kiss…well, imagine a twist.

The bottom line is that Tarsem (a.k.a. Tarsem Singh or Tarsem Singh Dhandwar) doesn’t have a knack for comic farce, His specialty is making everything look like dessert and blending animation with live action and providing a sense of visual unity and panache, which he does here. But the energy never picks up and the “funny stuff” isn’t funny.

Last night Mirror Mirror‘s Rotten Tomatoes rating was at 80-something percent. Now it’s at 56%. It’s melting…it’s melting!