wired

Today’s LX.TV Tribeca Film Festival webcast includes footage of the red-carpet premiere of Brando plus interviews with Patricia Clarkson and John Turturro as well as clips from the TCM movie featuring Al Pacino and Ed Norton. A festival doc called Hellfighters is also profiled by former sportscaster Jon Frankel.

Frank Langella, who’s been getting great reviews for his performance as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon, the Peter Morgan play that just opened in Manhattan, scored a major coup by snagging the Nixon role in Ron Howard‘s movie version, which will start shooting in August and come out in the fall of ’08. Howard wanted Warren Beatty as Nixon but apparently Beatty managed to somehow persuade Howard and partner-producer Brian Grazer to reconsider. (I could speculate but I won’t.)

London’s Daily Mail went with this story also, and Variety went with it a little after 9 ayem based on the Daily Mail report.

Howard was right to cast the best man as opposed to casting someone with more marquee value, and thereby deciiding to make the best possible film based on the quality of the merchandise. Like I said earlier, Frost/Nixon film isn’t going to break records no matter who plays Nixon.

Quentin Tarantino has told the Telegraph‘s John Hiscock that his stand-alone Death Proof, which will show at the Cannes Film Festival and then commercially in Europe, will run 30 minutes longer than the 85-minute version that was included in Grindhouse, the three-hour, ode-to-exploitation double feature that became a devastating financial fizzle for the Weinstein Co. a few weeks ago.

Somewhere along the way I absorbed the idea that the longer Death Proof would only run about 100 minutes, or roughly 15 minutes longer. But a film running 115 minutes that originally comprised 85 minutes — that’s significant. One presumes (hopes) that the extra length will really and truly add to the film, and not just extend it.

“There is half-hour’s difference between my Death Proof and what is playing in Grindhouse,” Tarantino says. “I wrote my script — I couldn’t be prouder of my script — then I had to shrink it way down to fit inside this double feature.

“I was like a brutish American exploitation distributor who cut the movie down almost to the point of incoherence. I cut it down to the bone and took all the fat off it to see if it could still exist, and it worked. It works great as a double feature, but I’m just as excited if not more excited about actually having the world see Death Proof unfiltered.”

It is naturally assumed that the stand-alone Death Proof will have some kind of limited U.S. theatrical exposure prior to being released here on DVD, but maybe not.

“I can’t wait for [Death Proof] to premiere [in Cannes],” Tarantino says. “It will be in competition, and it’ll be the first time everyone sees Death Proof by itself, including me.”

Jack Valenti, the consummate Hollywood politician and chief of the Motion Picture Assn. of America for 38 years, died this afternoon. The news broke right while I was flying from Burbank to Oakalnd, hence the late posting. The head of the Motion Picture Association of American for 38 years, Valenti was a brilliant operator, a wise wordsmith and an elegant man. Oh, and a great raconteur.

I first met Valenti at some kind of industry gathering at the Sportmen’s Lodge on Ventura Blvd. in 1983, and I can remember to this day his sharp eagle eyes sizing me up as he smiled and shook my hand. All world-class smart guys all over the world have eagle eyes. Eyes that whir and click as they assess your vibe, your appearance, your manner. Valenti was one tough hombre. I thought he lacked flexibility as far as trying to address the wrongs of the CARA ratting system, but that was then and this is now.

Radar‘s Jessica Grose asked me and two other big-mouths — Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel and Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune — to comment on three new TV ads directed by big-name directors. (Note: Radar told me to view and assess three ads, and if they’ve chosen to only post reactions to one or two of them, that’s their doing.)

A $50 million deposit into Tom Hanks‘ I.R.A. account to star in Angels and Demons? The reported fee is actually $35 million plus a potential $15 million in back-end revenue. You be the judge.

I’m heading up to the San Francisco Film Festival in a couple of hours. I probably won’t be back into things until 5 or 6 pm. There’s a big opening night hoo-hah that I’ll probably try to attend.

The late Dan Cracchiolo, the hot shot get-around who worked as Joel Silver‘s top guy in the mid to late ’90s and a little beyond, once told me about a conversation he and Silver had about the size of the craniums of big movie stars. He said that Silver told him, “Dan, all big stars have really big heads.” Physically, he meant.

I’ve spoken to a fair number of big-name actors and can testify that this is frequently the case. Mel Gibson has a big head; ditto Kirk Douglas and Kevin Costner. (I once wrote that Costner “has a head the size of a bison’s.”) Warren Beatty has a fairly sizable head. So does Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I don’t recall Tom Cruise‘s head being all large, however.

I would say that Clive Owen, to judge by the above photo from Shoot ‘Em Up, certainly qualifies.

There’s obviously something about having a big head that gives a person presence, power…a sense of dominance. Full disclosure: I have a big head myself.

Big movie-star heads are a very consistent visual factor in day-to-day Hollywood life, and yet people who don’t mix it up with talent would never, ever learn of this from mainstream interviewers and columnists. I’m just saying…

Israeli critics and their editors are being bullied and strong-armed by the two biggest Israeli film distributors, Matalon and Forum Film, and Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke is trying to get others riled up about it. In response to this, Tel Aviv Time Out‘s senior critic and film editor Yael Shuv has written to lend his voice to the protest.

Why don’t these stories tell us what we want to know, and let us see what we want to see? Britain’s Daily Snack reported last night that Hugh Grant has been arrested for assault “after allegedly hurling a container of baked beans” at photographer Ian Whittaker yesterday morning (i.e., Tuesday) somewhere in west London.

What I want to know is, did Grant hit Whittaker with the beans in the head or the chest or where? Did the take-away container splatter all over the place and cover Whittaker’s face in brownish-red sauce and gooey-drippy beans?

And where’s the photograph? Can you imagine being a photographer and covered with baked beans that were thrown by a big-name actor and not taking a photo of yourself? Not to have done so argues with the primal instinct that drives all photographers. If I’d been Whittaker I would have persuaded a passerby to take the shot. And yet it happened a day and a half ago and no photo. This suggests to me that there wasn’t much to see.

Whittaker seems to be a well-respected photographer, by the way.