Stop what you’re doing right now (seriously) and watch this — actor Dave Coyne (a.k.a. “DCLugi” of Subatomic Warp), has put together a comic video, called “Early Auditions”, about four actors — Chris Walken, Jack Nicholson, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro — doing their best to land a part in Snakes on a Plane. [Note: The first link goes to Snakes on a Blog, which had the Coyne video on the top of its page at 7:50 am Monday, but they’ll eventually move it down, of course.]

“Be disloyal. It’s your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it’s the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent — and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don’t own, and they’ll go on raising the price they are willing to offer. Didn’t Christ say that very thing? Was the prodigal son loyal, or the lost shilling or the strayed sheep? — Graham Greene

Kris Tapley informs me that Univeral publicist Jen Chamberlain sent out a press release on 3.7.06 announcing the title change from Flight 93 to United 93. Okay, fine…but I didn’t get it, and it was still being called Flight 93 on the IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and JoBlo earlier today, and Variety ran that story on 3.19 in which they called it Flight 93 and that Google search I mentioned shows that several other sites are still in the old mode, so is everyone suffering from ADD or what?

Here’s a pretty good (i.e., well-written, moderately diverting ) piece about Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener by critic Carina Chocano. I’ve seen the film, which portrays four Westside L.A. women in terms of their jobs, income and relationships with their men (i.e., mostly husbands), and I certainly recognize some of the characters, character traits and situations. Holofcener is a smart writer, an honest artist and a straight dealer…but there are two things in this film that no one, anywhere, is going to buy. One is Jennifer Aniston playing a poor house cleaner who winds up with a slovenly, poorly-dressed overweight rich guy who tries to chisel her down on her house-cleaning fee…a guy who’s about 75 to 100 pounds heavier than she is, and about 15 inches taller. The other is a scene in which Catherine Keener, playing an unhappily married screenwriter, visits a next-door neighbor who is angry at Keener and husband Jason Isaacs for starting construction on a second-story addition to their home which blocks the neighbor’s view of the city. Earlier in the film Keener and Isaacs agree they’re willing to accept neighbor hostility over this matter, but when Keener visits the neighbor and sees for herself how the second-story addition is a gross visual eyesore from this perspective, she runs out and tries to stop the building and tells all the workers to go home. Uh-huh…an expensive undertaking she’s had months to consider and involves the borrowing of a serious amount of money (probably from a bank) to pay for, and she’s going to shut it down over a matter of neighborly relations. We’re also asked to believe the neighbor wouldn’t have invited Keener over to her home in the early stages (i.e., while the framework was being put up) to make her case. You want to like this film, and you want to go with it…but these obstacles are not the doing of the viewer.

“I, too, just came back from seeing Inside Man and while my audience wasn’t vocal against the United 93 trailer like they were in Arlington Heights, my companion turned to me when it ended, saying, ‘Do you want to see that? I have no desire to see that…eccch!” — Joseph Jones, Tampa.

One of the zombie letters (in response to my observation that there are no Pacific Rim zombies…the phenomenon is strictly East Coast, Caribbean and other Old World areas) came from reader Charlie Hill, who reminded me about that highly regarded Joe Dante/Sam Hamm Showtime film, Homecoming, which aired on the “Masters of Horror” series last 12.2.05. Based on the short story “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey , it runs with the premise of “what if the hundreds of soldiers killed in Iraq were to rise from the dead for the purpose of voting Bush out of office for lying as to why we went over there in the first place.” I never saw this (don’t get Showtime) and it’s not on DVD. How good was it? Does anyone know when it might be available on disc?

“I live in Arlington Heights, Illnois — a fairly affluent, moderately left-leaning suburb — and the audience I saw Inside Man with on Saturday reacted none too well to the United 93 trailer. When the Brokeback Mountain trailers first started playing there was some discomfort but nothing too reactive. But reaction to United 93‘s trailer was downright hostile, with a few people actually yelling, ‘too soon!’ and ‘there’s no reason to see that’ in addition to a lot of perturbed coughing. From listening to people on the way out, there seemed to be a sentiment that this movie is looking to exploit still-fresh 9/11 anger and nobody seemed to want anything to do with it. I don’t know how representative this are of the population as a whole (maybe the righties will buy into it), but I’m not sure audiences are ready for the 9/11 movies coming out this year.” — Kyle Dickinson

Turns out that Snakes on a Plane tune I liked so much was sung by Neil Cicierega. He wrote this evening and asked me to link to his www.lemondemon.com site, except it’s been shut down due to bandwidth overages. He also passed along “live journal post” whatchamacallit.

A mildly depressing, somewhat alarming piece by Nerve writer Justin Clark about the growing power of conservative media mogul Philip Anschutz. The conservative-minded owner of Regal Cinemas (as well as the Edwards and United Artists chains) has plans to shape and control the kind of movies you’ll be seeing at his theatres in the coming years. Sanitized, family- or Christian-friendly…a segregated aesthetic environment.

A “Page Six” item, based on the word of private eye Richard Sabatino, says that Nicole Kidman was “well aware” that Tom Cruise “was using a private detective to wiretap her phones during their 2001 divorce” [and that] “Kidman knew that Cruise’s private detective, Anthony Pellicano, was a resourceful opponent.” The story says that “during her divorce, [Kidman] would talk to friends on the phone and every couple of minutes break into the conversation and say, ‘So, Tom, are you listening?’ or ‘Am I saying what you want me to say, Tom?’ She knew he was either tapping her phone or trying to. She was no dummy. She not only knew about it but taunted Tom.'” The story repeats previously-reported info that Kidman has been questioned by the FBI “because the feds found a recording of her talking to Cruise in computers they seized from Pellicano’s office in 2002.” Di Sabatino “suggests” that the tape was from Cruise’s phone, the story says.

British author and gossip columnist Toby Young yesterday passed along an insane-sounding rumor about Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter being considered as Paramount honcho Brad Grey‘s replacement, a story that Young admitted was almost “almost impossible to believe.” The noteworthy thing here is Young’s declaration that “Grey’s position looks increasingly untenable…at this rate, it’s not a question of if he goes, but when.”

More blood in the water, the sharks are circling, and things are looking even more dicey as far as the future of Paramount chief Brad Grey is concerned. The latest bite was contained in yesterday’s (3.24) N.Y. Times story linking Grey and indicted investigator and accused wiretapper Anthony Pellicano by David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner. They reported that “the first direct evidence of eavesdropping” by the indicted investigator “has surfaced in newly filed court documents” that contain “excerpts of what prosecutors have described as Mr. Pellicano’s summaries of conversations he intercepted in 2001 between Vincent Zenga…and his lawyer, Gregory S. Dovel, during their contentious suit against the influential Hollywood executive Brad Grey, now head of Paramount Pictures.” Zenga and Dovel filed a suit last Thursday accusing Pellicano, Grey, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, attorney Bert Fields and Fields’ law firm, Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman Machtinger & Kinsella, of “invasion of privacy, disclosure of confidential information and illegal wiretapping.” Oh…and Keith Carradine is also now suing Pellicano.