Those connected with or working for Julia Roberts and her about-to-open film, Duplicity, have to be grinding their teeth about a nip-nip snark piece by Newsweek‘s Ramin Setoodeh that asks, “Is Roberts over?” They have to be especially chagrined about such a piece appearing a day before the big New York premiere of Tony Gilroy‘s deceptive brain-tickler and six days before it opens nationwide.

The answer, as I’ve written, is yes, time moves on but no, Roberts isn’t “over.” She is, however, in her Bette Davis/All About Eve phase now, which probably means she’s no longer a stratospheric box-office draw. She puts fewer butts in seats, but that’s still a valuable asset if you grade this attraction on the curve of her marquee power-that-was. She’s still “Julia Roberts” but in a more mature (tougher, steelier, suffer-no-fools) guise. Which basically means she’s become someone else. Which is cool.

Roberts is returning to the screen “after essentially taking five years off to raise her three children,” the Newsweek piece begins. The problem is that things have changed in the interim. One, the romantic comedy genre, in which Roberts has enjoyed her biggest successes, is “practically on life support.” Two, movie stars “have become a dying breed.” And three, Roberts hasn’t opened a successful film in eight years — i.e., since ’01’s America’s Sweethearts.

On top of which Roberts is “Hollywood ancient” — i.e., 41 years old — and, in Newsweek‘s view, a ’90s relic. (That was then, this is now.) Plus “it’s almost impossible for a woman to drag her date to a chick flick,” the article claims. Is this because Sex and the City, Mamma Mia and He’s Just Not That Into You were so awful that males have come to believe that the bottom has fallen out of chick-flick badness?

Plus her strict sense of privacy seems out of synch, the piece notes, “in this age of TMZ, celebrity blogs and phone cameras in every restaurant. It’s amazing how much we don’t know about her. Does anyone remember what her husband, Danny Moder, looks like? Even her children are virtually anonymous, which is quite a feat in our Shiloh– and Suri-crazed world. This is all great for Julia, but it may not be great for her career now that saturation media exposure has become the one-a-day vitamins of any healthy Hollywood career.”

Your husband’s face has to be commonly recognized and photos of your kids have to be in Vanity Fair and People in order to fortify your movie-star credentials? I feel nauseous.

But the observation about movie stars being a dying breed is more accurate than not. And it’s satisfying to once more hear that guys are totally refusing to be dragged to chick flicks.

It’s commonly known that Clint Eastwood‘s The Human Factor, which Warner Bros. (a.k.a., the “Death Star”) will release next December, is based upon John Carlin‘s “Playing The Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.” Yesterday’s news is that the first half-decent set photos turned up on TheBadand the Ugly. All shot from a distance, no close-ups, fuzzy.

Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood on the South African set of The Human Factor (Warner Bros., 12.09). This and other pics were posted yesterday afternoon by TheBadand the Ugly. I have the script on PDF, but the usual laziness and fatigue has kept me from reading it.

Morgan Freeman reportedly bought the rights to Carlin’s book, and is now producing and playing Mandela in the film. It tells the story of how the 1995 World Cup Rugby Final — a contest between the heavily-favored New Zealand team and the South African Springboks — helped to heal the post-Apartheid racial divide.

Matt Damon, whose hair has obviously been blonded and is now trim and buffed up (i.e., a sharp contrast from the chunky cholesterol bod he grew for Steven Soderbergh‘s The Informant, which may turn up at the Cannes Film Festival two months hence), is playing South African rugby team captain Francois Pienaar.

Unless he somehow manages to commit suicide, Bernie Madoff is going to die in jail. That seems appropriate to me, but I’m wondering why he didn’t just run for it when he had the chance. He knew the Feds were on his tail and it was just a matter of time. I’m asking because something in me can’t help but sympathize with a caged bird, especially when he/she is looking at life in the slammer.

If I was Madoff I would have prepared for my escape and disappearance during my ponzi-scam days. All criminals need to face the fact that sooner or later they’ll be forced to lam it. I would have socked away massive amounts of cash in a few Swiss, Cayman Islands and Venezuelan bank accounts under fake names, with debit and credit cards attached to each account. And I would have hired pros to create several sets of first-rate fake IDs and fake passports. And I would have arranged in advance for plastic surgery with a first-rate specialist based in Moscow.

