A lowbrow comedy that racks up a lower-than-15% Rotten Tomatoes average, as The Zookeeper (Sony, 7.8) has so far managed, has nothing to worry about as far as the family-viewing crowd is concerned. Kevin James‘ latest, produced by Adam Sandler‘s Happy Madison crew, is allegedly reprehensible, and it’ll do just fine this weekend with the millions who loved Night at the Museum, which The Zookeeper is basically aping.

Best slapdowns: (1) “Smells like the monkey house before cleaning time.” — Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy. (2) “If a worse movie is released this year, I hope I don’t have to see it.” — MSN’s Glenn Kenny; (2) “Lock the cage and throw away the key.” — Boxoffice.com‘s Pete Hammond; “If we could talk to the animals, they’d probably hate it too.” — Associated Press critic Dave Germain.

Today a photo and a transcription of a 2.9.60 fan letter written by Stanley Kubrick to Ingmar Bergman (i.e., while Kubrick was working on Spartacus, as indicated by the Universal-International letterhead stationery) was posted.

Question: Can anyone imagine a reputable director today writing such a letter to Zack Snyder? If so, could they imaginatively compose such a letter themselves and send it along?

“Dear Mr. Snyder: I should like to offer my praise and gratitude as a fellow director for the unearthly and brilliant contribution you have made to the art of opening-credit sequences. The opening-title portions for Sucker Punch, 300, Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead were truly thrilling. Seriously — I’m not being facetious. Trust me when I say that I am literally breathless with anticipation for the Man of Steel credit sequence. Your vision of what credit sequences can be has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films,” etc.

The names of the dwarf brothers from Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, opening on 12.14.12, are actually Snoopy, Gloopy and Picknose. No, seriously — Dori, Nori and Or. The players (l. to r.) are Jed Brophy, Adam Brown and Mark Hadlow .

That long-running News of the World phone-hacking scandal has finally torpedoed Rupert Murdoch‘s British tabloid. The 168-year-old publication (Dickens almost certainly read it) will close on Sunday, 7.10, in an attempt to flush out sewage backwash from the Murdoch empire.

“The good things the News of the World does…have been sullied by behavior that was wrong,” said James Murdoch, son of Rupert, in an official statement. “If recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company.” “If“?

“The move to close The News of the World was seen by media analysts as a potentially shrewd decision: jettisoning a troubled newspaper in order to preserve the more lucrative broadcasting deal and possibly expand the company’s other British tabloid, The Sun, to publish seven days a week.” — from Sarah Lyall and Brian Stelter‘s N.Y. Times story on the development.

Additionally: “British Metropolitan police have informed Andy Coulson, former media adviser to British Prime Minster David Cameron, that he will be arrested Friday in connection with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Coulson, who resigned as Cameron’s director of commuications in January, was contacted by detectives on Thursday and told to appear for formal questioning on Friday.”

Wells to Paramount publicity: About a week ago Variety‘s Jeff Sneider tweeted that Paramount has decided to change the title of Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo Cabret to Hugo. And now Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet has just gone with Hugo in a preview piece. Did I miss an official confirmation?

If Hugo Cabret‘s title has indeed been dumbed down, is it because Paramount marketing research indicated that your average rural American might be thrown and perhaps turned off by the word “Cabret”? As in: “Hmmm…sounds kinda French. How d’ya say it….CaBRETT? Hugo CaBRAY? Arty-farty…right? Later.”

This echoes last April’s decision by Sony Classics to simplify the title of Roman Polanski‘s adaptation of God of Carnage into just plain Carnage. With no explanation offered it was speculated in this corner that (a) “perhaps the Polanski name plus the God of Carnage title might turn off a certain segment of the audience, and so they’re playing it safe” and (b) Sony Classics “is [perhaps] afraid that God of Carnage sounds too much like a video game. And just plain Carnage doesn’t?

That little glimmer of pleasure in Meryl Streep‘s eyes and mouth as she explains what’s important, nay, essential in her presentation to the British electorate is so friggin’ Oscar-baity it’s not funny. Forget it, game over, she’s nominated. Like I said the other day, it’s Streep vs. Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs vs. Charlize Theron in Young Adult plus two others.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond caught about ten minutes worth of Iron Lady footage at last May’s Cannes Film Festival. Here’s his report.

This crashing-plane sequence from Mike Nichols‘ Catch 22 (’70) is one of the most ambitiously choreographed shots of this type ever. Obviously a single take with no vfx or gimmicks. The smoking plane coming in for a landing disappears frame-left and then, unseen, takes off and climbs up and away. The camera pans left with Jon Voight and Martin Balsam as we’re shown a stationary burning plane pretending to be the other plane, etc. Show-offy? Sure, but thrillingly so.

Hearty congrats to Nichols, production designer Richard Sylbert (who passed in ’02), dp David Watkin.

This scene of the fleet taking off is also quite special. The photography and the production design are the two best things about Catch 22, really, as it isn’t hugely successful in the various other departments — let’s face it. And that longish opening-credits shot as pre-dawn darkness gives way to light? Has to be seen at least once.

In the early ’80s I drove down to the Catch 22 set in San Carlos, Mexico (near Guaymas) and walked around the airfield and took pictures, etc.

