The boat sailed on this Michael Bay/rejected Dark Knight script parody four or five days ago. It may as well have been posted last May. The world has moved on. But it’s funny so here it is anyway. Posted by Jared on www.spill.com.

Why is this “shock the rubes” gay makeout stunt, staged for a sequence in Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Bruno movie, only being reported now (7.8) by The Smoking Gun when it happened a full month ago? No reporters in Arkansas picked up on this? Asleep at the wheel.

“Lured by $1 beer and the prospect of ‘hot chicks’ and ‘hardcore fights,’ thousands of Arkansans were duped last month into appearing as extras in comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest staged mayhem,” the story says. “Cohen and his confederates organized cage fighting programs on consecutive days in Texarkana and Fort Smith.
“Both cards ended with two male grapplers (one was identified as ‘Straight Dave‘ and wore camouflage) tearing each other’s clothes off and, while in underwear, kissing down their opponent’s chest. This man-on-man action triggered Fort Smith fans to throw chairs and beer at the ring, according to one cop present at the city’s convention center.”

It’ll only cost $3 to attend Thursday night’s screening of Nicholas Ray‘s King of Kings at the American Cinematheque. Much of this 1961 Samuel Bronston epic is either pompous or tedious — some of it is painful — but I’d attend anyway if they would present a 70mm print of it, which of course they’re not. Burn me once with a slightly frayed 35mm print of Ben-Hur, shame on them. Burn me twice, shame on me.

The casting of the 37 year-old Siobhan McKenna (37 going on 52) as Mary, mother of Jesus, is ludicrous — a solemn earthy Irish woman straight out of Sean O’Casey and James Joyce with her clearly lined face, alabaster Irish complexion and faintly suppressed Dublin accent.
There are nonetheless five worthwhile things about this film: (a) Miklos Rosza‘s score, particularly the overture; (b) Ron Randell‘s performance as Lucius, the thoughtful, morally conflicted Centurion; (b) Jeffrey Hunter‘s lead performance during the last third; (d) the shots that show perfect focus in both the foreground and background (which was pretty amazing during a time in which films would commonly rack focus to catch the foreground or background, but never both); and (e) the eloquent narration by Ray Bradbury.
Bradbury is going to show up before the show and talk about his work on the film.

Yesterday’s withdrawal timetable statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki — he claimed he’s negotiating a deal with Washington that will set a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign forces as part of a framework for a U.S. troop presence into next year — couldn’t be better news for Barack Obama and couldn’t be worse news for John McCain, who’s made staying the course in Iraq the centerpiece of his campaign.
Maliki’s statement “was the first time that Baghdad’s Shiite-led government has made a pullout deadline a condition for a promised new agreement with the United States for a troop presence into 2009.” This seems to me like the big defining moment of the ’08 Presidential race, the end of the legitimacy of the Bush-McCain hang touch policy, and a Godsend to the Obama camp — and the news guys are barely paying attention to it. Could I be missing something? If I am, I can’t figure what.

Berlin’s liberal, openly gay mayor Klaus Wowereit favors the idea of Barack Obama giving a speech at the Brandenburg Gate when he travels to Berlin later this month, although the conservative-minded German chancellor Angela Merkel, famed on this side of the Atlantic for getting a creepy back rub from George Bush in 2006, is against it.

Wowereit, Obama, Merkel

The Brandenburg Gate is the “most famous and history-rich location in Germany,” a Chancellery source told Der Spiegel‘s Carsten Volkery in a piece posted today. “In the past, it has only been used on very special occasions for addresses by politicians, and when, then only by elected American presidents. More clearly stated: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would be better off looking for another location in the German capital to hold a speech.”
Wowereit, however, “appeared unimpressed by the warning from Merkel’s office and said during a press conference on Tuesday that he would be pleased if Obama were to address the public at the Brandenburg Gate.
A spokesperson for the local government told Der Spiegel that “the decision over where Obama should make his appearance was in the hands of the city council of Berlin and not the chancellor’s office or the federal government.
“Some suspect Mayor Wowereit’s remarks may be self-serving,” the article says. No!
Jurgen Trittin, deputy floor leader of The Green Party in the German parliament, has predicted that Obama would end up getting his JFK moment at the Brandenburg Gate. “Do you think that Wowereit would miss the chance to appear alongside Barack Obama?,” he reportedly asked an interviewer on the German news channel N24. “I believe Wowereit is thinking [Obama] should appear [and] I will come into the picture and everything will be great.”

