Whoa, whoa…Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest runs two hours and 35 minutes, give or take? A cartwheeling fluffball mascara-and-attitude romp should run a minimum of three hours, I should think. If I were Jerry Bruckheimer I would add an overture, an intermission, and entr’acte and exit music.

“I’m beginning to wonder if Pirates is not only going to blow everything out of the water this year, but if it’s going to take the three-day record from Spiderman. I didn’t go to the screening last night, but I sent my girlfriend and she reported that it’s not only incredible, but that it had the junket audience applauding as well. If Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinksi and Johnny Depp can do that to the hard-core critics and cynics, think what it’s going to do for the civilians.” — Journalist colleague. Wells reply: You’re probably right about Pirates blowing everything out of the water, etc., but junket journalists have never been my idea of “hard-core”. They talk very cynically in private, but they tend to be generous in the presence of talent and publicists, so I don’t know how much stock you can put in their applaudings.

The point of this David Poland piece seems to be that the traction-penetration effects of marketing campaigns aren’t showing up in surveys until…what?…two weeks before the nationwide release date (or is it one week?), so anyone who runs tracking data on a film three weeks out is misunderstanding the way things work and creating unfair havoc in the process. I certainly experienced the downside of this when I ran those negative early-bird numbers on The Break-Up, and I’d like to think I’ve learned something from this. But of course, Poland has to get ugly by referring to a wave of “journalists” who are fixating on tracking…the quote marks meaning, of course, that people who’ve reported tracking aren’t journalists, and that “they are proving that a small amount of information is truly a dangerous thing,” he says. Well, I try to double-check tracking figures at all times. Three companies provide regular data, and it’s out there, and I’m certainly not passing along anything that any distributor or marketing outfit hasn’t already read or heard. I’m presuming that the readership knows that tracking data, like any political survey, always follows by a few days what people are ostensibly thinking and feeling. It is never in front — it always chases. And sentiments about upcoming movies can turn on a dime, as we’ve recently seen. That said, are we supposed to regard the consistently lower-than-they-should-be numbers for Superman Returns as complete poppycock? Sometimes tracking tells the wrong story and sometimes it doesn’t. One company reported this morning that Adam Sandler ‘s Click has a 44% definite interest and that Pirates of the Caribean: Dead Man’s Chest has a 68%, and it means absolutely nothing that Superman Returns has a 41% definite interest? The fact that SR‘s definite interest tallies have never crested 50% almost certainly means something. You can’t say it’s absolute total balderdash. Somewhere out there people seem to be saying to themselves, “Who needs another Superman film, especially one that wants to pretend it’s 1983 and that Richard Pryor‘s Superman film never existed.” What matters, of course, is what will happen when people finally see it starting next Wednesday. We all know it’s going to “open”, but who knows what the vox populi shakedown will be? To me Superman Returns is a moving and very personal film, but a journalist pal who’s seen it told me this morning he’as flabbergasted by the rave reviews. I’m hoping he’ll be in the minority, but let’s see.

Nobody ever seems to destroy anything in low-budget films, but expensive stuff often gets blown up and inferno’ed in big-budget franchise pics. Is there anyone in the world who finds these spectacles exciting in any way, shape or form? Is there a metaphor I’m missing that action fans have understood all along? That beautiful yellow whatever-it-was sports car that was blown off the ground inside the gates of Vatican City in Mission: Impossible III…an absolute flat-liner. Like all explosions. Filmmakers keep using them, I assume, because they’re a kind of visual punctuation. This would be fine if fireballs were the equivalent of a simple period, but they’re not — they’re exclamation points, which only bad writers resort to. All I know after reading this item is that I’m now a lot less interested in seeing Casino Royale.

Billy Wilder was born 100 years ago today in a village now known as Sucha Beskidzka, Poland. He left us four years and three months ago, or roughly seven months after the best book about him — Cameron Crowe‘s “Conversations with Wilder” — hit the book stores.

You could argue that the last “real” Billy Wilder film — The Fortune Cookie — came out 40 years ago, and that the guy’s a relic by 2006 measurings. But all that goes away when you sit down and watch his better films. Not the stodgy ones…not Love in the Afternoon or The Spirit of St. Louis (a personal soft spot) or The Front Page but (I have to remind myself there are hundreds if not thousands who’ve never heard these titles) Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Stalag 17, Sabrina, One, Two, Three. Here are three dialogue excerpts — from Sunset Boulevard , The Apartment, and One, Two, Three. Which reminds me…where’s that DVD of Ace in the Hole?

Former N.Y. Daily news critic Jami Bernard‘s “Incredible Shrinking Critic” blog (which I really shouldn’t be linking to, given her alliance with a certain hammerhead), and a video piece she’s recently thrown together about how life feels now without a portfolio.

When you flip through the 32-page newsprint program for the L.A. Film Festival, everything suddenly comes into focus. Compared to the chore of finding your way through the ruts and ravines of the online site, the paper program is clearer, simpler and much easier to sort through.

