Love the poster and teaser for Frank Miller‘s The Spirit (Lionsgate, 1.16.09). You know going into a Miller film that every frame will be luscious and immaculate (especially if you’re a fool for anachronistic noirish monochrome stuff, particularly when intense reds are thrown in for accentuation’s sake). You also know or strongly suspect that the story and the dialogue will probably feel cliched and shopworn and ho-hummish. I would be a shameless Miller groveller and a kiss-ass if he would only put half the energy into story and dialogue that he puts into visual composition.

So what exactly is Sean Penn intending to do on-stage at the Coachella Music Festival on Sunday, 4.27 from 2:10 pm to 2:40 pm? If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that Milk director Gus Van Sant wants to shoot Penn (in Harvey Milk guise) giving a speech to a big crowd. He doesn’t play in a band. Stand-up comedy?

The Tribeca Film Festival (4.23 to 5.4) “has always suffered comparisons to it’s older, more important siblings,” writes the N.Y. Observer’s Sara Vilkomerson.

“It doesn’t have the old-world glamour of Cannes, the international marketplace hagglings at Toronto or Berlin, the late-night frenzied dealings and celebrity swagfest of Sundance or the elegant prestige found at Lincoln Center. It hasn’t even had a central location, what with theaters all over the city hosting screenings, and downtown itself a strange labyrinth of high-end restaurants and hotels.
“What Tribeca has had is a lot: hundreds of films; paparazzi-lined Hollywood-style premieres; family film and ESPN sports-themed programming; artist round-table discussions; outdoor ‘drive-in’ screenings; concerts; and audience-participatory events. (This year, director John Landis will host a 25th-anniversary screening of the epic video for Michael Jackson‘s Thriller, where audiences are invited to ‘learn the Thriller dance,’ get zombie-fied at a Thriller face-painting station, compete in a Michael Jackson look-alike contest or boogie at the Solid Gold Dance party.)
“Given the overwhelming confusion of choices (for the Thriller video alone, four separate activities?), Tribeca has consistently faced cries of complaint: It’s unmanageable, the venues are all over the place, ticket prices are too high, it doesn’t generate the kind of sales that make Variety headlines, it’s just too much. At seven years old, it’s time to ask: Can Tribeca grow up?
“‘I read somewhere that in New York the default mode is complaint,’ said Tribeca Film Festival artistic director Peter Scarlet.

Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal

“When the New York Film Festival started in 1963, he pointed out, the New York press responded with a “reaction of distaste mixed with horror, not unlike that you saw with ’50s sci-fi movies when something landed from another galaxy. But gradually, humans being what they are, and the New York Film Festival being what it is — a pretty terrific film festival — New Yorkers actually relaxed their sphincters and got used to it. Now it’s an accepted part of the cultural fabric of New York.
“‘And then this other monster called Tribeca came along seven years ago and it was like, `Oh my God it’s so big!’ Which seems kind of ridiculous because New York is the town of everything bigger than everything else. I mean, nobody complained that the Empire State Building is too tall.’
“That’s true,” says Vilkomerson, “because the Empire State Building’s height is what allows us all to appreciate it. Tribeca has faced the opposite problem, being so big as to be impossible to appreciate.
“‘Everyone has their opinion,’ said Tribeca’s director of programming, David Kwok. ‘”I think when you come so strongly out of the gate, people want to criticize or have their own perspective of how it should be. Especially when it’s new. It’s almost natural instinct for some people — it’s easier to take a jab than to look at the positives. Whether it’s fair or not is not for me to say.’
“As one industry insider put it, ‘They’re a film festival on the defensive.'”

I don’t care how old this is…

Yesterday Just Jared ran pics of Evan Rachel Wood and Larry David shooting scenes for Woody Allen‘s latest, which marks a return to Manhattan home turf. Here’s a shot that suggests Allen may be considering a slight plug for Tom McCarthy‘s The Visitor (as he did in Match Point with a shot of a London marquee announcing the showing of Walter Salles‘ The Motorcycle Diaries).

