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This latest David Halbfinger-Allison Hope Weiner New York Times story about the Anthony Pellicano investigation is about how Pellicano tried to shake down billionaire Ron Burkle in 2002, telling him that he would not investigate him in exchange for payment of a fee between $100,000 and $250,000. It’s basically a portrait of how Pellicano used to drum up business by “holding himself out as a broker between rich and powerful adversaries, thereby drawing them into his realm at Hollywood’s underbelly,” the Times story says. Burkle, of course, had a similar-type enounter with New York Post “Page Six” reporter Jared Paul Stern, although Stern has maintained his meeting with Burkle wasn’t the blatant shakedown it’s been reported to be, and that he was somehow set up.

Another generic ready-or-not, here-comes-United 93 story, this one by USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican…right down the middle of the tarmac. It mentions a USA TODAY/Gallup poll of 1,006 adults conducted between 4.7 and 4.9, that found that “38% of respondents were very or somewhat likely to see a 9/11 movie, while 60% would not be inclined to watch one. If they turn out in theaters, that 38% is enough to supply very solid box-office numbers.”
People were split evenly, 44% to 44%, over whether it was a good or bad thing for Hollywood to tackle 9/11. (The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.)

The official Cannes Film festival selections have been announced, and I deeply regret the non-inclusion of Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain…I’ve been told since last November or thereabouts that Aronofsksy wanted to show it there, but apparently the Cannes chiefs wouldn’t offer him a competition slot and that’s what he was insisting upon so that was that. The upside surprise is that Richard Linklater‘s A Scanner Darkly will be shown under Un Certain Regard. Otherwise, the big four U.S. films in competition are Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette (gotta remember that hyphen), Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel and — as my French journo tipster Matthieu Carratier predicted yesterday — Richard Kelly‘s Southland Tales. (This is a major boost for Kelly, whom I interviewed for the defunct Razor magazine this time last year and have since gotten to know a bit.) The other big titles are Pedro Almodovar ‘s Volver, Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labrynth, Nani Moretti‘s The Cayman, Andrea Arnold’s Red Road and…anyone have any tips on any choice non-U.S. films? The special screening highlights are Davis Guggenhiem‘s An Inconvenient Truth and Bill Couturie‘s Boffo: Tinseltown’s Bombs and Blockbusters. The big U.S. films that are basically using the festival for hooplah’s sake are Ron Howard‘s The DaVinci Code, Paul Greengrass ‘s United 93, Brett Ratner‘s X-Men: The Last Stand and Tim Johnson‘s Over the Hedge. There will, of course, also be that 20-minute preview of the Paramount-funded Oliver Stone melodrama World Trade Center. That John Ford doc by Sam Pollard called John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend, which will be offered as part of a big John Ford collection that Warner Home Video is putting out on June 6th, is also, I think, slated to be shown at some point during the festival.

On one hand you’ve got this cottonball, press-release-sounding New York Times story about Paris and its many depictions in movies, centering on a retrospective at the Hotel de Ville (i.e., city hall) called “Paris au Cinema.” And on the other hand you’ve got this Variety story about Woody Allen suddenly bailing on shooting his next film in Paris because the costs were getting prohibitive. I can relate to that.

In the announcement about Brian Grazer filing for separation from his wife Gigi Levangie-Grazer, the Associated Press story mentions that Levangie-Grazer is author of two well-known works — the screenplay of Stepmom and an ’05 book called “The Starter Wife” — that are about a somewhat older wife being edged aside by her husband’s younger girlfriend. The couple has two young boys…a tough one. My own sons were three and half and two when my ex and I divorced.

Mattheiu Carratier‘s Cannes Film Festival tips were 75% correct, by the way: Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain (Warner Bros., October) will not, sad to say, be screened there, in competition or otherwise. (Perhaps via a market screening…?) And Richard Kelly‘s Southland Tales will not only play Cannes but in competition! Congrats, Richard! (Carratier had half-incorrectly been told it might be shown as a non-competitor or even as a midnighter.) Another French source confides that the reason The Fountain won’t be playing Cannes is that Aronofsky wanted his film in competition but the festival didn’t, so he withdrew it. That was it…plain and simple.

Patrick Goldstein and others feel that the arrival of United 93 is not only healthy but overdue. And if it’s a less-than-soothing experience for some…well, get used to it. “With the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching, it is not too soon for movies to offer some unflinching perspective,” Goldstein writes in his “Big Picture” column. “The cold truth is that great art — or at least, as in the case of United 93, sober, thoughtful art — is unruly and impatient. Studios and politicians take polls to see if they are too far out in front of the public. Artists lead with their chin, scrambling headlong out onto ledges or exploring into dark corners. They don’t wait for the audience to form a cozy quorum.”

“It may be the film’s most compassionate gesture — its single most humanizing touch — to indicate that the heroes of Flight 93 were motivated not by patriotism, as it may be comforting for some to think, but by unthinkable fear and a primal survival instinct.” — critic Dennis Lim‘s review of United 93 in the Village Voice.

The final Bushian war-cry epilogue that appeared on the tail end of unfinished versions of Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 (Universal, 4.28) — “America’s war on terror had begun” — has been removed from the film. 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″…or words very close to that. So the final graph in Dennis Lim‘s Village Voice review is now invalid. It partly reads,”Perhaps mindful of his target audience, Greengrass makes sure to dangle some red-state red meat…United 93 slips into propaganda with a concluding title card that declares, ‘America’s war on terror had begun.’ Whatever Greengrass’s intentions, his film’s closing moments essentially memorialize 9-11 Bush style, as an occasion for revenge. Painful as this movie is, it’s even more excruciating to imagine how it might play in some of the country’s multiplexes.” No worries…the concern is moot.

The Hollywood Foreign Press saw Mission: Impossible III Tuesday night and some Entertainment Tonight people saw it earlier in the day, but the Wednesday M:I:3 junket was suddenly cancelled by Tom Cruise due to Katie Holmes having given birth to their daughter Suri sometime prior to 4 pm on Tuesday, which is when her arrival was announced. (Ancestry.com says that “Suri” is a Hindu and Sikh term…”Sanskrit suri for sun, priest, sage.” It is also “an epithet of Krishna.”) And by the way: Brooke Shields, Cruise’s philosophical opponent last year over the subject of post-partum-depression, gave birth to a baby girl yesterday also.

So who is “Film Fatale“, the new MCN blogger? Like other mysteriously-reclusive-women-friends-of-David–Poland I’ve barely spoken to in years past, the lady (I’m assuming she’s not a gay guy doing a Libby Gelman-Waxner) is being reclusive and, for the time being, hiding her identity. I’m not saying she’s busted or anything, but if you click on a 2.13.06 post called “Welcome to Hollywood” it says “posted by Justine.” It would be very easy to guess it’s Justine Elias. Perhaps too easy. I wonder…

You can’t see An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount, 5.26) “and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000,” observes Richard Cohen in the N.Y. Daily News. “Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. For instance, his insistence on abstinence as the preferred method of birth control would be laughable were it not so reckless. It is similar to Bush’s initial approach to global warming. It may be that Gore will do more good for his country and the world with this movie than Bush ever did by winning in 2000.”