I should have posted a link two days ago to Mark Ebner‘s Hollywood Interrupted interview piece about one-time recording mogul and accused murderer Phil Spector, who “was always a fatal train wreck waiting to happen,” Ebner declares. Spector’s trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson is now underway, and Ebner is pledging to provide live-blog gavel-to-gavel coverage from Los Angeles Superior Court.

A pass-along from renowned cartoonist and old-time (i.e, ’70s and early ’80s hangover) Connecticut friend Chris Browne, who’s been writing and drawing “Hagar the Horrible” since 1988.

Denmark’s Niclas Kockum says that yestersday’s post on Premiere.com’s list of greatest movie posters “should acknowledge that the history of good movie posters goes a bit beyond the American borders. If your criteria for a good movie poster is how ‘striking, innovative, eye-catching’ it is, then you just can’t go wrong with old Polish movie posters. Trippy as hell. Practically all of them beat the original posters.”

I was okay with Lasse Hallstrom‘s The Hoax (Miramax, 4.6), but — this column is often about the “but” factor — I can’t get over Hallstrom’s decision to allow an early panoramic shot of New York City’s lower half (i.e., shot from the roof of a midtown skyscraper in the mid 40s, facing south) to momentarily destroy the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Those of you who know that The Hoax is a period film (it happens entirely in 1971 and early ’72) have probably guessed what the issue is already.

The film begins with a wind-blown Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) and his editor (Hope Davis) standing next to a helipad atop the McGraw-Hill building and awaiting the arrival of a chopper carrying the legendary Howard Hughes, whom Irving has allegedly been interviewing for an exclusive tell-all book. So when the camera takes a look at the lower-Manhattan sprawl, the viewer naturally expects to see the World Trade Center towers, which had been built only two or three years earlier.

But The Hoax was shot in 2005 by guys on a budget, and so they’re not there. As lame as that sounds, that’s pretty much the reason why. Worse, the same tower- less shot is used in The Hoax again, around the two-thirds mark. Almost as if someone is saying to us, “Were you getting popcorn when that early missing- towers shot appeared? You were? Well, here it is again. See what screw-ups we are?”

I tried reaching Hoax producer Mark Gordon to ask (a) why Hallstrom or someone else hadn’t pointed out the error and hired a visual-effects house to paste the towers into the Battery skyline, or (b) why Hallstrom didn’t simply aim his cameras west or east or north. But it took the better part of a day just to get Gordon’s publicist’s number — the subliminal message seemed to be “please leave us alone.” So I called Mark Dornfeld at Custom Film Effects, the company that delivered most of the Hoax‘s CG visuals.

Dornfeld, amiable and easy-going, said “there was no discussion” about pasting in the towers — “it never came up” — but suggested that people should cut Hallstrom a break because “he’s not a native.” How much would it have cost if Hallstrom or Gordon had wanted Dornfeld to paste in the towers? “Ohh, I’d say maybe, let’s say, $3500 to $4000. We’re talking about pasting in a still image into a static shot, and it doesn’t have to be too distinct because there’s a lot of haze in the distance of lower Manhattan anyway, so….yeah, $3500 to $4000.”

I don’t know what else to say, guys. I didn’t go into The Hoax with an attitude, waiting to slam any errors I could find. It’s not a bad film at all, but if you show any audience from any country in the world a visual of lower Manhattan they’re going to look for one thing and one thing only — the twin towers if the film is set before 9.11.01, or the absence of the towers if it’s set after. Very simple, slam dunk, no discussion.

A revised estimate has been passed along about the projected gross for TMNT this weekend. A studio-based marketing guy is now saying it’ll be more like $25 to $35 million (he actually thinks it’ll be closer to $35 million) rather than the $20 to $25 million projection I reported yesterday or the day before.

I saw Lasse Hallstrom‘s The Hoax (Miramax, 4.6.07) last night in Westwood at a “special screening” (i.e., red-carpet photography but no after-party). It’s not without problems (or should I use the word “issues”?), but it’s not half-bad. The seams show from time to time (the budget was lean), but it’s better than decently made. A low-key caper movie-slash-ethical drama, The Hoax never once pissed me off, and that’s saying something by today’s standards.

Richard Gere schmoozing after Sunday night’s “special screening” of The Hoax

Set in the early ’70s, it’s about how author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere, giving one of his vigorous, all-out performances in the vein of Mr. Jones or Breathless) flim-flammed most of the world (including book publisher McGraw-Hill) into believing he’d persuaded reclusive wackjob billionaire Howard Hughes to tell all for a definitive autobiography.

