I finally looked at this iPhone 2.0 video from two or three months ago. I thought the new phone, due later this month, was supposed to be (a) faster loading in terms of websites, (b) have a sharper, higher pixel-level camera, and (c) offer a longer-lasting battery. The 2.0 allows you to selectively delete mail, which is very welcome, but if it doesn’t have the three features I’ve listed, is it worth shelling $400 if you already have last year’s iPhone? I’m asking.

iPhone firmware 2.0 hands-on from Engadget on Vimeo.

Anne Thompson‘s skinny about Paramount Vantage being folded into big Paramount, posted by yours truly a mere 19 hours after the appearance of the original 5.3 article. Congrats to good guy Gerry Rich, who will be running the marketing.

David O. Russell‘s Nailed, which has had its filming schedule halted at least twice due to money problems on the part of its financier, “will resume filming Wednesday thanks to a late-breaking financing deal” between the notoriously shaky Capitol Films and Comerica Bank,” according to Hollywood Reporter guys Gregg Goldstein and Leslie Simmons.
“Key cast members, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Biel and Catherine Keener, were en route to the South Carolina set Tuesday to begin shooting the next day. But the ultimate future of the film from the economically troubled Capitol remains uncertain.
“Sources say the Comerica financing, secured Monday, will help the film meet its projected $25 million budget and additional costs from a week of missed shooting days and union penalties. But some of the filmmakers aren’t sure if the funds will last through postproduction.”

Tomorrow night Clint Eastwood will attend a q & a session at Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre following a showing of Michael Henry Wilson‘s Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film, a year-old 81 minute doc about Eastwood’s career.

The Aero interview will follow a 7:30 showing and before a subsequent screening of Don Siegel‘s The Beguiled (’71), a Civil War-era drama with Eastwood, Elizabeth Hartman and Geraldine Page.
Oddly, Wilson’s film is not included in the just-released Dirty Harry box set. As this Amazon listing states, the DVD doc is Bruce Ricker and Dave Kehr‘s Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, a doc released nearly eight years ago.
Warner Home Video didn’t respond to queries, so I asked an Eastwood assistant at Malpaso Prods. if the box-set doc is the Ricker-Kehr and not the Wilson, and she said yes.
Here’s a piece I wrote nearly eight years ago about the Ricker-Kehr doc, called “Through A Glass Mildly“:
“I caught a showing Monday evening of Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, a 90-minute documentary about the actor/director’s celebrated career. It will show on PBS on Wednesday, 9/27, as part of the “American Masters” series. I was invited by the doc’s writer, Dave Kehr, the well-known film critic who’s reviewing these days for CitySearch, an online site, and who is also a regular contributor about film for the New York Times.
“Directed by Bruce Ricker, Shadows is a first-rate job. It points out every important or noteworthy step in Eastwood’s evolution from bit-player actor (under contract to Universal in the ’50s) to TV actor to tough-guy icon to Oscar-winning director for Unforgiven, his one unmistakable masterpiece. Kehr weaves together every knowledgeable point anyone could make about Eastwood’s oeuvre. The influences and growth experiences along the way are fully noted and reflected upon.
“But there’s no dodging the observation it’s also a bit of a gloss. I wasn’t looking for a tear-down job, exactly, but docs with a warts-and-all approach to their subjects always seem to have more resonance. It may be that Eastwood has lived a relatively wart-free life (he’s obviously not the ‘bothered’ type), but it was also clear to me that the filmmakers weren’t very interested in digging too deeply into this area.
“What major artist hasn’t grappled with demons, or been driven by some festering inner fear, or plagued by some behavioral shortcoming? Eastwood, apparently. He emerges here as a determined but mild-mannered artist who developed his brushstrokes skillfully but slowly, and who dabbled with second-rate material too often and never really went for broke except with Unforgiven.
“I’ve long admired Eastwood. I especially liked the way he made The Bridges of Madison County into a much better and more touching film than the book. But his directing style has sometimes felt too casual to me, and he’s frequently been too accommodating in his choice of material. The doc acknowledges he may have made one or two too many Dirty Harry films, but it never really takes him to task for directing swill like Firefox and The Rookie. Nor does it ask why A Perfect World and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil played so flat.
“On the other hand, it doesn’t even mention a film of his I haven’t seen in years but which I remember as being not half bad — Breezy, the 1973 May-December romance with William Holden and Kay Lenz — which Eastwood directed but didn’t star in.
“Narrated by Unforgiven co-star Morgan Freeman, the doc benefits from interviews with Eastwood, director Curtis Hanson, Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel, Unforgiven co-star Gene Hackman, Bird star Forrest Whitaker, Eastwood’s mom, and many others. I especially enjoyed the black-and-white clips from Eastwood’s bit parts in ’50s sci-fi movies and from the TV series Rawhide, which he stayed with for seven years as surly cowhand Rowdy Yates.
“Out of the Shadows plays like a very smart, gently perceptive valentine. No harm in this. It’s a good piece. I was just hoping for more.”

