The jacket art for the Criterion Collection’s new Missing DVD (out 10.21) is classy, nicely done. The helicopter shot, of course, is from a scene when Thomas Horman (John Shea) steps outside his hotel room in Vina del Mar and sees what he sees, which tells him (and us) that a military coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende government has begun. If I’d designed the cover I would have used the shot of the white horse being chased by soldiers in a jeep down a deserted Santiago street.

Two days ago the Times Online Paris correspondent Charles Remner reported that Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona has led the French box-office tallies for the past two weeks. The film hasn’t done badly in the U.S. since opening limited in mid-August (it ranks as 81st among all ’08 attractions) but neither has it been burning up domestic records.

The reason for the French success is that Allen is “adored in France,” Bremner writes. “Annie Hall, Manhattan and the other masterpieces of his oeuvre were a cult in the 1970s but his name is barely known to younger Americans. He has gone on turning out his essays on love and mortality but U.S. filmgoers turned their backs on his more recent efforts. That has been Europe’s gain, with three European-financed films set in London and now his brilliant Spanish outing.
“Allen, now 72, is revered here as un grand auteur. His charm, neurosis and sense of humour touch a Gallic (yes) nerve. The reviewers have mainly raved over Allen’s Spanish opera, calling it dazzling, clever and sublimely melancholic. How is it that an American movie is regarded as a minor art film in its own country but manages to beat out all the native comedies and US blockbusters at the French box-office?”

“The water cooler has frozen over. Twittering on the interweb has dimmed to faint chirps. A scan of the horizon reveals no bat signal on any building. I’m referring, of course, to the debate over whether The Dark Knight will beat Titanic‘s $601 million (U.S.) record take at the North American box office.

“TDK is just past $527 million, still in release and still in the Top 20 for current pictures. It has just $75 million to go to sink the ship, which should just be chump change for Hollywood. Yet I spy no cheerleaders garbed in sexy bat leather. Am I the last guy on the planet who still cares about this?” — from a 10.24 article by the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell.

To go by Henry Blodgett‘s analysis on Silicon Valley Insider, the N.Y. Times is in serious financial trouble. We’ve all been reading about the dropping ad revenues, newsroom layoffs and whatnot, but this looks bad. “How The N.Y. Times Can Save Itself?” Yeesh. I am, needless to say, very emotionally invested in this newspaper. It’s been with me all my life.

HE’s Austin-based columnist Moises Chiullan on Synecdoche, New York.

In a discussion of the Best Actor race in his latest Envelope column, Pete Hammond reports about an “honest-to-God truth, swear on a stack of bibles” response from an insider who saw a rough cut of Clint Eastwood‘s Gran Torino earlier this week. The tipster said that “the old guy could actually win it all for this one. He’s that good in this.” The insider adds that “the role gives Clint great emotional range,” Hammond says.

“With a smart True Grit style campaign that takes note of the fact Eastwood has actually never won an acting Oscar, he certainly should vault to the top of any list if indeed the film and performance lives up to this earliest of hype.”
Question: Is the person who whispered to Hammond the same one who told Kris Tapley that Clint could be a contender? How many people went to that screening last Monday or Tuesday?

In a review posted 45 minutes ago, Variety‘s Derek Elley has given a stiff slap-down to Quantum of Solace, the soon-to-open James Bond flick directed by Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Stay), who made his bones as a touchy-feely type. “The shortest and certainly the most action-dense Bond ever, Quantum of Solace plays like an extended footnote to Casino Royale rather than a fully realized stand-alone movie,” he says.

“Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, possibly knowing they couldn’t immediately top the previous pic’s sheer stylishness, have radically reshuffled the series’ traditional elements, but also allowed incoming helmer Marc Forster to almost throw the baby out with the bathwater. Played with a cold, mechanical efficiency that recalls the Bourne movies, with almost no downtime or emotional hooks, Quantum will find some solace in beefy initial returns but looks unlikely to find a royale spot in Bond history or fans’ hearts.
“Though pic is the first in the series in which the action follows directly from the previous film, the differences in tone, look and tempo are instantly apparent. As the camera zooms across northern Italy’s Lake Garda to pick out Bond (Daniel Craig) being chased in his Aston Martin by armed villains, it’s clear that the elegance of the franchise that Royale director Martin Campbell resuscitated is already a thing of the past. Even David Arnold‘s music seems to punch the clock rather than elevating the visuals.
“Thanks to his sheer physical prowess, Craig — less muscular this time around, and more panther-like — still manages to make the character look as if he’s in control, even when he’s being hunted by various villains and at least two major spook agencies, and even though seems to have suffered a personality bypass. However, the plot is unengaging: basically a grim series of near-escapes as Bond hunts (but is mostly hunted) between Latin America and Europe.”

