Okay, it’s true — Robin Williams has gone into rehab. Anyone who faces up to a problem and tries to do something about it deserves respect and support. Presumably he’ll be out and jazzed when he starts doing publicity for Man of the Year (Universal, 10.15), which is said to be his best film is a while. Barry Levinson‘s too.

“Watching World Trade Center, I thought of several prominent critics who argued that United 93 was little more than a conventional Hollywood heroism saga in verite-documentary clothing. It’s true the filmmakers didn’t frame 9/11 in the context of a larger geopolitical struggle. But United 93 did lay out, in haunting detail and with stunning immediacy, the lack of military preparedness, the garbled lines of government communication, and the absence, for all practical purposes, of a commander in chief. If it was indeed a saga of heroism, its heroes weren’t conventionally introduced, and all, unconventionally, perished [and was therefore] a fitting monument to people who turned out to be Washington, D.C.’s last and only line of defense.” — David Edelstein, New York magazine.

I don’t mean to be a killjoy but those Metacritic review samples for Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center (opening today) average out to a 68% positive. Any grade below 70 is a flunk unless the teacher likes you and cuts you a break, and there are some stiff rebukes out there, particularly from L.A. Times critic Kenny Turan, New York critic David Edelstein, and Toronto Globe & Mail critic Rick Groen.
Not that moviegoers give a damn what these guys think, but still…
The question facing WTC is whether paying audiences will be sufficiently enamored with the film’s plainly emotional, family-centric, non-political current to bypass the second-act confinement problem. Patriots, righties, flag-saluters, supporters of the Iraq War, etc. — Paramount needs you guys to turn out in force and push World Trade Center past a low-to-mid 20s showing for the weekend and a low-30s showing for the full five days.

Whenever Apocalypto gets released, it may not be Disney/Touchstone booking the theatres. Fox 411’s Roger Friedman is quoting “sources” in his 12.9 story that says that Disney/ Touchstone is “shopping” Mel Gibson‘s movie Apocalypto — i.e., looking to dump it because it was a tough sell in the first place, and now it’s even tougher and they don’t want the headache. And I’m hearing also that the film is in play. An L.A. marketing source tells me “no one” except Disney wanted Apocalpto when it was first offered so the enthusiasm levels of a new distributor would be open to question.
I made some calls this morning and spoke to a distribution executive in the position to know, and he/she acknowledged that Friedman’s story has merit. I have calls out to other distributors who may or may not share something, but the most likely suitors would be Bob Berney’s Picturehouse (Berney’s Newmarket distribbed The Passion of the Christ) or Lionsgate.
A few days ago I wrote about the possibility of Touchstone delaying the release date into March of April of ’07 — dumping Apocalypto altogether is obviously another equation. If Disney’s Dick Cook is indeed shopping it around, he’s doing so because (a) Gibson has signed off on this or (b) Disney corporate doesn’t like the anti-Semitic taint attached to the Gibson name, etc.

Esquire‘s Chuck Klosterman totally gets the Snakes on a Plane sham of a mockery of a mockery of a sham.
The ironical appreciation of Snakes “is based on the premise that the bad movie aspired to be good,” he says. “If a film never takes itself seriously and originates as satire, everything is different; its badness means something else entirely.” Right.
“SOAP doesn’t fit into either category: It doesn’t take itself seriously, but it’s not a satire. It will probably be unentertaining in a completely conventional way. Which, apparently, is what people want.” Apparently.
“They want to see Snakes on a Plane in order to tell their friends that it’s ridiculous, even though (a) that’s the only thing everyone seems to know about this movie, and (b) that’s been the driving force behind its marketing campaign. It’s not a bad movie that’s accidentally good, and it’s not a good movie that’s intentionally bad; it’s a disposable movie that people can pretend to like ironically, even though (a) it’s not ironic and (b) they probably won’t like it at all.” And it doesn’t matter.
“The only purpose of Snakes on a Plane is to make its audience feel smarter than what it’s seeing. Which adds up, since that’s part of the reason people like reading the internet.” Yes…yes!

I remember having a quick chat with IFC Films topper Jonathan Sehring and IFC marketing exec Ryan Werner near the end of last year’s Toronto Film Festival, and being asked what I liked that hadn’t been picked up. I said I was pretty taken with Abel Ferrara‘s Mary, which I’d seen a night or two earlier. Obviously a marginal type deal, I added, but it felt to me like Ferrara’s best since Bad Lieutenant. The costars are Matthew Modine, Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche.

Here it is almost a year later and after the usual prolonged wrangling, IFC has picked up domestic rights to this “long-languishing film,” as Stu Van Airsdale reports and describes on his “Reeler” blog.
Here’s another idea for IFC: as an extra on their Mary DVD, they should include Not Guilty, Rafi Pitts‘ richly entertaining documentary about Ferrara that I saw and reviewed while covering the Locarno Film Festival in July ’03. (I’d provide a link to my Not Guilty piece, but my colleagues at the site formerly know as Movie Poop Shoot have taken down my column archives.) The doc never turned up anywhere else, but it seemed quite good to me.
Stu says there’s “no word yet” on a Mary release date, “and the details do not specify whether or not IFC will be releasing via its First Take day-and-date arm.”

Talladega Nights got a B from CinemaScore. If a movie’s getting a solild positive response it gets an A or an A-minus. Anything below a B-plus means the word isn’t sensational. Perhaps this explains that 12% Friday-to-Saturday drop last weekend. I would figure on Talladega business being down 45% to 50% this weekend, or a gross in the low 20s.

John Horn is reporting that an L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll about movie-viewing habits says youths “are willing to watch brand-new movies at home rather than in theaters, are starting to use their [computers] as their entertainment gateway and are slowly turning to their iPods and cellphones for video programming.” Fine, but some of the wording in this story feels vague.
47% of 12 to 17 year-olds contacted by Times/Bloomberg pollsters say they “would” watch a movie on a computer, which is higher than the percentage of those amenable to watching films on their cell phones (11%) or video iPods (18%). What does “would” mean in this context? I “would” eat a hotdog made of ground-up gorilla intestines if I was desperately hungry enough, but would I order one if I could just as easily order a nice Greek salad with warm pita bread on the side? Watching a flick on a decent-sized laptop screen is okay, but who in the world would willingly settle for this with an option of seeing a film on a 36″ flat-screen, a 60″ high-def screen or a movie screen?
The Times/Bloomberg poll seems to suggest that picture size, sharpness and richness of texture don’t matter as much to younger teens as they do, say, to older movie buffs in their 30s or 40s. We all know younger teens teens don’t have access to plusher viewing modes, amd yet something tells me they’re not that enthused about micro-screen viewings. There’s a big difference between being okay with something and seriously liking it.

Congrats to Ronan Graffiti’s Steven Santos and Marcus Levy for throwing together this trailer for Signs of Anti-Semitism, a forthcoming Mel Gibson thriller. It starts out perfectly, peters out a bit, then rebounds with a Woody Allen clip at the end. If they’d only made the font for the words “of Anti Semitism” exactly the same as that for “Signs”. It’s still pretty good though.

I guess we’re never going to see any stills of Ben Affleck in that those old, clunky-looking TV series Superman suits he wears in Allen Coulter‘s Hollywoodland (Focus Features, 9.8). He wears them in two or three scenes — the brown-and-gray tunic (worn when the show was shot in black and white) once, and once or twice in the brilliant red and blue outfit. There must be a prohibition in effect. I don’t know why this is interesting, but here’s an exclusive shot of the two suits from IGN’s “Stax” Flixburg.

When I was at San Diego Comic-Con two or three weeks ago I flipped through a copy of Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon‘s “The 9/11 Report”, a 144-page graphic-novel version of that 2004 document. There’s something weird about looking at comic-book images of that day and reading approximation terms like “WHOOOM!” to describe the sound of United #175 slamming into the south tower. But if you’re going to illustrate something like this I guess there’s no avoiding generic moves. Jacobson and Colon are old pros, both in their 70s.

You’d think there’d be a prominent mention of this book on the site for Hill & Wang, the division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux that’s publishing…but there’s not. (And it doesn’t turn up when you do an in-site search.) “The 9/11 Report” will be in book stores as of 8.22. The thing that would really sell, I imagine, would be a graphic novel version of Loose Change.

Women are often disrobed and filmed in a stylish, lip-smacking way in Brian DePalma’s films, and the trailer for The Black Dahlia (Universal, 9.15) seems to indicate he’s maintaining his signature. Nothing wrong with this — just predictable. The forthcoming booking at the Edinburgh Film Festival (8.14 to 8.27) is fine, but my reservations still hold.