Without running a photo or naming the guy in this space, it’s just amazing — staggering — how unstoppable self-destructive urges seem to be in some people, despite the certainty of exposure and brutal consequences.

“Like any good celebrity today, Diana perfected the illusion of accessibility, exuding the common touch although she was anything but. The tension between her new, and Queen Elizabeth II’s old, brand of royal image-making is at the heart of Stephen Frears‘ The Queen, as the out-of-touch queen (Helen Mirren) grapples with the public and media clamor for some hint of feeling from the palace in response to the princess’s death.
“Afterward, Elizabeth bitterly realizes: ‘I’ve never been hated like that before. Nowadays people want glamour and tears, the grand performance.’
“What Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) tries to persuade her to embrace, what Blair and Diana so viscerally understood, was the need for an emotional performance in a touchy-feely media age. Ms. Mirren makes Elizabeth immensely moving in her quaint belief that her subjects want stoic reserve and dignity from their monarch. But Diana was Oprah and Blair her Dr. Phil; no contest.” — Caryn James in today’s (10.11.06) N.Y. Times — “Royal P.R.: People’s Princess Obliterates the Stiff Upper Lip”

“I’ve always been interested in films that address the contemporary situation. Historical films interest me more as history than art. I have, perhaps, 10 years of films left in me, and I’m perfectly content to ride the broken-down horse called movies into the cinematic sunset. But if I were starting out (at the beginning of my narrative, so to speak), I doubt I’d turn to films as defined by the 20th century for personal expression.”
So says Paul Schrader, in a preface to a very long article now available in the September-October issue of Film Comment. It’s called “Canon Fodder”, with a subhead that reads, “As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks?”
The only thing things that seems profound and penetrating to me about films coming out today are those with elements that stem directly from “films as defined by the 20th Century.” Most filmmakers and film lovers I know and respect care deeply about re-stating and carrying the banner for the aesthetic standards of 20th Century cinema into the new millenium. I don’t know what form of creative endeavor Schrader would pursue today if he were 21 and just starting out. Video games? Creative terrorism? Running his own website with some form of online performance-confessional a la Jamie Stuart?

The obviously cool thing about this trailer for Grind House (Weinstein Co./Dimension, 4.6.07) is that it’s been processed to look like a banged-up American International trailer left over from 1973. As I wrote on 10.2, the pic is composed of two high-style wank-off movies in one — Robert Rodriguez‘s Planet Proof and Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Terror. That’s a reference to my getting the titles wrong before, of course. They’re actually called Planet Terror and Death Proof.

Still from Grindhouse trailer; Rose McGowan

The other thing that pops through is how pistol-hot Rose McGowan looks. Her outfits provide at least a portion of understanding as to why Rodriguez mingled with McGowan between takes, a move that led to the end of his 16-year marriage to Elizabeth Avellan . (Thanks to the MovingPictureBlog‘s Joe Leydon for the link.)

“Rarely do words as stark as ‘heroism’ get parsed in filmmaking, but that’s just what Clint Eastwood‘s World War II feature Flags Of Our Fathers does. A diffuse and demanding picture that, as with most Eastwood films, takes a while to find its stride, it should nevertheless see good upscale market business, as well as make a deep critical footprint that will ensure awards consideration.” — from Brent Simon‘s review in the 10.11 Screen Daily.

The latest Jamie Stuart New York Film Festival video is mainly about hair — i.e., Stuart’s sparse Soderberghian thatch vs. the angular, abundant topside forest that has always been a component with David Lynch, director of the NYFF-screened Inland Empire . Stuart doesn’t get into how the the film plays, what others seemed to think of it, or the whys and wherefores of Lynch’s decision to self-distribute it.

Another would-be Oscar contender has been dinged just as it rushes out of the starting gate. Nicholas Hytner‘s film version of Alan Bennett ‘s Tony-award-winning play The History Boys has finally been reviewed out of London (two days before its commercial opening over there), and if the word of Variety‘s Leslie Felperin is to be given any weight, there appears to be trouble in River City.