I’ve been looking for a decent YouTube capturing of the crash-landing scene for a long time. I don’t know why the person who put this clip together felt the need to use a lame opening title card, or why he/she decided to keep the clip running with the same title card for a minute after the shot ends.

…with the same mind and spirit and perspective that he had before he died in the ’90s but in the body of a go-getter Congressman from Southern California, and he’d probably have a tough time getting re-elected because he’d be considered too moderate, too thoughtful, too practical. He’d be regarded as a sleepy-centrist go-along Republican who doesn’t get the ideological fever of the Tea Party or the debt-ceiling shutdown or any of the things that Eric Cantor or Michelle Bachmann believe in. He could almost be a centrist Democrat by today’s standards.

Nobody who knows anything cares about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2…no one. The franchise has been over and done with for several years. The last one that mattered was directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The fact that each subsequent installment has made tankloads of money means absolutely dead nothing. It’s no surprise that the Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Wrap reviews are favorable. It’s all part of the script.

This clip of Page One reactions by serious journalists was sent to me by the p.r. guys working for Magnolia, the doc’s distributor. I wrote back as follows: “I’m posting this & thanks for sending, but the Page One premiere and after-party in Manhattan happened a good three weeks ago, and this video was posted on July 1st. Why did it take two weeks for the video to be cut together, and why does it take you guys another week to offer it to the likes of myself?”

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo star Daniel Craig to Esquire.com‘s Tom Chirella: “It’s as adult as you can possibly make it. This is adult drama. I grew up, as we fucking all did, watching The Godfather and that, movies that were made for adults. And this is a $100 million R-rated movie. Nobody makes those anymore.

“And Fincher, he’s not holding back. They’ve given him free rein. He showed me some scenes recently, and my hand was over my mouth, going, ‘Are you fucking serious?'” And yet “it’s not that he simply showed me footage that was horribly graphic. It was stuff that was happening, or had happened. And somehow you don’t see it.” (Lifted from Awards Daily.)

For me there’s one decent laugh in Horrible Bosses (Warner Bros., 7.8). And there are maybe 30 or 40 titters (i.e., faintly amusing material that doesn’t resonate or sink in because it lacks the antsy undercurrent of classic no-laughers like Greenberg). But at no time did the entire house at last night’s Arclight screening erupt in gales. Lone oddballs here and there would giggle (the guy sitting behind me wouldn’t stop) but the film clearly wasn’t connecting. That’s because of one thing and only thing only. It’s not good enough.

(l. to r.) Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman.

Okay, it’s not offensively bad by the downmarket comic standards of 2011. I’ll give it that much. The main performers — Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell — give it the old nutso-gusto, and the script (by John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein and Michael Markowitz) is loose and limber and raunchy and stupidly “fun” and director Seth Gordon keeps the ball in the air in a manner of speaking. Is this a reason to go see it this weekend? If you have little or no taste, yeah…I suppose. We’re living in grim-slide times so why not?

A lot of critics, not wanting to seem out of step with something dopey and inoffensively thin, are giving Horrible Bosses a pass. Except several have proven themselves completely untrustworthy as far as rating comedies go so forget the 85% Rotten Tomatoes rating that Horrible Bosses currently has. Too many critics are just going along. I don’t want to name names, but I know that some are throwing their hands up and saying “whatever” to themselves only to turn around and do pretzel contortions in order to write semi-complimentary things because they don’t want to seem overly cranky.

I’m different because I judge comedies not by 2011 standards (i.e., you can do or say any finger-up-your-arse, simian-impulse thing that comes to mind and if it sticks to the wall, no matter how coarse or phlegmy, it’s funny) but by classic Billy Wilder standards, which is that it has to be carefully and honestly and realistically written according to the laws of commonly-perceived human behavior, and it has to hold water in terms of plot and motivation and character in the same way that any dead-straight drama (Death of a Salesman, A Lie of the Mind, A Moon for the Misbegotten) has to hold water.

You can’t throw out the rule book because you’re making a “comedy”. Comedies aren’t that different from dramas — they’re just pitched differently and sprinkled with a kind of dust — and are much, much tougher to write and perform. Comedies need to be just as much about what people are facing in life — how they’re coping with loneliness and ambition and financial pressure and growing-up issues — as stage plays or dramas. They have to be real. They’re not excuses to light farts and flamboyantly goof off and just…whatever, go anywhere or try anything.

Men acting idiotically and fearfully while planning to kill bad bosses just isn’t funny. Sneaking into the homes of the would-be victims without wearing shoe gloves and hair bonnets and rubber surgical gloves is absolute idiocy and therefore not funny. Jennifer Aniston being hired to play a small business owner (i.e. a dentist) who’s an intemperate sexual predator in a dark wig and who flashes portions of her hot bod and risks years of struggle to get through medical school in order to satisfy passing fancy is degrading and ridiculous and not in the least bit funny. It’s doubly unfunny when the object of her lust is little male hygienist with a high-pitched voice (Day) who probably has a schlong the size of a rook on a chess board. I could go on and on and on.

I sat there like a tombstone, studying the screen like a cop studies a suspected felon during a late-night grilling at a grimy downtown precinct and not even tittering (okay, I inwardly tittered) until that one joke came along, which I really did laugh at. But even then I didn’t go “haaaah-hah-hahhh-hah-ahhh-hah…whoa-ho-ho…gee, whoo!” I just went “hah-huh.”