I love how kneejerk righties are using this photo to sell the idea that President Obama is being somehow intemperate and/or naive in extending a limited form of friendship towards Cuba and Venezuela (and that country’s president Hugo Chavez) based on future cooperation. Anti-Americanism is always made, never born. Caribbean and South American leaders who’ve called out American politicians for acting with arrogance and authoritarianism and looking no further into any situation other than to determine what’s best for corporate interests aren’t necessarily wrong.

Late last month the History Channel began airing a show on Predator X, the aquatic superbeast that swam the seas and ate everything and everybody some 147 million years ago. 50 feet long, 99,000 pounds, foot-long teeth, four flippers, etc.

I would pay to see a movie about this guy, seriously, but I wouldn’t want to see it made by McG or Stephen Sommers or Roland Emmerich. I’d probably want something more in the vein of John Sayles‘ Alligator, which is to say adult and knowing but with a slight wink. And yet real. If I were Tom Rothman I would give orders to shoot it in black and white 3D, which would obviously proclaim an ironic attitude. But then I’d flip this around by making the special effects as good as they possibly can be. And I’d somehow work in a scene in which Predator X eats a boatload of Somali pirates.

Yesterday was warm and fair and almost summery. It was easily 2009’s best walking-around weather so far, and a declaration from nature that the horrid cold has pretty much come to an end. The whole city, it seemed, was on the streets; nobody was indoors; everyone you ran into seemed to be in at least a fairly good mood. (All photos taken with iPhone.)

Prince Street near Thompson — 4.17.09, 6:45 pm.

Just after picking up a copy, standing in 42nd and 7th Avenue subway — 4.17.09, 2:25 pm.

Hanging under the marquee for 33 Variations, the Jane Fonda play.

It appears as if 19 year-old Emma Watson, like her Harry Potter costar Daniel Radcliffe, is unusually short. As is Macaulay Culkin, another former child star. Not to mention Mickey Rooney. I’m sorry, but it seems a curious irony in their having become rich and famous for having played children while children, but their genetic inheritance, curiously, doesn’t hand them an opportunity to physically grow out of that phase and move on. I know I’m not supposed to say this and that the HE scolds will jump on me for doing so, but it does seem a bit odd.

I tapped out some stories, lunched with a journalist friend, visited the Apple store in Soho, picked up my Tribeca Film Festival pass, etc. A friend and I walked around the meat-packing district last night, which seemed to me (being a recent arrival) to have transformed itself into the garden district of New Orleans or the Left Bank/Sorbonne area in Paris.

The news broke yesterday that the Paris transport authority, RATP, has transformed itself into a kind of bureaucracy of the absurd by removing the trademark pipe of Jacques Tati, the legendary absurdist French director and actor, from a poster advertising a Tati retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise over concerns that an image of a pipe violates laws preventing the advertising of tobacco products.

The poster image is a famous shot of Tati/Hulot riding a bike in his classic 1958 film Mon Oncle. The pipe is Hulot’s trademark as much as the bowler hat and cane are trademarks of Charlie Chaplin, but p.c. dictums have erased it as far as the retropsective is concerned. In it place the Paris censors have inserted a yellow children’s windmill.

Tati played Monsieur Hulot in four classic films, each time with the exact same manner and accessories — M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, Play Time and Traffic. (There’s a fifth Hulot film, Evening Classes, that I’ve never seen or even heard of until I checked today.)

Metrobus, the publicity wing of the Paris public transport network, told reporters that “allowing Monsieur Hulot to smoke on buses and underground metro platforms would be an infraction of the law banning advertising of alcohol or tobacco.”

Director Costa Gavras, president of the Cinematheque Francaise, told Le Parisien that the ruling “is absurd and risible…I think it would have made [Tati] die of laughter.”

Criterion’s high-definition DVD remastering of Stephen Frears‘ The Hit (1984), available on 4.28, is worth buying for several reasons. The cincher for me is John Hurt‘s legendary portrayal of Braddock, a British assassin sent to Spain to capture and bring to Paris an ex-gangster (Terrence Stamp) who needs to pay for ratting on the London mob. It’s one of Hurt’s two or three finest performances, no question, and certainly one of the most pleasurable ever delivered in a crusty, hard-boiled vein.

