The Weinstein Co.’s debt load is being restructured and the media handicappers are taking shots. Things may not be as dire as they seem but Harvey and Bob clearly need a hit — a big one. But there’s nothing that looks all that hot and heavy on the release horizon until…neighhhhh!!…Rob Marshall‘s Nine comes thundering into town on horseback some five and half months hence. Talk about a dramatic make-or-breaker.

Inglourious Basterds, trust me, is no bonanza-waiting-to-happen. Even if director-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino succumbs to pressure to trim it by 40 minutes (The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman reports that Harvey Weinstein and Universal are both pushing for this) it still won’t do more than decent to fairly good business. It’s basically a talkfest with one really good scene in the beginning (i.e., Col. Landa and the French farmer).

Nine, which the Weinstein Co. will open on 11.25, is obviously the big potential rainmaker — a film that will either make things right for the Weinsteins or not. It would obviously really help if it wins the Best Picture Oscar, or at least is nominated. My gut tells me this will probably happen.

I can’t see Rob Zombie‘s Halloween II (8.28) doing monster business, although good horror always brings in a decent haul. I don’t know anything about Shanghai (9.4) with John Cusack and Chow Yun-Fat . John Hillcoat‘s The Road (10.4) has been highly praised in Esquire and is clearly a potential award-calibre prestige release but without much chance of being a mass hit. (Why didn’t the Weinsteins show it to Cannes? At least on a small, no-hoopla basis?)

Miguel Arteta‘s Youth in Revolt with Michael Cera don’t have a date (the Weinstein Co. site just says “fall 2009”). And then there’s Piranha 3-D with Elizabeth Shue and Richard Dreyfuss next March. Plus Tim Story‘s Hurricane Season and Marcus Raboy‘s Janky Promoters.

It’s the summer of ’74, and the 27 year-old Dreyfuss is having trouble sleeping during the filming of Jaws. Tossing and turning, talking to himself. He suddenly awakes and see a filmy white ghost hovering over his bed. “Hello, Richard,” the ghost says. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m here as your friend and comforter. Well, not really. Because I’m telling you that 35 years from now you’ll make a movie called Piranha 3-D and…well, perhaps you need to prepare for this.”

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale has posted a smart summary of the evolving investigation into the recent death of David Carradine. Suspicions of foul play are growing (i.e., who bound Carradine’s hands?), Carradine’s family has hired lawyer Mark Geragos and superstar forensic pathologist Michael Baden to look into things on its behalf and the FBI has gotten involved.

“Thai investigators essentially ruled out the possibility of foul play after interviewing hotel staff and reviewing surveillance footage of the corridors near Carradine’s room,” Stu reports. But Extra‘s Jerry Penacoli said on a recent Larry King Show interview that he’s spoken to the director of the film Carradine was shooting in Thailand “at length” and that the director “said that he believes that there was foul play.

“And he said that no one else knows this but his family — Carradine’s family and friends and people closest to him, but David was very interested in investigating and disclosing secret societies.”

Secret societies?

Observer writer and reporter Lynn Barber, whose traumatic experience as a 16 year-old inspired Nick Hornsby‘s script of An Education and led to Lone Scherfig‘s brilliant film of the same name (which Sony Classics will open stateside on October 9th), has written a piece about how the real story went down.

(l.) Lynn Barber at age 16; (r.) Carey Mulligan as she appears in An Education.

It’s interesting that Carey Mulligan, who essentially plays Barber in the film, vaguely resembles Barber when she was 16. Mulligan gives an Audrey Hepburnish, career-launching performance that’s sure to be recognized come awards time. The older suitor’s name (called David in the film and played by Peter Sarsgaard) was Simon Goldman, and my God, what a creep!. Barber’s article is well written and well told — wise and scathing and dead-on.

An Education is one of the finest and most pleasurable films I’ve seen this year. It’s like it was made in the mid ’60s by John Schlesinger right after Darling. Here’s my Sundance review.

This is a couple of days old but Hollywood getaround guy Steven Meiers (a.k.a. “toastycakes“) posted this story about having snapped a photo of the screen while watching The Hangover last Friday at the Arclight — mistake! He got hauled out of the theatre by security and was questioned by four cops in the lobby.

The photo-taking was mitigated in Meiers’ head by the fact that he was sitting with Hangover costar Sasha Barrese and director Michel Gondry. Meiers obviously thought it would be harmless (as well as emotionally supportive) to snap a quick shot of Barrese on the big curved screen and…whatever, give it to her so she could put it on her handheld.

Some people think they live under a special halo or something. We all know you can’t do this and you’re asking for it if you do.