“The History Boys may please fans of the original legit production and the stragglers who didn’t catch it in Gotham or London’s West End,” Helperin begins. “However, auds coming cold to this largely faithful adaptation of Bennett’s clever but contrived classroom comedy won’t be so wowed, given pic’s irrevocably stagy feel.
“Hytner’s flat-footed direction doesn’t help, nor do pic’s younger cast members’ over-rehearsed perfs, [and] the blow-up to the bigscreen makes the original material’s fault lines look more chasm-like. Bennett’s glittery dialogue may encrust the material with jewel-bright, quotable lines, but it sounds just plain phony in the mouths of the younger characters. Plus, the younger actors are so used to inhabiting their roles that all the spontaneity has been squeezed out, although a couple (Barnett, Parker) get better results.
“In the end, they nearly all sound like Alan Bennett characters — and ones who would be more comfortable in the 1950s than the 1980s — rather than real people. Essentially, they’re vehicles to air competing ideas about education, homoerotic desire, and how history is written. All interesting stuff, but it never quite gels as a drama.”

Hollywood Bytes columnist Elizabeth Snead dropped by last night’s Flags of Our Fathers premiere after-party, which I would have liked to attend. And not just for the free food, which was probably of a higher quality than the offerings at Oki-Dog.

This is hilarious — Terry Gilliam on the streets plugging the Manhattan opening of Tideland (IFC, 10.13) and looking for loose change in the bargain. I’ve seen most of Tideland (I walked out after an hour) and this clip is fifteen times more entertaining. Gilliam’s spirit is infectious.

But why has David Lynch arranged to self-distribute Inland Empire, his 172 minute, digitally-shot “fever dream” flick, before the end of the year? What were Lynch’s concrete options before he decided to go this way? Manohla Dargis wrote some respectful things about Empire, but what are the buyers really saying about it behind closed doors? Was nobody was making a serious offer? Gregg Goldstein‘s Hollywood Reporter story is vague about this stuff.

Diane Sawyer: “How much did you read of people who came out and said, Do not work with him again? What do you feel about them?”

Mel Gibson: “I feel sad because they’ve obviously been hurt and frightened and offended enough to feel that they have to do that. Um, and it’s their choice. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

— excerpted from two-part interview Sawyer has taped with Gibson, set to air on Thursday and Friday morning on “Good Morning, America”

Columnist Ray Richmond has mentioned a half-assed site called Celebrity Ranker that claims to calculate how popular and sexy someone with a lot of internet exposure may be. It ranks people by sifting through Google and tabulating the pages focusing on this or that celebrity, which Ranker says number 23,706. (That’s appalling in itself — 23,706 celebrities pressuring maitre d’s to seat them in restaurants before others.)
But the rankings sound like total bullshit. As Richmond points out, George Clooney is only the 3,486th most popular celeb and the 4,618th sexiest. Really? I put in the names of the three Departed stars. Leonardo DiCaprio is behind Clooney in popularity (ranking at #3940 — his popularity rating is 5.127 on a scale of 0 to 7) but ahead in sexiness (#3947). Matt Damon wipes the floor with DiCaprio in terms of popularity (#2500 with a 5.706 rating) but loses out in terms of sexiness (ranked as # 5312). And Jack Nicholson is behind them both with #3689 popularity ranking and a sexy rating of # 6670….whoa!
Among internet columnists, David Poland out-rates me in tems of popularity — he’s #7941 and 4.033 compared to my ranking of #8949 and 3.762 — but I’ve been judged to be much sexier — #4502 compared to Poland’s #6305. But we’re both sexier than Nicholson. (How exactly does this site equate sexiness with internet page views again? Just trying to understand this as best I can.)
Let’s see…Fox 411‘s Roger Friedman is the 8,249th most popular guy online and the 4322nd sexiest. (Beating out Poland and myself in the latter category.) The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is the 9122nd most popular and the 7709th most sexy. Harry Knowles is more popular than Poland with a #6689 ranking but less sexy with a ranking of #6511. Hollywood Wiretap columnist Pete Hammond is the 9916th most popular and the 6200th most sexy. L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has an #8787 popularity rating and a sexy ranking of #7719. And Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson has a #6098 popularity ranking and has been judged the 7010th most sexy. Eat my dust, Goldstein!
What I’d like to know is, who the hell are all those celebrities with popularity and sexiness rankings in the realms of 12,000, 15,000 and 20,000, given that most big-name celebrities seem to have numbers in the 3000 and 4000 range and internet columnists are more in the range of 4000 to 9000? You’d have to be a real scumbag with hair growing out of your nose to have, say, a popularity ranking of 14,978 and a sexy rating of 16,235. Think about this. You’d have to be a Serbian war criminal with hives, halitosis and a chronic farting problem to rank in the 20,000 range.
And just think — some psuedo-celebrity out there has been ranked in last place. Who could that be?