Here‘s Part 2, Billy Bob Thornton‘s segment, New Rules.

This portion of a paragraph from a two-day-old Patrick Goldstein column made me blink: “When they weren’t dancing, Brett Ratner and Michael Jackson would watch movies together. [Ratner] says they must’ve watched the original version of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 50 times over the years.” Ratner is exaggerating, of course, but still. Speaking as someone who’s watched some great films as many as 25 or 30 times (like North by Northwest, say), the idea of anyone eagerly watching that 1971 film more than four or five times seems awfully strange. It’s good but not that good.

Why hasn’t Warner Home Video come out with at least a seasonal release date for the North by Northwest Bluray? George Feltenstein told High-Def Digest last February that they were preparing one.

Variety‘s Pamela McClintock is reporting that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has earned an estimated domestic haul of $201.2 million domestic, a result of business at 4,234 theaters. This is the biggest five-day haul ever after The Dark Knight. Pic’s worldwide total through Sunday was $387 million, one of the best global debuts of all time.

Excuse me but I need to go slit my wrists now.

The good news is that The Hurt Locker had a great opening also. The three-day estimate is $144,000, which came from playing at four theaters for a per-theater average of $36,000. Some were guessing a $30k-per-screen average based on Friday’s business. As Coming Soon’s Ed Douglas puts it, “This is pretty strong for a movie with no big name actors. It played to sold-out audiences at all 4 theaters (2 in NY, 2 in LA). It’s important to note that unlike other limited run films that have multiple prints at each theater, this was not the case for The Hurt Locker, thus demonstrating the true audience demand for the film and a representation of the film’s potential.”

However Michael Mann‘s Public Enemies winds up faring commercially and critically, Marion Cotillard‘s performance as Billie Frechette, the girlfriend of Johnny Depp‘s John Dillinger, is an award-quality nail-down. No dramatic actress in recent memory has conveyed as much intestinal steel, and it’s all in her eyes. In each of her scenes they have a straight-from-the-shoulder, no b.s. quality. Every time you look at those watery French peepers and think, “God she’s beautiful,” a subsequent thought happens a split second later: “Man, she’s tough.”

Marion Cotillard in Public Enemies

Even when Cotillard visibly melts at the end when Stephen Lang‘s G-man character delivers the final line (in what is easily the most moving scene), she does so with remarkable subtlety, like a survivor, like a woman who knows from dignity.

I came to this thought after reading Mark Harris‘s 6.28 N.Y. Times profile of Mann and the film, and particularly by this passage about Cotillard:

“[Mann’s] movies are known for many things, from technological virtuosity to narrative complexity, but prominent roles for women are not among his trademarks. The character of Billie Frechette is something of an exception. Several American actresses wanted the part; Ms. Cotillard won it even though her English was less than rock steady. ‘But she’s ferocious,’ Mr. Mann said. ‘She’s so focused and artistically ambitious that you knew that come hell or high water she was going to get there.'”

In short, Cotillard looks to me like a lock for Best Supporting Actress contention. Lang’s screen time is perhaps a bit too brief to warrant consideration but the way he handles that final scene with Cotillard is nothing short of beautiful. Another supporting standout is Stephen Graham‘s portrayal of Babyface Nelson — a screaming tempest, a madman with a tommy gun….”hey!”

I’m feeling a certain hesitancy about the fate of Public Enemies because of what I heard from a couple of critics after last Thursday night’s screening. (Others felt it was brilliant, which is also my view.) Like I said before, the critics and moviegoers who like their meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans are going to have problems with it. Public Enemies is a first-rate cops and robbers 1930s time-trip highdef-video art movie, but it ain’t meatloaf and it sure as hell ain’t McDonald’s. It’s a dish of almond praline semifreddo with grappa-poached apricots. Yes — a high falutin’ dessert, as in scrumptious. And then there’s that ending.

N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes continued the food analogy in a recently-posted weekend box-office story, to wit: “People complain about Hollywood’s tendency to be unadventurous with its big-money titles, but the moviegoing masses clearly get the most excited when they are not being surprised. In other words, the multiplex really rocks when movies are served up the McDonalds way: predictably and comfortably.”

