I was going to report that Jennifer Lopez‘s Bordertown, a drama about several unsolved murders of poor women in the El Paso-Juarez areas, would finally see the light of a projector lamp on 10.20.06. Except it’s not happening, and nobody you call seems to have a clue when it might be seen.
10.20 is when the IMDB says MGM will be releasing the Gregory Nava-directed drama about a reporter (Lopez) looking into the murders. Not true, according to MGM publicist Jeff Pryor. And pay no mind to the fact that there’s an MGM-related Bordertown website either. MGM had negotiations about distributing it but nothing came to fruition, says Pryor, and you can definitely forget about it opening on 10.20. So who’s distributing Bordertown? No idea, says Pryor.
Two reps working for Lopez at William Morris said they didn’t know either “but why don’t you try Warner Bros.?”, one said. I did…nothing. I also tried New Line, which looked at possibly distributing Bordertown when they were working in the spring of ’05 on the Monster-in-Law opening, but I was told “nope…never happened.” A New Line friend told me that Bob Berney‘s Picturehouse considered distributing Bordertown also, but they also backed off. Five’ll get your ten Bordertown will show up sometime in early to mid ’07 as a straight-to-video thing. Bets?
Same deal, I’m guessing, for Minnie Driver‘s Virgin of Juarez, which is about the same subject with Driver playing a reporter digging into the heart of El Paso-Juarez darkness.

There was an either-or work situation that Owen Wilson was looking at not long ago — a high-paying role in Steven Brill‘s Drillbit Taylor, some kind of simple-ass Paramount comedy, or a role in Wes Anderson‘s not-as-well-paying “India movie”, the title of which has now been revealed by Production Weekly as The Darjeeling Limited. But something worked out or Owen just chose the right thing, but he’s now doing the India flick. It begins shooting in December. Cowritten by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, it’s about three brothers travelling through India. And the brothers will be played by Owen, Jason and…Luke Wilson? HE suggestion to Wes: drop the “The” in the title and just call it Darjeeling Limited. The three-word title doesn’t roll off the tongue that easily. Naturally I’d like to score a copy of the script, and it’s starting to get around so it’s just a matter of time. If anyone wants to trade an Adobe PDF version for one of my scripts….

This Devin Faraci CHUD interview with Brett Ratner is four days old (by internet standards that’s almost like saying it’s a parchment scroll found in an underground tomb) but it’s a worthwhile education about where Ratner is at these days and how he sees himself. He acknowledges that “people have always hated me” and mentions that Paul Thomas Anderson threatened to put a bullet in Ratner’s head if he carried through on his plan to remake John Cassavettes‘ Killing of a Chinese Bookie ,and talks about Roman Polanski’s willingness to play a small part in Rush Hour 3 which Ratner will start shooting in seven or eight weeks time.
“I think there√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s a blurred line between my public persona and my work,” he says. “It just happened. I think eventually people are going to look back and go, Wow. I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m not going to be in the tabloids anymore, I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m not going to be in Us Magazine, and they√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re going to be able to look at the film and how it holds up as a film on its own. It won√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t be about √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìBrett Ratner speaks in the third person, so he√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s an asshole.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ And I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t speak in the third person, but that√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s what they say. People have always hated me. It√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s not annoying at all. The meanest group is Defamer and Harry Knowles. I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t take myself that seriously. It√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s like, come on. I totally laugh at it. If I did take it seriously, it would probably be worse than what it is.
“I love what I do. I love filmmakers. Werner Herzog is here [in Los Angeles] — how cool is that? The biggest star could be in the room and I care about the filmmakers √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Ǩ≈ì the directors and cinematographers and the producers. These are the people that I admire. And I love movies. I drove up from LA and the whole ride we played The Movie Game. We did movies with animals as the star. I went on and on and on and I was like, √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìWoah, I have seen a lot of movies!√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢
“At the end of the day I want to leave a mark somehow. If one of my films holds up 100 years from now I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ll be happy wherever I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m watching from.”

Talladega Nights (Columbia) is going to grab about $35 million this weekend…maybe more. One tracking report says general awareness is 89, definite interest is 47 (that’s big) and first choice among all pictures in release is 24 — one person out of four. And this is from an urban sample. It goes without saying it’s gonna kill ’em in the boonies — a movie like this is red meat for the red states.
Meaning it’s going to more than double the Miami Vice tally, which will probably come in around $13 or $14 million.
World Trade Center Paramount, 8.9) looks like it’ll have a pretty decent five-day opening tally (it preems on Wednesday, 8.9). It has an 85% general, 35% definite interest, 12% no interest and 10% first choice from one tracking report. It could do reasonably well — $25, $26 million. It doesn’t seem to be courting the negatives that United 93 had. (The negatives for that film were in the low teens just prior to opening.) Being on the cover of Newsweek undoubtedly helped to some extent.
Snakes on a Plane opens two weeks from tomorrow and it’s not looking like gangbusters. There seems to be a significant group that’s not getting the joke and doesn’t want to get the joke, and who just want their horror films served straight without the silly-cheesy stuff.

Studio executives who’ve said nothing about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks “are clearly not the bravest people in the world,” producer Howard Rosenman has told L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein. “They don’t want to alienate Mel or [Gibson agent] Ed Limato, one of the most powerful agents in town. They’re all thinking, what happens if he comes out of this and I’ve said something? He won’t work with me when I need him.”

