The gist of yesterday afternoon’s World War Z piece by Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is that the super-costly Brad Pitt-Marc Forster zombie film (a) is, according to Fleming, no John Carter and no Battleship, (b) in the opinion of Fleming, who was recently shown the film in NYC, it’s “a rocking, smart, pulse-pounding big-scale pandemic with raging zombies, tension and the kind of hero[ic] star turn Pitt hasn’t done in a long time,” and (c) it’s been unfairly tarnished for re-shooting its last act when doing nothing to improve the film would have resulted in a more positive (or at least more neutral) advance buzz.

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Phase 1 was the lousy Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings. Phase 1.5 was the positive pushback (measured, ardent) from guys like David Edelstein, Rick Groen, Lou Lumenick, Roth Cornet. Phase 2 is the current box-office celebration — $18.5 million on Friday, a projected $50-plus million by Sunday night. And Phase 3 is the verdict of Hollywood Elsewhere readers. Include impressions on how the room felt, whether it seemed to be connecting, etc.

Tweeted earlier today by Cannes honcho Thierry Fremaux, a pic of four shoeless couples simulating the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward clinch while lying on the giant poster for the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, obviously before it was lifted and mounted on the side of the Grand Palais. Pic was inspiration for a poster for a thoroughly forgettable 1963 Melville Shavelson film called A New Kind of Love.

Previously noted on 3.22: “Woodward’s hair was blonde in A New Kind of Love (as it was in real life at the time) so who’s the brunette in the poster?”

I’ll have 10 and 1/2 days at the Cannes Film Festival (Wednesday, 5.15 thru Saturday midday, 5.25) and at least 27 films to view, and that’s with a lot of trims. The non-competitive Great Gatsby on 5.15 (thanks again to Warner Bros. publicity for refusing to let me catch it in NYC last Thursday morning) plus 12 Competition films (Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives, Paolo Sorrentino‘s La Grande Bellezza, Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive, Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind the Candelabra, Roman Polanski‘s Venus in Fur, Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska, Francois Ozon‘s Young and Beautiful, Takashi Miike‘s Straw Shield, James Gray‘s The Immigrant, Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past, Arnaud Desplechin‘s Jimmy P., Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis) for a total of 13.

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It’s been denied that Cannes Film Festival jury chairman Steven Spielberg and fellow jurors will watch the 20 competition films aboard Spielberg’s yacht, The Seven Seas, during the festival. The 282-foot yacht, which sailed from Ft. Lauderdale over a month ago so Spielberg can live on it during the festival, has “an infinity pool with a 15-foot glass wall that doubles as a movie screen so guests can watch his [films] while swimming or lounging poolside,” according to one description. If I was Spielberg I would do that without apology. I would wallow in pig luxury and tell the complainers to kiss my ass.

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I’m not presuming that Hollywood Elsewhere’s special Google Glass window screen (due to be installed sometime in either late 2014 or certainly by 2015) will be immediately popular. It’ll just be a screen to consider and look in on from time to time…that’s all. Sometimes blank, sometimes active. I’ll never transmit anything private, but imagine how cool it will be to broadcast a discussion about a film that has just debuted in Cannes with two or three other critics, right from the halls of the Palais. Or an interview as it’s happening. The images will have to be clear and steady, of course, but this and other bugs will gradually be ironed out.

“A certain naivete or innocence or an unwillingness to face reality…that’s the key to a lot of successes. Many women in the arts or in business or even in the professions require a certain degree of belief in themselves when other people see no reason to believe in them. Most great products have been made over the dead bodies of experts.” — producer David Brown (The Verdict) speaking in a YouTube clip uploaded about five years ago.

When the 310 area code was introduced to L.A.s westside over 20 years ago, the editors of Beverly Hills 213, a lightweight glamour weekly that had launched in the early ’80s, had to decide whether to keep the old name or change it to Beverly Hills 310. They stuck with 213, and in my mind that ended their relevancy. And yet by the same token Rupert Murdoch’s decision to create 21st Century Fox, an independent media and entertainment company….aahh, who cares? The main thing is that the TV and movie corporation called 20th Century Fox won’t be fiddled with.

The Great Gatsby opens today in the States. This spoiler podcast (intended for listening after you’ve seen the film) by Slate‘s Dana Stevens and Brow Beat editor David Haglund put me into the film more than the reviews. The aggregate review ratings are low, but more than a few respected critics have been friendly. Lou Lumenick‘s enthusiasm for the 3D renderings of 1920s Manhattan has me going.

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So much for my fleeting idea of a minimalistic, 2001-like sound design being used for Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity. I knew they would heap the sounds on. The idiots need their whumps and roars because their cow brains need those Michael Bay prompts in order to feel involvement. I get that. I’d do the same if I were in Cuaron’s shoes. But like I said yesterday, it’ll be cool if Cuaron remixes a realistic version for the Bluray.

The only serious standout element in JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek Into Darkness, the only thing that makes you sit up and go “whoa, wait…this is good,” is the lead villain performance by Benedict Cumberbatch. The poor guy has a somewhat oddly shaped face and weird demon-cat eyes so he’ll never play the good guy, but he’s a serious world-class actor with a kind of young Richard Burton quality and an energy field that just grabs hold and lifts all boats.

Cumberbatch is playing an impassioned, duplicitous intellectual-terrorist-with-feelings named John Harrison (there’s more, actually, but this all that I can divulge), and of course he has to end up vanquished, but he’s so volcanically vital and charismatic that I wish he wasn’t stuck having to fulfill the fate of a baddy-waddy. I wish the rule book could have been thrown out in his case.

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