Ridley Scott‘s Body of Lies (Warner Bros., 10.10.08), the Middle East spy drama with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, is now, according to Scott, being called A House of Lies. Was this announced recently? If so, I missed it. The “A” is unnecessary — just House of Lies will do. Actually it doesn’t. It sounds like a domestic drama about a couple with marriage problems.

Here’s a portion of a q & a Scott gave to Eclipse magazine’s Scott Essman:
Essman: “You directed Blade Runner and Alien, which are seminal science fiction films. Why have you not done more science fiction films?”
Scott: “I am going to do one. I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month. That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film that I am doing now in England.”
Essman: “Are you working with Russell Crowe again on the Robin Hood film?”
Scott: “I am, I just finished with him and Leonardo DiCaprio on Body Of Lies, which is now going to be called A House Of Lies. It is pretty good. I am very happy with it. In Nottingham Russell is the Robin Hood figure.”
Essman: “Are you still planning to make Blood Meridian?”
Scott: “We got it down as a screenplay and the problem is that it is so savage. But that’s what it is. If you did it properly it would be an X-certificate. But you can’t apologize for the violence and you can√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t quantify the violence and you shouldn’t try to explain the violence. It is what it is√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭ¶an exercise in brutality, savagery and violence. For the most part it is probably relatively accurate. It shows the flipside to Dances With Wolves of how the United States was probably taken. It was taken by the throat.”

Director Rod Lurie (Nothing But The Truth, Resurrecting The Champ) sent the following to my e-mail box this morning: “The Democratic primary campaign has been electric,” he began. “It’s been better than any fictionalized version could be. Better than The Best Man, Recount, The American President, The Candidate or The Contender.
“But when people talk about Obama’s experience, it seems like a dead argument to me. That’s because I look at White House governing the same way I do filmmaking.
“Directors, like any Oval Office occupant, bring vision and ideas to the world that they now control. They are not necessarily experts at the technical aspects of the game. A director has a director of photography and a President has a Secretary of the Treasury. The director has a production designer and a President has a Secretary of State. All the below-the-line guys have to respond to the big idea of their boss.
“”First-time directors with no experience, after all, have given us Citizen Kane, The 400 Blows, Reservoir Dogs, Breathless, American Beauty, Buyz in the Hood, Sling Blade, The Maltese Falcon and Ordinary People. Young directors with some but not much experience (liek Obama) have given us The Godfather, The French Connection, Pulp Fiction, Mean Streets, The Killing, Jaws, American Graffiti and so on.
“Once directors gain that experience — once they taste success — they tend to get not so much lazier as they are careful. Safe. There are some directors like Eastwood and Huston who improved as they aged, but not many others.
“The same thing tends to apply to our leaders. When he was younger, John McCain was a reformer and a bull that carried his own china shop around with him. It was commendable when he opposed Reagan putting our marines in Lebanon, for example. It was commendable when he lashed at Christian evangalists like Fallwell and Robertson. But now, he’s playing it safe in his old age. He’s not tweaking the base, not insisting that the Republicans take a good look in the mirror and adjust their tie or realize that the need a haircut. Its as if he needed the advantage of youth’s energy to go against the grain.
“Go Obama.”

Defamer‘s Summer Bad-Buzz Watch article, which went up late yesterday morning, focuses, of course, on the Big Three — Get Smart, The Love Guru and The Happening. Whatever, blah-blah, standard sniper-fire stuff.

What’s funny or mildly amusing about this New York subway poster defacing lying just to the north of this graph? Nothing. It’s asinine. But what it tells you, I believe, is that the elite malcontents out there have picked up on the Happening vibe and are quietly massing against Shyamalan. The fact that 20th Century Fox hasn’t scheduled any press screenings (not just here but in hinterland burghs) tells you something.
I don’t trust what I’ve heard about Get Smart — too blunt, too simplistic — so I’m keeping mum.
I’ve heard that The Love Guru is pretty bad, yes, but doesn’t the concept, Mike Myers‘ makeup/appearance and the ad art make this point more clearly than any loose-talk item?

