This is one of the oldest cliches in the book, but my Shreveport experience last weekend reminded me once again that rural Southerners — maybe I’m talking about Southerners of all shapes and sizes — seem to generally be warmer, friendlier, easier-going people than blue-state urbans. More personable, kindlier, more ready to chat…nicer. I met some really serene people down there, and…well, that’s it. The only problem is that a good number of them are Republicans.

I’m a serious fan of the first 85% of Mike Nichols‘ Wolf, to such an extent that I might actually buy the Bluray. Its negative reputation, which I realize is accepted doctrine, is all because of the last 20 minutes, which had an obvious studio-mandated smell about them. I’m serious in calling it my favorite werewolf movie of all time as it’s obviously the most adult and sophisticated and, as far as it goes, semi-believable.

Jack Nicholson in Mike Nichols’ Wolf

Nichols’ film, aimed at 30-and-overs, probably wouldn’t have a prayer of being made today. I feel I’ve already seen the forthcoming Benicio del Toro version.

A friend told me I can’t post this because the pitchforkers will kill me, but the fact is that many European governments and cultures have more liberal standards about the age of consent than this country. I personally feel that 18 or thereabouts is the right age, but the facts are the facts. I’m only mentioning it because it provides a context by which an adult European-born male might have a different mindset about this than a U.S.-born male. Not an excuse for anything or anyone, but simply a basis for looking at you-know-what from a different perspective. Three, two, one…

Last February I posted a piece about Tachen’s coffee-table book about Stanley Kubrick‘s Napoleon, which was expected at the time to be in stores within four months. That didn’t happen, but it apparently was issued on 9.1.09. Only 1000 copies at $560 bucks a pop on Amazon. I’d love to have two or three hours to sift through it. (All 2874 pages worth.) Has anyone had the pleasure?

I do wonder how sales are given that (a) splurge purchases of this sort are the first thing to go in a recession economy, and (b) reading the free online script (dated 9.29.69) and using a little imagination (i.e., imagining John Alcott‘s Barry Lyndon-like photography being applied) gives you a fairly full immersion into what the film might have been.

By today’s standards, a project like Kubrick’s Napoleon — a film that, had it been made, almost certainly would have been some kind of timeless, splendidly detailed deep-dish experience — exudes an almost antiquated 20th Century vibe. It would almost certainly never be considered in our post-Napoleon Dynamite era, and of course it didn’t even make the cut by the commercial standards of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Here’s a nine-year-old Salon article about the project.

EXT. LYON STREET – NIGHT

It is a witheringly cold winter night, in Lyon. People, bundled up to the eyes, hurry along the almost deserted street, past empty cafes which are still open. Napoleon, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, passes a charming, young street-walker, about his own age. He stops and looks at her, uncertainly. A large snowflake lands on her nose which makes him smile.

GIRL: Good evening, sir.

NAPOLEON: Good evening, Mademoiselle.

GIRL: The weather is terrible, isn’t it, sir?

NAPOLEON: Yes, it is. It must be one of the worst nights we have had this winter.

GIRL: Yes, it must be.

Napoleon is at a loss for conversation.

NAPOLEON: You must be chilled to the bone, standing out of doors like this.

GIRL: Yes, I am, sir.

NAPOLEON: Then what brings you out on such a night?

GIRL: Well, one must do something to live, you know — and I have an elderly mother who depends on me.

NAPOLEON: Oh, I see… That must be a great burden.

GIRL: One must take life as it comes. Do you live in Lyon, sir?

NAPOLEON: No, I’m only here on leave. My regiment is at Valence.

GIRL: Are you staying with a friend, sir?

NAPOLEON: No… I have a… room… at the Hotel de Perrin.

GIRL: Is it a nice warm room, sir?

NAPOLEON: Well, it must be a good deal warmer than it is here on the street.

GIRL: Would you like to take me there, so that we can get warm, sir?

NAPOLEON: Uhhn…yes, of course. If you would like to go there. But I have very little money.

GIRL: Do you have three francs, sir?

This is several hours old, I realize, but here’s what the steely-eyed, conservative-minded Cokie Roberts recently said about the Polish sausage: “Roman Polanski is a criminal. He raped and drugged and raped and sodomized a child. And then was a fugitive from justice. As far as I’m concerned, just take him out and shoot him.”

Criterion Collection president Peter Becker has explained the slight Che delay (i.e., coming out in January ’10 rather than two months hence). The Che Bluray/DVD “is coming, and as you can imagine there’s a wealth of great content getting developed,” Becker says.

“We wanted to be ready for December, but Steven Soderbergh needed time to reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che Guevara biographer Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed more time to prepare.

“In short, it became clear that if we delayed the release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That’s a trade we will always make, even if it means we don’t get the benefit of sales in the holiday season, and we think that’s the kind of

decision our collectors would want us to make.”

Okay — I’ll buy that.