A couple of hours ago Nikki Finke posted an exclusive report concerning Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards project. She wrote that (a) the script went out yesterday (Monday) to Universal, Warner Bros and Paramount, and to Sony today, and (b) that there’s “a possibility” that Harvey Weinstein will be producing (along with Lawrence Bender) but not financing it, which “certainly adds fuel to those rumors that The Weinstein Co is having movie money woes.”

The question I would have asked if one of my agent sources had called me about this is “how many pages”? Is it, like, 180 or 200 pages? I ask because of that reported-about interview between original Inglorious Bastards director Enzo G. Castellari and Tarantino on the forthcoming three-disc DVD (out 7.29) of his 1978 film reveals that Tarantino’s new version will be a two-parter like Kill Bill. In other words, something that may be leisurely paced, elephantine, long.
If I was running production at one of the four studios, I would insist that everyone reading and making a call about Tarantino’s Bastards script should also see Castellari’s original 99-minute film, which came out in ’78. We all know that Tarantino routinely flavors his scripts with his sassy talky-talk, and that Bastards, though set in World War II, will completely ignore the idioms of G.I. speech at that time in favor of the Quentin music. Which is fine. But I would want to know if the “music” or perhaps the extra plotting is really worth the expense of making and releasing two movies. (If, that is, the script indeed runs around 180 or 200 pages. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the movie Tarantino talks about on the Bastards DVD is no more.)
It may also be that Tarantino’s Bastards has a natural “fighting weight” length of 180 minutes or longer, and no ifs, ands or buts. But I also might insist, depending on the length of the script, that the theatrical version of the film be shot and cut to run no more than 115 to 120 minutes, and that a three-hour version (or perhaps a Part I and Part II) be confined to the DVD market. Because I really wouldn’t want to go through any sort of Grindhouse-type experience.
And because I believe that any movie or novel or essay is always a little better if it’s been pruned and tightened to within an inch of its life. The Tarantino I’ve heard about all these years doesn’t know from pruning. He is no longer, by most accounts, the guy he was in ’92 or ’94 or even ’97. He seems to be someone who believes in and stokes the fires of his own legend, and who seems to have a sense of his own genius, invincibility and entitlement. Not a mentality, in short, that’s likely to produce something lean and mean.

A “predictably glossy screen adaptation of the Abba-scored musical” that uses bigscreen names like Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan for the leads and adds lush Greek exteriors” that are made to look “glitzy” and “over-polished,” Mamma Mia! plays out more like an oversized Abba promotional vehicle than a fully dramatic piece,” writes Variety‘s Jordan Mintzer.
His point is basically that the film will make lots of money off its huge female fan base, partly or largely because of the “fun” element that was recently praised by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Ray Bennett. But the direction by Phyllida Lloyd (who directed the stage musical) and the screenplay by Catherine Johnson is not, he strongly implies, up to the level of Baz Luhrman, Lars von Trier or Milos Forman.
“The singing-and-dancing work for the basic excitement and energy of a live performance, but an additional boost of cinematic prowess is needed to sustain a similar rhythm on film,” he notes. “Johnson and theater-opera vet Lloyd” — both in their first screen outing — “can’t seem to find the right tone or style for their globally celebrated material.
“Most of the chorus dance numbers — especially ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ and ‘Voulez-vous’ — feel over-shot and over-cut, never allowing for the pleasure of a sustained, well-choreographed performance. Other, more intimate songs — including the beach-set ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ and the cliff-set ‘The Winner Takes It All’ — feature a twirling Steadicam that does a better job of depicting the gorgeous coastline than the lip-synching cast.
“Thesping is all-around pro, although some stars, especially the bouncy and rejuvenated Meryl Streep, seem better suited for musical comedy than others, including Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard.
“Despite the obvious time and energy devoted to smooth transitioning between studio and location scenes (both are shot realistically yet theatrically by d.p. Haris Zambarloukos), tech work often feels more rushed than mastered. Poor dubbing in some of the outdoor sequences tends to take away from the filmmakers’ insistence that we’re actually there.”