Last night on CNN, commentator Jeffrey Toobin noted that Barack Obama‘s victory margin “is without dispute — he has won the nomination…so without the deranged narcissism of the Clintons, I don’t understand why [this isn’t officially over].” Asked by his chuckling, mock-shocked colleagues what he really meant, Toobin said, “Well, what does that mean…it’s ‘her night’? He just won!”
GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, also appearing on CNN, said that in Clinton’s almost blustery, non-conceding “no decisions tonight” speech last night “she did everything but offer Obama the vice presidency.”
But “what other decision can she make?,” MSNBC’s First Read essay asked this morning. “Her speech, which came after the networks declared Obama the presumptive nominee, seemed akin to the losing football team remaining on the field after the game is already over and celebrating with its fans.
“A close friend and adviser said, ‘We were going flat-out until last night. We poured everything into winning South Dakota. Now she needs some time to decompress.’ Another said: “She knows she has maximum leverage right now.” The Clintons clearly believe that Obama needs her supporters — and that they can continue this dance for at least a few more days, despite pressure from party leaders to get it done.”
Decompress? In other words, instead of doing what any student of politics would consider to be the traditional, respectful thing — i..e, her conceding the nomination to Obama — she’s focusing instead on trying to chill down so she can personally feel looser and more relaxed? Is she going to double up on foot massages?
Hillary Clinton’s raging egomania is literally sickening. She’s a fiend. She will crawl out the landing gear of Obama’s jet when it lands in Denver and tear Lance Henrickson in half. (Thanks to HE reader Crow T. Robot. Thanks also to Bosco Bear.)
Which makes it all the more difficult to admit that as loathsome and despicable as Clinton is, it would still be the smart thing for Obama to ask her to be his Vice-President.
John F. Kennedy didn’t betray his “let’s get this country moving again” campaign mantra by making Lyndon Johnson, a vulgar, old-school wheeler-dealer, his running mate — he chose Johnson in order to win. Clinton is an absolute monster, but she believes in the right things and Obama, I suspect, will need a scrappy pit bull to help slap some deals together. You can’t be too high-minded in a scummy business like politics.
Clinton will bring along the middle-aged Appalachian-industrial Midwest rube vote (or certainly a greater portion of these good and gentle folks than Obama would otherwise get on his own), and she’ll certainly attract the millions of older, less-educated women who’ve been standing with her since last January and before. She is obnoxious with talons. She is Darkness Personified and nothing but trouble, but she believes in and wants to achieve the goals that Obama is committed to. The poor guy needs to hold his nose, shake hands with the devil and win the damn election, and move on from there.
That said, she is clearly trying to force Oabama’s hand in this thing, and if he decides to turn her down and go with someone else as Vice-President, Obama will be admired for having made a tough and principled decision. For HRC is truly sociopathic — one of the ugliest right-thinking liberals of all time.
As Politico‘s Roger Simon wrote this morning, Clinton’s “fighting words [last night] only increased the need for Obama to show that he can be strong, tough and in charge. Clinton’s unwillingness to recognize Obama as the victor only increased the need for Obama to act like a president and not like a doormat. And denying her a vice presidential slot may be a way of doing that.”

“He thought a little thing like winning would stop her? Oh, Bambi. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons. If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance. ‘It’s never going to end,’ sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. ‘We’re just moving to a new phase.’

“Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. Getting dragged across the finish line Tuesday night by Democrats who had had enough of the rapacious Clintons, who had decided, if it came to it, that they would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary, the Illinois senator tried to celebrate at the St. Paul arena where Republicans will anoint John McCain in September.
“But even as Obama was trying to savor, Hillary was refusing to sever. Ignoring the attempts of Obama and his surrogates to graciously say how ‘extraordinary’ she was as they showed her the exit, she and a self-pitying Bill continued to pull focus. Outside Baruch College, where she was to speak, her fierce feminist supporters screamed ‘Denver! Denver! Denver!'” — from Maureen Dowd‘s 6.4.08 N.Y. Times column, titled “She’s Still Here!”

For a change, I’m in complete accord with the tweedly-deedly Dave Kehr over his enthusiasm for Blake Edwards‘ What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), which is out today on DVD.

Or rather, my memory of this World War II farce, having seen it many eons ago, is in accord with what Kehr wrote today in his N.Y. Times DVD column. I remember it being hugely funny, but you have to careful with Edwards (who is one of the slickest and coarsest auteur-level directors of all time) and you really can’t trust your memory. I will therefore see it this evening and render a verdict down the road.
I remember clearly that Harry Morgan, Jr.’s Major Pott character is a hoot. He somehow gets lost in a network of caves and tunnels under the small Italian town where the story takes place, and the loneliness and confusion slowly turn him into a babbling loon. I remember one of his final lines: “White man speak with forked tongue!”

A studio exec has written and clarified some points about the Universal fire and the films (prints) that were destroyed. First, he says, “No archival material is stored at Deluxe — circulating prints of the more popular titles are kept there. Those prints, of course, remain unharmed.”
Secondly, “A monumental amount of Universal’s archival prints — highly precious, still screened on occasion, and not to be confused with original camera negatives — were destroyed in the fire.”
Thirdly, “Even though the negatives are allegedly safe in New Jersey, this is still a colossal tragedy. It will take Universal years — if not decades — to replace all the lost archival prints (assuming they even have the inclination).”
“Also remember that Universal owns pre-1950s Paramount, so much of those archival prints have been lost as well. UCLA maintains nitrate prints of those titles, but those are not lent out for screenings.”

N.Y. Times guy Michael Cieply on Sony Classics’ unusual (and perhaps trend-setting) plan to open Baghead in Austin, and then, according to SPC co-topper Tom Bernard, “probably” Dallas, Houston and maybe Portland. The New York and L.A. openings won’t happen until sometime in July or August. The first group of non-coastal cities, says Bernard, √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚Äútend to connect with what√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s new and different.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù