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In reporting that John Malkovich is “in talks” to costar in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Burn Ater Reading, a half-serious, half-doofusy dark comedy set to begin shooting in August with Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Frances McDormand playing major roles, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the Coens’ screenplay “is being kept under wraps” and that “it is unclear what Pitt’s character will be.”

Brad Pitt, Ethan and Joel Coen, John Malkovich

I can clear that mystery up since I finished the script this morning. Pitt is playing a dumb health freak and workout trainer (i.e., dumb in the way that William H. Macy‘s character was on the not-fully-comprehending side in Fargo). The trainer is called Chad Feldheimer, and is described in the Coen script as “fortyish and well-muscled.”

The story kicks into gear when Chad partners with a fellow gym worker — a neurotic 40ish woman named Linda who’s looking for a way to afford some heavy-duty plastic surgery in order to improve her love life — in trying to shake down an embittered CIA employee named Osbourne Cox (Malkovich) who’s written a CIA tell-all that contains lots of sensitive hot-button material. Cox has lost the disc, though, and Chad has found it at the gym he and Linda work at.

I don’t know who’s playing Linda, by the way, but it’s not McDormand. It’s a splendid part. Whoever gets it is going to have something she can point to with pride for decades to come. I would offer it to someone a bit older but pretty — Julianne Moore. Someone who doesn’t need plastic surgery as much as a four-day weekend at an ashram.

The script isn’t all that secretive because I was sent a copy a few days ago, and if guys like me are reading it you can bet a lot of others are also.

I love Burn After Reading. It’s about hubris, stupidity, ineptitude, unbridled egotism — all traits that the Coens have worked with before to delicious and splendid effect. It’s arch and sardonic and inflected with that wonderfully dark Coen attitude and some really first-rate character-embroidery (a la Fargo and Barton Fink), and yet it’s sometimes laugh-out-loud funny in the vein of The Big Lebowski and Intolerable Cruelty.

If they do it right (I’m particularly jazzed by the idea of Emmanuel Lubezski doing the hand-held photography), this may well turn out to be, for the Coens, an uncommon mainstream hit. It reads, in fact, like one of those once-in-a-blue-moon Coen sweet-spot movies, and I say that as someone who wasn’t at all delighted with The Ladykillers or The Man Who Wasn’t There, was “comme ci comme ca” with O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Miller’s Crossing, and who still finds it difficult to watch Raising Arizona without getting irritated.

Variety is reporting what I posted yesterday morning — a first-weekend tally of $148 million for Spider-Man 3. That’s the biggest domestic opening weekend ever. The comic-book extravaganza from the hand of director, co-writer and Republican supporter Sam Raimi also took in $375 million worldwide, which is the biggest across-the-globe tally in human history.

Congratulations, lemmings! By supporting a mediocre film to this degree you have guaranteed that more big-scale CG mediocrities (i.e., dumbed-down behemoths that don’t logically add up or contain anything in the way of cleverness or skillful character construction, etc.) will be cranked out in the years and decades to come. You’ve told Hollywood in unmistakable terms, “Lower the bar all you want ….we’ll come anyway as long the movie has cool CG and it’s a major tentpole event flick that all our friends are hot to see…hoo-hoo!”

Spider-Man 3 did $57,274,000 last night, including about $10 million from Thursday’s midnight show. Others are claiming it did $59 million even. One studio is projecting a total weekend tally of $148,929,000. Even if the disappointing word-of-mouth brings it down some it’ll still do over $140 million. Sam Raimi‘s movie is eating up 80% to 85% of the weekend’s business.

Disturbia is #2 with $5,700,000 and Fracture is #3 with $3,666,000…off 46%. The Invisible is fourth with $3,542,000, followed by Next at $2,966,000. Poor, kicked-around Lucky You will end up with about $2,626,000 — the per-screen estimate is about $1940. Blades of Glory will make $2,462,000. Meet The Robinsons will take in $2,456,000 and Hot Fuzz will earn $2,095,000. Are We Done Yet? is tenth with $1,494,000 and a cume of $46 million.

When I first heard a few weeks ago about screenwriter Stephen Schiff writing a Wall Street 2 movie, I wrote him with some questions. I said there’s a competitive element afoot with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio cooking up a rise-and-fall-of-a-Wall Street-hustler story — an adaptation of Jordan Belfort‘s upcoming tell-all autobiography “The Wolf of Wall Street.” And I was wondering if Schiff’s piece was going to be something different or familiar.

The familiar would be another tale about a twentysomething money-hungry guy (a) gaining entry to the world of high finance, (b) learning the ropes, making big bucks and getting a little drunk on the juice of it all, and (c) eventually going too far, getting busted and crashing into a hole of shame and disrepute.

Schiff, ill and on a writing deadline, asked if we could talk later, and I said sure. And then yesterday along came a piece about the film by N.Y. Times guy Michael Ciepley, using producer Ed Pressman and actor Michael Douglas as the on-the-record sources. Schiff’s script is called Money Never Sleeps and will be, according to Ciepley’s story, about a “restyled” Gordon Gekko, to be played again by Douglas.

Gekko’s character arc won’t be emphasizing “moral development.” He’ll be the villain of the piece, in other words. There was no mention of a good-guy character, if in fact the film intends to use one.