I would have slipped out of Manhattan before the Feds arrested me. I would have taken a private plane to northeastern Canada and then another to Iceland, and then a third to Belgium. I would then enjoy a leisurely car trip to Russia, my pockets and briefcase stuffed with several hundred grand in Euros, ready to bribe whenever necessary. I’d meet my plastic surgeon somewhere in the Ukraine — haven’t decided where.

After the operation I’d move to Tartu in Estonia and recover for six or seven weeks. Then I’d drive down to Moscow and hire myself a team of four elite bodyguards — two guys, two women — and invest in the finest electronic security systems and outfit all my homes with them.

Then I’d make my way to Vietnam. I’d probably build myself a high-security home in the Central Highlands and live in it for two or three months — no more. The eventual plan would be to have several “safe houses” but never stay in any one for very long. Always moving, never sleeping with more than one eye closed, “like Yassir fucking Arafat.”

I’d buy a 100-foot sailing craft and move around from port to exotic port like a wandering character in a Joseph Conrad novel. I’d hire three full-time prostitutes to travel with me, but they’d have to be prostitutes who know how to sail. I might smoke opium from time to time. I’d pay for even more hookers to drop by on weekends, but they’d have to be highly educated and well-read. No booze, no cigarettes. But I’d chill out with quaaludes from time to time.

I’d volunteer with Red Cross organizations to help the poor. I’d move to Darfur and try and use my money to try and purchase some level of comfort or protection for the poor who live there. I’d move the operation to the Amazon jungle from time to time. I’d see about getting to know Hugo Chavez (although he might not want to know me). I’d travel to the South Pole and then to South Africa, and then take a ferry to Madagascar. I’d catch plays in London twice a year. I’d buy a studio in Montmartre that I’d visit every four or five months for a week or two. I’d always stay inside days, reading and watching movies on my 52″ LCD flatscreen, and working out on a treadmill. I’d go out to dinner and for walks in the evenings, wearing shades and a fishing hat.

I’d eventually get pinched, of course. Sooner or later somebody would sell me out or spot me (even with my altered appearance). But I might stay free for two or three years, and at least I’d have a great adventure under my belt and many things to remember before spending the rest of my life in miserable confinement.

John Hamburg‘s I Love You, Man “cranks out the kind of lowball humor that makes you gag on your own laughs,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy. “Ever alert for opportunities to drop dirty bombs — and compelled to repeat every below-the-belt joke at least one time too many — pic never surmounts a deeply lame central premise that makes most of the action seem fraudulent and thoroughly unnecessary.

I Love You Man‘s Jason Segel, Paul Rudd

“[It] is propelled by the perplexing notion that a young man isn’t properly prepared for marriage or life in general unless he has a best male friend and, in the bargain, a guy who merits being his best man at the nuptials. It’s a rare film that features an operating principle less compelling or credible than this, although the script by John Hamburg and Larry Levin makes use of it to put Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) into a succession of awkward and embarrassing encounters that can easily be — and are — misconstrued in aspiringly comic ways.

“But the notion of sending him on ‘man-dates’ in search of a best friend proves preposterously contrived, as if such a confidential and symbiotic relationship could be formed anywhere near as quickly as falling in love, or certainly lust. Add the fact that Peter’s fiancee becomes completely and understandably alienated by the process and the annoyance level hits the red zone. All the picture lacks is a nudgy mother constantly asking, ‘So when are you going to get a best friend already?'”

Everyone expected Watchmen to experience a steep revenue drop (40% or 50%) on its second weekend. Hardcore geeks contributed $55 million and change last weekend, but the mainstream crowd wasn’t expected to follow suit. But a drop of 71%, as reported by Big Hollywood’s Steve Mason, is devastating. And a 73% drop, as reported by Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke, is obviously worse news.

The weekend’s #1 film is Disney’s family-friendly Race To With Mountain, which will probably earn $24 million and change.

“In the last couple of years the industrious Joe Swanberg has managed to turn himself into an identifiable independent name despite having evinced little initial filmmaking talent,” N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has written. “Things look better, however, in his latest effort, Alexander the Last, a 72-minute (including credits) series of loosely connected scenes.

“For starters, he finally has a real actress to look at and undress, the charming, vibrantly alive Jess Weixler, who plays Alex, a rather less appealing actress struggling with the divide between life and art. As important, Alexander comes with an imprimatur of legitimacy because the filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Margot at the Wedding) has signed on as a producer. It’s hard to imagine Mr. Baumbach putting his name to anything without some creative input.