Imagine doing dozens of interviews with a cross-section of 25 year-old guys across the country, guys from middle to lower-middle-class backgrounds who haven’t benefitted from high-end university educations, and saying to them, “If you had to choose between (a) a modest, unexceptional, not-very-exciting life involving hard work, an annual two-week vacation and maybe a little quiet desperation in between, or (b) the life of Raffaelo Follieri, the 30 year-old Italian con man who was recently given 4 and 1/2 years for cheating investors out of millions but who ran with a very high-end crowd and got to enjoy the allegiance and creature comforts of Anne Hathaway before it all came crashing down, which would it be?”
Honestly — what do you think most of them would say? Or rather, what would they say to themselves deep down? I’ll bet that a very healthy percentage would choose the Follieri option. They might not admit this to an interviewer, but everyone wants the lah-lah life these days, and they’re all willing to sacrifice and cut corners to get it. People are who they are, and want what they want. The idea that it’s better to burn brightly and then fade to black rather than plug along and never know the perks and the highs has been around for a long time, and it’s been gaining traction.

A 10.24 Daily Mail article has posted two negligible photos of Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Ten months have passed since Ledger worked on the film (in December ’07) and this is the best that anyone can come up with?

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley has laid out a logical-sounding scenario by which Clint Eastwood could nab a Best Actor Oscar nomination and perhaps even the award itself for his swan-song performance in Gran Torino. Here it is along with my comments:
“Of the contenders most anticipate to be in play, only Sean Penn‘s portrayal of Harvey Milk has the on-paper swagger, while Leonardo DiCaprio (despite generating considerable heat — I’ve heard one person say “it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen”) could spoil the party if he can push past the pretty-boy image that fellow hopeful Brad Pitt will face.” Wells comment: Not having seen Milk, Revolutionary Road or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I can buy into the idea of Eastwood landing a swan-song Best Actor nomination. But because his Gran Torino performance appears (to go by the trailer) to be a snarly old-guy reiteration of a very familiar persona, a voice is telling me he’ll probably wind up third or fourth in the pecking order, at best. If a nomination happens, of course.
“Mickey Rourke is the odds-on favorite heading into November for a nomination, but despite the brilliance of the performance and the film, there is the sense that the nod will be the reward. An Indie Spirit Award is probably in the cards, and if so, promises to be the usual kiss of death.” Wells comment: “Kiss of death” bequeathed by winning an Indie Spirit?
“Frank Langella, to round out my own predicted five, faces an uphill battle in gaining an Oscar to go along with his Tony for the same performance. Even with plenty of positive assessments, the potential to underwhelm is out there, in the open, and waiting to keep Frost/Nixon an also ran in multiple areas.” Wells comment: If Academy members subscribe to the idea that at least one of the five Best Actor nominees should ideally go to a gray-haired veteran, it may come down to Langella vs. Eastwood with the deciding factor not just “how do they compare?” but mainly “how good are the films?”
“Benicio Del Toro could be a real threat if the film finds the traction necessary to move into serious play, but it probably won’t be the event that Eastwood’s effort will be. And the only other performance that really shouts for attention is Josh Brolin‘s work in W, a film that could be yesterday’s news sooner than later.” Wells comment: As lived-in and organically believable as Del Toro’s Che Guervara is in Steven Soderbergh‘s epic, it’s not a histrionic, soul-baring, feel-my-pain Academy “performance” and probably won’t even calculate with most Academy members. Brolin is aurally and behaviorally perfect in W. but not in a way that’s likely to sir Best Actor talk. The general consensus, unfair and unperceptive in my view, is that the movie isn’t raging or urgent or powerhouse enough to propel Brolin or any of the other cast members into being talked up.
“The film will be emotional, and given the particulars of the script, the portrayal is sure to prove heartbreaking. It could be the stiff upper lip of an awards season that finds itself competing with the election year, a note of hope and even a demand for sacrifice.” Wells comment: 100% agreement.

The trailer for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (Warner Bros., 12.17) is up and running, and it feels delicious. Make that scrumptious. It shows the basics, who the characters are, the tone of it, the tough-old-bird-against-the-gang-bangers scheme. And it conveys something really special, or does by my sights.

Remember that initial rumor that Gran Torino might be some kind of Dirty Harry movie (which of course was soon after debunked)? Well, take a look at this thing — it is a kind of Dirty Harry movie, at least in terms of the pugnacious, suffer-no-fools, take-no-guff nature of Eastwood’s Walt character. I realize that it’s finally about getting past (or growing through) all of that, but that final hand gesture — the very last image in the trailer — has a certain legendary assurance, and almost a kind of beauty. Because of our decades-long investment in the Clint legend, because of his iconic nature, because of the Eastwood metaphor of never retiring or slowing down and getting better as you get older.
You can never trust trailers, but Gran Torino looks like a humdinger.