How normal is it these days for guys to not grim up and get focused on some kind of career plan until they hit 29 or 30, or even 31 or 32? Fairly normal, I think. The bottom line is that the stuff that’s funny in Kevin Smith‘s Clerks 2 is pretty fucking unfunny out there in the real world, but this is what gives good comic films their undertow.

Not a spoiler but it may read like one to someone who hasn’t seen Spike Lee’s Inside Man, so beware: A reader has mentioned a curious detail in Inside Man that’s probably nothing, but it bugged him. At the very end as Clive Owen and his colleagues drive off (and keep in mind all the discussions about Christopher Plummer‘s past and dealings with the Nazis and the profits that came from that), they’re driving away in a Volkswagen. [I haven’t verified this, but I know and trust the guy who’s passing this along.] I’ve got a copy of Russell Gewirtz‘s Inside Man script and there’s no mention of anyone driving a Volkswagen, so if this was meant as some kind of extremely dry and subtle joke it was Spike Lee’s (or his production designer’s) idea. It’s not a joke, of course, that Volkswagen AG, the German manufacturer of the first VW’s, got started with slave labor. It began around 1940 by using Polish women between the ages of 14 and 32. By 1944, tens of thousands of Ukrainian, Polish, Danish, Dutch, and Belgian citizens; Soviet, French, and Italian prisoners of war; and Jewish concentration camp prisoners were being used as unpaid slaves at Volkswagen’s plants throughout Europe. At times they totalled 85 percent of Volkswagen’s wartime workforce. Anyway, it’s either a coincidence that Owen and the gang drove off in a VW or it’s not, but of all the cars Lee and his crew could have chosen, it’s odd that they chose a car that’s famous for having been created way back when by Nazis.

“Too soon! Too soon!“….this is the mantra of people who aren’t breathing in and out, and who are basically coming from a place of emotional denial or suppression. Days pass, seasons come and go, things change and snakes shed their skin. Obviously a lot of “too-soon”-ers are talking about avoiding United 93 and/or World Trade Center…whatever. But eventually you have to move on.

Okay, okay…Tom Cruise recently said on a German TV game show that he and Katie Holmes are going to be married this summer after the birth of their baby and the release of his new movie, Mission: Impossible III. Tomkat forever…fine. What got me about the story was going to Wikipedia and learning about the game show Cruise appeared on, which is called “Wetten Dass” (i.e., “Wanna Bet?”). Airing since ’81, and broadcast live six or seven times a year with each show lasting two hours (an occasional overrun happens), it’s described as the most successful show in Europe. Hosted since 1987 by Thomas Gottschalk, the show is
about people betting whether this or that Average Joe can successfuly perform some unusual, sometimes bizarre, always difficult task. Like, for example, contestants trying to assemble a V8 engine from parts within 9 minutes, or 13 swimmers trying to tow a 312-ton ship over a distance of 25 meters. In short, fans of the show have a certain taste for the bizarre.

On Tuesday, 3.28, I wrote an item about having been told that David Fincher‘s Zodiac (Paramount, 9/22) had been retitled as Chronicles, but I also quoted a Paramount spokesperson who said “we have the rights” to use the word “Zodiac” as a movie title, which led to my observation that the rumor sounded “a tad questionable” so “don’t take this one to the bank just yet.” The next day (Wednesday, 3.29) I wrote that Fincher’s Zodiac “is absolutely going to be called that” and that Chronicles “is just what it was called during casting and shooting, apparently …as a ruse.” And now, some three or four business days later, there’s a story by Variety‘s Pamela McLintock debunking the Chronicles rumor and citing an “internet rumor” as the source of said erroneous notion.

Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim‘s An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming documentary that knocked me and everyone else for a loop when it played Sundance ’06, is being released by Paramount Classics on 5.26 — only seven and a half weeks from now — and there’s still no website for the film. There’s nothing at the Paramount Classics site, and there are no links to a Truth site on the IMDB or Coming Soon. This is perhaps the most important documentary to ever receive commercial distribution — it’s essential that mainstream Americans (especially those who voted for Bush and who drive big fat SUV’s) see and think about the message it contains — and the lack of a website at this stage of the game seems kinda derelict…no? There’s no such thing as getting the information out too early with a subject like this. Here, at least, is the main Gore-sponsored site that runs it all down, and here’s the column page containing my review out of Sundance. (An excerpt: “I’m starting to think that Gore’s entire political career, which culiminated with his run for the White House in 2000, has been about getting people to see and fully consider this absorbing slide-show lecture movie about global warming…An Inconvenient Truth is Gore’s crowning achievement…the summation of his life…the reason he was put on this earth to become a politican and a stirrer-upper and influencer of public opinion.”) Even the Amazon page for the Rodale book version, also called “An Inconvenient Truth” and due in book stores on 5.16, doesn’t even have jacket art…amazing. Whoever is in charge of the online promotion of this film belongs in the same effectiveness category at former FEMA chief Michael Brown. He/she obviously needs to be canned, and someone more on the ball needs to be brought in pronto.

Chat-boarders have been talking about this since early January, but I didn’t care about it until yesterday. The Omen (20th Century Fox), a remake of the classy 1976 horror-thriller that starred Gregory Peck, Lee Remick and David Warner, will open worldwide on an unusual day in early June — Tuesday — because the date will be 6.6.06. A clever marketing idea, and certain to strike a chord with the wack-jobbers…I’m sorry, devoted religious righties…who believe we’re approaching the End of Days. I’ve always half-liked Richard Donner‘s original, and re-doing it sounds cool, but the director, John Moore, is…I want to put this delicately so as to not to hurt Moore’s feelings, or those of his agent….a second-tier hack. (If you doubt it, compare his Flight of the Phoenix remake to the Robert Aldrich original, and re-watch Behind Enemy Lines….I mean, forget it.) Liev Schreiber has the Peck role (the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in the Donner version), Julia Styles is playing his wife (will Moore have her repeat Lee Remick’s falling-backward-over-the-stair- bannister scene?), Mia Farrow has the evil Mrs. Baylock part (played by Billie Whitelaw in ’76), David Thewlis performs the David Warner/Jennings part (which means Thewlis’s head is going to get sliced off by a large sheet of flying glass, right?). Perhaps the creepiest element in the Donner version was Jerry Goldsmith‘s music, and it’s worth noting that Moore’s composer, Marco Beltrami, will be sampling Goldsmith’s music in his score, and particularly his “Ave Satani” composition. (The IMDB credit says Beltrami is the composer but that “themes” by Goldsmith are part of the mix.)

I’m restating the obvious, but yesterday’s “Not-So-Bad Summer” piece reminded me what an unusual late July-early August we’ll be seeing this year. Four audacious, high-calibre films from a cluster of heavyweight older-guy directors — Michael Mann, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone — opening within a three-week period (7.28 to 8.11). Mann’s Miami Vice on 7.28, Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers and Gibson’s Apocalypto on 8.4, and Stone’s World Trade Center on 8.11.

“I am of the opinion that inner happiness is impossible without idleness. My ideal: to be idle and love a fat girl. For me, the greatest delight is to walk, or to sit and do nothing; my favorite occupation: to collect what is not needed (papers, bits of straw) and to do useless things.” — Anton Chekhov…who couldn’t have spent too many days collecting bits of straw and making love to cute fatties, given what I know it necessary to keep the creative waters flowing, and also considering the number of plays Chekhov wrote and the debts he had to satisfy.

