It sure is wonderful news that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince made close to $20 million last night. Friends in high states of excitation have been calling for the last hour or so. We’re all getting together this evening to celebrate over drinks.

An HE reader wrote this morning that he’s just “finished the script for Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air, the George Clooney vehicle. It’s a hell of a piece. Clooney should kill in the role. The style is very reminiscent of Thank You For Smoking.”

I’ve just realized I’ve had a copy of this script in my script folder for months and I haven’t even skimmed it. Lazy ass. I’m presuming DreamWorks will open it sometime this fall and that it may show up at the Toronto Film Festival. But there’s no specific projected release date that I can find.

The IMDB plot summary: “Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.”

Carey Mulligan‘s “this is what I really think and feel and want” scene with Emma Thompson (starting at 3:22) will, trust me, be used again and again in video pieces about Mulligan’s work in An Education, starting in September. For obvious reasons. Update: The YouTube clip I found and posted earlier this morning had to be taken down. But I’m keeping the item up for the comments.

The greatest sensual pleasure to be had from coffee beans is putting your nose into a bag of freshly ground beans and having an aroma orgasm meltdown. Nothing else in the coffee world approaches that. Because every time you get high from that great aroma you think “Aahh, what a great cup of coffee will come from this!” And of course, the coffee never tastes as good as the aroma promises. No matter how well prepared, the sip always falls short.

Ground coffee-bean aroma is right up there in the top-ten pantheon, which also includes (a) the smell of burning leaves on an early October evening on a suburban street in New Jersey, (b) the aroma of the seats and carpeting in a brand-new BMW or Mercedes or Range Rover while the car sits inside a dealership, (c) the scent of White Musk oil (i.e., purchasable at the Body Shop) that’s been recently applied to the neck of a freshly showered lady in her mid 30s, (d) the smell of downtown Manhattan streets after a heavy evening rainshower in mid July, (e) the scent of damp agricultural soil near crops in California’s Imperial Valley after another nighttime rainshower, and (f) the smell of soaked beach sand in the early evening after a rainshower.

I’m basically saying that people everywhere buy coffee because of the sizzle rather than the steak.

Here‘s President Obama doing ten minutes of play-by-play commentary with Chicago White Sox announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. “I don’t hate the Cubs. I just don’t root for them, that’s all.”

One of David Carradine‘s final performances was in a just-released piece of exploitation crap called Break. Look at the idiots standing around in the scene shown below. Where do they find people with such neutered expressions? I can feel Carradine’s pain as I watch it. A strong and steadfast actor dies but once, but actors who perform in films like Break suffer repeated smotherings of the soul.

I’m as much of a fan of this kind of photo as the next guy, but it seems as if Scarlet Johansson has stopped acting for a reason. Maybe she’s figuring “what’s the point?” She needs to get back into it again, only this time appear in some good films. Because I don’t know or care what Mango is.

An Education‘s Carey Mulligan playing verbal table tennis with the charmingly rat-a-tat-tat David Poland. That’s my girl you’re messing with, pal! Kidding.

I believe none of what I hear and only half of what I see, but a Sydney reader named Warren wrote a few minutes ago saying “you may be interested to know that Steven Soderbergh is directing a play for Cate Blanchett‘s Sydney Theatre Company here in December this year. Maybe that’s where he sees his future.” “Mystery project” alluded to and half-assedly confirmed by the website.

Jacket art for the forthcoming North by Northwest Blu-ray, expected sometime in November in the U.S. and U.K. Posted yesterday by www.blu-ray.com. Cary Grant isn’t running with any particular conviction. He could have just come in from a rainstorm and is running through an apartment building lobby and trying not to slip. Poor-ass choice on someone’s part.

Vanity Fair‘s Julian Sancton has compiled a list of critics who’ve used the term “fish in a barrel” in their critiques of Bruno.