From a selection of Murray Close film-set photos allegedly being shown for the first time at Proud Camden gallery from now until 6.7.09. (I say allegedly because there’s no mention of a Close show on the Proud Camden site.)

Today’s scholastic exercise to is to sift through Eugene Hernandez, Brian Brooks, Peter Knegt and Andy Lauer‘s “Cannes Wish List” piece on Indiewire and try and pick out the titles that weren’t mentioned in Mike Goodridge‘s Cannes forecast article in Screen International than ran seven weeks ago.

Sidenote: Atom Egoyan‘s Chloe just wrapped so it’ll be quite the feat if it plays in Cannes six weeks hence.

“I’m already paying fees to RealD for the systems. I’m paying to put in the silver screens and I’m paying to train employees to run the product. For 20th Century Fox To come in at this point and say they aren’t going to pay for the glasses [for showings of the 3D Ice age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs] while saying they all the upside of the revenue, is ridiculous.” — A “angry exhibitor” speaking to Entertainment Weekly‘s Nicole Sperling two days ago at Showest. (Supplying glasses to exhibitors for a single 3D feature costs the distributor about $1 million.)

Last night I was introduced to Vincent Pastore (a.k.a. “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero from The Sopranos) at the Rescue Me after-party at the Times Square Hard Rock cafe. Nice guy but his hand was thick and smallish and dry — it felt like coarse sandpaper. Vincent explained right away that he was showing the Hard Rock’s historical displays — i.e., guitars and costumes used by famous musicians — to a young dark-haired lady he was with.

The girl, who spoke with a borough accent, was slightly overdressed and in her mid to late 20s, said she was “very interested [in the displays] because I don’t know anything about rock ‘n’ roll. I only know about disco.”

Right away I cocked my head. “But disco was thirty years ago,” I said. “Yeah, but my parents were only into disco,” she replied, “so that’s all I know about.”

First, what kind of cast-iron blinders do you have to be wearing to only know about the kind of music that your parents were into during the Jimmy Carter administration? And two, who admits to mixed company that their parents’ taste in music has not only defined their interests but also kept them from having any curiosity about other forms of music for their entire life?

Noting that N.Y. Times readers have offered to donate money to keep the struggling (one could say staggering) publication alive, executive editor Bill Keller, speaking yesterday at Stanford University, said that “saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”

President Obama playfully fucks with reporter from the Times of India at a press conference held yesterday.

Robert Wilonsky has a story on his blog that may have something to do with the Wolverine leak. That’s the rumor, at least. There was an FBI raid at a “huge internet hub” in Dallas this morning. The owner released a statement saying it has something to do with a customer of theirs, and that the FBI needed access to their information.

Last night I caught the brilliant first episode of new Rescue Me season at the Radio City Music Hall, and also a comedy set from star-creator Denis Leary, which was somewhat funny in the usual Leary way — contentious, caustic, seething, middle-aged and very urban Irish blue-collar and very fuck-you frustrated. So what else is new? That’s his handle.

50th and Sixth Avenue following last night’s Rescue Me screening and comedy performances — Thursday, 4.2.09, 9:35 pm

Radio City Music Hall grand foyer — Thursday, 4.2.09, 7:25 pm

The problem with the screening was that the RCMH is cavernous as hell and the sound echoes all over the place so you had to cup your ears to hear it right. But you couldn’t hear it anyway because the show was a benefit for the Leary Firerighters Foundation, which meant that the place was filled with borough types who laughed so loudly (image two thousand water buffaloes yaw-hawing en masse) that they obscured at least half the dialogue.

Funny as he can be, Leary is regarded as a heavyweight actor-dramatist these days because of Rescue Me, which he co-created (with Peter Tolan), produces, co-writes and stars in. It’s always been a superb show that mixes comedy and pathos in a way that feels perfectly synched and fine tuned. This is the fifth season. I was surprised by the continued spark and pizazz, given the tendency for ensemble comedy series to lose a little mojo after two or three seasons.

This season is noteworthy (apart from the punchy-dramedy value) for a revival of the 9/11 current, which of course is what inspired Rescue Me in the first place. It kicks in when a French journalist (Karina Lombard) interviews the firehouse gang for a piece on the 10th anniversary of the disaster. This material wasn’t in the episode shown last night, but knowing this is in the wings makes me all the more interested in watching. (I’m trying to scrounge extra screeners as we speak.) The series kicks off next Tuesday on FX at 10 pm.