A fellow movie columnist (reputable, “name” guy, works for big-city newspaper) wasn’t permitted to post this, so he sent it to me: “Just about every movie now gets a ‘director’s cut’ DVD, but I must admit I still almost sprung out of my seat when I received a package containing Bambi: The Director’s Cut. What really got me was the sticker: ‘Contains never-before-seen footage of the death of Bambi’s mother.’ Holy moley! The original Walt Disney film never showed this traumatic event (it was signaled by the sound of a gunshot) and yet this sequence is credited with sending generations of children into therapy. I was neither here nor there when I saw it as a kid, but when I re-saw the film as an adult in a crowded theater in Boston, I could hear high-pitched voices in the audience whimpering, ‘Where’s Bambi’s mommy?’, ‘What happened?’, ‘Did Bambi’s mother die?’ and ‘Will you ever die, Mommy?’. And yet it turns out that the first cut of Bambi included an entire extra minute involving the death of Bambi’s mom, and the reaction to it wasn’t conclusively negative. There were some who thought — and some modern-day psychiatrists on the featurette agree — that the scene was quite moving and poetic. As Dr. Robert Bleb of the University of Pennsylvania states: ‘Children who see this [version] now are likely to become less troubled than audiences of the past because what they see is so much less horrific than what those other children had only to imagine.’ I’ve seen it and I think he’s right. Here’s how it goes: As in the released version, Bambi and his mom are happily frolicking to celebrate the new spring when the mom senses the approach of Man and tells Bambi to run. The two of them sprint across a field, and as the camera stays on Bambi, a shot rings out. But this time there’s a quick cut back to Bambi’s mother, whose head jerks back as her body hits the ground, sending up a thin cloud of snow dust. (A faint trickle of blood is visible behind her.) She lies on the snow, her breath vaporizing in the air, and she whispers with her last breath, ‘Bambi.’ After the vapor of the mother’s last words dissipates and her eyes become shrouded with what look like white drapes, her deer spirit levitates out of her body with newly-sprouted wings slowly flapping her heavenward while Edward H. Plumb’s lush score swells to a crescendo. A trio of sweetly chirping bluebirds escorts her up to a thick layer of white puffy clouds, which the mom’s deer spirit passes through alone. On the other side, she is greeted by a large gathering of similar deer spirits, including one who maternally licks her on the head and says in a soft voice, ‘Welcome home.’ (Gulp…talk about the cycle of life.) Then the action returns to Bambi alone in the forest as seen in the original release, with him calling for his mommy until he is greeted by his father, the Great Prince. At the end, when Bambi has triumph- antly taken his father’s place, a superimposed picture of the mother appears in the upper-left corner of the frame, in the sky. She’s smiling down at Bambi, though if you look closely her head appears to be mounted on a wall. That Walt Disney was a cruel ironist. By the way, Happy April 1st.”

“I’m on the same page with you about Dallas, but when it comes to actual Texas work being lost, that’s a whole different story. I’m a sometimes-employed actor here [in Texas], and for a lot of us the news of the Dallas shutdown is devastating. There are a lot of crew members who need something like this. (I’ve seen bumper stickers posted around sets saying ‘Shoot J.R. in Dallas’, which were made up by the Dallas Film Commission). I hope that when Fox gets this film rolling again that they hire Betty Thomas to direct because she at least knows how to do a good parody/tribute.” — Alfred Ramirez, Fort Worth, TX.

Huge earnings for Ice Age: The Meltdown (20th Century Fox), the Carlos Saldanha-directed sequel to ’02’s Ice Age, which was co-directed by Saldanha and Chris Wedges. One projection has the animated family film earning $69.5 million for the weekend. (Another studio is projecting just over $70 million.) Inside Man (Universal) will be #2, with weekend totals projected at $16,754,000. ATL (Warner Bros.) will come in second with close to $14 million. V for Vendetta (Warner Bros.) is projected to earn about $6,518,000…obviously losing steam. Stay Alive, She’s The Man, The Shaggy Dog and Slither will most likely finish in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth place. Sharon Stone‘s Basic Instinct, which opened in 1453 situations, will end up in ninth place with an estimated tally of $3,385,000…right down the toilet.