In a 10.12 New Yorker profile titled “Call Me: Why Hollywood Fears Nikki Finke,” Tad Friend reviews and re-tells many of the Finke stories and anecdotes that have been kicking around in plain sight for the last few years. I haven’t yet packed for an airport shuttle that I have to catch in 51 minutes, but I found the article fairly reported, very well-written (of course) and even half-neutrally compassionate at times, particularly in a section that recounts a deeply despairing period in 1996 when two friends of Finke — N.Y. Observer editor Lisa Chase and N.Y. Times reporter Bernie Weinraub — were concerned that Finke might do herself in.

Here, in my view, are the two best paragraphs in the piece (which I’ve converted into three graphs):

“Finke’s code is the Hollywood code. She is for hard work, big box-office, stars who remain loyal to their agents and publicists, and the little guy — until, that is, the big guy chats her up. Then she’s for that big guy until some other big guy calls to stick it to the first big guy. And this, too, is the Hollywood code: relationships are paramount but provisional.

“One executive observes that people who heed Finke’s call to snark about their competitors shouldn’t get too comfortable: “The idea is, the lion won’t eat me if I throw it another Christian. It works for a day, but you’re going back to the Colosseum soon.”

“I don’t think for a minute these people like me,” Finke tells Friend. “They talk to me because that’s how the game is played. They’d like to ignore me, but they can’t. The best way for them to think of it is: I get bitch-slapped today, and someone else’ll get bitch-slapped tomorrow.”

“Every once in a while, someone will ask me if I attend the Cannes Film Festival,” Hollywood & Fine‘s Marshall Fine begins. “I always say the same thing: ‘No, and here’s why: Anything that’s good at Cannes will open in theaters. And anything that’s bad will be in the New York Film Festival.’

“I actually wrote that about 20 years ago in a newspaper column, but my assessment remains unchallenged by the lineup of the 47th annual New York Film Festival, currently hoodwinking ticket buyers at New York’s Lincoln Center for another week.

“While there are a couple of films in this year’s festival that I’d actually pay money to see (Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces and Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire), the lineup firmly follows a formula to which the NYFF has become addicted for decades.

“That formula relies heavily on two kinds of films: the deliberately provocative and offensive (hence, its inclusion of Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist and Harmony Korine‘s Trash Humpers, among others) or films that are supposed to be good for you. Which is why I think of the NYFF as the oat bran of film festivals, full of fiber and boasting little real flavor.

“NYFF obviously has no interest in matching Toronto or even Sundance for the number or scope of films it offers. Film program director Richard Pena has often referred to New York as a boutique festival, designed to showcase handpicked examples of what amounts to the best of contemporary cinema worldwide.

“Once upon a time, that meant films that, having been discovered by the NYFF, would find their place in the contemporary canon. But no longer: With its contrarian, over-intellectualized approach, the NYFF has become the ‘we know best’ festival, full of films that no one – except the selection committee and the people who actually made the movies – will ever care about.

“The films get their brief moment of glory at Lincoln Center, never to be seen again — or else to show up oh-so-briefly in one of New York’s arthouses, where they will prove all over again that no one wants to see them. (And, finally, on the annual 10-best lists of critics for the Village Voice and Film Comment.)

“I’m not saying that the NYFF should only be searching for popular hits. But accessibility does matter. Showing films that make you want to keep watching them should be a criteria. It’s not just that the NYFF chooses films that challenge audiences. It chooses films that challenge audiences to stay in their seats.”

Here’s something I wrote a few weeks ago about the NYFF selection system.

To hear it from two Straw Dogs crew people, two major features — Warner Bros.’ Jonah Hex and Disney’s Secretariat — didn’t shoot in Shreveport due to lobbying from their respective (and married-to-each-other) stars, Josh Brolin and Diane Lane. Their motive, of course, was Brolin’s ridiculous bust in Shreveport in the summer of ’08 after finishing work on Oliver Stone‘s W. (i.e., the infamous Stray Cat altercation), and all the subsequent legal obstinacy from the Shreveport judicial system.

I subsequently told this story to some Straw Dogs honchos, and they didn’t tell me I was wrong. If there are other wrinkles, please inform.

Due to open next June, Jonah Hex stars Brolin as the title character (a wild west bounty hunter) with Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, Will Arnett and John Malkovich. The director is Jimmy Hayward with a screenplay by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. It shot all over Louisiana — just not in Shreveport. It shot studio interiors in Sylmar, California.

Due for release in October 2010, Randall Wallace‘s Secretariat — a biopic of Penny Chenery, owner of the 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat — stars Lane as Chenery with costars John Malkovich (double duty!), Dylan Walsh and Scott Glenn. It used locations in Kentucky and Louisiana with Shreveport cut out of the pie.

I was bothered by three things in Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland, and I don’t think it spoils it to explain them. (1) If you’re in a sprawling, zombie-inhabited supermarket and you’ve just killed a ghoul with a metal baseball bat, only a fool drops the bat on the floor because another one could be right around the corner. (2) If you’re at an amusement park, turning on the lights and rides is a pure idiot move because it will primarily do only one thing — attract zombies. (3) Zombies don’t smile maliciously, even if they’re clowns.