Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson and RiskyBiz blogger once again runs a Mel Gibson statement ahead of everyone else. Gibson has stopped shot of agreeing to be lashed by rabbis in penance for his anti-Semitic remarks last weekend, as I half-seriously suggested he do yesterday, but he is saying, humbly, that he wants to sit down with Jewish community leaders and get his head straight.
“I’m not just asking for forgiveness,” his new statement reads. “I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.” Earlier in the statement he says, “Please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.”
“I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.
“This is not about a film. Nor is it about artistic license. This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. It’s about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad.” In Malibu, he surely means, as well as in northern Israel, southern Lebanon, Iraq and other places of agony in the Middle East.

“World Trade Center yields lovely and touching moments but proves a slow-going, arduous movie experience, if more uplifting than Universal’s earlier test of that historic day’s box office potential, United 93 ,” says Variety‘s Brian Lowryin his 7.31 review .
“Stone’s film bears some thematic resemblance to Alive , Frank Marshall‘s 1993 chronicle of a plane crash in the Andes. Both offer a tribute to human endurance under unimaginable conditions, but watching young guys huddle together trying not to freeze to death or two cops pinned under tons of debris isn’t exactly a cinematic thrill ride. Long stretches are shot in tight close-up on John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage ) and more personable Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) lying immersed in gray muck, seeking to stay alive.
“While both actors deliver strong performances, they are confined by the narrative figuratively as well as literally, spurring a degree of impatience for the climax. Yet the film ultimately present[s] an inspiring vision of can-do American spirit amid adversity, exemplified by [Connecticut rescuer Dave] Karnes and the rescue workers (played by, among others, Stephen Dorff and Frank Whaley) risking life and limb to assist complete strangers.”

In his revivings of the Rambo and Rocky franchises, Sylvester Stallone is taking a last desperate leap at marginal fame, semi-relevance and a revenue surge. It’s a tough place to be in but we all have to keep knocking.

I wish Stallone had kept trying to play Copland-type character roles, but I guess he wasn’t offered much in this vein after Copland came out, probably because people felt he wasn’t that terrific in it.

I got to know Stallone slightly as a result of working for a couple of hotshot publicists (Bobby Zarem, Dick Delson) who represented Sly during the big-dick Rambo II era in ’85 and ’86.

I then interviewed him in May 1992 during the Cliffhanger shoot in Cortina, Italy, for a piece that eventually ran in the New York Times. So I can say with a certain authority that when he’s in the right mood, Stallone is a likable, very funny and witty guy. He has a perverse sense of humor. But this never really came out in his films.

Every now and then Stallone wasn’t in the mood to be likable and witty, and then it was tippy–toe time. Sometimes his eyes would resemble a dead shark’s.

I was leaving his Pacific Palisades home once and making light chatter as a kind of exit strategy while Delson and Zarem were doing something in the other room. I noticed a familiar painting on the wall near the front door and said to him, “Francis Bacon…excellent taste!”

A friendly reply might have been “yeah, good old Francis” or “you’re a fan too, huh?” But he was in one of his moods or something. Stallone looked at me like he was Louis Lepke and I was a guy behind on my payments, and said, “You got it.”

He meant “yeah, it’s Bacon” and not “yeah, I have excellent taste”, but it was still kind of a flatline thing to say.

Superman Returns was in 2005 theatres last weekend, or about 225 more theatres than The Devil Wears Prada was playing in, or about 1778. And yet Prada made more money, earning $4,774,000 with a $2600 average. Superman Returns made $3,570,000 with a $1700 average.

Mel Gibson has checked into a rehab facility for his alcohol problem, as reported by the Star‘s Lee Hannon and confirmed by his publicist Alan Neirob. However, a neighbor quoted in the story thinks Gibson has gone into the wrong rehab facility. If you want to read about this, here you go.

A South Park Mel Gibson segment via UTube, obviously made with The Passion of the Christ in mind. Moderately funny (okay, more than moderately), but Matt and Trey need to make a new “sugar tits and bad Jews” version.

That rumor about Heath Ledger being cast as the Joker in the next Batman movie has turned out to be true. A Warner Bros. publicist told me ten minutes ago the next Batman flick for Warner Bros. will be called The Dark Knight, and that Chris Nolan will again direct, and that Ledger will indeed play the infamous cackling twisted baddie who has it in for Batman, etc. Big payday for Heath, obviously — doing it for his kid, and because he always seems to enjoy going weird and quirky. An official release will be sent out tomorrow. The publicist told me to call her for more details but she didn’t include her extension or her cell and…forget it. I’ll post the rest tomorrow.

Here’s a fairly good review of Apocalypse Now: The Complete Triple Dip, the DVD containing both the original theatrical and the Redux versions of Francis Coppola‘s 1979 classic. I’m kidding about the DVD’s subtitle — it’s actually called The Complete Dossier.