The standout performance, for me, was Michael J. Fox‘s as a twitchy, wheelchair-bound guy who’s apparently dicking Janet (Andrea Roth), the ex-wife of Leary’s Tommy Gavin. It’s touching to see Fox, who’s been grappling with Parkinson’s for years, give his performance hell despite the obvious fact that the disease is getting in the way.

Nick DiPaolo also did a comedy set (following Leary’s opener). And as funny and confident as he is, I didn’t care at all for the blue-collar-bar vein in some of his material, particularly as it reflected upon Barack Obama. DiPaolo was playing to a borough crowd, and if a certain kind of joke works with a certain type of crowd, you use it — I get that. But he was basically stoking racist attitudes, and this turned me off. I wound up giving him the finger as I left.

“People of the left think Obama is a messiah,” DiPaolo said. “I know what that’s about because on Election Night I was looking at the TV screen and going ‘Jesus H. Christ, Jesus H. Christ.'” And this got a huge laugh. Fucking animals and their bullshit borough perspectives. Sitting in the audience (I was in row SS, seat 305) felt like I was surrounded by the cast of Goodfellas without the icepicks.

Everyone in Strasbourg speaks English? I realize that the under-45 French are generally bilingual, particularly those in service industries, retail, tourism, etc. But not the 50-plusses and certainly not the proles. It goes without saying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy would never deliver an all-French speech to a crowd in this country, even in Manhattan, even at the Alliance Francaise.

Last night EW‘s Christina Spines posted a conversation with Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Tom Rothman about the Wolverine piracy: “The version that went out is unfinished,” Rothman said. “It’s about 10 minutes shorter, it doesn’t have key scenes, it wasn’t [fully] edited, and none of the effects shots were in any remotely final form. It’s a complete misrepresentation of the film and is deeply unfair to the people who have worked on it for years.”

Rothman added that Fox and the FBI “are zeroing in on the culprits” and that “he feels confident that they’ll be able to name the perpetrators soon,” Spines reports.

“We, like everybody, thought our system was secure,” Rothman said. “Just like I’m sure there are lots of banks that get robbed that thought their vault was safe. We thought the post-production pipeline was secure at every juncture. But obviously, it’s self-evident that it wasn’t. I have a high level of confidence we’ll find out where the lapse in security was and we’ll bring the perpetrators to justice.

“The picture is not the kind of movie people get the whole experience of by watching on their computer. But other than The Hulk, I don’t think a movie with this kind of anticipation has been stolen. And it’s also a big deal because of how early it is.”

Rothman told Spines that both he and Wolverine star Hugh Jackman have vowed to stop at nothing to get the movie out to as many fans as possible.

“Hugh was heartbroken and hurt when he found out. He’s lived with this thing for 10 years. But he’s also a man and knows that life isn’t fair, and is more determined than ever. Hugh and I exchanged e-mails [and said that] basically we’re not going to let the bastards win. But we didn’t use the word ‘bastards.’ That’s a slightly sanitized version.”

A friend who caught yesterday’s Showest screening of Woody Allen‘s Whatever Works (Sony Classics, 6.19) says “it’s very funny and yet lighter even than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the sum result being that it feels less significant but also works better as a crowd-pleaser.

“Larry David, of course, is a perfect Woody Allen stand-in with classic Allen attributes, [such as] speaking directly to the camera. Evan Rachel Wood really stretches in the role of Melodie, a naive and slightly stupid Southerner who never emerges as [any kind of] stereotype. And Patricia Clarkson, as Melodie’s mother, is excellent.”

The screening happened in Las Vegas, the home base of Showest for decades.

The Manhattan-based story is basically about a May-December relationship between David and Wood, and, according to one synopsis I’ve read, an attempt by the disapproving Clarkson to break it up. I’m not sure if Ed Begley, Jr. plays Wood’s dad, but I suspect as much. My friend didn’t think to mention costars Henry Cavill, Michael McKean or Kristen Johnson …whatever.

“It’s probably too light for the same Oscar consideration that Vicky Cristina got,” she says, “but the typical Allenesque wit and flavor mixed with the general New York-iness are wonderful to spend time with. It got a great reaction from the Showest crowd, too.”