“The story in Alexander emerges elliptically after Alex’s musician husband, Elliot (Justin Rice), heads out for a spell. She soon lands a part in a theater production (the movie was shot in Brooklyn), playing the romantic foil to a vague young man, Jamie (the equally hazy Barlow Jacobs), for whom she develops…well, a vague interest.

“The two advance and parry on and increasingly off the stage, even as Alex’s sister, Hellen (Amy Seimetz), moves in on Jamie. Inhibitions and clothes are shed amid awkward silences, lurching conversations and tentative gestures as the focus shifts between life and the theater, and the two realms become more and more blurred, at least for Alex.

“The only thing truly in focus here is Ms. Weixler’s performance.”

I’ve been waiting to see Gerald Peary and Amy Geller‘s For The Love of Movies: A History of American Film Criticism for a long time. It’s been in the works for years. So many, in fact, that one of the talking heads appears as a young, lean-faced guy with a shock of dark hair (in footage that was shot around 2000) and as an older, fuller-faced guy with less hair. Happens to all of us, but this may be a first. Same interview subject, two biological incarnations.

Anyway, For The Love of Movies — directed and written by Peary, produced by Geller — is finally here and it does the job nicely. Which is to say intelligently, competently, lovingly and, after a fashion, comprehensively. Meaning that it tells the story as thoroughly as the budget and running time have allowed. For those who don’t know much about the lore of the realm, it’s nutritious food and then some.

It’s a hell of a subject — a chronicle of magnificent obsessions and magnificent dreams, and a rise-and-fall story covering scores of critics, the entirety of the Hollywood film culture from the ’20s to the present, and hundreds if not thousands of movies.

Ideally (and this is no slag on Peary or Geller) For The Love of Movies should have been a well-funded, six-part American Experience series on PBS, shot on 35mm by Emmanuel Lubezski, and including a vast smorgasbord of film clips donated by their copyright owners as a gesture of thankfulness. (Today’s production and marketing community may resent critics, but they owe them big-time.)

But Peary and Geller’s low-budget, hand-to-mouth approach will do for now. I’m very glad it was made, glad that I saw it. I hope others follow suit when it has its big debut on Monday, 3.16, at South by Southwest, and more particularly at the Alamo Ritz at 8 pm. And then on Wednesday, 3.18 at the same venue. And again on Saturday, 3.21, at the Alamo Lamar 3 at 4 pm.

Gerald Peary (l.) and Amy Geller (r.) with unknown female.

You can’t watch this film and not acknowledge that Peary and Geller are fully up to the task of providing a clean and cogent history lesson. Could they have made a snarkier, trippier excursion piece? A more poetic and probing cultural epic or tone poem…whatever? Yeah, probably, but they were budgetarily constrained and wanted to reach the not-very-hip (or moderately hip) crowd.

So they’ve thrown together an easy-to-digest, chapter-by-chapter saga of the last 90 years of American film criticism, starting in the mid-to-late teens with the emergence of Frank E. Wood, the first “cricket” to earn his stripes by investing a modicum of personal passion and a writerly point-of-view, and hiking all the way through Vachel Lindsay, Robert Sherwood, the great seminal trio of Otis Ferguson, James Agee and Manny Farber, the 20-year reign of Bosley Crowther, the fall of Crowther over his Bonnie and Clyde review, the influence of Cahiers du Cinema and the auteur theory, the resultant reign of Andrew Sarris and The American Cinema, the huge influence of Pauline Kael and the writings of Stanley Kaufman, Vincent Canby, Richard Corliss, Richard Schickel, Molly Haskell, Roger Ebert, Stuart Klawans, etc.

This feels like Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Stop the Fire.” I’m hearing a film-critic spoof version of the lyrics. Come to think, a mock music-video interlude would have been a great thing for Perry and Geller to run with — seriously.

Gleiberman, Hoberman, Harlan tell-it Jacobson.

John Powers, Elvis Mitchell, Leonard Maltin, mumblecore.

Titanic, Janet Maslin, Wesley Morris, David Sterritt.

Ain’t-It-Cool, Rex Reed, Nesselson and junket whores.

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Orson Kane, Indies in the ’90s.

Wilmington, Weinberg, Siskel and Szymanski.

Ruby Rich, Kenny T., tits and zits, Anthology Film Archives.

I’ve lost the rhythm, can’t get it right, haven’t the time. Anyone?

