The big outdoor Doubt scene between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis is now viewable at the N.Y. Times site.

What’s with Summit refusing to announce a theatrical opening date for Kathryn Bigelow ‘s The Hurt Locker ? They’ve had this landmark war thriller since the acquisition was announced almost five months ago but they’ve steadfastly refused to say when. Pussyfooting on a theatrical release date is odd enough six months out, but it’s bizarre when the film in question is this good.

I realize that Lionsgate’s rumored purchase of Summit may have some bearing, but it still feels weird that Summit never announced a date. It suggests that they believe they’ve got a hot potato on their hands. Which of course it isn’t — it’s brilliant.

A couple of just-announced festival dates suggests the release date has to be in late March or early April. The Hurt Locker, I’ve learned, will have a special screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on 3.5. It’s also been announced that it’ll show as a premiere attraction at South by Southwest, which runs from 3.13 to 3.22. Whenever a film with a solid distributor makes the rounds at festivals and high-profile screening series, an opening is never far off. All I got from Summit publicity chief Vivian Mayer is that an announced date “isn’t far off.”

The only possible monkey wrench I can imagine is the Lionsgate acquisition deal. But if things were truly up in the air the two afore-mentioned bookings wouldn’t have been made.

“In Serbis politics isn’t a matter of slogans but of real bodies, which perhaps accounts for why it paradoxically unwinds in a movie theater,” N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote last Friday. “The heavenly bodies that populate our films bring their own pleasures, of course, alighting on screen as if from a dream. The bodies in this movie are not heaven sent, but neither are they puppets in a cinematically contrived nightmare.

“Rather, they lust, sweat, desire and struggle with ferocious truth. In one scene a young man lances a boil on his rear with an empty bottle, a grotesquely funny affirmation of real life and real bodies at their most humble and humanly poignant. You might gag, but you definitely won’t forget it.”

Cheers to Defamer‘s Kyle Buchanan for posting an interview clip earlier this afternoon of Talkshow‘s Spike Feresten grilling At The Movies critic Ben Lyons over the many similarities between The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump. That “Funny or Die” clip that pointed out the same parallels has been taken down, but Feresten’s site has it.

This Christian Bale screaming tape from the set of Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros., 5.22.09), which was broken this afternoon by Gawker, is pretty damn good. It’s the best on-set screaming since that David O. Russell YouTube clip from the set of I Heart Huckabees. Here’s a longer TMZ version of same.

Moises Chiullan‘s summary of the most intriguing ’09 South by Southwest titles has me actually thinking about trying to attend this year. I’m particularly interested in catching Gerald Peary‘s For the Love of Movies, a doc about the history of American film criticism that has taken some seven years to put together. Here’s a 12.07 riff on Peary’s film by Filmmaker‘s Rob Nelson .

My only concern is Nelson’s observation that the film “scarcely if ever acknowledges [the] mounting threats to the profession.” This can’t be. Peary and producer Amy Geller must have changed their film to reflect the times in the 14 months since Nelson wrote this.

From Thursday to Sunday I’ll be visiting the Oxford Film Festival, most of which takes place on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, Mississippi. I was invited down with a few other film journalists (James Rocchi, Kim Voynar, etc.) to watch films and stroll around and take part in some kind of panel discussion.

They told me to fly to Memphis. Shuttles will drive us to Oxford from there. I had to buy my own ticket but they’ll reimburse upon arrival. That way they’re not stuck if you don’t show.

I haven’t been to a deep-south burgh since I attended the Savannah Film Festival in ’01 or thereabouts. But Savannah’s not an expression of the red-state south as much as a kind of spooky old ghost town. Ole Miss is a highly respected university, of course. The resistance to James Meredith‘s enrollment happened close to 50 years ago. Nonetheless the daughter of a screenwriting acquaintance told me that a conservative good-old-boy group on campus vented their anger over Barack Obama‘s election on the night of 11.4, and in a rather ugly way.

I’ll be looking for stuff like that when I’m down there. Local color, aromas, attitudes. Maybe I’ll get into a Josh Brolin-style redneck altercation in a bar. Nature smells a bit different down there — agreeably so. I know I’d like to find at least one mom ‘n’ pop eatin’ place that serves local cuisine. A friend tells me “the best fried chicken in America” is served at a joint called Gus’s. Two of ’em, actually — one in Memphis, another in Southhaven, Mississippi.

“I love Oxford,” a filmmaker friend wrote today. “I used to be friends with writer Larry Brown who passed away a few years ago. While you are there you should eat at one of the best restaurants in the country. It’s called the Grocery and it’s directly on the square just down from Larry’s favorite bookstore.”

