My approval of Jonathan Parker‘s (Untitled) is due (a) to a helpless affection for any ultra-dry comedy that refuses to even glancingly suggest that audiences may want to laugh, (b) a modest primal attraction to Marley Shelton, augmented in this case by a zingy-sparkly performance, and (c) an admiration for dp Svetlana Cvetko, whose work I wrote about in a July 2008 piece about a short film called On A Tuesday.

Last night Variety‘s Michael Fleming reported that Tab Hunter Confidential, a yet-to-be-shot doc about the actor’s closeted life in the ’50s and ’60s, “is being shopped for distribution.” Based on Hunter’s 2005 autobiography in which he first spilled the beans, it’ll be directed by Jeffrey Schwartz and produced by Allan Glaser (Hunter’s partner) and Neil Koenigsberg.

Yesterday’s announcement about Mike Nichols‘ selection as the next AFI Life Achievement Award recipient allows me to re-post a Nichols tribute that I recorded last April at the Museum of Modern Art. It was hosted by MOMA film curator Raj Roy and featured four legendary Nichols collaborators — Meryl Streep, Elaine May, Nora Ephron and Buck Henry.

The biggest problem with strong>Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, in the view of Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, “is not the look of the costumed creatures but the manner in which they speak.

There are fine creative inventions in the film, he adds, “but nothing much is ever at stake, causing a story that begins in dynamic fashion to slowly devolve to the level of fleeting whimsy.”

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Things is “fleet of foot, emotionally attuned to its subject and instinctively faithful to its celebrated source, and it earns a lot of points for its hand-crafted look and unhomogenized, dare-one-say organic rendering of unrestrained youthful imagination. But Jonze’s sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can’t quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.”

In a 5.20 riff about IFC’s acquisition of Lars Von Trier‘s Antichrist, I offered the following suggestions: “(a) Don’t market it as a serious film but as a hoot; (b) Make a deal with a toy company to sell battery-powered toy foxes covered with blood and afterbirth that say ‘chaos reigns!’ when you pull their tail; (c) Sell it as something that only the truly freakish of mind can handle — i.e., are you man enough to see Antichrist?”

I’m not aware of any Antichrist foxes having appeared in stores, but IFC has clearly adopted the “hoot” approach to selling the film, to go by this Peter Bruge 10.10 Variety piece. It claims that “chaos reigns!,” a statement spoken by a bloody slow-motion fox during the film, “is fast on its way to becoming this year’s ‘I drink your milkshake!‘

“The graphic tale of a couple coming to terms with their grief divided critics in Cannes but is starting to find a following, thanks to some shrewd maneuvering by domestic distrib IFC Films, which recognized that younger auds and genre fans seemed attracted by the very elements that repelled other viewers.

Particularly iconic was a surreal scene in which Willem Dafoe‘s character stumbles through the primeval brush, where he encounters a fox devouring its own flesh. In what may or may not be a hallucination, the animal tosses its head and snarls the words ‘Chaos reigns.'” Here’s a YouTube link to the full scene.

“‘We’ve been saying it in the office since we bought the movie, so it’s funny that it took off in Fantastic Fest,’ says IFC marketing head Ryan Werner, who sent the clip to a number of blogs. IFC also screened the film at the Austin, Texas-based horror and genre fest, where fanboys latched on to the pic’s aphorism, starting a “chaosreigns” Twitter stream and demanding shirts from the fest’s on-site T-shirt purveyor, Mondo Tees.

“‘We knew things would happen, just because I’ve worked on other controversial movies before like The Brown Bunny, and they kind of take a life of their own once you start throwing stuff out there,’ says Werner.”

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a piece by Neal Karlen about the Jewish heritage of St. Louis Park, Minnesota — the Minneapolis suburb that serves as an existentially hellish setting (circa 1967) for Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man. It’s been widely reported, of course, that the Coens grew up there, but so, Karlen reports, did Senator Al Franken, N.Y. Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and political scholar Norman J. Ornstein.