The formal DUI charges filed today (8.2.06) against “Mel C. Gibson (01.03.56)” by the People of the State of California.

It’s intriguing about Hugh Jackman and Fox 2000 planning to make another film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, with Jackman producing (with partner John Palermo) as well as playing the lead, Billy Bigelow. The original 1956 film version, directed by Henry King and starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, is kind of cornball but it has some great songs and a devastating final 20 minutes. Every time I watch it, I melt.

Bigelow is a Maine carnival barker and an ignorant thug who’s managed to charm and marry a local girl named Julie. Too proud to knuckle down and find a job, Bigelow is determined to make money when he learns Julie is pregnant. This leads to his falling on his knife and dying during a botched robbery. Stuck for 16 years in celestial purgatory, Bigelow is given a chance one day by the “manager” to return to earth and try and help out his daughter, who has a lot of the same attitude problems he had when alive. Bigelow’s initial efforts to provide guidance are crude and pathetic, but things finally kick in and his daughter seems to somehow hear him at the finale.
Based on Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom”, Carousel is the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical that gets me because the dark tragic story balances the overly jubilant emotionality of their music. And that strange celestial plot line — a story of a loser who manages to show love and get his act together and help his child only after he’s dead — is affecting in some kind of deep-down way that I’ve never fully understood.
Jackman sang the Billy part in a 2002 Carnegie Hall concert to honor Rodgers & Hammerstein. He’ll have to be better than the hammy Macrae was in the older film. Frank Sinatra was initially signed to play Bigelow in the ’56 Carousel and went before the cameras for a couple days but abriuptly left the shoot when he realized he’d have to perform each scene twice — once for 35mm CinemaScope cameras, once for 70mm Todd AO cameras (i.e., the way Fred Zinneman’s Oklahoma was shot). And yet when MacRae was brought on to replace Sinatra, Carousel was filmed only in 35mm.
Sinatra’s cocky-Hoboken-thug personality would have probably made for a perfect Bigelow. He recorded most of his “Carousel” songs in the studio before shooting, and here’s his version of the famous “Soliloquy” number — the one with Bigelow dreaming and fretting about his unborn child.

Mel Gibson “has been a very bad goy,” author and New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier has told N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “It is really rich to behold Gibson asking Jews to behave like Christians. Has he forgotten how bellicose and wrathful and unforgiving we are? Why would a people who start all the wars make a peace? I have always wondered why people who believe that we control the world do not have more respect for us. Take that cop who arrested Gibson. Do you think it was a coincidence that he was a Jew? We have been following Gibson’s every move since he released that movie. The other night, when our uniformed brother spotted him bobbing and weaving in his star car, we saw an opportunity and we took it. Don’t blame us — it’s what Yahweh would do. When Officer Mee busted him, we all busted him.”

Oliver Stone is throwing together a third, extra-lengthy DVD of Alexander — 225 minutes, give or take — and Warner Home Video will put it out whenever….later this year, early ’07. Rope Of Silicon’s Laremy Legel posted this story about it 11 days ago, but I wasn’t paying attention. “”I’m doing a third version [of Alexander on DVD, not theatrical], Stone told Legel during a World Trade Center interview. “I’m going to do a Cecil B. DeMille/Oliver Stone three hour, forty-five minute thing. I’m going to go all out [and] put everything I like in the movie. He was a complicated man, it was a complicated story and it doesn’t hurt to make it longer and let people who loved the film and see it more and understand it more, I love working on it because I love the movie. I hope to have it done in two months, a month and a half and then it’s up to Warner. It will be a catalogue item. I don’t think they’ll go out and make a big thing of it.”

So what’s being “conveyed” here with this new Flags of our Fathers one-sheet? Class, of course — Clint Eastwood’s film (Dreamamount, 10.20) is going to reek of the stuff. And a tone of gloom, as signified by the raising of the flag atop Mt. Surabachi, which originally took place at midday, at either at dawn or sunset, or maybe just before a thunderstorm. Handsomer and cooler-looking this way….more of a mythical quality. Other thoughts?

One of the issues with All The King’s Men (Columbia, 9.22), I’m being told, is “length.” Director Steven Zallian “can’t really part with any bit of it.”

For those who don’t feel like reading to the end of the “Balloon Dismissals” piece I just put up, my revised Best Picture of 2006 list in order of probable (i.e., perceived) Oscar strength is as follows: (1) Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks); (2) Babel (Paramount Vantage); (3) Dreamgirls (DreamWorks/Paramount); (4) The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia Pictures); (5) World Trade Center (Paramount); (6) Stranger Than Fiction (Columbia); (7) The Good Shepherd (Universal Pictures) and (8) Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.).
Plus (9) The Fountain (Warner Bros.); (10) Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight); (11) United 93 (Universal); (12) Infamous (Warner Independent); (13) Reign O’er Me (Columbia); (14) Red Sun, Black Sand (DreamWorks); (15) Fur (Picturehouse); (16) The Holiday (Columbia); (15) Little Children (New Line); (17) The Good German (Steven Soderbergh); (18) Notes On a Scandal (Fox Searchlight ) and (19) maybe Stephen Frears’ The Queen (Miramax).