Best quote: Douglas telling Ceipley said he wouldn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t mind if he never had “one more drunken Wall Street broker come up to me and say, ‘You√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re the man!'”

I have no idea whether or not Money Never Sleeps has a good or poor chance of coming out before the Scorsese-DiCaprio film (Schiff will deliver the script “later this year”), but they should probably get the lead out just to be on the safe side.

Oliver Stone‘s anti-Iraq War video spot, sponsored by the MoveOn.org political action group and VoteVets.org, is straightforward but underwhelming. When I first heard Stone would be doing this I was kind of expecting…I don’t know, some kind of pulverizing visual statement that would scream “wake up and listen!” Something that would say “the guy who made Platoon made this.” Maybe some kind of Battle of Algiers-type deal.

Instead, Stone shows us two talking-head closeups of two vets — John Bruhns, a former infantry sergeant who fought in Iraq “starting from day one” in ’03 and realized early on that the presence of U.S,. troops was “wrong, immoral and irresponsible,” and Ron Kovic, the paraplegic Vietnam vet whom Tom Cruise played in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, saying that “together we can support the troops” by bringing them home.

I agree — we are disrespecting U.S. soldiers in Iraq by sending and keeping them there — and Stone and the MoveOn-ers are coming from a morally compassionate place, but the primary visual impression in Stone’s piece is that Bruhns has put on weight since his ’03 tour.

L.A. Times reporters Claudia Eller and Lorenza Munoz reported today that Steven Spielberg has won a bidding war for the right to finance Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones, a movie based upon Alice Sebold‘s 2004 book about the aftermath of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl who narrates her tale from heaven. DreamWorks SKG will reportedly be paying Jackson “just under $70 million” to make the film, including his producing and directing fees.

The Spider-Man 3 “attack dogs are out in force,” laments Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers in a more-or-less positive review. He says that the haters “see the film’s budget (a reported $250 million) and the huge box-office take of the first two installments ($1.6 billion) as evidence that the filmmakers are in it for the money. Now there’s a shock.” That wasn’t the point, Travers, and besides your figures are wrong. The “reported” budget (per Kim Masters‘ recent Radar story) is actually $350 million with Sony admitting to $270 million.

Travers also takes note of “internet wags” pointing out that Raimi, “from a conservative Michigan family of Polish Jews,” contributed $900 to Dubya’s reelection campaign in 2004.” My God, that explains everything! People from conservative Polish-Jewish families from Michigan can’t possibly be expected to feel any sort of outrage at a U.S. President who blatantly lied about reasons for our involvement in Iraq and in so doing brought death to thousands of U.S. soldiers. Because…you know, they’re Polish Jews from Michigan.

Several days ago — six, to be exact — MSNBC’s Brian Alexander posted a piece on older hotties, or MILFs or GILFs. Ellen Barkin, Lena Olin, Helen Mirren, et. But he never mentioned Anna Magnani, a major MILF in her time. Striking but never exactly “pretty, dark bags under her eyes, looking like an underpaid Roman cleaning woman…but one look and you knew she’d be breathtaking in the sack. I could tell that when I was ten.

I realize, of course, that jails are necessary. Society needs to be protected from bad people. But I’ve never liked the idea or the metaphor of jail…who does? Whenever I hear about a prison break there’s a part of me that wants the escapee to elude the fuzz and the hounds and never be heard from again. All that changed tonight. For the first time in my life, I’m not only glad that a certain person is going to jail — I’m happy, reassured, comforted.

Paris Hilton‘s attorney Howard Weitzman said that her sentence was “uncalled for, inappropriate and bordered on the ludicrous.” No, no — it’s called for, it’s entirely appropriate, and strangers are hugging each other in the streets. Weitzman also said that Hilton has been “singled out because of who she is.” Yes, of course, obviously….good move, Judge Sauer!

New York‘s “News Reel” column has taken a look at the script for The Lovely Bones, am 112-page adaptation of Alice Sebold‘s novel by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and declared that it “looks to be not nearly as good as Heavenly Creatures.” I too have a copy of The Lovely Bones (sent to me a few days ago). It’s difficult for me to invest any enthusiasm in a project that the dreaded Jackson has an interest in, but I’ll try to read it and write an assessment within the next few days.

The Hollywood Reporter isn’t what it used to be, but there’s still plenty of interest in the trade paper’s top editorial job,” says a 5.4 Radar item by Jeff Bercovici. “A number of Los Angeles Times staffers are said to have thrown their hats into the ring, perhaps worried about what might become of the Times now that it (and parent Tribune Co.) have been taken over by Sam Zell. (One, staff writer Claudia Eller, says she was contacted by a search firm, not the other way around.) New York Times scribe Sharon Waxman‘s name has also come up.

“Asked whether she was in the running, Waxman says, ‘There’s nothing going on there.’ (Intriguingly, she adds, “If that were true, I don’t think I’d let you break it.”) The job is said to pay around $200,000 a year. ‘If it were not for the money, no serious journalist would take it,’ says one embittered insider. ‘The new owners are only interested in using the paper to help promote their seminars and other profit-making enterprises.'”