“Friedman, Franken and Ornstein all angled for parts in the picture, but the scheduling didn’t work out,” Karlen writes.

One of the most bountiful aspects of A Serious Man, I wrote last monh, is the cavalcade of grotesque faces. The ensemble cast out-grotesques Mike Leigh‘s stock troupe by a country mile. Karlen reports that an open casting-call listing for Serious Man extras stated the following: “PHYSICAL LOOK: Specific characteristics represent 1967…ASM is not a ‘glamorous’ film. WE LOVE INTERESTING FACES. The dorkier, the better!”

Arrived at Heathrow this morning at 7:40 am, bought an Oyster card, took the Underground to Hyde Park station and registered at the Dorchester by 10:30 am or so. (Things always take longer than you expect.) I then ordered a pricey breakfast in the salon, sharing a table with the Boston Herald‘s Stephen Schaefer, also here for the Fantastic Mr. Fox junket. I got about 90 minutes sleep on the plane, at most, and am consequently too fried to write anything. So the best I can do for now is simply post photos.

Dorchester Hotel salon — Monday, 10.12, 10:55 am

Monday, 10.12, 10:20 am

In most English-speaking environs, the past tense of “ask” is “asked.” Except in borough cultures surrounding Manhattan, of course, where the past tense is conjugated as “axed.” I finally realized today that better-spoken borough people say “I axed him a question” while common-cattle types tend to say “axe” without adding on the “d.”

Michael Cieply‘s 10.10. N.Y. Times piece about Roman Polanski’s situation takes stock of today’s tougher attitudes and standards about congress between older men and younger women, and — for the first time in my readings — seems to forecast a longer sentence than expected for Polanski (i.e., more than 12 to 18 months) if and when he’s extradited to the States and faces a judge.

It suggests that Polanski really should have seen the process through back in ’78 rather than skip. It also tells me that it would be at least somewhat unfair to apply today’s mandates and mores in the matter of Polanski’s sentencing. It would almost be analagous to a man having been busted for illegally selling liquor in 1912, and then skipping for 10 years, being re-arrested and extradited and facing a sentence in 1922 during the height of prohibition. He was guilty by 1912 standards, of course, but would be seen as more guilty by 1922 standards. That doesn’t seem right to me.

“If [Polanski] is extradited from Switzerland, Mr. Polanski could face a more severe punishment than he did in the 1970s,” Cieply reports, “as a vigorous victims’ rights movement, a family-values revival and revelations of child abuse by clergy members have all helped change the moral and legal framework regarding sex with the young.

“Mr. Polanski’s lawyers — including Reid Weingarten, a Washington power player — are likely to argue that Mr. Polanski does not even qualify for extradition from Switzerland, because he was set to be given a jail term of less than one year when he fled to France in 1978.

“But Stephen L. Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, has signaled that he believes much stiffer penalties may be in order. Questioned by reporters just after Mr. Polanski’s arrest, he said the filmmaker had received a ‘very, very, very lenient sentence’ that ‘would never be achievable under today’s laws.'”

Nine months after An Education preemed at Sundance, it finally opened limited last Friday. I’m guessing that some of those who feel I’ve overpraised it and/or made too much of Carey Mulligan‘s performance were among the viewers. Reactions?

I get why Couples Retreat, which almost every critic thinks is shit, is the #1 movie this weekend. People refuse to consider reviews (naturally!) and the trailer made it look half-decent and some imagined, I’m sure, that a remnant of the old Vince Vaughn/Wedding Crashers aura might be part of it. (Or that Vaughn plus Jon Favreau meant a possible reviving of the old Swingers thing.)

I’ve been in Atlanta since last night. A strictly personal thing. No industry tie-ins or allusions of any kind. Everyone deserves a little down time, and perhaps even an occasional semblance of a life. Out of here tomorrow morning and off to London tomorrow night for the Fantastic Mr. Fox junket.

Downtown Atlanta