So the $13 million earned by Fever Pitch on its opening weekend is said to be disappointing, and a shadow now hangs over over the nascent film career of Jimmy Fallon. The poor schlub just didn’t have the right chemistry with costar Drew Barrymore, blah, blah. I’m wondering, though, why the one-sheet made absolutely no mention of the fact that this was (look at me…referring to this puppy in the past tense already!) a Bobby and Peter Farrelly comedy? Don’t their names mean something to the fans of There’s Something About Mary, et. al.? Did Fox marketers hide this fact because the Farrelly’s Stuck on you only took in a lousy $34 million or so, and they were afraid this failure would taint Fever on some level? And while we’re on the subject, what killed the Farrelly’s Three Stooges film with Russell Crowe as Moe?

A bit more on the stall-out (what else can you call it? a case of profound head-scratching?) of Steven Soderbergh’s Che, a biopic that’s been expected to focus on the gnarlier aspects of the late revolutionary leader’s life and exploits. A little more than ten days ago, Benicio del Toro, who’s been intending to play Guevara in this particular vehicle for a long while, was asked about the project by an Empire Online reporter, and he replied, “I’m going to see [Soderbergh] in a week or so, and we’re going to sit down. We just want to make a good movie, and it’s really hard to take the life of that man and condense it in two hours…it’s just really hard. So we have to find an angle that we stay true and honest to the guy, and at the same time, you know, attack some of the questions of who he was, and make it work like a movie.” In other words, back to the drawing board. Despite earlier-announced plans to start shooting this moderately expensive drama next August (i.e., four months from now), the project is obviously on hold until sometime in mid to late ’06. Is “we need to find an angle” a euphemism for money problems? Could this mean that Terrence Malick, who was going to direct Che before Soderbergh stepped into the gig about a year ago, might pick up the reins yet again? Malick’s The New World will be completed and released by late ’05, so who knows? Soderbergh is currently working on the experimental Bubble, and in September will begin lensing The Good German, a post-World War II romantic thriller written by Paul Attanasio with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. (Yeah, I know — I’ve already said that.)

Kristin Scott-Thomas is telling BBC News that the success of the French-produced Arsene Lupin, which opened in Europe last fall but has apparently found no U.S. distributor, exemplifies a new approach to movies in France. “I think it’s very exciting,” Scott Thomas remarked, “because for a long time in France ‘commercial’ was a dirty word. Now it’s okay to make a lot of money with the films that you’re making.” It’s certainly okay for this 44 year-old French resident, because the producing of more and more empty fantabulous films in France means she gets to earn bigger paychecks. What she doesn’t acknowledge, of course, is that the movie is, to judge by reviews, on the fatuous side. As Boyd van Hoeij of European Films.net politely puts it, Arsene Lupin “is high on atmosphere and production values (the reported budget being 23 million Euros), though it treats the story only as a necessity to bring us from one skirmish to the other, from one lady’s bed to the other and from one flaming explosion to the next.” See what I mean? The cultural-aesthetic cancer that has all but taken over mainstream big-budget filmmaking in Hollywood has spread to France. Break out the Dom Perignon! “Arsene Lupin [can] be an old-fashioned adventure if you are willing to let it be just that,” van Hoeij continues. “The story and its internal logic are not its greatest feats, but indulge in this two-hour fantasy of this rakish burglar in an exquisitely imagined Paris and Normandy and you will come away entertained, amused and delighted.” Adhering to general principle, I am torn between shedding a tear and wanting to throw up.

Come September Steven Soderbergh is planning on directing The Good German, a post-World War II romantic thriller written by Paul Attanasio with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles. And I guess…whoa, wait a minute…what happened to Soderbergh’s Che? Last time I looked this $40 million Che Geuvara biopic, which has a script by Terrence Malick and Benicio del Toro playing the lead role (along with Benjamin Bratt, Javier Bardem, Ryan Gosling, Franka Potente), was going to start shooting in Bolivia next August. Obviously this much-delayed project has worries up the yin-yang. I was just hoping that Che would be Soderbergh’s bounce-back movie…the one that would finally pull him out of his slump. He’s currently shooting an experimental thing in West Virginia and Ohio called Bubble…and I’m saying “experimental” because he’s using amateur actors. Producer Gregory Jacobs has described it as “a character piece, maybe even like a slice-of-life story. There is a murder that takes place, but it’s not a murder mystery.”

