The latest NRG numbers on The DaVinci Code are huge — 94% general awareness, 58% definite interest and 25% first choice. Ron Howard’s film (and I have to say that David Poland’s nickname for this film — Opie’s Dae — is inspired) may be the biggest film of the summer because it seems to have the broadest advance interest among the four quadrants. It doesn’t appear to be as big with under-25s as, say, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest or Brett Ratner‘s X-Men: The Last Stand but still…

This morning marks the launch of what I’m calling “Elsewhere Now“, which is the new default version of Hollywood Elsewhere. From here on, the front page of the column will be a series of items all running the same length, most of them WIRED-type quickies (which can be read in their entirety on the main page or, if they’re longer than 105 words, will require a jump) with a thrice-weekly feature story thrown in with a little clapboard icon signifying this. For those of you who hate change in any form, this isn’t as big a shake-up as it might seem. If you don’t like the new design just click on “switch to Elsewhere Classic” and you’ll be taken to the standard page with the “old” design (i.e., the one I started with in September 2004). There may be one or two more tweaks or touch-ups over the next day or so, but nothing much. Two designers co-created this new look — one of them is Team Elsewhere’s Jon Rahoi — and if you ask me a beyond-splendid job has been rendered. (Rahoi, a San Francisco-based programmer and web design professional, lists Amazon, Hewlett-Packard and Lucent among his clients.) In any case, sweating out this new design plus being in Houston and travelling on Continental Airlines is why I haven’t posted as much as I usually do the last three days, but it’ll be the usual-usual from here on. I mean, it won’t be the usual-usual because now there are two (clap!), two (clap!)…two Hollywood Elsewhere’s in one.

I for one (and I know I’m not the only one) thoroughly respect Universal honcho Ron Meyer‘s decision in late December 2004 to drive out to a prison in Taft, California, in order to visit wiretapper Anthony Pellicano, who was incarcerated there. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out, and you can double or triple that if you’re behind bars. So in my view guys who visit you in the slammer (especially during the Chistmas holidays) are good hombres . Obviously Meyer’s visits implies this or that, but let’s take a second and acknowledge what loyalty is all about .

In Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), a 59 year-old Gregory Peck played Robert Thorn, the U.S. ambassador to England, and Lee Remick, who was 40 or 41 when the film was shot, played his wife Katherine. Remick may have seemed a bit too old to be getting pregnant and raising a young son, but her age wasn’t a stopper. Peck certainly seemed too old to be embarking upon fatherhood for the first time, but this was balanced by the fact that he was completely believable as a high-level diplomat at the summit of his career . In John Moore‘s Omen remake (20th Century Fox, 6.6.06), these characters (i.e., they have the same names) are played by 38 year-old Liev Schreiber and 25 year-old Julia Stiles, which makes them seem too young. Except Schrieber’s Thorn is apparently not the London-based U.S. ambassador but an assistant to the ambassador who suddenly elevated into power when a vacancy opens up, so to speak. This is how I understand it, at least. If anyone knows better, please advise.

This is a video clip shot during the shooting of Mission: Impossible III that shows Tom Cruise lying prone on a street and waiting for a big truck to start hitting the brakes and then jacknife and then roll right over him…and then it actually happens and it’s quite cool. Damn thrilling, in fact. In fact, it’s more exciting than when the sequence happens in the film. The difference is that I totally believe the video — it’s obviously “real world” and un-tricked — and I don’t really believe anything I see in a super-expensive action film of this sort. I don’t trust my eyes, I mean, to the extent that I’m presuming that a good portion of what I’m seeing during any big stunt sequence is digitally composed or has in some way originated on someone’s hard drive.

I first saw this teaser for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on Friday night at the AMC Dunvale 30 in Houston. It was at this precise moment that a less-than- profound Casey Affleck thought came to mind. Here he goes again, I muttered, playing another creep — the doleful deadhead Robert Ford, infamous for putting a cowardly bullet into the back of Jesse James (Brad Pitt). On top of his last creepy-head — that glum-ass, do-nothing piece of wood in Steve Buscemi‘s Lonesome Jim, and what was perhaps his seminal blank-stare creep role in Gus Van Sant‘s Gerry (’02). I don’t know anything about Affleck’s “Chris” character in The Last Kiss or his “Patrick” character in Gone, Baby Gone, a forthcoming Boston-area crime drama based on Dennis Lehane‘s novel, to be directed by brother Ben Affleck, and his recurring role in the Ocean-ic caper movies isn’t worth mentioning. But I know there’s a growing sense that Casey is gradually becoming a kind of magnet for neghead roles — the go-to 20-something actor (who’s actually 30) if you’re casting a youngish character with a fuck-me, I-can’t-quite-put-it-into- words-but-I-know-I-feel-like-a-baloney-sandwich attitude. I’ve listened to this damn teaser three times and I still can’t understand the first portion of what he’s saying. I think what I’m saying is that I’m starting to associate the name “Casey Affleck” with a kind of flu syndrome.

This The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford site appears to be dead, but these song lyrics have a certain poignancy: “Robert Ford, a gunman / Did exchange for his parole / Took the life of James the outlaw / Which he snuck up on and stole / No one knows just where they came to be misunder- stood / But the poor Missouri farmers knew / Frank and Jesse do the best they could.”

United 93 is “the feel-bad American movie of the year”? Catchy pull-quote from N.Y. Times Manohla Dargis, the only problem being that it’s a highly debatable claim. I know what Manohla means, but this is simplistic emotional coding . My idea of a serious feel-bad movie in Barry Sonnenfeld‘s RV. (I would imagine it’s Manohla’s also.) For the life of me I can’t get my head around the idea of a movie as assured and expert and heavily throttled as United 93 making anyone feel “bad.”

Brian Burrough and John Connolly‘s Vanity Fair piece about the Anthony Pellicano wiretap magilla is being called inaccurate by Paramount chairman Brad Grey plus reps for Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, who were all named in the piece as having engaged Pellicano’s services. Gabriel Snyder‘s Variety piece says that “Pitt, Sandler and the Farley rep deny ever hiring the P.I. In addition, HBO has denied that Grey once pushed a TV show based on Pellicano as a replacement for The Sopranos, as the mag also reported.” This story must have been fact-checked over and over to the breaking point, and yet Connolly and Borrough are accused of being flat-out wrong…weird. I hope this story doesn’t develop into the equivalent of Woodstein naming H.R. Haldeman as the fifth man in that Washington Post story. The article went online Wednesday and will be available in the June issue, which will hit newstands on Wednesday, May 3rd.

Truly, this Jamie Stuart riff on the American Express “my life, my card” ads is fucking-ass brilliant . Give this guy a Wes Anderson or M. Night Shyamalan life…enough mad money to patronize cool restaurants, big-loft-size digs in Philly or Paris, $15 million to make his next film, a Mensa-class blonde girlfriend, etc. The delay in the beginning with nothing happening, and then that slamming-into-the-brick-wall image approaches the realm of near-genius. Seriously.

A smart, hilarious, comprehensive piece about Hollywood quote whores by e-Film Critic’s Eric Childress. One word for this obviously well-researched article — “unmissable!” (That’s a reference joke…read the piece and you’ll see what I mean.)

Holy shit…this is awful, tragic news. Jennifer Dawson, the 35 year-old wife of New York Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz (and mother of their two kids), died suddenly late yesterday afternoon. Alan Sepinwall has delivered the news in a “House Next Door” posting that went up today. Jennifer was in good health, didn’t drink, smoke or take drugs, “so there will be a medical examin- ation to find out what happened,” Sepinwall writes. If anyone wants to send cards, the address is 343 State Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Matt’s also on e-mail a lot, either his work address (mseitz@starledger.com) or his home one (reeling@aol.com).