The script is by William Wheeler (Empire, The Prime Gig). Marcia Gay Harden, the always superb Alfred Molina (as Irving’s partner-in-crime Richard Suskind), Julie Delpy (as Nina van Pallandt), Eli Wallach, Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci costar.

An actor named Michael J. Burg is billed as having played Truman Capote in the film — to the best of my recollection this performance isn’t in the film. Milton Buras is also credited on the IMDB for portraying Howard Hughes — his performance must have been cut out.

Irving has been quoted as saying, “I had nothing to do with this movie, and it had very little to do with me.”

When I think of Irving (whom I interviewed in the ’90s — I forget about what), I think of him lying on a sunny beach in Ibiza with Nina van Pallandt. But there’s no Ibiza stuff in the film — almost all of it was shot in and around New York City with some extra lensing in Puerto Rico

I’ll have a technical comment to share about the film tomorrow.

I was okay with Lasse Hallstrom‘s The Hoax (Miramax, 4.6), but — this column is often about the “but” factor — I can’t get over Hallstrom’s decision to let an early panoramic shot of New York City’s lower half (i.e., shot from the roof of a midtown skyscraper in the mid 40s, facing south) that momentarily destroys the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Those of you who know that The Hoax is a period film (it happens entirely in 1971 and early ’72) are probably guessing what the issue is already.

The film begins with a wind-blown Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) and his editor (Hope Davis) standing next to a helipad atop the McGraw-Hill building and awaiting the arrival of a chopper carrying the legendary Howard Hughes, whom Irving has allegedly been interviewing for an exclusive tell-all book. So when the camera takes a look at the lower-Manhattan sprawl, the viewer naturally expects to see the World Trade Center towers, which had been built only two or three years earlier.

But The Hoax was shot in 2005 by guys on a budget, and so they’re not there. As lame as that sounds, that’s what happened. Worse, the same tower-less shot is used in The Hoax again, around the two-thirds mark. Almost as if someone is saying to us, “Were you out getting popcorn when that early missing-towers shot appeared? You were? Well, here it is again. See what screw-ups we are?”

I tried reaching Hoax producer Mark Gordon to ask (a) why Hallstrom or someone else hadn’t pointed out the error and hired a visual-effects house to paste the towers into the Battery skyline, or (b) why Hallstrom didn’t simply aim his cameras west or east or north. But it took the better part of a day just to get Gordon’s publicist’s number — the subliminal message seemed to be “please leave us alone.” So I called Mark Dornfeld at Custom Film Effects, the company that delivered most of the Hoax‘s CG visuals.

Dornfeld, amiable and easy-going, said “there was no discussion” about pasting in the towers — “it never came up” — but suggested that people should cut Hallstrom a break because “he’s not a native.” How much would it have cost if Hallstrom or Gordon had wanted Dornfeld to paste in the towers? “Ohh, I’d say maybe, let’s say, $3500 to $4000. We’re talking about pasting in a still image into a static shot, and it doesn’t have to be too distinct because there’s a lot of haze in the distance of lower Manhattan anyway, so….yeah, $3500 to $4000.”

I don’t know what else to say, guys. I didn’t go into The Hoax with an attitude, waiting to slam any errors I could find. It’s not a bad film at all, but if you show any audience from any country in the world a visual of lower Manhattan they’re going to look for one thing and one thing only — the twin towers if the film is set before 9.11.01, or the absence of the tower if it’s set after. Very simple, slam dunk, no discussion.

“Page Six” says the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s rating s board “just might flip out” when they see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez‘s Grindhouse (Weinstein Co., 4.6), a wink-wink exploitation movie in quotes that’s being sold as a tribute to the cheeseball sex-and-violence flicks that used to play in urban downmarket movie theatres in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

Wait a minute…”might” flip out? As in “they haven’t seen it yet”? A little more than two weeks before opening? I don’t think I believe that. The Weinsteiners are looking for an R rating but “some of [the film] is so graphic and outrageous for a major Hollywood studio, there’s no question it’s headed for an NC-17 without big cuts,” says a ‘Page Six’ operative who got a sneak peek at the most over-the-top footage.”

So the risque footage may show up on the DVD instead of in theatres? I think most of us understand that system and are actually quite accustomed to it.