Hurt wears jet-black shades for at least half the film and has very few lines, but he teems with repressed feeling in every scene. There’s never a moment when you can’t tell exactly what he’s thinking or feeling. His Braddock is half-moving, half-amusing (and sometimes hilarious) and altogether unforgettable for all the things he’s clearly afraid to speak of, much less think about. He’s a walking dead man in many respects, but Hurt lets you see and feel everything churning inside — the fears, longings, trepidations. And all with a deadpan expression and next to no facial movement.

This got me to thinking about other great hard-boiled performances. I’m not speaking of actors who play their parts with a minimum of expressiveness — hard and frosty, wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes, etc. Anyone can do that. I’m speaking of performances, like Hurt’s, that use that terse, tough-guy thing but make it all feel like opera.

Jean Servais asTony le St√©phanois in Jules Dassin‘s Rififi — that’s another classic of this type. Lee Marvin‘s Walker in Point Blank isn’t quite on Hurt’s level (the part isn’t written that way), but he slips in and out of a lost-and-melancholy mode. Who else? Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven?

Francis Coppola‘s publicist Kathleen Talbert has sent out the following message about Tetro, Coppola’s latest film, and the Cannes Film Festival: “Since there has been much speculation in the press about the Cannes line-up,” she staites, “we want you to be aware that Francis Coppola has declined to bring his new film Tetro, starring Vincent Gallo, to Cannes.

“Below is his statement. If you choose to use it, I would ask that you use it in its entirety. Oh, and just to correct another misconception — Tetro [has been] shot in black and white and color.” Todd McCarthy‘s Cannes lineup piece that ran in Variety yesterday mentioned that Tetro (a) is a prospective Cannes attraction and (b) has been shot in black and white.

“While I very much appreciate the invitation,” Coppola’s statement reads, “this is an independent film, self-financed and self-released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film. More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the U.S. release this June 11th.”

HE translation #1: “As some of you have gathered since the release of Youth Without Youth, the words ‘independent film,’ ‘self-financed’ and ‘self-released’ as they concern yours truly are euphemisms for confounding, difficult to stay engrossed in, draggy, mind-numbing, etc.” HE translation #2: “If we take our film to Cannes we’ll get killed by the critics and the word will go out everywhere so why do it? We can only lose.”

Tetro will open on 6.11 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Miami, and Washington, D.C.

I spoke a couple of days ago with Il Divo director Paolo Sorrentino at the Standard Hotel. The interview went well and speaks for itself. We talked about the film (obviously), Tony Servillo ‘s portrayal of former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti (which the film is about), Bluray players, Rome, the world economy, etc.

Il Divo director Paolo Sorrentino at Manhattan’s Standard Hotel, a metallic, super-cool high-tech palace located in the meat-packing district.

I told Sorrentino that he reminded me of a somewhat thinner-faced pre-plastic surgery Michael Cimino (i.e., as Cimino looked in the late ’70s).

Il Divo (MPI, 4.24) has no website, but it is, as I said a few days ago, an immaculate, highly stylized film about Andreotti and his political career, particularly the events that led to revelations about his ties to the Italian mafia and his reported complicity in the murder of a journalist.

I saw it last year in Cannes, and my immediate reaction was basically (a) “a first-rate political drama but probably too Italian to play in the U.S.” (about which I was obviously wrong) and (b) “a brilliant performance by Servillo.”

“The old guard has passed and the new guard is here. And the new guard likes to ding dong ditch people just for fun.” — Ashton Kutcher after beating CNN (yes, CNN) to the million-follower mark yesterday afternoon. But what does it mean to be ding dong ditched?

Nikki Finke‘s report this morning that 20th Century Fox is internally projecting a $70 to $75 million domestic opening-weekend gross for Wolverine (with rival studios predicting closer to $80 million) makes you wonder to what extent the illegal piracy and downloading of the film — which was first noticed on or about April 1st — may have hurt the earning potential. Would it be looking at a $90-to-$100 million opening without the piracy?

Brett Ratner‘s 2006 X-Men movie cost $210 million, opened to $102.7 millon. Bryan Singer‘s X-Men United cost $110 million, opened to $85.5 million. The key consideration, of course, is whether the illegal downloading has influenced the general word-of-mouth. How could it not?

It was announced yesterday afternoon that Bruno has gotten its R rating. The real story (i.e., the humor element) would convey what cuts were made to get this rating. The trades never seem to even try to report this.

A DVD of Fritz Lang‘s Manhunt (1941), a classic World War II-era chase thriller, will emerge in remastered form on May 12th from Fox Home Video.