And yet — and yet! — I’d like to hear of one instance in an uptown big-city plex like the Arclight which anyone was caught taping a movie with a video camera — just one. Or one instance in which a person invited to a private or all-media screening (or who attended same as a plus-one) was busted for this. Is there any evidence that movies are not pirated for the most part by people in the post-production community (or by their “friends”)?

Jezebel‘s weekend editor got pretty angry at Saturday’s “Just Hot Enough” piece and went after me pretty savagely in a Sunday piece called “Jeffrey Wells: ‘Life Would Be Heavenly And Rhapsodic If Women Had The Personality And Temperament Of Dogs.'”

I posted a reply on Jezebel but this is just a variation on the old line that reads “if you want a friend get a dog.” We all know what this means. Hetero relationships are always being reassessed and renegotiated. Your stock goes up or down with your wife/girlfriend depending on various evolving factors. People fall out of love in relationships. (And sometimes back in love.) Ardor fades. People get fat, lose jobs, lose their love of life and sometimes turn to drink. Expectations are unmet and disappointment ensues. All to say that “love” is definitely conditional. Whatever kind of “love” you and your significant other have going right now is not necessarily going to be there tomorrow or next week, let alone a year or two from now. Nothing new in this.

In a 6.7 N.Y. Times piece about the increasing prominence of web-based critics in movie-marketing campaigns, Michael Moses, executive vice president of national publicity for Universal, tells Brooks Barnes that “some of the best film writing and most substantive reviews are found online. Those sources are as legitimate as any other.”

And Mike Vollman, president of marketing for MGM and United Artists, says he “will probably rely more on quotes from blogs than from Time magazine and The Los Angeles Times” when he slaps together his campaigns for Fame, a remake of the 1980 musical, and Hot Tub Time Machine.

“The reality, and I’m sorry to tell you this, is that younger moviegoers are more likely to be influenced by a blog than by a newspaper critic,” Vollman said.

In Dave Kehr‘s 6.7 N.Y. Times review of Warner Home Video’s just-out DVD of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Zabriskie Point (’70), he quotes a line spoken by the late Mark Frechette, who played the lead male role. I haven’t seen Zabriskie Point in eons and Kehr has obviously just seen it, but I’m 95% sure he slightly misquotes.

The line is spoken when Frechette stands up to speak during a meeting of lefty radicals who are talking about whether they’re willing to risk their lives in order to fight the pigs. My recollection is that Frechette says, “Well, I’m willing to die” — beat, beat — “of boredom.” And then he walks out. Kehr quotes Frechette as follows: “I, too, am ready to die for the revolution, but not of boredom.” Very slight difference and not a big deal, but I have pretty good recall.

Sidenote #1: “On August 29, 1973, Frechette and two members of [Mel Lyman’s] commune attempted to rob the New England Merchant’s Bank in the Fort Hill neighborhood in Boston. One of the members of the commune was killed by police and Frechette, who did not have bullets in his gun, was arrested and sentenced to the minimum security state prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts. He died under suspicious circumstances during a weightlifting accident when a 150-pound bar fell on his neck, allegedly choking him to death. Officials did not suspect foul play however questions arose over whethere Frechette had been suffering from depression.”

Sidenote #2: Harrison Ford’s Wikipedia bio says he “had an uncredited role in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film Zabriskie Point as an airport worker.” Whatever the accuracy of this, I doubt that Ford is the guy in this Great Escape clip — even though it looks just like him.

I wandered outside yesterday afternoon for something to eat, and when I began to head back I realized I’d left my keys inside and had locked myself out. It took 45 minutes to get back in, and the way I managed it drew a small crowd. Flashing firetruck lights, an extension ladder against the building, loud walkie-talkies, etc. The talk of the neighborhood.

My first move was to buzz myself into the building and ask the fat guy who lives upstairs if I could hang myself out of one of his windows and drop down to my level. His place looks out on a four-walled open-air space that adjoins an open window in my kitchen. He was cool about it, but said the only window is in the bathroom and I might not fit. He was right — strictly a job for the Asian guy from Ocean’s 11 — and it was too far to drop down anyway.

So I called a couple of locksmiths and was told it would probably cost $150. Didn’t like that at all. Then I remembered that my street-facing living-room window was open without a screen. Do you guys happen to have a ladder of any kind?, I said. “Why would we have a ladder?,” the guy said. “We’re locksmiths.” I went over to the hardware store across the street and asked if they had a ladder I could borrow — nope.

So I sucked it in and called the local fire department — took me a long while to finally get through — and asked if they’d mind doing me a favor. Less than ten minutes later a big shiny red truck arrived with three guys aboard. “Have you got ID that says you live here?” the top guy asked. Yes, I do, definitely. They took the ladder off the side of the truck and three minutes later my door was open, situation solved. Thanks, guys — good of you to do this. “You’re welcome, have a good day.”

