David Poland thinks that because he links to a news story before others do then on some level that story kinda half-belongs to him and that others who link to the same story are feeding off his site, or his initiative. The ridiculousness of that view aside, here’s a Poland Hot Blog thing I’m bouncing off….Poland had it first, all right? But it’s also the best riff I’ve ever read by a mainstream newspaper guy — the Guardian ‘s Alan Rusbridger — about how and why old (i.e. print) media is on the way down and new (i.e., online) is on the way up. The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) staged a lecture on March 16th (not “the other night,” as Poland had it) in London. It’s on Adobe Acrobat and I friggin’ hate Adobe Acrobat, but it’s fascinating reading. It nails the attitude of big newspapers like the New York Times and how so many established publications are losing readers to various upstart online publications, etc.

I saw Bruce Willis at a party last night for Andy Garcia’s The Lost City (Magnolia, 4.28), and although I’ve spoken to him at junkets my first thought was that he’s taller than he looks in films.
Apparently he’s friendly with Garcia, perhaps in some small way due to Willis having turned down the part of the Steve Wynn-type Vegas mogul in Ocean’s 11, which led to Garcia getting it. And Willis and Garcia are both political conservatives in a heavily liberal town, so there’s also the strategic alliance thing to consider. In any case, I was sent this online video file of Willis in a Japanese TV commercial for Eneos, the Japanese oil corporation. I’ve watched it twice and can’t figure what the pitch is. There’s no wit to it.

Paramount is showing Mission: Impossible III this evening to the Hollywood Foreign Press in preparation for interviews happening tomorrow (Wednesday, 4.19) with Tom Cruise and (perhaps) others from the film. You’d think with all the negative press on Cruise happening right now (the high NRG negatives I reported on last weekend, the women-don’t-like-him angle from Peter Howell, the placenta-eating put-on story that broke this morning, the rigged Parade poll story, the American College of Radiologists critique, etc.) that Paramount might want to step out of the box a bit and have columnists like me see the film this evening also…you know, with the understanding that if it works as well as some of us are hearing that we could do a little word-of-mouth spreading about the film, for a change. That way the buzz wouldn’t be all wacky-wacky like it is now.

“The title was what got my attention,” Samuel L. Jackson tells USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna in the last and final Snakes on a Plane story of the spring. “I got on the set one day and heard they changed [the title], and I said, ‘What are you doing here? It’s not Gone with the Wind. It’s not On the Waterfront. It’s Snakes on a Plane!’ They were afraid it gave too much away, and I said, ‘That’s exactly what you should do. When audiences hear it, they say, ‘We are there!'”

It appears that those Tom Cruise Parade poll results were rigged. Question is, by whom? Parade.com recently asked readers to opine about whether Cruise was responsible for his wackzaoid public image last year or if it was mainly the media painting him that way. As I reported a few days ago, 84 percent blamed the press. But Parade publicist Alexis Collado has told “Page Six” that “we…found this a little bit fishy, so we did some investigating. We found out more than 14,000 (of the 18,000-plus votes) that came in were cast from only 10 computers! One computer was responsible for nearly 8,400 votes alone, all blaming the media for Tom’s troubles. We also discovered that at least two other machines were the sources of inordinate numbers of votes. It seems these folks (whoever they may be) resorted to extraordinary measures to try to portray Tom in a positive light for the Parade.com survey. There is even a chance they wrote a special ‘bot’ program for the sole purpose of skewing the results, rather than casting the votes by hand on a computer.”

A nice page of graphic steals from the opening credit sequence of Jason Reitman ‘s Thank You for Smoking. And here’s the credit sequence itself. Composed by an outfit called Shadowplay Studio, the titles draw from the look of classic cigarette packaging.

The Tom Cruise-eating-baby-placenta quote was a jape that was misinterpeted by a clueless writer, Patrick Mulchrone, in a story for the Daily Mirror. Based on quotes from a brand-new GQ interview by Lucy Kaylin , it has Cruise saying he intends to eat his newborn baby’s placenta right after birth. Cruise was goofing around with Kaylin and Mulchrone took it straight, but still…more weirdness at this point doesn’t help M:I:3. Cruise knows he’s got negatives because of last summer’s hijinks, he knows he’s on the ropes, he’s most likely heard about that Roger Friedman item (true or not) about an audience clapping during an M:I:3 scene when he gets beaten up, and he knows some people are saying that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the draw and not him….and so he goes out and jokes about placenta-eating. I haven’t bought the new GQ yet but here’s the exact quote as passed along by the Mirror story: “I’m gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I’m gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there.” Reader Mark Smith says during a recent interview with Diane Sawyer Cruise “tried to make a joke about the nutty, exaggerated things people were saying about the Scientology-supervised birth ritual…and then he made some joke about eating the placenta. It wasn’t funny and from his mouth it sounded creepy, but I have the feeling that ‘eating the placenta’ is his new deflection-phrase.” So it’s a put-on…fine.

Having a baby is not a walk in the park. It’s not like meditating. I’ve been there, and to me all that delivering-the-baby-in-silence Scientology crap that Tom Cruise has been talking about is deranged. If you’ve been there in the room during birth (as I have, twice), and you know what a mother goes through, the notion that loud vocal exclamations are bad for the baby’s spirit is totally diseased. Cruise has been quoted as saying that “scientifically it is proven…now there are medical research papers that say when a woman’s giving birth, everyone should be quiet.” He apparently told GQ magazine that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard determined making a noise had a “negative spiritual effect” on someone giving birth. And yet he allowed that partner Katie Holmes will be allowed to scream. “It is really about respecting the woman,” he said. “It’s not about her screaming.” Let me understand this correctly. Cruise has given permission to Holmes to shout out during childbirth…right? Wow. That’s damn decent of him.

Director John McTiernan pleaded guilty today in federal court in Los Angeles to lying to the FBI when questioned about dealings with Hollywood wiretapper Anthony Pellicano. The Die Hard helmer faces five years in the can, probation and fines, etc., but he almost certainly won’t be punished too hard because he’s said to be cooperating with investigators. When is something going to happen in this case? The readers are restless and I can hear the jungle chant: “We want Brad…we want Brad…we want Brad.” No, the other one.

The word on John Lasseter‘s Cars (Disney/Pixar, 6.12) still ain’t good. That or the old Showest buzz is still banging around. “It’s okay but it doesn’t really work…it’s not The Incredibles …nobody bats 1000,” etc. Is anyone over the moon about this thing? I mean, someone who isn’t on the Disney-Pixar payroll?

According to New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, Paul Weitz‘s American Dreamz (Universal, 4.21) is “physically horrid to behold.” On top of which “any attempt to defend [the film] for its political venom, or for the surfeit of its surreal conceits, is doomed to founder on a single, obstructive fact: this picture ain’t funny. I winced three times, and gave a couple of short laughs, but that was it.”

The trick in giving your kid a really cool name is to avoid dull pokey names like Pete or Mike or Ted, but don’t make it too cool or strange. You know…don’t fix it so the kid is guaranteed to have a hard time at school with their classmates because his first name is Pilot Inspektor (the believe-it-or-not first name of Jason Lee‘s son) or Moxie Crimefighter (real name of Penn Jillette‘s son) or Moses (sired and condemned by Gwynneth Paltrow and husband Chris Martin). When Pilot Inspektor turns 22 or 23, he’s going to find his father sittin’ at a table dealing stud’ with a bunch of other actors and say, “My name is Pilot Inspektor! How do you do! Now you’re gonna die!” And then they’ll tumble to the floor and into the street, a kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer.