Indiewire‘s Peter Knegt has reported that Jodie Foster’s The Beaver “opened in 22 theaters across North America Friday night to dismal box office returns. A kind of half-dramedy, half downer-with-a-touchy-feely-undercurrent piece (i.e., Mel Gibson as a clinically depressed toy company CEO who finds solace through a beaver hand puppet), the film grossed an estimated $30,000 on its first night of release, averaging just $1,364. That should amount to roughly $100,000 over the weekend for distributor Summit Entertainment, with an average of $4,500.”

“Somali pirates, Gaddafi’s son, now bin Laden — do NOT fuck with Obama, he’s gangsta!” — Bill Maher about four days ago.

Michael Corleone: “My father’s no different than any other powerful man. Any man who’s responsible for other people, like a Senator or a President.” Kay: “Michael, do you know how naive you sound?” Michael: “Why?” Kay: “Senators and Presidents don’t have men killed.”

It’s just been announced that Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, currently facing a sentence of six years in prison and a 20-year employment ban because their work offended the Tehran mullahs, are coming to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival with two politically-charged autobiographical films. Update: The festival press release stated the above by any rational understanding of the English language, but others have deduced that festival staffers didn’t mean to suggest that Panahi and Rasoulof would physically attend the festival.

Rasoulof’s Goodbye, which will screen on Friday, 5.13 as an official Un Certain Regard selection, is about “a young lawyer in Tehran in search of a visa to leave the country, which is what Rasoulof did during the winter of 2010/2011,” says the release. Panah’s This Is Not A Film, showing on Friday, 5.20, “tells how Panahi waited for the verdict of his court appeal [for months],” the release continues. “Through the depiction of a day in his life, Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (a documentary filmmaker and former assistant director) offer us an overview of the current situation of Iranian cinema.”

Said it before, saying it again: Panahi and Rasoulof and their families need to lam it to Paris. Screw the mullahs. Life is short.

I’ve watched this Ed Schultz “Lean Forward” MSNBC spot six or seven times now. How it is, all right. Who could/would dispute? The basic truth is that the right supports the economic disparity and corporate favoritism in the name of free-market, laissez-faire determinism. Insane.

Last night Jett and I caught the Ben Stiller-Edie Falco-Jennifer Jason Leigh B’way revival of John Guare‘s The House of Blue Leaves. Okay, I was a bit wary after N.Y. Times critic Ben Brantley roughed it up. Brantley was being a bit of a piss-head, it turns out. Call me an easy lay (I’d never seen Guare’s play until last night) but I was pleased, aroused…no beefs. The performances (Stiller and Falco’s especially), staging & set design, theme and general pizazz are penetrating and exceptional.

The story unfolds in a dinghy Queens apartment during Pope John’s 1965 visit (which Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby also bounces off — I kept thinking about Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse going through their troubles at the same time). Stiller is Artie Shaughnessy, a profoundly untalented songwriter with a day job at a zoo, living with his schizophrenic spouse Bananas (Falco), planning an escape to Los Angeles with girlfriend Bunny (Leigh). Hooboy, do things not go as planned!

A new trailer for Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs will go out attached to Priest (Sony, 5.13). After a release-date delay that has lasted for eons, I’ve been eager to see an indication of how Lurie’s remake of Sam Peckinpah‘s 1971 classic (which 99% of the mega-mall sophistos have never heard of) might play. Sony is presumably unwilling to let the trailer out prior to 5.13 so here’s the oldie-but-goodie.

Update: I’m told that the new Straw Dogs trailer will be online “a few days” before 5.13.

From Israeli movie columnist Yair Raveh: “If you’re collecting Cannes hints, here’s another one: Shlomo Bar-Aba, the lead in Joseph Cedar‘s Footnote.

“Bar-Aba is one of Israel’s better known stage and TV comedians — a truly wacky performer in the Robin Williams sort-of-way. (I had the privilege of writing some of his material in the past.) He rarely does movies and here he is at his most quiet, subdued and disciplined role. But just like when Peter Sellers or Jerry Lewis did a straight role you can feel the chaotic energy bustling underneath. And because he’s a virtual unknown outside of Israel (here he’s a huge, huge star) I believe he’ll be one of the big finds in the festival in terms of acting. So check him out and the movie as well.”

Yesterday’s big Twitter meme was “Terrence Malick’s Thor.” You always know something is cool if Matt Zoller Seitz and James Rocchi are on it. But 24-plus hours later “Malick Thor” brings up nothing on Google. No art, no tweet compilations, nothing. The next step, of course, is a mashup video linking dialogue, themes, obsessions, etc. But is this thing even taking off?

The two main sources of 2011 Hollywood agony are (a) the studio bosses and underlings who are afraid to make anything other than comic-book movies, sequels or reboots of old franchises, no matter how lame or disconnected from the zeitgeist these remakes might be, and (b) the millions of moviegoers out there who refuse to patronize anything other than comic-book movies, sequels or reboots of old franchises.

If I could get away with throwing all the afore-mentioned studio bosses and execs into a burlap bag filled with rocks and then throw the bag into a lake in northern Scotland, I would. Not that it would solve anything (i.e., they’d only be replaced), but it would feel good and “right” and the Movie Godz would send me a magnum of good champagne.

Last night’s flight was hell. The agony of sitting in a too-small seat and almost sleeping but not really (i.e., sporadically dozing on the surface of the pond rather than slipping below and sinking to the bottom) was more acute than usual. The price for an exit-row seat was having to sit between two big guys. One was large-bellied and a bit of a wheezy breather and wearing poolside flip-flops (why do people who don’t believe in pedicures do this?), and between his girth and my broad shoulders it wasn’t a good fit.

I’m staying in a 31st floor apartment at 310 Greenwich Ave., or about three blocks west of the Chambers Street A stop and a two or three blocks south of the Tribeca Grill. I’m here for the weekend and a day. A detour into Connecticut tomorrow and then back to the city on Sunday, and then a flight out of JFK on Monday afternoon for Paris and then Cannes with an expected early-morning arrival on Tuesday.

Tonight Jett and I are catching the B’way revival of John Guare‘s The House of Blue Leaves with Ben Stiller, Edie Falco, Jennifer Jason Leigh, et. al. I planned to see a revival back in the late ’80s in Pasadena but something got in the way, so this is my first time.

The two somewhat larger bags aren’t light but at least they’re not steamer trunks out of the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, which is what I’ve seen a lot of people lugging around at airports. Always travel with small-ish bags. Either you get it or you don’t.

Apologies to Peter Guber and Brett Ratner for failing to post this last Sunday. It was taken prior to a TCM Classic Film Festival discussion about the relentlessness corporate hunger for sequels (and the cowardice exposed by this). Pete Hammond moderated.

“I enjoy your writing. I enjoy your themes. But your ‘community’ of commenters are like the worst idiots from a Union Square or Santa Monica cafe where the wifi works and the coffee is cheap. I’ve tried only reading your bits but it doesn’t work. If I see you in Cannes I’ll say hello, but I’m afraid I won’t be coming back here.” — Mark Tierney, producer, photographer and general get-around guy, in an email received at 2:16 pm Eastern.

My response: “I share your pain but what precisely pushed you over the edge? Something today or yesterday? What comment in what thread? Because except for the spewings of an occasional loon or loser HE comments are fairly sharp and spot-on.”