Remember Nancy Travis? Remember all the stuff she did in the late ’80s and early ’90s? (Married to the Mob, Internal Affairs, So I Married an Axe Murderer, etc.) She was banished to the tube and theatrical semi-obscurity about ten years ago, but is now returning in the upcoming Ken Kwapis film, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Warner Bros., 6.3). Delia Ephron’s script, based on the Anne Brasheres book of the same name, is about four best friends (i.e., women) of different shapes and sizes sharing a magical pair of jeans that fits each one perfectly. And, the description says, “to keep in touch the friends pass the jeans to each other as well as the adventures they are going through while apart.” Awesome. I love chick flicks about best friends sharing experiences and keeping in touch and occasionally hugging each other and giving each other advice about how to handle problems with men.

Remember the magic jacket in On the Waterfront? It was passed from Joey Doyle to K.O. Dugan to Terry Malloy, and everyone who wore it told the truth (i.e., finked to the Feds) ahout Johnny Friendly and wound up getting pounded or killed by the torpedos. It was a hair-shirt thing…a burden-of-ethical-conscience jacket.

I’ve just noticed a trend in a a great number of my favorite movies. They all revolve around a couple or few sad sacks, losers, misfits, who bump into each other and embark (or are forced) on a journey together. The path is unpredictable and sometimes is entirely internal. This may be America’s vision of itself – a ragtag fleet of outcasts huddling together on a quest to find haven. Or maybe all screenwriters are such people. Beside the obvious (Revenge of the Nerds, Thelma and Louise) there are: Tampopo, Rushmore, Sideways, Swingers, Wonder Boys, Star Wars, The Muppet Movie, Major League, Stripes, Shaolin Soccer, Fight Club, Lost in Translation, Better Luck Tomorrow. Hell, I can even make the case for Collateral. More?

I’m jazzed about the Huffington Report, the new left-wing blog that Arianna Huffington is launching sometime later this month. Sounds kinda like an internet version of Air America, no? Of course, I don’t really believe that Warren Beatty, who has told the New York Observer that he’ll “probably” contribute, is going to bang out much in the way of monthly or weekly (much less daily) copy. Matt Drudge is right — the internet is a beast that needs to be constantly fed and fed. (And then fed again. And fed again.) The political site, which will be based out of Manhattan with editors and rented offices and blah-dee-blah, will also feature jottings by Barry Diller, David Geffen, Viacom co-chief Tom Freston, Tina Brown and…Gwyneth Paltrow. I guess this basically means that any Hollywood leftie who wants to write something will be posted. Gwynneth Paltrow?

A wet unmarried (i.e., interlock) print of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (20th Century Fox, 5.6) will be screened for junketeers in Pasadena this evening, and I’m sure that verdicts will be making their way to the surface fairly soon after.

Daniel Craig may be the new James Bond. Sean Hamilton of London’s The Sun has just reported that Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has offered Craig a three-picture 007 deal. Is it me, or am I hearing a big collective “hmmm” emanating from the fan base? Cool as he is on his own terms, Craig in a Bond guise strikes me as a vaguely psychotic Timothy Dalton. He’s obviously smart and talented and a fine riveting actor (superb in Matthew Vaughn’s forthcoming Layer Cake and Roger Michell’s Enduring Love, which Paramount Classics brought out last fall, and the most interesting player by far in Michell’s The Mother) but his gray-blue eyes have an emotionally inert quality that contain a hint of menace, and I suspect it’ll hard for the troops to warm up to a guy who just might strangle or throttle you on a whim. There’s something tucked away and creepy, maybe even a bit sadistic, hiding inside Craig’s chest cavity. Maybe that’s a healthy thing to add to the 007 mystique, and maybe Pierce Brosnan was too fey and quippy and Irish pubbish. Or am I just reacting too strongly to the impression left by Craig’s psychotic son-of-Paul Newman gangster role in Road to Perdition?

Sean Connery is going to voice-act James Bond in a video game based on From Russia With Love? A cool idea in concept, but there’s a hangup: that wonderfully smooth, soothing, almost musical voice that Connery had in 1963 when the film was first released doesn’t exist any more. The voice of any 74 year old man is going to sound softer and gurglier and generally less commanding than the one he had when he was 32 or 33, which was Connery’s age when he starred in the second 007 film. (There’s an obvious difference between the voice of the young Tony Curtis in Spartacus and the 65 year-old Curtis who looped himself for the “snails and oysters” scene in the 1991 restored version of that film.) So unless Connery’s voice can be digitally tweaked to made to sound younger, the idea is full of beans. But hey, Sean gets a nice paycheck and Electronic Arts gets to say they’re bringing Connery back to Bond fold and blah, blah. Just don’t come complaining to me when you buy the game and it feels vaguely like a rip.

If you’ve ever read Jim Romanesko’s Poynter.org media watchdog site,
check this out. It’s funny. To me, anyway.