Diseased cynicism secretes out of Red like the flu, like poison. Anyone who says this bullshit comic-book actioner thing is “funny” is suffering from total corrosion of the soul. Nothing paycheck movies of this type sap and impurify our precious spiritual fluids. They’re a scourge and a pestilence. I really and truly mean that.

It’s fine with me that Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and the others got paid for appearing in this thing, but there’s no reason why anyone with even a modicum of taste would want to pay to see it. Words can’t convey how deeply depressing it is to watch Mirren blast automatic rifle fire with a blank expression and without any stress or vibration passed along to her body or face.

I hated this film so much that I got out of my seat and laid down on the screening-room floor (i.e., at the Dolby room on Sixth Ave. and 55th Street) and took a nap at the halfway point. It was that or leave, and I had nowhere to go. I really couldn’t stand sitting there any longer and letting this film infiltrate my system.

“I’ve watched the five-and-a-half-hour Carlos twice now, and am completely convinced that it’s a great film, in serial caps, as it were; and looking at Assayas’ other work, I’m growing in my conviction that Assayas isn’t just one of the most vital filmmakers working today, but that he’s one for the books, as the saying goes — a major figure in his country’s cinema, and world cinema.” — Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny in a 10.13 posting.

“It isn’t that Mr. Assayas doesn’t have strong opinions, only that because he wants to move beyond familiar axioms — Carlos the monster, Carlos the cool — he shows history as it’s happening, active and dynamic, rather than how it will be subsequently narrated. Those opinions come through forcefully and at times, with such bluntness, it can throw you.” — N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis in a 10.15 posting.

Sincere gratitude to the Movieline crew for having posted high-quality scans of old Movieline articles from the ’90s, including my own “Ten Interviews That Shook Hollywood” article, which ran in March 1992 or thereabouts.

Believe it or not, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be running a six-day tribute to Cannon Films from 11.19 to 11.24. What’s next — a black-tie tribute at Alice Tully Hall to Elie Samaha? From the online program guide: “Israel’s answer to Simpson and Bruckheimer, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and their production and distribution company, Cannon Films, bestrode the 1980s with gleeful exploitation-movie schlock and quality auteur cinema from Godard, Cassavetes, Mailer and Ruiz.”

The idea, I’m guessing, is to stay away from the films of Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris, Albert Pyun and Charles Bronson and crap like Masters of the Universe, Superman IV and Over The Top and focus on the small handful of semi-decent flicks that Cannon cranked out — i.e., Barbet Schroeder‘s Barfly, Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Runaway Train, Richard Franklin ‘s Link, Norman Mailer‘s Tough Guys Don’t Dance and — if you want to be extra-accomodating — Tobe Hooper‘s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Forget Jean-Luc Godard‘s King Lear, which I dismissed as a masturbatory time-waster and, as a senior Cannon employee put it at the time, “a total fuck-you letter to Menahem.”

Here’s that piece I ran last August about my experience as a Cannon staff writer from ’86 to ’88, called “That Cannon Stamp.”

The chronology: (a) President Obama met with the Waiting for Superman team (including the kids) on Monday, (b) I posted a photo the next morning, (c) the White House website posted this video late Tuesday afternoon, and (d) Paramount publicity sent the link around late yesterday afternoon. That’s how it went down.

The video shows that Paramount honcho Brad Grey and Waiting for Superman director Davis Guggenheim were also (naturally) part of the group.

London-based photographer Dafydd Jones took this shot of Paul Newman, Natasha Richardson and Lauren Bacall on a Hudson River boat-cruise party to celebrate the launch of Tina Brown‘s Talk magazine on 9.2.99. To me this photo says that every day above ground is cause for celebration.

Last night I became the very last entertainment journalist/columnist in the world to see Exit Through The Gift Shop. My guilt is lifted…finally! And no more harassment from distributor John Sloss about my dereliction. It’s a half-humorous, half-depressing, altogether fascinating film about the lowering of aesthetic standards in the art world. It’s very “alive” and attuned to 21st Century art-celebrity currents, and in my head has shot to the front of the pack in the Best Feature Doc competition.

