I’m about to catch a flight from Oakland to Burbank. A busy day awaits. A chat with Ophelia Lovibond (Nowhere Boy, London Boulevard) at 3 pm, an interview with Salt director Phillip Noyce at 6 pm, and then a dinner at 8 pm.

N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich has written a tasty retro-bashing of Mel Gibson‘s The Passion of the Christ in today’s edition, “The movie was nakedly anti-Semitic, to the extreme that the Temple priests were all hook-nosed Shylocks and Fagins with rotten teeth,” he states. “It was also ludicrously violent — a homoerotic ‘exercise in lurid sadomasochism,’ as Christopher Hitchens described it then, for audiences who ‘like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.’

“Nonetheless, many of the same American pastors who routinely inveighed against show-business indecency granted special dispensation to their young congregants to attend this R-rated fleshfest.

“It seems preposterous in retrospect that a film as bigoted and noxious as The Passion had so many reverent defenders in high places in 2004. Once Gibson, or at least the subconscious Gibson, baldly advertised his anti-Semitism with his obscene tirade during a 2006 D.U.I. incident in Malibu, his old defenders had no choice but to peel off.”

What’s the deal if you’re the author of some excellent magazine articles from the ’90s, ’80s or before that have never been scanned or archived, and therefore aren’t findable on Google? I’ll tell you what the deal is. Your work pretty much ceases to exist, and if you’ve retired or moved to Tibet or what-have-you then you’re pretty much a ghost. Magazine writers have to have their hands and pawprints in the 21st Century cyber world, or they’re dead.

Last night I heard from TV and feature writer David Handelman, who’s in the prime of his life and decades from being over. But the “ghost” syndrome has affected one of his articles — i.e., a superb 1985 piece he wrote for California magazine called “Absence of Malick.”

Handelman wrote that he was mildly pissed that I’d mentioned the California article but not his name in a March 2009 HE piece called “Malick, Olstein & Me” — a recollection of how I nearly died researching and writing a laborious Malick profile in ’90 and ’91, only to see it manhandled and diminished by Los Angeles editor Andy Olstein in ’95. I wrote Handelman back and explained that I’d forgotten his name that day and was unable to Google any record of his Malick piece online, so I just moved on.

The long and the short is that I said I was sorry and fixed the March ’09 piece — it now contains the proper credit. I explained that the best thing that day would have been for me to stop writing “Malick, Olstein & Me”, and then drive down to the Academy library on La Cienega and dig up Handelman’s California piece (which is almost certainly in the Academy’s Terrence Malick file) and yaddah-yaddah. I should have but I didn’t because I felt it more important to get the piece done and worry about fixing the knick-knack oversights later.

I told him that when I discovered that (a) there was no Google mention of his 1985 Malick article, and (b) that at least two others had ripped off the title “Absence of Malick” I figured it was open season and there were bullets flying and I wasn’t about to stand up in the midst of it. A Google search told me that Andrea Vancher wrote a piece called “Absence of Malick” for American Film in February 1991, and that David Gregory made a film called Absence of Malick in 2003. There’s also a Caryn James article that uses it, I think.

“You created that title as far as I know, and here are two people who ripped you off cold,” I told Handelman. He wrote back and explained that Andy Olstein, who was working under California editor Harold Hayes in the mid ’80s, had thought it up. Olstein again!

Here‘s a recent article by Handelman called “The Ones That Got Away.”

The second time is the charm with Inception, especially if you catch it in IMAX. It definitely comes together with a second viewing while the things you enjoyed the first time are agreeably underlined and intensified. My ambiguous feelings about Chris Nolan‘s epic have now been significantly lessened. I am pretty much in the boat now. Faraci was more right than Scott. Inception is dense and challenging, but a masterpiece of its kind.

Sound quality is a key factor. I made my 8:30 pm showing at the Metreon last night, and what a pleasure to (a) actually be able to hear all the dialogue (which was more than I could say for the sound at last Tuesday’s Lincoln Square all-media) and (b) pick up on all those plotty-pat expositional doo-dads that I missed (or wasn’t entirely sure about) the first time.

The first time I missed Leonardo DiCaprio‘s line about how the spinning dreidle will keep going in a dream but will collapse in reality. Last night I heard it. Plus I could actually hear about 85% of Ken Watanabe‘s dialogue last night whereas last Tuesday I was able to make out very little of it.

Warner Bros. publicity made a serious mistake in not showing Inception in IMAX to the assembled media last Tuesday. It’s a much more riveting film in IMAX — simple as that. IMAX sound is much sharper, cleaner and stronger than regular theatre sound.

Notice to all distributors: I’m telling you the God’s truth when I say that the sound in Lincoln Square’s theatre #1 isn’t good enough and in fact is infuriating. And anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or an incompetent schnook. My ears have been frustrated and driven nearly to madness in that theatre twice now — i.e., with Inception and with Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland.

Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino reports that by Sunday night Inception will have $58,500,000 in the domestic bank. It made $21.3 million yesterday on 3792 screens, counting about $3 million made from the Thursday midnight shows. So it really made about $18 million last night — let’s be fair.

The last figures I saw were 18 first choice, 23 unaided awareness, and a 48 definite interest, which indicated to me (and I realize I’m not exactly a box-office wizard-slash-Nostradamus) a $45 to $50 million take. So this is a little better than expected — fine.

This afternoon’s shock is that while Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt is down with Salt, Variety is silent — slacking off! And no Todd McCarthy Indiewire review either. But the Star‘s Marshall Fine is on the job: “Long story short: It’s the most exciting popcorn movie of the summer.”