Tax dollars, public utilities…a good thing!

“So far I’ve only succeeded in my dreams. I practice transcendental meditation and there is a phase where you’re meant to lift off the ground. It hasn’t happened yet. I’ll manage it one day. In fact, I’m aiming beyond levitation. I want to be able to fly like a superhero. I won’t be happy until I can fly across oceans and cities, saving people from being murdered.” — The Hangover costar Heather Graham quoted in an interview with London’s Daily Mail.

In The Americanization of Emily James Garner‘s character says a line to the effect that “nobody gets moral or spiritual unless they want to get something or get out of something.” Graham sounds like she’s in a relatively good place in her head, but I think she’s emphasizing her spiritual life in this interview as a way of saying “I’m fine with my career having cooled down and that I’m playing leads in indies that nobody sees and supporting roles in rowdy guy comedies. That’s all right with me because I’m tethered to something eternal and inspiring. And whatever happens, happens. I feel good.”

Ed Helms owns The Hangover. He puts out the most energy and and comic pizazz. By far. Zach Galifianakis, I have to say, disappointed me somewhat. Certainly in contrast to Helms. He’s just playing the primitive oafish infant who causes all the trouble…not impressed. Bradley Cooper scores nicely. I’ve never really tuned into him before, but he’s given his best performance yet. Justin Bartha is fine but he’s the absent sacrificial lamb. The second funniest guy is Ken Jeong — a madman.

I was fairly pleased with The Hangover. It’s much better than any number of drunk-adolescent-guys-get-into-into-serious-trouble-and-have-to-extricate-themselves-the-next-morning movies I’ve seen over the last 27 or 28 years, when the genre more or less began with films like Losin’ It and Risky Business. It put me in a good mood. I laughed from time to time. I loved the line about how “roofies” should be called “floories” because that’s where you always end up — on the floor. And the closing video montage that finally shows us what happened works nicely.

But it’s not a landmark film. It’s a B-plus. It takes a while to get going. (Jett leaned over at the 15-minute mark and whispered. “It’s not funny.”) But if I were a Warner Bros. exec, I’d definitely call for a sequel, especially considering what it made this weekend.

I picked up a two-disc collectors’ edition of The Magnificent Seven a couple of days ago. Would this 1960 John Sturges western be considered a classic without Elmer Bernstein‘s rousing score? I don’t think so. And yet I’ve always preferred it to Akira Kurosawa‘s The Seven Samurai (’54), which Seven is a remake of, because of the zen coolness factor provided by Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn.

I’m not saying it’s not a legendary western or a great guy movie, but it’s too talky. On one level I admire Sturges’ decision to clearly state the themes with William Roberts, Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman‘s above-average dialogue, but there’s just too much of it. When in doubt say less, or better yet nothing. Silences and visual suggestions can be golden.

And I’ve always been bothered by the affected acting style of Robert Vaughn (i.e. the way he conspicuously smacks his lips and draws a breath before delivering each line) — a huge pain in the ass. And if only the English spoken by the Mexican peasants was a little less correct with maybe a little Spanish thrown in from time to time. These guys sound like Hispanic literature professors at L.A. City College.

But the worst thing about it are those awful gunshot sounds. Every time someone fires we hear the exact same guh-BACH-auhl sound, like the sound team recorded one gunshot out in a canyon somewhere and used the same fragment over and over and over. God! I would go so far to say that the Magnificent Seven gunshots are the most irritating in motion picture history. The guilty parties are Del Harris (sound effects editor) and sound assistants Rafael Esparza and Jack Solomon.

I would go further and say that a defining trait of all first-rate westerns and urban action films is that the gunshots always sound awesome. The best six-shooter gunshots ever heard in motion picture history are in Shane, of course. They sound like warship cannons in an echo chamber. (Director George Stevens expended great effort, of course, to achieve this effect.) Another film with excellent gunshots is Michael Mann‘s Collateral, except they’ve never sounded as good on the DVD as they did when I first saw it at an Arclight press screening.

This conceptual Invictus poster, posted yesterday by Ryan Adams on Awards Daily, is embarassing. Matt Damon, who plays rugby star Francois Pienaar, is wearing the same kind of green jacket that he’s been photographed wearing on Clint Eastwood‘s set, but without the dyed blonde hair. And it sure seems as if the rendering of Morgan Freeman, who plays Nelson Mandela, is taken from Million Dollar Baby. I mean, it’s just crap. Plus Adams says the IMDB “hasn’t yet caught up with the title change” from The Human Factor to Invictus. Except they have.