wired

After pulling in a piddly $2.6 million two days ago (Wednesday, 11.10), which was 40% less than what The Incredibles earned on its fifth day, The Polar Express is looking at an $18 to $20 million haul for the five-day weekend. The standard major-release paradigm is to end up with triple your opening weekend gross, which means (and I take no joy in declaring this) that this $165 million gamble is a titanic wipe-out. But catch that IMAX 3-D version!

A few days ago Renee Zellwegger was quoted as saying that Hugh Grant, her Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason costar, was flabby and needed to work out. Now the 44 year-old Grant has told London’s Evening Standard that he’s fast losing interest in acting and is now “sort of semi-retired,” and that screen acting is “a miserable experience” and “so long and boring and so difficult to get right.” Grant also said. “I keep thinking I’m going to write a brilliant script.” The poor guy is going through a standard burn-out/meltdown phase. I’m sure he knows that when people say they’re “thinking” they’re going to write a brilliant script, that means they almost certainly won’t. He’s also surely aware that if he stops acting altogether he’ll gradually stop attracting AAA-level hotties like Jemima Khan, his current girlfriend. Life is not about being “happy” — so many people are hung up on that notion. A man should be what he can do. William S. Burroughs said it: “We are here to go.”

However you may find The Polar Express (everyone knows it’s gotten some lousy reviews…that Manohla Dargis pan was blistering), I’m told that the IMAX 3-D version is heads and shoulders above the regular mass-market “flat” version. The guy who told me this used the words “brilliant” and “genius.” I tried to get myself passed in to see it this weekend and was told no, so I guess I’ll be forking over my hard-earned pay because it sounds like an essential.

My Sundance Film Festival ’05 lodging situation is still in flux and there are only nine weeks to go. If anyone has a condo-share situation they’d like to discuss, get in touch. The dates are 1.20 to 1.30, although I usually bail by the second Friday.

The culturally and spiritually comatose James Bond franchise, briefly revived by Martin Campbell’s Goldeneye in ’95 but thereafter straight-jacketed and poisoned to death by caretaker producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, is about to sign Campbell to direct the 21st Bond flick, which will come out sometime in ’06. Of course, no actor of any standing, self-respect or intelligence wants to play 007 in the wake of Pierce Brosnan’s departure. Which movie role has had the higher turn-down rate — this or the brand-new Superman role prior to Bryan Singer taking the reins and hiring Brandon Routh?

A small matter, but here’s a sequential recap regarding the re-appearance of Thomas Jefferson’s “reign of witches” quote, which is being interpreted here and there as an allusion to Bush’s re-election: (1) Journalist Lewis Beale sent me the quote by e-mail on 11.3 or 11.4, and I ran it at the bottom of Hollywood Elsewhere on Friday, 11.5;(2) Barbra Streisand posted the Jefferson quote on her website three days later, on 11.8; and then (3) the New York Post’s Page Six ran a mention of Streisand’s posting on Wednesday (i.e., today), 11.10.

Forget any concerns about director Mike Nichols having shot some nudie footage of Natalie Portman in Closer (Columbia, 12.3) only to cut some of it out. It’s all stupid hormonal stuff and not worth talking about. What’s been kept in — a sequence between Portman, playing a stripper and wearing a kinky tassled bikini outfit, and Clive Owen in a private strip-club room — is very hot stuff, and I can’t imagine any complaints from anyone about anything. Enough said.

That was a very interesting decision by the Hollywood Foreign Press to classify Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ as a foreign-language film because it’s acted entirely in ancient Aramaic and ancient Latin. In so doing, the org has determined that Gibson’s film is not eligible for a Best Drama Golden Globe award. Except the word “foreign” doesn’t really apply because neither language is spoken anywhere in the world — they’ve been extinct tongues for many centuries. The Oxford Dictionary defines “foreign” as “being from another country,” but the countries or cultures these languages were spoken in centuries ago don’t exist. There is reason to call The Passion of the Christ an exotic language film or a non-English speaking film, obviously, but there is absolutely no factual or rational basis for calling it a “foreign language film.”

I don’t care about Roger Friedman’s motive in floating the idea of Harvey and Bob Weinstein taking over Sherry Lansing’s job and running Paramount Pictures. It may be an actual possibility or just hot air, but….hello?…it’s an excellent idea! An amazing idea. And I don’t care if David Poland or anyone else thinks it’s unlikely. A couple of shrewed, scrappy New York Jews steering the Paramount Pictures ship is an exciting and radiantly beautiful thing to contemplate. And I like the idea of Scott Rudin running Miramax also. It’s all a perfect Hollywood quilt. This industry would instantly become 33% healthier if these two scenarios come to pass.

I can’t make the link work, but this is an actual posting on Craig’s List that went up on Wednesday, 11.3, written by some guy in Philadelphia: “Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight. I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streak, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.”

So the smoothly assured, tonally agreeable, well proportioned Alfie is dead, which amounts to a mark against the concept of Jude Law being a movie star. No question that a $2935 average on 2215 screens for a $6.5 million total sucks. I don’t get it, I really don’t…this movie is far from a burn…but it’s dead now and it’s off to video. (It performed pretty well in England — go figure.) Paramount distrib chief Wayne Llewellyn suggested that one possible reason it flopped is that red-state moviegoers “didn’t want to see a guy that slept around.” Yeah, those red-staters are a pretty anti-libidinal bunch.

In Nancy Hass’s New York Times profile of producer Scott Rudin (Sunday, 11.7), it’s reported that Rudin “has told a few insiders that he has been offered the top job at Miramax.” Whoa…where did that come from? Is this for real, or is Rudin making a point? “I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I’m not that interested in entertainment,” Rudin (Closer, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) also tells Hass. She also writes, “[Rudin] claims to be driven by what he calls a ‘hugely romantic view of talent’ and the need, at least sometimes, to say ‘something absolutely worthwhile.'”