The one thing that holds Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo back from full emotional/psychological integration is a thing that Hitchcock himself lamented after the fact: James Stewart looks too old and square and plugged-up to be a tragic romantic figure. You just can’t invest in him as a man with an unruly libido. And that awful brown suit he wears in the early to middle portion of the film is like anti-matter. It’s the worst looking suit ever worn by a movie star in Hollywood history.

I understand that anyone of any age can fall ridiculously or pathetically in love, but the Stewart of Rear Window — a younger (and slightly younger looking) fellow with a less constricted vibe — should have played John Ferguson, not the Kiwanis Club Republican that Stewart seems to be in Hitchcock’s 1958 film. Stewart could have shaved five years by blonding his hair, but he went white-ish gray — mistake. He looks too tense and stodgy to fall for a woman 20 or 25 years younger. Plus he and Kim Novak are just not a good visual fit — he looks like her sleazy uncle, or some insurance salesman who’s paid for her favors behind his frumpy wife’s back.

Apple announced this morning it will give free “bumper” cases to iPhone 4.0 owners suffering from the “death grip” problem — i.e., losing reception bars due to holding the lower-left portion of the phone with a bare hand.

I’ve had a bumper from Day One and never had any reception problems (i.e., other than the usual call-dropping that I’ve gotten used to with Apple and AT&T).

When I was waiting in line to buy this phone at the Apple store on West 14th on 6.24, I read that the bumpers were being given free to buyers in England. Anyone paying attention knew the metal-band antenna was a problem that day. The Apple guys could have have chilled this whole issue down significantly if they’d been willing to forego charging $29 for the bumpers and just given them away. But they had to be greedy.

I was just listening to a Barbie Doll CNN showbiz reporter discuss the most recent Mel Gibson tape with a CNN anchor. The reporter said people were “confused” by the disconnect between the rage in Gibson’s voice and the fact that he’s such a devout Catholic and had “made such a beautiful film about Jesus Christ.” Okay, stop right there. Every sharp critic in the country noted that The Passion of the Christ was first and foremost about bleeding, beatings and bludgeonings, which is what Apocalypto was also largely about (along with beheadings). How thick do you have to be to not sense immense rage in those films?

A review of Salt by Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers won’t appear until next week, but it’s quite positive (apart from carpings about credibility). Reviews from Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Indiewire‘s Todd McCarthy will probably hit today, or certainly by tomorrow.

“Starring slinky-sexy-scary Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent accused of going over to the Russians, Salt is primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, ‘WTF!’ Go with the illogic or you’ll miss the fun. Salt has the action to slam you hard, batter your senses and make a case for Jolie as a superpower with the figurative balls to take on the U.S., Russia and North Korea, and still give crap to pussy critics who don’t like their credulity strained.

“Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a spy introduced as she’s being released from a North Korean prison after a bout of water torture that would turn strong men to secret-spilling jelly. A guy was almost cast in the role, but Tom Cruise passed, claiming Salt was cut from the pattern of Mission: Impossible.

“Enter Jolie, and something equally advantageous for the movie: timeliness. Sleeper spies are making major headlines, what with the FBI rounding up 10 members of a Russian spy ring suspected of living among us for more than a decade. And who can forget bombshell mole Anna Chapman, a.k.a. Anya Kushchenko, a centerfold-ready redhead working the Manhattan party circuit while passing info to the Russians. The Cold War is back, baby, and Salt is riding the wave.

“Never mind that the screenplay by Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen) flies off into fantasies that would shame Jolie’s Lara Croft and Wanted.

Salt benefits from the technical mastery and playful deviltry of Phillip

Noyce, the Aussie director who showed his artful side with Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American. With Salt, Noyce tears it up with the verve he brought to a duo of Tom Clancy adaptations, 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. Noyce, a skilled architect of action, can stage a stunt with the best of them.

“And Jolie is up for the challenge. She scales buildings barefoot, jumps from bridges onto moving vehicles, and blows up buildings in New York and D.C. Eat your heart out, Matt Damon. Salt is Jason Bourne without amnesia.

“If I’ve been skimpy with plot details, it’s for your sake. This red-hot thriller keeps popping surprises that shouldn’t be spoiled. I will say this: Salt goes on the run when a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) fingers her as a spy. She says she wants to save her scientist husband (August Diehl). Liev Schreiber, as her CIA boss, believes her. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as the agency’s counterintelligence officer, does not. Schreiber and Ejiofor have the acting chops to keep you guessing. But it’s Jolie’s ferocity and feeling that make us stick with Salt as she predicts the coming of Day X, when Russian sleeper spies are meant to rise up and take America by force. A big topic for a piece of popcorn escapism.

“Whether you buy it or not, hang on for the ride. It’s a twister.”

Variety‘s Andrew Stewart is reporting that Inception made a “healthy” $3 million from midnight showings on 2000 screens. A lot of people have to go work on Friday morning, but $1500 a screen doesn’t sound like much to me. Boxoffice‘s Phil Contrino reminds that Avatar‘s midnight debut was $3.5 million, and that “huge midnight grosses are usually reserved for sequels or established properties.”

If any HE readers caught Inception last night I’d love to hear what happened. What they thought, what the room “felt” like, predictions, etc.

Today’s tracking has Inception with an 18 first choice, 23 unaided awareness, and a 48 definite interest. That’ll mean $60 million or so for the weekend, but it also means that a lot of Eloi are holding on to their ticket bucks for the time being.

Chris Nolan‘s multi-levelled mind-tripper opens today at 3,792 locations, including 197 IMAX runs. As noted previously, I’m catching an 8:30 pm IMAX screening at San Francisco’s Metreon tonight.