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is tracking the strongest among Friday’s openers — 77, 33 and 15. Journey to the Center of the Earth is at 82, 21 and 7 (fair, needs to do better), and Eddie Murphy‘s Meet Dave is running at 65, 17 and 2 (bomb).
The Dark Knight (opening 7.18) is running at 85, 65 and 31 overall. The first choice figure among older and younger men is 41, at 25 among younger women, and 19 among older women. Obviously looking at very big business. Mamma Mia, which is opening against Knight, is running 19 for first choice among 25-plus women, but at 8 first choice overall. Older and younger men aren’t interested. Space Chimps (also opening on 7.18) is running at 48, 12 and 0.
Stepbrothers, opening on 7.25, is at 66, 37 and 2 — people aren’t focusing at this stage, campaign has some work to do. The X-Files: I Want to Believe, opening the same day, is at 59, 23 and 3.

I wrote a private letter to a publicist friend this evening, but I said a few things that can be passed along for general attribution. The question was about my striking a negative tone with a lot of big-studio product, so I tried to answer it…that’s not true about “trying” because it just sort of poured out.
“Look, [name]…here it is. My family lost 40% of its membership within the last four months (my sister and father both died) and I’m feeling nihilistic and fuck-all about things to some extent, and since my column is about what I’m feeling, doing, experiencing, tasting, worrying about, foreseeing, you name it…I’m probably responding to a growing sense of darkness and mortality around me and expressing reactions in a way that follows suit. That’s the genuine honest truth.
“On top of which I’m finding a freer, less inhibited voice these days. It’s hard and strenuous, but it feels amazing at the same time. You try writing eight to ten stories a day and see what comes out. After a while you can’t do the equivocating, smiley-face, loyal-opposition tightrope dance from the business-as-usual playbook. It’s the Wild West with a lot of rootin’ tootin’ buckaroos and gunslingers out there, and in the midst of this I’m trying to create something that may one day be construed to have had a semblance of value.
“I believe devoutly in writing well. And nobody, trust me, can write well while eagerly fellating the bottom-line, bottom-of-the-barrel corporate sausage factories. So what I’m trying to get into and create on a day-to-day basis isn’t the usual-usual. It’s more real and down to it, and I’m not so sure that’s such a bad thing.
“I’ve just hated much of what the big studios have put out in the last few months. So what? Who am I, Spartacus? The French resistance? I’m a small businessman trying to stand out and be a special read that you can’t find anywhere else, and at the same time make enough ad money to afford to help my kids out and maybe visit them once or twice a year.
“Who gives a shit if I don’t like corporate mass-market movies? Who cares if I don’t like the crap that the big studios put out in the late winter, spring and summer? Nobody does. I mean, except for the Hummer-drivin’ stooges out there who pay to see these movies regardless. Even if we all know they’re nowhere near as happy about these films as they’d like them to be.
“You and I know that the big studios are still making more and more crappy corporate product, and since I’m in the business of banging out eight to ten stories a day, what do you want to me to do? Become Leonard Maltin? Even if I wanted to, Leonard Maltin is taken by Leonard Maltin.
“The world is collapsing, descending into chaos, destroying itself with tribal warfare and asphyxiating itself with fossil fuels. And in a certain spiritual way, corporate Hollywood product is a part of this implosion/self destruction.
“You know it’s getting worse and worse and not likely to change. Except for this and that fall/holiday exception, the big studios don’t make movies for movie lovers like myself. They sorta did before from time to time; now they mostly don’t. They make big expensive crap-sausage movies that will hopefully turn a profit, and you know it. They make them for the unwashed, overweight taste-free homies who pay to see movies that go boom, fart, whee! and splat. You know it, I know it — why play games with each other and pretend otherwise?”

And speaking of great-looking classic one-sheets, I’ve had this color scan of an early Bulworth poster sitting in my office closet for exactly 10 years and three months.

Key poster-at image for Warren Beatty’s Bulworth

I remember interviewing the artist-marketer — the guy who took Warren Beatty‘s rough idea for a single-image concept and made it into an actual poster that stood on its own two feet — for my L.A. Times Syndicate column. I think it’s one of the greatest movie posters ever, and I can’t even find the ’98 article or the name of the guy I spoke to. I know he was living in Manhattan when we spoke.