“Despite some criticism, Pastor Roger Byrd says that the message will stay on the sign. He took the issue before his congregation Sunday night, and they decided unanimously to keep it.” There’s a small-screen video report that accompanies the WYFF news story.

The official 2008 Cannes Film Festival announcement went up just after 3 am this morning, and the ambiguity about Steven Soderbergh‘s two-headed Che Guevara drama — The Argentine and Guerilla — has been removed. It will definitely play there (possibly with The Argentine in some kind of not-quite-finished form, but whatever) and glory friggin’ hallelujah!

Once again it feels as if the festival will have an ambitious centerpiece — a long-haul piece de resistance by one of our country’s finest filmmakers that journos can argue about and pick over and send messages home about and piss off the Miami Cubans with. All is now well with the world except for the sociopathic fiendishness of Hillary Clinton.
As reported last night by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling (is there a “The” in the title or not?) is also locked in.
As predicted earlier, Steven Spielberg‘s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda will play there out of competition, as will Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Walter Salles‘ Linha de passe, an urban road movie, will play in Cannes — “mostly set in Sao Paulo’s high-rise hell, about four soccer star wannabe brothers,” says Variety’s report.
Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne willl bring The Silence of Lorna. France’s Arnaud Desplechin returns with A Christmas Tale, a family drama with Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric. Atom Egoyan will arrive with Adoration. Wim Wenders will bring The Palermo Shooting, and Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan will deliver Daydreams, a kind of detective drama.
James Toback‘s Tyson, a doc about the controversial former heavyweight champion, will play in Un Certain Regard.
Jia Zhangke‘s 24 City “may well be the only major Chinese film at Cannes,” says the Variety piece, due to “a current bottleneck in the Chinese censorship process, which includes authorizing overseas travel.”

James Toback, Mike Tyson

In Competition:
24 City, China, Jia Zhangke
Adoration, Canada, Atom Egoyan
Changeling, U.S., Clint Eastwood
Che (The Argentine, Guerrilla) Spain, Steven Soderbergh
Un Conte de noel, France, Arnaud Desplechin
Daydreams, Turkey, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Delta,Germany-Hungary, Kornel Mundruczo
Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino, Italy
Gomorra, Italy, Matteo Garrone
La Frontiere de l’aube, France, Philippe Garrel
Leonera, Argentina-South Korea, Pablo Trapero
Linha de Passe, Brazil, Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas
La Mujer sin cabeza, Argentina, Lucrecia Martel
My Magic, Singapore, Eric Khoo
The Palermo Shooting, Germany, Wim Wenders
Serbis, Philippines, Brillante Mendoza
The Silence of Lorna, U.K.-France, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Synecdoche, New York, U.S., Charlie Kaufman
Waltz With Bashir, Israel, Ari Folman
Out of Competition:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, U.S., Steven Spielberg
Kung Fu Panda, U.S., Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
The Good, the Bad, the Weird, South Korea, Kim Jee-woon
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, U.S.-Spain, Woody Allen
Midnight Screenings:
Maradona, Spain-France, Emir Kusturica
Surveillance, U.S., Jennifer Lynch
The Chaser, South Korea, Na Hong-jin

Special Screenings:
Ashes of Time Redux, China, Wong Kar-wai
Of Time and the City, U.K., Terence Davies
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, U.S.-U.K., Marina Zenovich
Sangue Pazzo (Crazy Blood), Italy-France, Marco Tullio Giordana
Screening of the President of the Jury:
The Third Wave, U.S., Alison Thompson
Un Certain Regard:
A festa da menina morta, Brazil, Matheus Nachtergaele
Afterschool, U.S., Antonio Campos
De Ofrivilliga, Sweden, Ruben Ostlund
Je veux voir, France, Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
Johnny Mad Dog, France, Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
La vie moderne (profiles paysans), France, Raymond Depardon
Los Bastardos, Mexico, Amat Escalante
Milh handha al-bahr (Salt of This Sea), Palestine, Annemarie Jacir
O’ Horten, Norway-Germany, Bent Hamer
Soi Cowboy, U.K., Thomas Clay
Tin Che, (Parking), Taiwan, Chung Mong-Hong
Tokyo!, France-Japan, Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax
Tokyo Sonata, Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Tulpan, Germany, Sergey Dvortsevoy
Tyson, U.S., James Toback
Versailles, France, Pierre Schoeller
Wendy and Lucy, U.S., Kelly Reichardt
Cloud Nine, Germany, Andreas Dresen
Yi ban haishui, yi ban huoyan, China, Fendou Liu

