Filmmakers tend to be a bit more affectionate and supportive of other filmmakers than, say, critics or the public, but that aside, Kevin Smith has seen Mission: Impossible: 3 (Paramount, 5.5) and passes along the following: “I saw it last month in [director-writer J.J. Abrams’] editing room, and it’s really great: far, far superior to the second one, and as good (if not better) than the first. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the most believable bad guy since Anthony Hopkins in Silence — he’s just plain frightening. [The film has] great tent-pole scenes and Tom Cruise is in top form. There’s no fat on it at all. All those years working on Alias made for fine training for JJ, as this thing is very well plotted and paced. It’ll do extremely well. I know I’ll see it again in theaters.” Why is Paramount publicity not showing it then? What is the strategy in keeping word-of-mouth spreaders away from it until three days before it opens? I think it’s part of the New Hollywood World Order…the truly big tent-polers are their own engine, about themselves & their own self-perpetuating inevitability, and writers and reporters are but lint on the lapels of the big-studio distribs in this context…at best incidental to the process. And the p.r. people are looking to make a statement to that effect.