It’s absolutely essential viewing for anyone who cares about wall art or lives in a major city with an idea that he/she knows something about where aesthetic standards are heading. (Hint: not up.) The oldest Gift Shop tag line is still the best one: “The world’s first street-art disaster movie.”

I saw Exit at the Tribeca Film Festival at a screening hosted by editor Chris King (l.) and producer Jaimie D’Cruz (r.).

I’m being threatened with eviction by the manager of the Cosmic Diner on Eighth Avenue so I may not finish this, but this more or less sincerely-assembled documentary was paid for by Banksy, the British street artist who never shows his face. Banksy more or less directed Exit, although it’s ironic that the film he funded chronicles the dawn of an age in which genuinely talented and high-craft street artists like Banksy and others are being usurped in a sense by pseudo-artistes like Thierry Guetta. I really am getting kicked out of here (“That’s enough, people need tables,” etc.) so that’s all she wrote until I return to the pad later tonight.

Former Time staffer and James Cameron biographer Rebecca Keegan and recently departed Entertainment Weekly writer/blogger Nicole Sperling are now official L.A. Times entertainment reporters and Oscar season pulse-takers. The idea is to fill the spaces left by the semi-departed Tom O’Neil (who recently reclaimed Gold Derby) and Pete Hammond (now with Deadline).

Two professional white guys who recently saw Tyler Perry‘s For Colored Girls hold differing opinions. One says “there’s no way this movie is getting a Best Picture nomination…there are two or three really good performances but Perry just didn’t succeed at translating the play into a good film.” The other claims “it’s the real deal — maybe too conceptually out there for safe, old, mainstream white Academy tastes, but the performances range from good (Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine) to great (Phylicia Rashad, Thandie Newton) to pretty much masterful (Kimberly Elise, Macy Gray).”

I’m not so sure about the opinion of viewer #2 as he calls himself a “Perry fanboy” and says that the Colored Girls helmer “is one of the most important directors working today, and not just because of his underrated films.” Choke, gag, spit….what? Holy dogshit, he actually did say that. Tie me up and tie me down and splatter a chocolate milkshake all over my face, neck and hair as I scream and struggle to free myself.

So I went back to viewer #1 and said, “Are you sure? I mean, do you think others might share the other guy’s reaction?” Listen, don’t worry about it, he replied. For Colored Girls “is not a Best Picture. It has solid performances across the board, but Perry isn’t a good director and the best parts of the movie are the monologues that come straight from the play. He obviously wanted to do something like Precious but the material just isn’t as strong and it feels like a filmed play rather than a movie.”

Over the last three-plus decades I’ve felt soothed and stirred by the performances of French actress Nathalie Baye, and particularly by her angelic pixie smile. I’ve also succumbed many times to the curious way her little-bird vibe has manifested into erotic intrigue. So I was delighted to lunch with her today at a tres elegant restaurant inside the Helmsley Park Lane on Central Park South. I’m a rabbit running late and way behind the clock, so I’ll pass along the particulars tomorrow.

Nathalie Baye at Garden Cafe inside Helmsley Park Lane hotel — Friday, 10.15, 1:25 pm.

Baye is here to kick off a Film Society of Lincoln Center/uniFrance career tribute that begins tonight and runs through 10.21. My favorite performance? I have three actually. Her stranger on a train in Bertrand Blier‘s Notre Histoire, her Cesar-winning performance in Le Petit Lieutenant, and her costarring role in Blier’s Beau Pere. The first two are being shown as part of the series.

Marshall Fine has really gone over the falls in a barrel — he likes Conviction and is panning Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos. But before responding, let’s carefully examine his reasoning.

