It needs to be clearly understood as far in advance as possible that The Legend of Zorro, the Antonio Banderas-Catherine Zeta-Jones movie called coming out on 10.18, should not expect and won’t in fact get any support from this corner. Pay no attention to that earnestly-reported here-comes-Zorro piece by Lewis Beale that ran in the L.A. Times Calendar section on 6.28. The original Martin Campbell Zorro movie was self-consciously flamboyant crap and a creative embarassment all around, and it gave rise to the money-grubbing, T-Mobile-hawking career of Catherine Zeta Jones, certainly one of the biggest capitalist-pig actresses of our time. One look at her face and all you can see are dollar signs…I want this, I’m going to marry him, you can’t have photos of my this or that aspect of my private life unless you sign here, etc. I guess it’s okay to read the Isabel Allende Zorro book , but let’s leave it at that.

Architecture doesn’t make me tear up like movies do, but I can’t suppress this, can’t keep it down any longer: I feel crestfallen when I look at the new Freedom Tower design. The building itself is okay, but that pointy, top-of-the-building thing looks inelegant…like a hypodermic needle drawn by a nine year-old. That off-center, see-through beacon thing that sat on top of the
old Freedom Tower design (i.e., the one announced on 12.20.03) was much more striking for its delicacy and unusualness….it really had something. The newly designed one feels too square and so-whatty.

It turns out the Russell Crowe phone-throwing episode was captured on tape. It’s also being reported that Crowe didn’t just throw a phone at Mercer Hotel concierge Nestor “Josh” Estrada, but also a vase. It’s also been written in this “Page Six” piece that what got Crowe so enraged was Estrada saying “whatever” after Crowe repeatedly complained that he couldn’t get an international phone connection. Now I know who the real bad guy is. I’ve dealt with guys like Estrada all my life and their “whatever” attitudes about life’s challenges, and they really don’t belong in service industries. When a celebrity wants you to hop, there is one and only one answer, and that is “how high?” A guy who says “whatever” about anything a valued customer needs is selfish and indifferent and living deep inside his own flabby head. And now Estrada has an attorney, Eric Franz, trying to milk Crowe for all he can…despite Estrada’s having barely been grazed by the flying phone. Estrada is not a man — he’s a girl. He’s the kind of guy who always goes “waaahh, you hurt my feelings….waahh, I’m telling the teacher” when he bruises his elbow or scrapes his knee. Crowe acted in a vulgar and detestable manner by doing what he did but if you’re going to act like a brute, third-raters like Josh Estrada are the best ones to give it to. This column stands four-quare against anyone and anything who says “whatever” in response to any kind of hard-to-figure situation…unless, of course, the using of this term is in some way appropriate.

I would love to jump into War of the Worlds (having seen it last night) but along with everyone else Paramount publicity insisted on a written pledge that I not review this Steven Spielberg film until Wednesday morning. I think it’s fair, however, to pass along one bit of reportage. The widely-buzzed-about disappointment with the finale, which I passed along in this space two or three days ago, is not about Spielberg’s decision to go with the the original H.G. Wells ending. It is not — not — about earthly bacteria in the alien’s bloodstream. As fantastic and genuinely scary as most of the film is (c’mon…you knew this would be the case), I can tell you that people sitting near me inside the Zeigfeld theatre at 9:05 pm last night were audibly moaning and whimpering when this offending scene unfurled. (It turns out, by the way, that Ain’t It Cool News didn’t break the review embargo — Paramount let them skate on the whole thing.)

The dozens of oddball revisions and reshufflings aside (which are fine — Peter Jackson isn’t doing a Gus Van Sant-folllowing Psycho remake), the new King Kong trailer is actually fairly (emphasis on the “f” word) cool. It’s just that his criteria seems to have been “how can I do this my way, so it doesn’t look like I’m copying?” instead of “how can I take what’s already been done very well and make it better, deeper, spookier…more haunting?” But I love the seeming fact that Jackson has Kong doing his Manhattan rampage in the winter, with snow on the streets…brilliant.

