My Cannes lodging is fine, but a sharp journalist friend out of New York is suddenly looking, so if anyone knows of any kind of flat share she could get into, please get in touch.

In case you haven’t checked its Rotten Tomatoes page, The Sentinel — the Michael Douglas-Keifer Sutherland White House thriller that wants to be No Way Out — has a 29% positive creme de la creme rating and a 31% positive overall. In other words, this 20th Century Fox release more or less blows. My favorite quote, from Efilmcitic’s Scott Weinberg: “C’mon, how seriously are we supposed to take a film in which the President of the United States is played by Sledge Hammer!?” (He means David Rasche, who’s also in United 93.)

Journalist Rob Scheer spoke to United 93 director Paul Greengrass yesterday about that closing-credits line — “America’s war on terror had begun” — that has been removed “It was absolutely my inclusion, and my exclusion,” Greengrass said. “I wouldn’t read too much into it. What was seen [by critics] was a very early version of it…it wasn’t finished. The thinking was, I wanted the story to feel like it was relevant to today. But when I saw that particular card at the end, I thought ‘that’s not right’ because that’s going to divide people. People are going to think, ‘Oh does that mean he’s for the war on terror or is he against?’ and in the end, that’s irrelevant. So in the end, I replaced it with the dedication to the victims of September 11th, because I think that the film speaks for itself. I didn’t want a card to divide the audience.”

You can read between the lines and tell that Variety‘s Janet Sphrintz and Deadline Hollywood‘s Nikki Finke aren’t happy with the California Supreme Court’s decision to throw out an old sexual harassment suit (filed six years ago) by a female assistant against three producer-writers on NBC’s Friends (as well as their Warner Bros. TV employers) for speaking profanely during story meetings. The woman, Amaani Lyle, felt being exposed to this was a form of sexual harassment, and it may have been that on some level. (Talking about big boobs and anal sex in front of female coworkers is certainly a kind of provocation.) But vulgar talk among “creative” colleagues is totally standard in this town…among almost all heavy-hitters, really. Indulging in Aristocrats-style improvs in a business meeting is a way of signalling that you’re an unpretentious get-down type and not an uptight dickhead spouting p.c. bullshit…that you’re “real.” Nobody likes someone sitting in the room complaining about the talk not being polite enough. This is Hollywood, after all…a world peopled with lions, faux-lions, jackals, hyenas and lots of little hamsters running around. In his written opinion on the case, Justice Marvin Baxter said that “the essence of a sexual harassment claim is disparate treatment on the basis of sex, and that the mere discussion of sex or the use of vulgar language does not constitute sexual harassment.”

“Poseidon is a remake of a classic film, but when you do that without having a big name it means either you’ll have a money generator with disappointing figures or a complete flop. Replace Josh Lucas with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, et, al. and you’ll probably have a success. Replace Wolfgang Peterson with James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, M. Night Shalaman, et. al. and you’ll probably have a success. With Lucas starring and Petersen directing, Warner Bros. will probably have another King Kong situation at the end of the day — sizable revenues that will nonetheless finally disappoint in relation to how much it cost to make and market. Similar fates enveloped the remakes of Psycho, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Manchurian Candidate…films that were original in their day and became known as classics of a sort, but when their remakes loomed were seen as being difficult to improve upon.” — Phillip C. Perron

“Another part of the reaction to United 93 is a certain craven American fear of looking at terrifying or unpalatable moments in history head-on. It’s as if examining these events or ideas might be too disturbing or challenging — as if we were all five years old. It’s Homer Simpson logic: if we can’t see it, it isn’t real. It isn’t happening. It will all go away.” — the Guardian‘s John Patterson about how U.S. media have responded to the release of United 93 “in the stupidest of terms” and how “they don’t understand the British tradition of documentary.”

“In American Dreamz, a comedy about a faltering American president, a wildly popular TV talent show and the Svengalis behind them both, the jokes don’t just fizzle into insignificance; they flop about with gaudy ineffectualness, gasping for air like newly landed trout. Unlike fish, alas, gags about nitwit com- manders in chief, oily television hosts and rabidly ambitious young performers with stars in their eyes and sometimes their beds can’t be tossed back in the water; only a blunt instrument, like a hammer, will do. Consider this a hammer, humanely but firmly applied.” — Manohla Dargis in Friday’s [4.21] N.Y. Times

Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey has little to fear from that upcoming John Connolly piece about the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping mess in an upcoming Vanity Fair, according to L.A. Indie ‘s Ross Johnson. “Grey, who hired Pellicano and frequently dropped by [his] office, is probably resting a little easier today,” Johnson begins. “Vanity Fair‘s June issue was put to bed yesterday [Thursday, 6.20]. Our spies at the magazine say that Grey, a friend of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, got the velvet glove treatment in the Pellicano piece. Grey’s corporate overlord, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, has not taken kindly to Grey being the proverbial one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Redstone’s warlords have been badgering the N.Y. Times to let up on the Grey-Pellicano story, and Redstone’s footsoldiers at the Viacom-owned Simon & Schuster book publisher have also stepped up.”

Focus Features has just announced a pickup of Woody Allen ‘s Scoop, a London-based comedy that he shot last summer costarring himself, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and Ian McShane. Allen also wrote and directed. Johansson plays an American journalism student who happens upon a great news scoop while visiting London. An affair with an aristocrat (Jackman) is also part of the mix. A Focus rep said he didn’t know the debut date, but Variety‘s Ian Mohr posted a story this afternoon that says Scoop is coming out “this summer.”

Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who not only wrote The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada but is a longtime collaborator of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (having written the screenplays for Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel, which was just accepted as a competition entry at the Cannes Film Festival)…Guillermo is telling me to take a close look at Andrea Arnold‘s Red Road, a U.K.-Denmark production that has also just been accepted as a Cannes competition film. “She was at a Sundance workshop when I was an advisor and I can tell you that her screenplay [of Red Road] was great and that it will be a hard competitor in Cannes. She is a major talent.” Last year Arnold won the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short for Wasp, which she actually made in 2003. (Or so it says on the IMDB.)

Are entertainment journalists ready at long last to stop using that same tired-ass lead in their stories about United 93, to wit: “Is America ready for a film like this”? I’m ready for this question to go away and stay away starting right now. The straw that broke it was Lou Lumenick‘s New York Post story. You can tell he likes the film, but Lumenick is the second critic to get it wrong about the now-removed statement — “America’s war on terror had begun” — that appeared on the closing credits in an unfinished digital version of the film. (The Village Voice‘s Dennis Lim was the first.) The finished version, screened in Beverly Hills Tuesday night, ends with the words “Dedicated to those Americans who lost their lives on September 11, 2001”.

“Humans are drawn to looking at the unwatchable as a way of cheating death. We willingly look at terrible things, often over and over — real footage of war and dramatizations, actual catastrophes and historical re-creations, the tragic outcomes of which are never in doubt — for the thrill of being alive . Perhaps we’re as astonished by our own good fortune as we are horrified by the worse fates of others who could just as well have been us. We grieve, we resolve, we call loved ones, we replay the images, humbled by our own relief.” — from Lisa Schwarzbaum‘s positive review of United 93 in Entertaiment Weekly.