Only in Waxmanworld and Finkeworld (and among their orbiting buzz-feeders) does anyone care which NBC/Universal suits have been/might be/will be fired, or who got the news first. All right, people care somewhat but not that much.

When things aren’t going well the people at the very top of the pile start thinking about who to whack. I’m sorry for those whose heads are now in jeopardy — it’s obviously traumatic — but suits have to live with the threat of being suddenly discharged just as John Dillinger had to live with the possibility of getting cut down by G-Men. “We have spoken these words, Starbuck, a billion years before these waters rolled.”

“Who the hell knew that Tony Soprano could be so damn funny?,” writes MCN’s Noah Forrest in a piece called “10 Reasons [Why] You Must See In The Loop.”

James Gandolfini is “playing an Army General who is serious about trying to stop this war at all costs and even more serious about his job. He’s a man who is put in a dicey predicament, the only man in the film who actually knows the real cost of war. And he’s reluctant to sign based on false pretenses that might involve a lot of troops being killed. But he’s also sharp as hell and quick-witted, and Gandolfini smiles just enough to bring the right amount of levity to the proceedings.

“Basically Gandolfini’s character is supposed to be the Colin Powell of the story, a good man in an untenable situation. Except in this case, he’s got a wicked and dry sense of humor. There’s a scene that Gandolfini and Peter Capaldi share, [with] so many wonderful insults thrown back and forth that I couldn’t stop myself from smiling the whole time.”

“I’d like…let’s see, one latte with skim milk to go and a Mountain Gorilla, black, for here. Thanks.” The woman at the Urth Caffe counter tried to block me from taking this photo, putting her hand in front of the iPhone. I said, “I can take any photo I want of anything I want…sorry.”

For the next five days I’ve agreed to observe and report on the InFilm program, which bills itself as a kind of Hollywood education experience for high-end tourists. The InFilm people are looking to spread the word around, and I thought it might be interesting to learn perhaps a bit more about the visual effects industry, which is the focus of this week’s get-around.

Taking an InFilm program Hollywood tour costs between $2500 and $3000 a pop. I’ve never heard of an operation like this, but it’s the sort of thing I’d probably go for if I had money to burn and didn’t have the social and informational access to the film industry that’s part of my Hollywood Elsewhere day-to-day.

The InFilmers are figuring that $2500 to $3000 isn’t too much to pay for a classy film connoisseur’s experience — for people who really and truly care about movies the way others care about Catholicism or whatever. It’s an informational way to blow dough, in short, for particular people who don’t see themselves as run-of-the-mill tourists.

That said, I’m not sure that this morning’s activity — a visit to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, where I spent hundreds of hours researching articles during my print journalism days of the ’80s and ’90s — is going to broaden my horizons.

But later today we’ll be dropping by Digital Domain, which I’ve never once visited in all my years in Los Angeles. On Tuesday we’ll be visiting Anatomorphex, and then Rhythm & Hues the following day. Visits to Legacy FX and Full Scale Effects will happen on Thursday.

Suite #310 at West Hollywood’s Le Parc hotel

I was introduced to the InFilm program by Brazilian film critic, scholar and educator Pablo Villaca, whom I’ve known on an online basis for a few years.

I ran into Pablo yesterday afternoon at the Le Parc hotel, where InFilm is putting us up, and since he’s never been here before I took him a ten-cent tour of West LA, Santa Monica, the Ocean Park beach area, Bel Air, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

Anyway, that’s the deal for the next five days — a high-end tour of the local FX industry. I’ll carve some time out here and there to file whatever, and I’m going to keep up with screenings and whatnot in the evenings.

Newsday‘s John Anderson has examined the psychology behind the urges of comedians to make “serious” films and therefore achieve a kind of peer validation that never seems to result from being gifted or skilled at making people laugh. All true enough, I suppose, but he uses the piece to basically put down Judd Apatow‘s Funny People as some kind of cathartic exercise rather than a valid and admirable film on its own right, which it fully deserves to be seen as.

And then Anderson doubles-down on dodging the central issue by predicting that typical Apatow fans probably aren’t going to respond as supportively to Funny People as they did to Apatow’s Knocked Up and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, which played a much different game.

These films were warmer and coarser entertainments seeking to entertain. Funny People is an “entertaining” film also but also a significantly more ambitious one that offers up straight-dope story, characters and atmosphere. My reaction was that it seems to be (a) real as hell and (b) coming from an intimate place that Apatow knows quite well. And for this, Anderson seems to be saying , Apatow needs to be taken down for indulging in pretension. Nice.

“In America particularly, success has to be repeatable, lest one risk being dismissed as a failure,” Anderson writes. “And so perfection is pursued until failure is achieved.

“Is that what Apatow’s doing? The qualities of Funny People may be less interesting than what the effort represents. And how it makes fans feel.

“The case of Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris is a classic example: In 1923, Chaplin was free of his earlier contractual obligations, was the biggest star in the world and could do anything he wanted. Did he make the greatest comedy ever made? No,
he made a drama, one with a moral and a message; a good movie, but not what was expected by his fans, who rejected it outright.

“The audience for Apatow films is young, raunchy and attracted by rude humor. A movie about mortality doesn’t seem like the best way into their hearts.”

