The trailer for I Love You, Beth Cooper (Fox Atomic, 7.10) suggests that the film is coarse and vulgar and way overcranked. A ludicrous teenaged horndog wish-fulfillment plot, gross stupidity, a hissing raccoon, insanely overdone foley effects, every cliche out of the tits-and-zits high-school handbook. Truly repellent. An unfortunate comedown for Chris Columbus, whom I was starting to learn to like after the invigorating Rent. The screenplay is by Larry Doyle, based on his book. I mean, I wanted to throw up.

Last night around 6:45 pm I walked into Leows Lincoln Square and a mid-sized theatre playing The Hangover to see the Michael Moore teaser. Except I made the mistake of sitting behind an ugly bald guy whose seat was leaning way back, in the same way that thoughtless people in coach lean their seats right into your face. He was short and bald and rocking in his seat as he stuffed his face with popcorn. It was like sitting behind a rambunctious seven year-old. I hated him on sight.

The feeling was apparently mutual because he kept half-turning-around — i.e., the universal gesture that means “hey, quit what you’re doing because you’re bothering me.” I crossed my leg to re-tie my shoe and this asshole turned around. He bounced his seat back and it hit my left knee and this asshole turned around. I was sitting behind him doing nothing (except thinking what an asshole he was) and this asshole turned around.

After the fifth or sixth turn-around I said, “What…? What’s your problem?” He said I was breathing on his head and it bothered him. Nostril breath, he meant. “Well, you’re gonna have to deal with it, pal, because I’m not gonna stop breathing,” I said. “You wanna sit on my lap?” he said. No, I said, and why don’t you try just sucking it in and shutting the fuck up? “Just go…just get outta here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Find a way to live with it.”

But I didn’t want to be anywhere near this monkey so I looked around and noticed two vacant seats behind me, on either side of a pretty 20something girl. No clothing or markers on either seat so I got up and sat in the empty aisle seat. Beat, beat, beat. “This seat is saved for my boyfriend,” she said. “Oh, for God’s sake!,” I said as I got up. “I don’t know why you’d be mad at me,” she said. “Because if you’re saving a seat you mark it,” I said. “You lay…you know, lay a jacket or a handkerchief or a folded newspaper on it. As in basic jungle law?” She looked at me quizzically. “Like wolves marking territory with urine?” Nope, no clue, pointless.

After seeing the Moore teaser and watching the kids walk around with donation cups (the girl behind me who saved her boyfriend’s seat reached into her wallet and gave a dollar to “Save Our CEOs” — brilliant) and listen to a guy yell out “start the movie!,” Jett and I walked over to the Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 theatre for a 7:15 pm show.

They showed the Moore teaser again. We were going to sit somewhere in the fifth row but a 20something animal in shorts had his big ugly bare feet sticking through from his seat an aisle back. “I don’t wanna sit next to that guy’s feet,” Jett said. I looked over and felt contorted with digust. “What an animal,” I said to Jett. “Look at him.”

Then the trailers started playing, seven or eight of them. Deeply depressing, assaultive. I felt nausea after watching the trailer for I Love You Beth Cooper. Then a baby started crying about a half-hour into the film.

Steve Mason’s weekend projection says that The Hangover will win again and that Pelham will come in third with $26 million or so. The Lincoln Square was showing The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 in their best and biggest theatre and The Hangover in a slightly smaller and shittier house — a large underventilated shoebox. The Hangover theatre was packed to the rafters, and the Pelham theatre was maybe 80%, 85% full. But a lot of people applauded at the end of it.

Robert Schwentke‘s The Time Traveller’s Wife, costaring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, comes out from New Line/Warner on 8.14. The trailer has an affable, settled and vaguely eerie atmosphere. It also radiates dreaded chick-flick vibes. Here, for simplicity’s sake, is a Publisher’s Weekly summary of Audrey Niffenegger‘s 2004 book.

“This clever and inventive tale works on three levels: as an intriguing science fiction concept, a realistic character study and a touching love story. Henry De Tamble (Bana) is a Chicago librarian with ‘Chrono Displacement’ disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes.

“From his point of view, he first met his wife, Clare (McAdams), when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she’d known him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his 40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time travelling to Clare’s childhood and meeting her as a 6-year-old.

“The book alternates between Henry and Clare’s points of view, and so does the narration. [It] expresses the longing of the one always left behind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love for Henry. Likewise, [it] evokes the fear of a man who never knows where or when he’ll turn up, and his gratitude at having Clare, whose love is his anchor.”

The German-born Schwentke is best known for having directed Flightplan, the Jodie Foster thriller.

A teaser for Michael Moore‘s upcoming financial meltdown doc, due on 10.2.09, preemed tonight in select theatres in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. “The movie is not going to be an economics lesson,” Moore told USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican earlier today. “It’s going to be more like a vampire movie. Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it.”