The same”Page Six” item also mentions that between the two Grindhouse movies (which are either called Death Planet and Terror Proof or Death Proof and Terror Planet or Planet Proof…same difference) — will be broken up by an intermission composed of a series of fake trailers “for such fictitious titles as Werewolf Women of the SS, directed by Rob Zombie. and another, directed by Hostel‘s Eli Roth, called Thanksgiving, “in which a town’s celebration of Turkey Day is interrupted by a mad slasher.”

Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.

Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse-themed programming schedule of ’70s and ’80s exploitation films at L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema omits one of the ugliest and most repellent s & m sleaze movies of all time — Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S..

Why did Tarantino omit this one? It stinks, it’s diseased, it was produced and performed by untalented people and it makes you feel skanky…why not?

Dyanne Thorne‘s Ilsa — a big-breasted blonde Nazi with a voracious sexual appetite straight out of David F. Freidman‘s libido — died at the end of this wretched film, but this didn’t stop Thorne and the producers from making three more Ilsa films — (1) Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, (2) Ilsa, The Wicked Warden and Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia. Anchor Bay has issued a reasonably good quality DVD box set featuring the first three — Siberia not included.

Ilsa came out of a ’70s sub-genre of grindhouse cinema that blended Nazis, riding crops and perverse sex, otherwise known as Naziploitation. (I remember the term “homosexual Nazi chic” included in a piece by critic Andrew Sarris in the late ’70s.). The genre began with two exercises in upscale perversity– Luchino Visconti‘s The Damned and Liliana Cavani‘s The Night Porter. But before you knew it the gates were down and the inmates were running the asylum with films like Salon Kitty (directed by Tinto Brass) plus Love Camp 7, Gestapo’s Last Orgy and Beast in Heat plus “Ilsa-clone” films like Elsa, Fraulien of the SS and Desert Foxes.

Tracking indicates that TMNT (Warner Bros,., 3.23), the jacked-up CGI’ed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick, is going to take the weekend. It’s at 83, 25 and 5, but you always have to figure higher with kiddie movies because phone surveyors don’t talk to six year-olds. It could do between $20 million and $25 million.

Close on the turtles’ heels will be Antoine Fuqua and Mark Wahlberg‘s Shooter (Paramount) — 59, 37, 10. It could do $12 to $15 million, maybe a bit more.

Everything else opening this weekend is looking weak. Mike Binder‘s Reign Over Me is at 56, 34 5 — good reviews so far, but the dogs aren’t eating the hamburger. The 5% first choice is better than last week, but when you’re four days away from opening you need to be at 10% or 12% or you’re dead meat.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is at 74, 26 and 7 — marginal. Robert Shaye‘s The Last Mimzy, which was previewed last Saturday night, is at 48, 24 and 5. Pride (Lionsgate), the swim-team movie with Terence Howard, is at 36, 29 and 2.

This anti-Hilary Clinton You Tube ad (i.e., “Hilary 1984”), which went up fairly recently, has been disavowed by spokespersons for Barack Obama‘s campaign, who are saying they had “nothing whatsover” to do with it. It’s a fairly stunning attack ad — stunning for its anger and the obvious fact that its creator sees Clinton as some kind of liberal Big Brother figure. It’s a sampling, of course, of the classic Apple 1984 ad that ran way back when. Fact is, it’s fairly brilliant.

A San Francisco Chronicle piece by Carla Marinucci that ran yesterday says Hilary 1984 “may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate — one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising.

The creator of Hilary 1984, which lasts 74 seconds, flatly declares his/her allegiance to Obama at the very end, and yet no one knows (or will confide) who cut the ad together. And yet the piece seems to be about more than just a preference for Obama over Clinton — it seems to be making a profound point about online vs. broadcast television as a source of general information, news and ads.

The spot represents “a new era, a new wave of politics…because it’s not about Obama,” says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. “It’s about the end of the broadcast era.”

“But some say the ad is just the latest attempt by outside activists to influence political campaigns,” Marinucci writes, “or the newest way for campaigns to anonymously attack their opponents.”

They’re live! “Screaming Huckabees”is live! “Get ’em while they’re hot before Russell’s lawyer (or Tomlin’s) swoops in and takes ’em down. Tomlin is more aggressive in this clip, no question. (She’s funny, though.) Russell doesn’t sound like the aggressor until the very end of the second clip….then he goes blooey.