This Korean Cinema Today cover, which I happened to see at last week’s Thirst junket in Manhattan, shows what appears to be the original image used for the Thirst poster. The poster image is cleaner and more elegant but the magazine photo is slightly kinkier and more carnal. A reminder that U.S. movie posters are never too risque, although European posters sometimes are.

I was driving east on Santa Monica Blvd. yesterday afternoon when I heard a siren coming my way. Like any good citizen I pulled right over and waited for the white-and-red ambulance truck to pass by. Less than a split-second later this silver convertible roared right out into traffic, taking advantage of my having pulled over to the side to pass me. A real hot-dog dick move.

I’m guessing that the driver probably thought the following: “Aaah, shit…an ambulance. You know what? I’m only going to half pull-over and do a California stop. Why should I pull over and wait like everyone else? I’m young, I’m in love, I’ve got things to do and places to see, and I can also take that guy in front of me in the bargain. Plus my girl’s in the car and I don’t want to show too much obeisance before the power of the law.”

Wow, I can buy a DVD of The Outfit right now. The image quality is probably nothing to write home about. Some guy probably recorded it off a televised showing but I’ll take it for now. The site is called ioffer.com.

This is obviously a petty observation, but I couldn’t help thinking as I watched James Cameron up on the Comic-Con stage a couple of days ago that his nose has gotten larger since the Titanic days. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mentioned this to a couple of journalist pals a few minutes after the Cameron-Jackson discussion ended on Friday night and they both went “yeah, yeah.” The aging process is nothing to look forward to. Robert Evans once explained it as follows: “Your nose gets bigger, your ears get longer and your teeth get smaller.”

This N.Y. Times examination chart of films about the lives and temperaments of comedians, compiled/written by Peter Keepnews, reminds me that no film has really gotten it right. Until, I would add, Judd Apatow‘s Funny People. Not that I’m on any sort of intimate terms with this profession/mentality/lifestyle, but it sure as hell feels believable. I never felt I was being played or sold a bill of atmospheric/emotional goods.

Almost two years ago Apple Insider‘s Kasper Jade reported about a forthcoming larger-than-iPhone Apple device that he described in a headline as “a return to the Newton.” Now he’s describing Steve Jobs’ latest brainchild as “a 10-inch, 3G-enabled tablet, akin to a jumbo iPod touch.” It’s going to cost maybe $450 or $550 — “somewhere between the cost of a high-end iPhone and Apple’s most affordable Mac notebook” — and will most likely turn up any time between January and March 2010.

An idea bulb went on when Jim Cameron yesterday mentioned a current project to dimensionalize Titanic — i.e., create a 3D version of it. Which he said would take about 12 to 14 months to complete. Peter Jackson, sitting right next to Cameron, was a bit more circumspect. He said he’d love to dimensionalize the Rings trilogy but that Warner Bros. is currently fearful of a shortage of 3-D equipped theatres. But Cameron was having none of it.

The Avatar director basically said “pshaw!” and explained that if major want-to-see 3D titles are in the pipeline, exhibitors will step up to the plate and audiences will follow. It’s basically a matter of the people in charge needing to grow a pair and roll the dice.

If Cameron can dimensionalize Titanic then obviously any film can undergo the same conversion. So why don’t distributors man up and start dimensionalizing all of the major big-format, big-spectacle movies made over the past 40 or 50 years? The first Star Wars trilogy, naturally. And Braveheart, of course. Ridley Scott‘s Alien and Cameron’s Aliens. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ben-Hur. Gladiator. Spartacus. The Harry Potter films. Black Hawk Down. Platoon. Full Metal Jacket.

And of course, Lawrence of Arabia. Can you imagine how exquisite that film could look in 3-D if it’s done right? With those striking desert vistas? All right, that’s it — get to work on it now and have the 3-D Lawrence ready for the film’s 50th aniversary in 2012.

An hour ago I wrote Robert Harris, the blue-ribbon restoration master who worked with director David Lean on restoring Lawrence in the late ’80s. “Cameron is re-doing Titanic in 3D and made a case that this could be a new growth industry — the Next Big Thing,” I wrote. “I’d love to see Lawrence in 3D some day….y’know? And The Alamo? All the great large-format films.

“So would I,” he answered, “but it comes down to artists’ rights. Without the filmmakers, we really don’t have the moral right to make changes. Great idea however.”

And I wrote back, “Moral rights? Are you kidding? Are you telling me that David’s family and whomever else holds the rights wouldn’t be interested in making this happen if the price was right and if you were on board to 3-D it the way David would have wanted?

“You wouldn’t be messing with David’s film — you’d just be creating a dimensional version for commercial (and spiritual and aesthetic) purposes. Where would be the harm? Who would object as long as the original materials are intact and the flat version is as safe as it’s always been since the restoration? No one.

“I would do backflips if a 3D Lawrence could be created. Are you kidding? They need to do this for the 50th annniversary.

“And you’re the guy to do it, Bob. You’re the Lean link who worked with him, knew him, knew how he thought, what his aesthetic criteria was all about, etc. Lawrence would be breathtaking in 3D. And you must know David would be delighted if it was done right. He was no stuffy drawing-room elitist — he was an elegant showman who wanted to reach people in their theatre seats and make them swoon over their popcorn.

“Cameron said yesterday he’s very happy with the 3D Titanic test footage so far. Obviously with a will the same process could be applied to Lawrence. As O’Toole/Lawrence said, “Aqaba is over there. It’s only a matter of going.”