I must have stuck my head into a couple of dozen bars, restaurants and clothing stores yesterday, and there were very few that weren’t playing tracks from Thriller. Clothing stores especially. “Billie Jean” in particular. And not once did I hear “Will You Be There?” It’s a little drippy here and there, but I’ve always felt this was Michael Jackson‘s best song. As much as I deplored who and what Jackson became over the last 16 years of his life, this song makes me put all that aside. I love the central melody and particularly the rhythm track — clap-clap, clap-pa-clap-clap.

I’m thinking I might do the odd thing and not sit here all day and write column stories. I’ve been telling myself I need to visit the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Met before it closes in August, and I’m thinking this is the day. I’ve worshipped his paintings nearly all my life, starting with my first viewing of Last Tango in Paris.

An important tenet of auteurism is that the best films are always driven by an intimate connection between the director and the lead character. Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart‘s Scotty Ferguson in Vertigo, Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel‘s Charlie in Mean Streets, etc. And it doesn’t really matter if the director admits to (or is even aware of) self-portraiture. Never trust the artist — trust the tale.

It hit me last night as I was preparing my questions for last night’s q & a with Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow that there’s a certain kinship between herself and Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James character — a guy who lives for the thrill of a super-intense job (i.e., bomb defusing) and who isn’t much good at day-to-day normality.

The “tell” is in a 6.25 interview with Bigelow by Movieline‘s Kyle Buchanan.

Renner’s character “thrives on the theater of war and outside it he feels like an incomplete person,” Buchanan notes. “That’s a personality type I could apply to a lot of directors. Only when they’re on set do they feel most themselves. Does that describe you at all?”

“Oh, good question,” Bigelow answers. “I suppose, personally, from my frame of reference, production is very intense and nothing else comes quite close to that. And yet, as a kind of more meta version of myself at that time…I don’t know. I’d probably have to be far more self-aware than I am to answer that accurately. I thrive on production. It feels very much like a natural environment for me. I don’t know if I thrive in normal life.”

Coward that I am, I didn’t put this question to Bigelow last night. I suppose I was thinking that her response to Buchanan (“I’d probably have to be far more self-aware than I am to answer that accurately”) told me that asking this would result in an awkward moment and that she’d probably sidestep it. This is what happens when you come to really like a director personally — you start to feel protective.

But as I sit here this morning I’m fairly convinced of the Bigelow/James connection. It’s arguably why The Hurt Locker plays as well as it does, and why everyone is calling it her best film ever. Bigelow has always “gotten” guys in her films. We hold this truth to be self-evident.

“Godfather should have never had more than one movie,” Francis Coppola has told Movieline in an interview. Meaning what? That The Godfather Part II never should have been made? Or that the Corleone family saga should have been released in an epic, all-in-one sequential form from the get-go? Either way it’s a silly and unrealistic thing to say.

I’ve always wanted to see a decent DVD mastering of the Godfather Saga — the beginning-to-end version with added footage that showed on network television in the late ’70s. Why doesn’t Paramount Home Video put it out? Where would be the harm? Hasn’t Coppola said somewhere that he prefers this way of absorbing the Corleone history above all?

Let me get this straight. England’s Optimum Home Entertainment is bringing out Bluray versions of both parts of Steven Soderbergh‘s Che two days from now and Criterion still hasn’t officially announced they’ll be putting out their own Che Blurays sometime in the fall? They’re still playing the cartoon hinting game? Why is Criterion so slow and Optimum so fast? That’s it — I’m getting a multi-region player.

And no excuses about how Criterion needs more time because they always put together a great package. When another region commercially releases a Bluray title that I’ve been looking forward to several months before the U.S., I feel jealous and resentful. We live in a now/sooner/ADD world. We don’t live in a world that goes by the words “chill down,” “eventually,” “read a book” and “never sell a wine before its time.”

I’m among a small group of Hurt Locker-admiring journalists who’ve been asked to do short before-the-audience interviews with director Kathryn Bigelow (and, I gather, producer/screenwriter Mark Boal) prior to evening showings at lower Manhattan’s Sunshine Cinemas. (Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas did one last night.) My chit-chat will start just prior to tonight’s 7:10 pm show. The Sunshine website says Bigelow will also make an appearance prior to the 9 pm show so I guess another journalist will be doing the honors. It’s a daisy chain.