“Hi, I’m Michael Moore,” the teaser narration begins. “Instead of using this time to tell you about my new movie, I’d like to take a moment and ask you to join me in helping our fellow Americans. The downturn in the economy has hurt many people. People who have had no choice but to go on government assistance, yet our welfare agencies can only do so much. That’s why I’m asking you to reach into your pockets right now and lend a hand.

“Ushers will be coming down the aisles to collect your donations for Citibank, Bank of America, AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and a host of other needy banks and corporations. Won’t you please give generously?

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘I already gave at the bailout’…and I know you did. But even if you’ve given in the past, give some more, it’ll make you feel….good.”

The lights came up and a team of eight or nine kids in white T-shirts that said “Save Our CEOs” came down the aisle to collect money after the teaser showed at Manhattan’s Leows’ Lincoln Plaza. Believe it or not, I saw six or seven women actually reach into their wallets and give a buck to the volunteers. Don’t they understand they’re participating in their own humiliation by doing this? It’s a joke, for God’s sake.

The untitled pic takes a comic look at what Mooore calls “the biggest robbery in the history of this country” — the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.

“If you go to see my movies, even if you don’t agree with everything in the movies, you’re going to have a good laugh,” Moore told Breznican. “I want them to walk out at the end saying ‘Wow, that was something!’ And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, ‘Um, excuse me [but] where are the pitchforks and torches?’ ”

Last night I bought a fresh new copy of Michael Herr‘s Dispatches — easily the best written and certainly the most important book about ground-level grunts during the Vietnam War bar none, renowned for its rich conveyance of the surreal climate and mentality and particularly the special lingo that went hand-in-hand with that whole jungle slaughterhouse experience.

Pages 28 and 29 of relatively recent printing of Michael Herr’s Dispatches.

I bought it with the idea of persuading Jett to give it a read, which of course he refused to do after skimming the first two pages as we stood in the book store. Broke my heart, but every generation has its own way of seeing and processing things, and of course writing about them, etc. I never liked Ernest Hemingway all that much when I was 21, certainly never as much as my father did. But I got into him later on. Across the water and into the trees.

Mike Binder‘s Jokeyphone is up and rolling in Beta form. My three favorite jokes so far are (a) “No Politics,” (b) “American girls” and (c) “12 Year-old Scotch.”

Inspired by Jokeyphone I tried to find my all-time favorite joke — the one that some call “kiki” about two anthropologists captured by cannibals in New Guinea, etc.? — but I couldn’t find it anywhere. If anyone has seen this on YouTube under some other name, please advise. You know which one I mean….? Anthropologost #2, having seen what happened to his friend when he chose “kiki” says, “I’m not a brave man so I’ll choose death.” And the chief goes, “Very well, death…but first, kiki!”

The bottom line, of course, is that all the attention given yesterday to the problems of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Paramount, 8,7) will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The film is what it is and there are millions who will pay to see it no matter what, but among the fence-sitters two things are incontestable: (a) barring an unimagined catastrophe of some kind the worst is over in terms of bad buzz, and (b) the film’s rep has nowhere to go but up.

Once the sneak previews and media screenings start in July it’s entirely possible that the G.I. Joe word will be “wow, surprise…a lot less awful than I expected!” If G.I. Joe had accumulated nothing but positive buzz going into August it would have to meet those expectations, God forbid. Now the pressure is off. If it turns to be even half-tolerable the word will reflect that in a mostly positive way — “doesn’t suck that badly!,” “harmless!” “I got through it and finished my popcorn!” and so on.

Paramount owes guys like myself a debt of gratitude. Seriously — they’re better off for it. And they have eight weeks to put across the old counterspin — a snap.

In today’s N.Y. Times A.O. Scott makes a good point about The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which is that the “stubborn, earthbound fact of the subways serves as an anchor” for director Tony Scott. “The gritty physicality of subway cars and tunnels balances the director’s signature flights into G.P.S. and Google Earth-inspired bird’s-eye moviemaking, constraining his indulgences much as it limits the options of both the criminals and the civic authorities in the movie.

Another good quote: Costars Denzel Washington and John Travolta “interact mostly via squawk box, cellphone and radio. But even at a distance from each other, they conduct a tag-team master class in old-style movie star technique, barreling through every clich√© and nugget of corn the script has to offer with verve and conviction. Even when you don’t really believe them, they’re always a lot of fun to watch.”

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 “is neither too raw nor too nostalgic,” adds Entertainment Weekly‘s Lisa Schwarzbaum. “And in the hands of director Tony Scott, it’s relevant but not too distressing, something that doesn’t shy away from jolting violence but is also, you know, fun. It’s an open-hydrant whoooosh of an action thriller.”