Fine’s objection to Carlos “is that in presenting a terrorist as an action hero, it glorifies terrorism as a legitimate path of political action. Would people be singing the praises of this film if it was equally well-made, just as thrilling and exciting — but was the story of Mohamed Atta? A terrorist is a terrorist. Murder is murder.

“A self-styled freedom fighter for the Palestinian cause (though he himself was neither of Semitic extraction nor Muslim), Carlos aligned himself with so-called internationalist liberation groups. Tied at first to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he cut a swath with high-profile bombings, murders and, his magnum opus, the kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers from a meeting in Vienna in 1975.

“But most of Carlos’ actions were either failures, went against his leaders’ orders or accomplished nothing, aside from killing innocent people and enlarging Carlos’ reputation. Yet Olivier Assayas‘ film, which casts Edgar Ramirez as the fierce, resolute Carlos, presents him as a militant revolutionary (who is also an opportunist).”

My e-mailed response to Fine: “First of all, you said yesterday that Conviction ‘could have Oscar potential.’ Do you know how Conviction could be given Oscar nominations? If Tony Goldwyn and his terrorist brothers take over the Academy building and threaten to kill Tom Sherak or else.

“Carlos makes clear what kind of history he had and what kind of guy he probably was — it spells it out in scene after scene after scene. As with most finer films, Carlos doesn’t instruct the audience about how to feel or think about him. It shows and dramatizes and allows them to piece it all together on their own.

“Everyone knows the world was on fire with revolutionary fervor in the late ’60s and early ’70s. A fuse had clearly been lit. It lasted into the mid to late ’70s for some. You’re saying Carlos the Jackal was in no way and at no time a legitimate political figure or thinker — he was simply an egotistical criminal thug who liked to admire himself naked in the mirror. I suspect on the other hand that he was a passionate believer in leftie causes and an egotistic asshole. You’re saying that Olivier Assayas knows he was just a thug and is being dishonest and even immoral by celebrating this guy as an action hero. But Carlos did do all this stuff shown in the film so the only way to go in your view is to keep his exploits hidden? To enforce a moratorium on any and all accounts of his life?

“I would submit that we’re all a mixture of elements — we all have nobility and spiritual aspiration and bravery in us and at the same time we like our Marlboros and our love of color and excitement and those smokin’ hot women, etc.

“On top of which leftie terrorists had a point in the ’60s and ’70s. Terror is a fact of history. It recurs and recurs. Terror is what angry activists resort to when they’ve been ignored or disenfranchised or dismissed or diminished by the political world.

“People have been making their political points with violence for a long, long time. The French resistance were terrorists during World War II, or they were no doubt regarded as common murderers by the German officers who were killed by them during the French occupation. The acts of rebellion against the British in the late 1700s by American freedom fighters were violent in nature — I’m sure they were derided as terrorists by the British. The ancient Hebrew resistance against the Roman occupiers made them common murderers in the eyes of the Roman authorities. The Algerians fighting for independence from the French were terrorists, surely, in the eyes of Charles DeGaulle.

“Were there any reprehensible scumbags among the Algerians or the French resistance or the American freedom fighters? Probably. The point is that all historians and filmmakers go for the color and the flair and the irony and the bang-bang-bang. And while Carlos was almost certainly the insensitive egotist and narcissist that Assayas portrays him as, I’m not persuaded that he wasn’t motivated by some sincerely-held political beliefs. At least in the beginning stages of his terrorist career.”

Fine’s response (received at 11:25 am): “The difference to me between resistance/freedom fighters and terrorists is that resistance fighters target the enemy to weaken their will to fight whether it was the American revolution or Algeria or the French (or some of the French) during WWII. Was there collateral damage? Of course — but civilians usually weren’t the target.

“But Carlos and bin Laden and their ilk use terror against innocent people who have no part of the struggle. That’s the definition of terror. It’s as simple as that. Even in the 70s, I saw a difference between the Weathermen and someone like Carlos.