Voynar told me that we’ll be stopping for a brief tour of Graceland on the way down. Good God. Not the home itself (I’m an Elvis fan as far as it goes) as much as the rancid commercial crap that has built up around it since the King’s death.

The inaugural euphoria residue was still lingering a week ago, but now it’s over and done with. We’re now into string-up-the-spendthrift-bankers mode. Symbolic slapdowns, getting all medieval on their ass, public floggings, mobs chasing them down streets. The time for taking bows and smiling for Annie Leibovitz is over. Stand up, show your mettle.

New York/Vulture’s Chris Rovzar has pointed out that Vanity Fair used the same cover shot of Obama several months back. Whoa.

Gay enough, obviously, but not funny enough. It starts to sag after the first minute.

The Sony Classics/Whatever Works distribution rumor that was kicking around last month has been confirmed. Woody Allen‘s latest film, a New York-based dramedy starring Evan Rachel Wood, Larry David, Henry Cavill, Ed Begley, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson, will open sometime next summer with the Sony Classics logo attached. The U.S. rights were purchased from the Paris-based Wild Bunch.

The plot is more or less about a May-December relationship (marriage?) between David and Wood, and her mother, played by Clarkson, somehow persuading a Manhattan-residing British actor, played by Cavill, to try and seduce Wood in order to break up her thing with David, whom Clarkson feels is too old for her daughter.

An HE reader asked last summer, “If you were Evan Rachel Wood’s parents, wouldn’t Larry David (or Woody Allen, who he’s theoretically standing in for) be an improvement over Marilyn Manson in the I Can’t Believe Who My Daughter Is Screwing department?” That’s no longer pertinent as Wood’s relationship with Manson went south last November.

Patrick Frater‘s 2.1.09 Variety story didn’t say Martin Scorsese is 100% locked into shooting an adaptation of Shusaku Endo‘s Silence — it said Scorsese is “determined” to make it his next film. It also said he and Graham King‘s GK Films are negotiating with Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal to star, and that the grim 17th Century drama is expected to begin shooting later this year in New Zealand.

(l. to r.) Martin Scorsese, Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio del Toro

Obviously this has the earmarks of a high-pedigree historical drama, but before getting too excited consider a synopsis on the Endo/Silence Amazon page, to wit: “The plot centers around a band of Portugese priests who land in Japan in the 1600s to spread the gospel on a culturally and spiritually unfertile soil. Their theology is eventually challenged in ways that only persecution and suffering can do. Can I carry on here? Should I? Can I forgive my tormentors? Should I?

“Ultimately, they wrestle with public apostasy” — i.e., a renunciation of faith — “and whether or not they could ever be forgiven if they commit such an act. This is not a feel-good book by any stretch. It deals with failure, defeat, abandonment, pain, and the silence of God through it all.”

In other words, it’s going to be a grim slide, Catholic guilt suffer-fest in Jesuit robes.

Remember the tragic-downer tone of Scorsese’s previous two collaborations with Day-Lewis — The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York. Keep in mind the catatonic stupor that enveloped viewers of Kundun, Scorsese’s last exploration of spirituality in an exotic culture. If it gets made, Silence will almost certainly be showered with admiration and respect from critics, and lose money hand over fist in commercial theatres. I for one can’t wait to suffer through this as I relish the performances, which you just know are going to be kick-ass. Not to mention the photography, sets, costumes, etc.

I was scorned last year for saying Scorsese should restrict himself to goombah gangster films. I didn’t exactly mean that. I understand that Scorsese has to do movies like Silence, Kundun and The Age of Innocence in order to expand his range and fortify his artist-auteur cred, and I respect that process. But in the old days the thick-fingered, cigar-chomping studio moguls would have told him to forget the Jesuits and get back to the loan sharks, drug dealers, wayward women, crooked politicians and hitmen. Because that’s what sells the friggin’ popcorn.

Only the flakiest would-be distributor would ignore the Great Depression 2.0 factor. With everyone terrified of losing their jobs and being unable to house and feed their families, who’s going to pay to see this thing besides dweeb cineastes who read Scott Foundas? I’m just asking.

if the deal goes through for Lionsgate to buy Summit Entertainment’s library of six films and the rights to the Twilight franchise, some level of creative influence/interference by the Lionsgate gore-hounds upon the next two Twilight films is at least imaginable. It could mean, in short, that New Moon will be a little bit bloodier than anticipated. Or certainly the Twlight film after that. Is there any filmmaking/distribution outfit with a more pronounced reputation for arterial gushings? That and Tyler Perry — Lionsgate in a nutshell.