Two days ago Forbes‘ Dorothy Pomerantz reported that Harrison Ford earned $65 million dollars between June ’08 and this month, mostly or entirely through his Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull profit percentage deal. That awful film has grossed $786 million worldwide.

Sixty five friggin’ million for donning the old fedora, holding his nose and starring in a megapic that (a) made him look like much more like a corporate go-alonger than a studly movie star, (b) all but ruined the viability of the Indiana Jones franchise and (c) cemented George Lucas‘s reputation as a legendary spoiler and degrader of potentially wow films.

The second biggest 6.08 to 6.09 earner was Adam Sandler, who made $55 million off fees and whatnot stemming from You Don’t Mess With the Zohan and Bedtime Stories. Will Smith came in third with a lousy $50 million for his work on Hancock and Seven Organs for Seven People…Jesus God.

The universally loathed and despised Eddie Murphy came in fourth via his earnings the mediocre Meet Dave. In fifth place was the dedicated workhorse Nicolas Cage.

Earnings estimates were based on talks with “agents, managers, producers and lawyers to determine what the stars earned as upfront pay on movies [stars] are currently shooting, as well as backend pay earned after a movie hit the theaters.” Forbes also tabulated “any money actors might have earned from doing ads for things like beer, banks and coffee.”

Tom Hanks came in sixth with $35 million followed by Tom Cruise ($30 million, 7th place), Jim Carrey ($28 million, 8th place), Brad Pitt (a lousy $28 million? With all those kids and all that travel?), and Johnny Depp ($27 million, 10th place).

The elite bottom-feeders are George Clooney ($25 million), Russell Crowe ($20 million…lifestyle cutbacks!), Robert Downey Jr. ($20 million, 13th place), Denzel Washington ($20 million), Vince Vaughn ($14 million), Ben Stiller ($14 million, second mortgage), Seth Rogen ($12 million, enough for starter home and nice second-hand Taurus), Matt Damon ($11 million…what’s he doing?), Christian Bale ($10 million, 19th place), and Will Ferrell ($10 million).

There’s a small but stunning “whoa!” in Brooks Barnes‘ 6.14 N.Y. Times piece about how Bruno simultaneously mocks and elbow-nudges homophobia. Universal, the film’s distributor, “won’t discuss the filmmaking process,” he writes, “but the studio insists that the vast majority of the people who appear with Sacha Baron Cohen had no idea they were being filmed for a Hollywood movie.”

This is the article‘s big whopping obiter dicta — the words in passing that suggest there’s no limit to average people’s ability to keep their brains from noticing or absorbing anything that doesn’t naturally reside in their own private intellectual and emotional gulags. To delicately rephrase, after Borat you really needed to be a complete cultural hillbilly not to be aware that Cohen would be out and about last year filming Bruno in a blonde wig.

I’m mentioning this because it suggests, obviously, that the core element in Bruno, like in Borat, is a relentless expression of disdain for Middle American zombie culture.

“In mercilessly exploiting the discomfort created when straight men are ambushed by aggressive gayness, Bruno happens to (surprise!) expose homophobia,” writes Barnes. “Gay groups are reacting with deeply mixed emotions, heightened by the recent triumphs (Iowa) and losses (California) in efforts to legalize gay marriage. Is the film then vulgar, inappropriate and harmful? Or bold, timely and necessary? All of the above?

“Ultimately the tension surrounding Bruno boils down to the worry that certain viewers won’t understand that the joke is on them and will leave the multiplex with their homophobia validated.

“‘Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be okay with it,’ said Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. ‘Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others.’

“Holding the opposite view are people like Aaron Hickland, the editor of Out magazine, who said he plans to put Mr. Baron Cohen on the August cover. ‘The movie does something hugely important, which is showing that people’s attitudes can turn on a dime when they realize you’re gay,’ Mr. Hickland said. ‘The multiplex crowd wouldn’t normally sit down for a two-hour lecture on homophobia, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m excited about that.’

“Bruno is not a lecture, at least not overtly. Like Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the 2006 smash that starred Mr. Baron Cohen as an anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist, Bruno is first and foremost a raunchy comedy featuring a not-so-bright guy who embraces sexism, racism and stereotypes as he happily goes about his business. Borat and Bruno are both familiar to fans of Da Ali G Show, Mr. Baron Cohen’s satirical talk show, which first ran in Britain in 2000 and began appearing on HBO in 2003.

“Yet Bruno is also intended as a statement about what it is like to be a member of a minority in America in 2009. Mr. Baron Cohen’s malaprop-loaded antics are fictional, but the hate they can elicit from the people he encounters is ostensibly real. (The same was true of Borat, which some human rights groups also greeted with hostility; Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said at the time that audiences ‘may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke’).”