That said, I’ve been half-persuaded to check out Ian McCrudden‘s Islander, about a lobster fisherman (Thomas Hildreth) going through a crisis. (It plays on 6.25 at 7 pm at the Mann Festival — check out the site for the other two showings.) “A really solid piece of work,” a somewhat interested party claims. “Hildreth is a find, as are Amy Jo Johnson and Judy Prescott as two women he becomes involved with in the film. Costar Philip Baker Hall is his usual outstanding self. Definitely worth a look if you can catch it.”

Former Boston Herald freelance film reviewer Paul Sherman has dynamited his career over the crime of selling approximately 117 feature film screeners to online pirate distributors (known as “warez” groups) from 1999 to June 2005. He may not do time because he’s cooperating with the FBI, but he deserves whatever punishment he gets. The ethical-moral breaches are thoughtless enough, but he’s also a small-timer. As Sir Thomas Moore says to Richard Rich in A Man For All Seasons, “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the entire world…but for Wales?”

The L.A. Film Festival kicks off tomorrow night, and is it me (a definite possibility) or am I detecting an extra measure of vitality…some kind of exceptional on-it factor? The special events, parties, discussions and film selections feel almost Seattle-ish….perhaps even better than that. Here are 19 initial picks, and I’m sure there are five or ten other films and events I shouldn’t be overlooking: (1) Julie Anderson‘s Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater (6.24, 2 pm, Majestic Crest — 6.30, 7 pm, UCLA James Bridges — 7.2, 5:30, Laemmle’s Sunset); (2) Jauretsi Saizarbitoria and Emilia Menocal‘s East of Havana (6.25, 9:45 pm, Mann Festival — 6.29, 10 pm, Majestic Crest — 7.1, 4:45 pm, Laemmle Sunset); (3) Bill Couturie‘s Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs and Blockbusters (6.28, 7:15 pm, Mann Festival); (4) Kelly Reichardt ‘s Old Joy (6.23, 5 pm, Italian Cultural Institute); (5) “The Nature of Film Criticism: Neil LaBute and Kenneth Turan” (6.23, Armand Hammer, free); (6) Neil Marshall‘s The Descent (6.23, 8:30 pm, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre); (7) Discussion panel titled “Unshown Cinema: Inside the World of The Films That Got Away” (6.25, Armand Hammer, free); (8) Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (6.25, 9:30 pm, UCLA James Bridges Theater); (9) “Conversation with Richard Linklater” (6.25, 7 pm, Italian Cultural Institute); (10) Nikolaus Geyrhalter ‘s Our Daily Bread (6.27, 9:30 pm, UCLA James Bridges Theater — 7.1, 4:45 pm, Landmark’s Regent); (11) Bradley Beesley, Julianna Brannum and James Payne‘s The Creek Runs Red (6.27, 7:15 pm, Landmark’s Regent — 6.30, 5:15 pm, Italian Cultural Institute — 7.2, 3:15 pm, Laemmle Laemmle Sunset 5); (12) Chris Gorak‘s Right At Your Door (6.28, 9:45 pm, Mann Festival Theatre — 6.30, 4:30 pm, Mann Festival); (13) Fabian Bielinsky‘s The Aura (6.28, 9:30 pm, Landmark’s Regent); (14) Richard linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (6.29, 8:30 pm, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre); (15) So Yong Kim‘s In Between Days (6.29, 9:30 pm, Landmark’s Regent — 7.1, 7 pm, Landmark’s Regent); (16) Jean Luc Godard‘s vMasculine Feminine (6.29, 9:45 pm, UCLA James Bridges); (17) Gil Kenan‘s Monster House (6.30, 8:30 pm, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre); (18) Lisandro Alonso ‘s Los Muertos (6.30, 9:30 pm, UCLA James Bridges Theater); (19) “Conversation with James Ellroy” (6.26, 9:45 pm, Italian Cultural Institute).

Harry Knowles chit-chatting with Brandon Routh…keep it light, keep it fanboyish, keep it friendly.

“If you’re going to run anonymous criticism of someone’s story” — i.e, the one written last Monday by L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein — “[by] saying ‘these articles never interview black execs, even in confidence — they always go after high-level talent to comment…’ you could at least call me or email me and ask if that was actually true in my case,” Goldstein has written Deadline Hollywood columnist Nikki Finke in an e-mail. “If you had called, I would have told you this: Of course, I interviewed plenty of black executives. What this person doesn’t seem to realize is that no black exec currently employed at a studio feels safe enough in their job to openly criticize their bosses about they dismal hiring record. They are only willing to say it off the record. And unlike the rest of the world, I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m very old-fashioned — I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t run anonymous quotes from anybody. I feel people have a right to know who’s doing the talking. I think it’s also unfair to imply that Spike and Singleton don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t hire enough black staff, since I go on tons of movie sets and they are the two guys who always have a predominantly African-American crew, something you almost never see in white, white Hollywood. But mostly, if you√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re going to allow someone to comment on my column, and whether I did the right kind of interviews, you owe me a fair chance to respond.” Finke then responds to Goldstein’s response, et. al.