Six or seven bent-over guys wearing ape-pelts around their shoulders and chests are circling a young woman sitting in their center and chanting the chant that goes “Kong!…konnalong- konnalong-konnalong-konnalongalong Kong Kong!!” and beating their chests with each repetition of those last two syllables. They do this two or three times and then suddenly one of them stops circling and stands up and looks at the others and says, “Wait a minute… something feels wrong…it’s not the same.” And the other ape-pretenders wave their ape arms and tell him to shut up, and then they tell him, “It is what it is, bubba. Peter Jackson’s in charge now, not Merian C. Cooper…deal with it.” And then they resume their chanting: “Kong! Konnalong-konnalong-konnalong- konnalong-along Kong Kong!!” And the dissenter says, “You fools! You’re telling me you would’ve been placated and satisfied if Fay Wray, God rest her soul, had lived long enough to be filmed speaking the famous ending line while standing in front of Kong’s dead body on 34th Street, ‘It wasn’t the airplanes…it was beauty who killed the beast.’ That would have been fine with you guys…you would have been cool with Fay Wray saying that line?”

From Roger Friedman’s column a couple of days ago: “Meantime, I’ve got a solid new figure for the budget on War of the Worlds. Are you ready? Not counting promotion: $182 million. With promotion, think more like $230 million.”

For the last two or three days there’s been a ripple effect coming off that press-junket screening of War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29),and specifically one cutting remark in particular about the conclusion being underwhelming or otherwise not cutting it because it doesn’t deliver a big crescendo-ish blowout but ends rather quietly and internally…in a bacterial realm. I won’t be seeing the film until Monday night but this is the ending that H.G. Wells used in his original novel and more or less the same one used in the 1953 George Pal movie with Gene Barry. Wells intended WOTW was a metaphor about British militarism and colonial takeovers, and how the invader will always be defeated by natural organic elements. You can interpret the Spielberg film as a metaphor about U.S. occupation of Iraq, or, as screenwriter David Koepp has explained, as primarily being about Tom Cruise’s character evolving from a state of distracted selfishness to one of unqualified readiness to do anything to save his children…but there is certainly nothing wrong with an alien-invasion film looking to avoid the cliche of a big wham-bam finale and deciding to end it on a quiet note, for God’s sake. Whether this ending works or not is another matter, but the concept behind it is completely valid and sounds, if you ask me, refreshing for its avoidance of the usual-usual.

I was blown away by Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) this evening. I don’t know how popular it will be (it may be a little too complex and sophisticated for the schmucks) but it’s very high-quality merchandise with a decent shot at year-end awards and Oscar noms. I expected it would be at least pretty good, considering how extraordinary Meirelles’ City of God was, but I didn’t expect it to be this smart and impassioned and as strongly political. This is easily the best adaptation of a John le Carre novel since The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1966). It’s a combination love story and whodunit wrapped inside a realistic political drama that feels as raw and teeming as City of God and then some. Set mostly in Kenya, its about the murder of activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz ) and the efforts of her mild-mannered diplomat husband Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) to find out why she wss killed and who did it. Did you know drug companies can be as ruthless as arms dealers or corrupt dictators? The only disappointing aspect is the casting of Danny Huston in a supporting role as yet another morally compromised scumbag. Here’s the trailer.

For years, Anita Busch was like Old Faithful. Every time I saw her at a screening or a party, she always gave me a vaguely dirty look. Every…damn…time. Which is one reason why I enjoyed…no, not enjoyed…why I didn’t especially grieve over Nikki Finke’s respectful vivisection and entombment of the former entertainment journalist in this just-posted L.A. Weekly column. The subhead reads, “Pellicano charges are vindication for the former Hollywood reporter, but we’ve already buried her.”

What…are you kidding? This is fantastic. You can tell right away that Elizabethtown has a nicely seasoned mood, a tone that’s not quite this, that or the other thing but is definitely alive and absorbing and trying to dig down. You can feel the whimsy, humor, gravitas, regrets. Kirsten Dunst seems…I don’t know…hotter and more emotionally come-hither than in anything she’s acted in before, and something tells me this will be Orlando Bloom’s home run. (Or something approaching this…a triple?) This easily overrides the effect of those moderately dull school yearbook cast photos that appeared on the Elizabethtown site a week or so ago. Jane Fonda is advised not to click here — it’ll only depress her. Everyone else, feel free.

Could everyone I’ve been speaking to about doing a new column (and you know who you are) please re-contact me so we can finalize everything and get this stuff rolling? Thanks.