“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” — Napoleon Bonaparte. In other words, better to have ridden high and drunk the electric brew, however briefly, than to have never ridden at all.

This 8.4 Associated Press article is the first significant “soft” piece about Mel Gibson. It has quotes from some Giibson friends, some of them Jewish, giving him a pass. Okay, fine. But a guy I know who worked with Gibson over a decade ago, and he’s has written and told me he “believe[s] all this shit.” He calls Gibson a “bigoted man, now and forever” and “a bigoted son of a bitch.” But life is fluid and moving and people grow. Look at how Bobby Kennedy evolved from ’62 to ’67. And the impulse to stand by a guy you like or respect during his hour of need is a noble one. We all need understanding, forgiveness, a second chance. Let’s just leave it at that.

I’ve seen a million trailers like this one for Joe Carnahan‘s Smokin’ Aces (Universal, 2.16.07). Why, then, does it seem way hipper than the others? Maybe I’m easily impressed, but it does seem funny. Jeremy Piven (Entourage ‘s “Ari Gold”) is a Vegas stand-up comic who’s decided to rat out some organized crime figures, which of course results in a couple of assassins (Ben Affleck, Alicia Keys) being sent to silence him. And of course there’s an FBI agent (Ryan Reynolds) looking to keep Piven alive. “Forget Hollywoodland — this is the movie that will bring acceptance back to Affleck,” a reader enthused about a half-hour ago.

Word around the campfire is that Nicole Kidman‘s performance as celebrated art-gallery photographer Diane Arbus is the best thing about Fur. As for the film itself, some are using the A word, as in “arty.” Or as in, “It turned out a little artier than what some in the loop were expecting.”

In some circles “arty” means index-finger-up-the-butt precious, but shouldn’t an Arbus biopic, of all biopics, have a kind of art-gallery feeling? An aura of artified apartness? If I’d directed this puppy I would have shot it in 35mm black-and-white.
The director is Steven Shainberg (Secrretary), who worked from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson and a book by Patricia Bosworth. Picturehouse is releasing Fur sometime in November, following what I’m told will be a debut at the Toronto Film Festival.
Arbus commited suicide in 1971 at age 48. Why is it that the final acts in the lives of so many gifted 20th Century artists (Arbus, Harry Nilsson, Sylvia Plath, Jean-MIchel Basqiat) end on a black note? Suicide obviously lends a quasi-tragic dimension and also gives the biographer or screenwriter an “ending”, but there are few cliches as groaningly tiresome as that of the self-destructive genius.

I don’t mean to go anal, but there’s this nagging issue with the blue contact lenses that Maria Bello wears for her part as John McLoughlin‘s wife Donna in World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.9). Reader Rich Frank observed yesterday that her eyes “are a weird, translucent blue and the pupils never seem to change size. Every time they went for a close-up I couldn’t help but stare at her eyes. Sure enough, in the photos on her IMDB page her peepers are deep brown.”

Maria Bello in World Trade Center) (l.) and A History of Violence (r.)

I noticed this too but I tried to push it away. There’s a weirdness in those artifical blues — almost a Village of the Damed quality — and this seems to get in the way of Bello’s fine performance, at least in the early stages. (I forgot about them during the scond half.) I presume Bello used the contacts because Donna’s eyes are blue and she wanted that extra measure of similarity. That’s understandable, but only Donna and her friends and family know she has blue eyes so it obviously didn’t matter that much. It’s not a huge deal but Oliver Stone probably should have said something.
Maybe Bello is one of those actors, like Laurence Olivier, who needs to alter her physicality in some way to get out of her self and become the character. Peter Ustinov once said that in his own skin and using his own voice Olivier never exactly filled the air with electricity. But give him a fake nose or a wig or something that took him out of his natural being and he was off to the races.
“I wouldn’t have mentioned this except it’s the second time in a month that colored lenses have become an issue,” Frank continued. “The same thing happened with Brandon Routh in Superman Returns. I knew going in that he did not have naturally blue eyes, so it became really distracting every time I saw those Master Po contacts.”

Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center is being celebrated by the patriot crowd, conservatives and right-leaning pundits as the best hooray-for-the-USA film in a long time. And they’re correct — it does work on this level, although not in any kind of divisive, anti-liberal way. Like I wrote earlier, I’m fine with it. It didn’t offend my political sensibilities, I mean. I can’t imagine it offending anyone’s.

This is why it’s starting to seem likely it’ll be one of the five Best Picture nominees. Because mainstream American moviegoers are always saying Hollywood movies always are a little too caught up in industry lifestyles and liberal attitudes, and here, for a change, is a straight-up emotional film from the heart of the Hollywood beast that any middle-aged Republican farmer from Iowa can go to with his wife and say, “Yeah, my kind of movie.”
This means if it gets Best Picture nominated you know that a lot of the people who profess not to care about the Oscars will probably tune in and root for it. (The last year when the audience jumped as ’99, when Titanic was Best Picture-nominated.) And that means higher ratings and the possibility of higher ad revenues.
It’s good politics to include a “heartland people movie” among the five nominees. That’s why it was a mistake to exclude Walk the Line last year. It deserved to be among the top five anyway, but nominating it for political reasons would have made sense. I realize, obviously, the Academy members don’t weight the political implications of their choices for Best Pictures, but still…
Now that I’m thinking about, I’m wondering why Paramount isn’t sneaking World Trade Center this weekend? Like I wrote yesterday, it’s going to do about $25 million give or take, but it would probably make more than $30 million and the word would go out faster with a nationwide sneak.

If I could clap my hands three times and rid the world of the Mozilla ActiveX plugin, I would clap my hands three times. You need to load the damn thing to watch trailers on the AOL Moviefone site but which it won’t load. The latest trailer I can’t watch because of this problem is one for Barry Levinson‘s Man of the Year (Universal, 10.13.06), an allegedly shrewd and restrained political comedy with Robin Williams, Laura Linney and Christopher Walken.
A friend who saw Man of the Year at a small screening a few months ago swore up and down it’s funny and corrosive and Levinson’s best since Wag the Dog. But I couldn’t accept her word (she’s not the most cultivated cineaste) so I called Barry’s reps and his producers to ask some questions about it, and they all said “who?…what?…too early.”

No director has swerved up and down and back and forth like Barry Levinson. Whenever a new movie of his comes along, everyone always asks, “Will it be a good Barry or a bad Barry?” There are actually two bad Barry’s — the guy who makes expensive commercial crap (Sphere, Indiana Holmes and the Temple of Doom) and modest, lower-profile commercial crap (An Everlasting Piece, Envy, Bandits). The good Barry, of course, makes films like , Avalon, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, Diner, etc.
Man of the Year is about a talk show comedian named Tom Dobbs (Williams) who decides to run for president as a goof, but faces some major problems when he unexpectedly wins. Why would that be a problem, I wonder? Would Jon Stewart be in a pickle if he were to run and win? I don’t see why. Chris Rock handled the job okay. The lesson of George Bush is that anyone can be president these days. You don’t need wisdom, character, brains — you just need to win and the determination to try and apply your power. I for one would vote for Walken for president without even thinking about it. I would…really.

I just thought I’d put up this Descent one-sheet and ask for interpretations. It’s obviously meant to look like a kind of Rorschach ink blot by way of Heironymus Bosch. It seems just as obvious to me that the artist who created this poster had his/her head in Vulvaland. It looks like some kind of mad Dali-esque scene from a Ken Russell movie. The message is either “beware those who would enter this chamber” or that some kind of satori consciousness awaits.

Roger Michell‘s Venus (Miramax, 12.15), which has that allegedly delicious Peter O’Toole lead performance, is going to play at the Toronto Film Festival. And Alfonso Cuaron ‘s Children of Men (Universal, 9.29), which everyone wet their pants over at Comic-Con and which Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu says has the visual chops of a Stanley Kubrick film, is not going to Toronto.

If I come back as a dog, I’d wouldn’t want to live in Asia because there’d be a fair chance I’d be killed and chopped up and grilled and served as somebody’s meal. I’d want to be a rich American dog living in Beverly Hills. Point of fact, I’d like to live with Candice Bergen and have the kind of life that this basset hound is living. Except I’d want be be a golden retriever. Seriously, read this story and who’s got it better — this dog or your average citizen in southern Lebanon?

I have this idea that Oliver Stone, Nic Cage and Michael Pena will be a good group on The Charlie Rose Show this evening. I’m seeing World Trade Center a second time for good measure this evening.

Waaay down at the bottom of his Film Convictions page, with a Permalink anchor, is a “Hangman” review written about two months ago of Steve Zallian‘s All The King’s Men. Take it with a grain, but at least there are hints and indications. About what may be up with it, I mean. As explored here, here and here.