The most exciting extra for a lot of people will be a full 17-minute reading of T.S. Eliot‘s “The Hollow Men” by Marlon Brando. There are also 13 deleted scenes, including one called “Monkey Sampan” One, deemed “a notoriously hard-to-find relic from the film√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s original construction” plus 12 additional sequences are not available in either the original or Redux versions
Apocalypse Now was shot in 70mm and was initially shown in the correct widescreen 70mm aspect ratio of 2.21 to 1. This new DVD has Apocalypse trimmed down to 2.35 to 1, which sounds like they’ve chopped off the tops and bottoms slightly. I saw it in 70mm at the Ziegeld 27 years ago and I know they showed it at 2.21 to 1 during that engagement and they wouldn’t have done this if it hadn’t been cool with Francis and the powers-that-be, so anyone who says a 2.35 to 1 presentation is somehow better or more complete is wrong. I’m always disagreeing with people who think it’s better to show a film with the tops and bottoms chopped off. Give it air, I always say. Give the actors a little headroom.
To be a really complete Apocalypse dossier, of course, George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s Heart of Darkness — a brilliant documentary about the tortured making of the film — should have been included, and of course it hasn’t been

Only a week or so on the job and Disney production chief Oren Aviv has already defined himself as a disciplined dispenser of carefully composed (read: disengenuous) press statements.
First he told N.Y. Times reporter Laura Holson that he was “surprised when Disney chairman Dick Cook asked him…to succeed [Nina] Jacobson” and that he “never asked for [the] job.” Now he’s telling Slate‘s Kim Masters that he’s ready to look past Mel Gibson’s attitudes about Jews. “I’ve worked with Mel on several films over the years and we have a great relationship, ” he said. “We all make mistakes and I’ve accepted his apology to what was a regrettable situation. I wish him the very best on his path to healing.”
That’s a nice Christian comradely thing to say, and also a necessary thing considering that Disney is stuck with the task of distributing Gibson’s Apocalypto, but there’s an art to bullshitting the press that Aviv hasn’t gotten the hang of yet. You have to try and sound like someone who hasn’t rehearsed his quotes ten times over before picking up the phone. Every now and then you have to just blurt something out that sounds tossed-off and what-the-hellish and and 90% true. If you say too many half-true, half-horseshit statements, reporters will get wind of your character sooner or later and then they’ll stop listening.

The anti-Jewish thing has been tattooed into Mel Gibson’s forehead and there’s no laser procedure that will remove it. There’s only one way to deal with it, and that’s what Henry II did after Thomas Becket was murdered. Gibson needs to do penance. He needs to visit a prominent temple, take his shirt off, kneel on the stone floor and submit to lashings by a team of rabbis. Repeatedly, I mean. For weeks and probably months to come. He needs to make a show of groveling at the feet of Hollywood’s Jewish bigwigs. That’s the only thing that will even half-assedly begin to get him off the hook . Me bad, me anti-Semite, me looking for guidance. Question is, does he have the character or the will to do that?

An Access Hollywood piece set to air this evening reportedly quotes Lindsay Lohan‘s manager-mom Dina as saying that the wording in the letter sent to her daughter last week (i.e., the one warning Lindsay to cool it on the partying and missing work or else) by Morgan Creek honcho James Robinson was “way out of line” and “ridiculous.” She reportedly added, “Maybe [Robinson] has personal issues with whomever and it came out with my child. I don’t know him. I can’t judge him. I don’t think it was a smart thing to do to a young girl.”

Speaking as a parent, this tells me three things are probably in place. One, Dina is dug into the role of being her daughter’s friend and supporter as opposed to being her parent, and this mindset doesn’t allow for dealing with her daughter’s issues. Two, she’s probably some kind of seminal laissez-faire provocateur as far as her daughter’s past nocturnal proclivities are concerned. And three, she’s a present-tense enabler of same. When (I’m not even saying “if”) Lindsay winds up with the inevitable substance-abuse issues and goes into rehab and all that, there will probably be people other than her mom who will provide the right kind of counsel and support. I mean, look at Dina’s photo above (she’s the blonde on the right). Consider that smile on her face. She’s obviously a hottie who’s obviously open to glamour and lusciousness and sparkling encounters.

Here’s the Save-the-River-Oaks-theatre petition site, and here’s another Houston Chronicle article (it ran last Friday, 7.28) about the public clamor to try and save this beautiful old theatre with the beautiful red-and-yellow neon marquee. Over the last ten days or so the online petition (sponsored by the Houstonist.com site, although you’d never know it by looking at the petition page) has close to 14,000 signers.

The Chronicle story also reports that City Councilwoman Ada Edwards and “other council members” hope to persuade Houston-based Weingarten Realty Investors to change its plans. Nobody is going to “persuade” the Weingarten gang to change anything — pressure that threatens their pocketbook is the only thing that big-wheel developers understand.
Make no mistake — the Weingarten executives who are running the local Houston show are the bad guys in this story. They want to impose unwanted, culturally- damaging change upon the only section of Houston has has any real sense of architectural soul, and concerned citizens are uniting in opposition to this. The possibility of the River Oaks theatre being destroyed is not a benign act of nature — it’s a matter of deliberate will on the part of some obviously greedy people. And if you ask me the following pro-River Oaks statement, issued by Landmark Theatres CEO Bill Banowsky, strikes me as rather wishy-washy in the face of this:
“Landmark Theatres is 100% committed to the historic River Oaks Theatre. We hope to continue to serve Houston residents with the best in quality art and independent film for a very long time. Landmark Theatres upholds a strong tradition of saving and restoring old movie palaces. We’ve accomplished this with the River Oaks Theatre and many other beautiful theaters across the country. We believe this to be a worthy undertaking for the appreciative audiences in the communities we serve. It is their support that has enabled Landmark Theatres to bring these wonderful buildings back to life.”
If Landmark was “100% committed to the historic River Oaks theatre”, wouldn’t you think they’d issue a statement with a bit more fighting spirit…that wasn’t so generically bland?