For whatever reason Perry and Geller don’t mention the great French critic Andre Bazin. (Or at least not that I remember. He’s not listed in this cast roster.) Nor do they mention John Simon, whom I always regarded as a brilliant (if occasionally cruel) critic and one of the major go-to guys of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Or Todd McCarthy, Dwight McDonald, Bertrand Tavernier, Andy Klein, Armond White, Ty Burr, Glenn Kenny, Anthony Lane, Scott Foundas, etc.

There are a lot of holes and gaps — let’s face it. The doc only runs 80 minutes. A longer length (115 or 120 minutes, say) would have obviously allowed for a more comprehensive summary.

For those who know a lot about the American film-critic monastery, For the Love of Movies is a tidy and agreeable canoe ride down memory creek. With a tinge of melancholy, I should add, although this comes more from my own feelings.

Peary and Geller, to put a point on it, have chosen not to emphasize the dominant reality facing established film critics in the 21st Century — i.e., the extinction of the monk-like film critic cabal as it was known and defined from the late 1930s and ’40s to the beginning of this century, and the drop-by-drop decline and diminishment of the power and prestige of the traditional film critic. Which is due, obviously, to the winding down of the Gutenberg era, blah blah. With some critics and columnists adapting to the new technological climate (ahem) and some not so much.

Peary and Geller acknowledge that it’s currently a sink-or-swim, do-or-die reality out there. They begin by saying that “film criticism is a profession under siege” and that “according to Variety 28 film critics have lost their jobs in the last several years.” That, of course, is dated information and isn’t the half of it. Sean P. Means‘ disappearing film critic list is currently at 49. MCN’s Last Film Critics in America list has the names of 121 who are still collecting a check.

Clearly we’re looking at the end of the road here, certainly for the elite culture portrayed in the film.

The prime kiss-of-death factor is a diminished interest among today’s tweeting, texting, 24/7 digital-feed generation in being passive recipients of the views of learned, brahmin-like, know-it-all film critics dispensing ivory-tower insights. Economic issues aside, the firing of film critics is rooted in today’s common-currency belief that everyone and anyone with a computer or hand-held device knows as much as those snooty-ass critics do. Or certainly that their opinion is just as valid, and that they prefer a more democratic, interactive bloggy-blog conversation as the dominant mode of dissection and discussion.

In short, there’s a whole current of lament than runs underneath this story that probably should have been explored with more frankness and feeling.

For The Love of Movies is narrated by Patricia Clarkson. I don’t want to be a crank, but I would have preferred to hear a raspy, whiskey-tinged male voice tell the tale. The voice of someone who sounds like he might have personally lived through some of the history. Michael Wilmington would have worked in this respect.

Thanks to HE reader “bmcintire.”

Speaking last night at the School of Visual Arts, Tyson director James Toback told a story about Focus Features’ chief James Schamus. He was the first Hollywood hotshot to be offered the film at Cannes, but he passed. Flash forward a few months when Toback’s agent calls Toback with the news that Schamus had told a mutual friend that he not only loved Tyson, but said it was by far the best thing he’d seen at Cannes.

Toback called Schamus right away. “From what I’m told you were at a Tyson screening in Cannes, and you passed,” he said. “But now I’m hearing you loved it. Somebody’s clearly lying.”

Schamus: “I passed on the movie and I loved it”

Toback: “Why?”

Schamus: “The movie’s brilliant, but it doesn’t fit what we do. We’ve never released a documentary at Focus. So there’s that plus I’m a financier — I’m not an acquisitions guy.”

I spoke with Alexander The Last director Joe Swanberg a day or so ago. It had to be a phoner because he lives in Chicago. The chat lasted 18 minutes. He agreed that he’s less a story-driven director than a framer and coaxer of emotions, personalities, situations, moods. Either films of this type get you or they don’t. I made it clear last Tuesday I’m a sucker.

Joe Swanberg during filming of Alexander the Last

Alexander the Last will be available on IFC Movies on Demand, concurrent with its screening at South by Southwest. Operators that carry IFC Movies On Demand are (a) Bright House, (b) CableVision or Ch. 508, (c) Charter (Ch. 1 /Movies On Demand/IFC In Theaters), (d) Comcast (Ch. 1 /Movies On Demand/IFC In Theaters), (e) Cox (Ch. 1 /Movies On Demand/IFC In Theaters), (f) Insight (Ch. 1 /Movies On Demand/IFC In Theaters), and (g) Time Warner (Movies On Demand/IFC In Theaters). Here‘s an IFC brochure detailing other IFC on-demand titles, etc.