The Reel Geezers hit it out of the park again with this review of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I’m in hell…we’re all in hell tonight with the Hildebeast having won Pennsylvania by a solid 10%. I know Obama’s seeming flirtation with Adlai Stevenson-ism is frightening to many of us (it certainly has been to me), but the two bedrock reasons for the persistence of the Clinton campaign are, face it or not, (a) gender loyalty among the less-well-off, somewhat less-educated women who can’t let go of the momentousness of a woman making a super-serious run for the presidency, and (b) primal tribal resistance among the working grunts — under the skin, only slightly acknowledged ** — to the idea of an African-American president. Very few will cop to it, but it’s been there all along. Don’t lie. Don’t deny.
“Why can’t Obama put Clinton away?,” MSNBC’s First Read asked this morning “The AP’s Ron Fournier takes a stab at answering this, and he points to five reasons (race, working-class voters, friends in trouble, inexperience, and mettle). But to us, women seem to be the bigger reason. They continue to rally to her side; nothing has shaken their confidence in her. If Clinton continues to beat Obama by 30-plus points among white women, how can he knock her out?”
On top of which that Clinton won’t stop with the viciousness, and the bubbas seem to keep going for it.
“The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it,” says a N.Y. Times editorial called “The Low Road to Victory.”
“Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.”
** Fournier’s piece noted that “an AP-Yahoo News poll found that about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black president. The actual percentage is probably higher because voters are shy about admitting a racial prejudice to pollsters.”

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy reported at 9:30 pm this evening that Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling (Universal, 11.8), a 1920s mystery drama with Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Amy Ryan and Colm Feore, will compete at next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

With the official Cannes announcement due tomorrow morning, McCarthy also revealed three other surprises:
(a) Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which stars Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem, “will appear in Cannes after all, with Allen attending the fest over the initial weekend.”
(b) There may be a sliver of sunshine peeking through the clouds regarding the reported not-quite-ready situation concerning Steven Soderbergh‘s two Che Guevara films, The Argentine and Guerilla. “No one is saying the situation has definitely changed, but the competition schedule is being left flexible enough to accommodate Soderbergh in case he decides the films are in shape to present to the public — a result for which Cannes programmers have evidently been given some reason to hope,” McCarthy wrote.
(c) Barry Levinson‘s widely reviled What Just Happened? may not close the festival, despite an earlier report that it would.

Due respect, but Michael Cieply‘s 4.23 N.Y. Times story about Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner‘s Valkyrie — twice-delayed and presumed to be troubled — adds next to nothing to the story.

All it does is (a) offer a cursory sum-up of the situation that followed the announcement of the second push-back on 4.8.08 (Cieply believes that negative web reaction was the most noteworthy aspect) and (b) allows Wagner to sound tough and resolute with statements like “we will not be daunted,” “anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn’t understand the business,” “nothing is going to stop us” and “we are determined to make this work.”
I obviously know what this sounds like, but I feel that the piece I threw together on August 9th provided a more interesting photograph of things as they seemed to stand 14 days ago than Cieply’s piece does now at looking back and reviewing the hoo-hah.

I was disappointed after missing a screening of OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, a French- produced James Bond/Austin Powers spy satire, at the Seattle Film Festival in June 2006. It had opened to great reviews and strong business in France two months earlier, and it seemed like all the rage. (As far as a French- made film can be said to be the rage of anything.) A year and a half later it played at the St. Louis International Film Festival.

And now it’s here…almost. But too late! A little more than two weeks hence (i.e., on May 9th), it will finally open commercially in this country. I’m sitting here and I’m going, “They expect me to feel enthusiasm about an ’06 movie?” It should have at least opened last summer. The current has wound down. Flatline.