“And while people like you and other critics might be able to understand and convey the nuance of Carlos’ character flaws, the average viewer will just see him as an action hero, no matter Assayas’ intent. He was a terrorist. I don’t care how smart or charismatic or interesting he was; at the end of the day, he was a terrorist. Period.

“Which brings me back to my question: If this were a movie about Mohamed Atta or Osama bin Laden — would you be as excited by it?”

Wells response: An Assayas movie about Atta or bin Laden? I could go for a film about Atta, sure. He was a monster, but I doubt if he saw himself in that light. It took discipline to learn how to fly and to carry out the attacks and a certain kind of sick and demented courage to kill himself (and hundreds of others) by flying a jet into a building, knowing he would be instantly crushed or splattered and/or roasted to death. So yes — it would be a chilling film to watch, but I’d be very interested in seeing it, especially if it was made by Assayas.

Vince Vaughn‘s 10.14 statement about the “gay electric cars” joke in that now-reedited trailer for Ron Howard‘s The Dilemma was a little too grim and butt-plugged. We wanted to hear that guy in The Wedding Crashers do a free-associating riff and lay it down in a kind of motor-mouth style. Instead Vaughn sounded constipated. He was saying what his people told him to say rather than what he really thinks.

“Let me add my voice of support to the people outraged by the bullying and persecution of people for their differences, whatever those differences may be,” Vaughn’s statement reads. “Comedy and joking about our differences breaks tension and brings us together. Drawing dividing lines over what we can and cannot joke about does exactly that — it divides us. Most importantly, where does it stop?”

Here’s what Vaughn should have said: “If you want to write funny and make people laugh, you have to speak in common everyday terms. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about…okay? And as much as I agree with the need to condemn hate speech in all its forms, beefy guys who slurp beers in Chicago bars during happy hour understood and laughed (or at least snickered) at that line. And those beefy guys are okay people in my book. Decent, bill-paying, fair-minded schlubby types who don’t want any kind of hate in their lives or in their heads.

“The line I spoke simply meant that electric cars aren’t studly or swaggery enough in a Clint Eastwood sort of way — that’s all. The line wasn’t putting down gay people or implying anything negative. It simply meant that the thinking and the symbolism behind electric cars them is a little bit guilty and constricted and regimented in a p.c. kind of way, however necessary and eco-friendly those cars happen to be, and that Steve McQueen would never drive one.

“That’s all it was. Just a joke that average people who are totally down with Anderson Cooper and are not homophobes happened to get. The Thought Police don’t like to hear this, but funny is what people laugh at.

“The other day Jeffrey Wells took some heat for saying there are two definitions of gay. The first simply means being homosexual, and the second means a cross between p.c. overdosing and lacking a certain guy-ness — a kind of sloppy apartment, softball-adept, baseball-hat wearing, hot-dog-eating, Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O quality. The second definition of ‘gay’, Wells said, is reflective of a certain gelatinous, salad-eating metrosexual thing — a ‘watch your language and be respectful of others and watch your attitude’ attitude. We all know what he was talking about even if if some of you say that you don’t. Leave that shit outside when you’re talking to me…okay? No offense.

“Some said no to Wells. They said there is only one definition of gay and splitting the definitions is denigrating gays all the same. Okay, maybe so. We’re not assholes and we don’t want to imply or pass along harmful things so maybe we’ll just cut the fucking line out of the film. But there’s something just a teeny bit Soviet about what I’ve been hearing.

“Can I be honest? Can I just say it? Fuck it — LexG said it better than I can: ‘Going green is gay, energy-efficient vehicles are gay, and sandals are incredibly gay. And saying that isn’t on par with dragging Brandon Teena into a cornfield, and does not even remotely in any microscopic way contribute to actual homophobia or hate speech.’ But we’ll probably lose the line anyway because we don’t want to be seen as dicks, and I’m sure we can all rest easy that because a two-second snippet has been cut from the trailer and — this is Ron and Brian’s call — the film itself.”