Manhunt was one of my favorite late-night TV movies when I was in my early to mid teens. But it hasn’t been aired in a long time and has never before been released on DVD or VHS.

Based on Geoffrey Household‘s “Rogue Male,” it’s about a gentleman hunter named Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) who manages to penetrate Adolf Hitler‘s Berchtesgaden headquarters as a kind of hunting exercise, not to kill Hitler but to prove to himself that he was able to get him in his sights. I remember the close-up of Pidgeon’s trigger finger — pausing, hesitating.

Then the story kicks in. Pidgeon/Thorndike is discovered by German security, thrown off a cliff, survives, is tracked down by soldiers and hounds but manages to escape, makes his way to London with German agents still on his trail, meets an emotionally vulnerable streetwalker (Joan Bennett) who wears a little metal arrow in her beret. She falls for Thorndike, takes him in, pays the price.

It’s been decades since I’ve seen it but the principal baddie is played by George Sanders; John Carradine plays another ne’er do well. I especially recall the ending with Pidgeon hiding in a cave and Sanders talking to him from outside, trying to coax him out, and the manner in which the little arrow from Bennett’s beret resolves things.

It doesn’t work for me to call it Man Hunt — it has to be a one-word title.

As with all older action films the pace is slowish and deliberate. But old-fashionedness is what the enjoyment of a film like Manhunt is all about.

This data chart says that Manhunt was shot in March 1941 and was out in theatres three months later. This was more or less standard procedure back then.

One of the features on the disc is a restoration comparison. That’s always a closer for me. Shawn Belston‘s Fox Home Video team is highly respected. I’ve only seen Man Hunt on a primitive black-and-white TV with commercials every 10 minutes.

Sanders was repeatedly cast as villains because of that snide and effete manner that he did so well. But what about those of us who enjoy Sanders’ haughty airs? I loved his disreputable cad in Rebecca and the way he oozed out his insinuations. In any event mix his effeteness with good-guyness and you’ve got one of Sanders’ most winning roles ever — the adventurous journalist friend of Joel McCrea in Foreign Correspondent. And he was charming also (as well as perfect) as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve.

The screenwriters of State of Play, says L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein, “have taken a story that’s really a cop movie and grafted it into the world of journalism.” He makes some good points, but he should have clarified if the same plot points are in the original six-hour British miniseries. I need to watch it again myself so I can answer this question.

“Russell Crowe actually interrogates one suspect — I mean source — in a motel room, with a backup crew of cops — I mean reporters — stashed in an adjoining motel room, secretly videotaping the encounter, which he then shows to another source/suspect in the story. This is, ahem, wrong on a thousand different ethical levels, not to mention, in an era of vastly diminished newspaper resources, who could afford to pay for all the video gear, much less two motel rooms?” Hilarious!

“Crowe has a basic conflict of interest that would disqualify any reporter from covering this story; he’s an old friend (and former college roommate) of the powerful congressman who’s at the heart of a murder mystery. Even worse, from a believability angle, Crowe’s top editor (nicely played as a tough-talking Fleet Street expatriate by Helen Mirren) knows all about their friendship, which in real journalistic life, would have disqualified Crowe from covering the story from the jump-off, especially since he has an even more complicated entanglement with the congressman’s wife.

“There [are] other farfetched moments, including a scene where Mirren refuses to print an explosive story, saying that the paper’s new owners are insisting that Crowe get at least one key source on the record. A reputable newspaper would indeed demand that at least one source be on the record before printing a big story, but that demand would come from the editors, not from the owners of the paper, who usually find out about a big story at the same time the readers do — after it’s printed.

“But for me, the biggest whopper of all happens after Crowe has pushed his deadline to the limit. He finally sits down and cranks out a complicated expose that could ruin a number of powerful Washington insiders in even less time than it took me to write this blog item. (Fair enough — that’s dramatic compression, since who wants to see the dreary details of all that typing.) But when Crowe is finished, he simply hits the SEND button, gets up and walks out of the newsroom, as if his job were done.

“It’s a heroic walk off into the sunset, but in terms of veracity, it leaves out all the real work that goes into a story after the first draft is finished. In other words, there’s no editing, no rewrites, no fact checking, no trims for space, no perusals by the paper’s lawyers, no nothing. It’s a wonderful movie moment, but like all too many movie moments, whether they involve lawyers, doctors, cops or grouchy newspaper reporters, it leaves out an awful lot of the rich detail that goes into accomplishing a task.”