The first thing I saw on the iPhone after coming out of my second viewing of State of Play this afternoon was the NC-17 rating given to Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Bruno. This is surprising? What kind of rep would this 7.10 Universal release have if the MPAA’s ratings board had given it a nice obliging R? Please.

The idea with Bruno is to make average folks in all socio-political realms (i.e., not just red-state males) cringe and go “eeeww!”, and to do that right it has to top the naked wrestling “eewws” in Borat, so what else could have happened?

The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman reported last night that the offensive footage includes Cohen having “anal sex with a man on camera” — big deal. Jim Carrey does some fairly brazen ass-banging in the M.I.A. I Love You, Phillip Morris. I mean, we are experiencing the Fall of the Roman Empire and the End of Civilization as we know it…are we not? So why not allow such scenes to be included in adult fare?

Why can’t U.S. society at least be more like Sweden or Denmark? They aren’t so wang-averse over there. I thought that Billy Crudup‘s blue schlong in Watchmen signified a sea change in U.S. values.

There was also a reported MPAA objection to Cohen being shown “sneaking naked into the tent of an unsuspecting non-actor” on a hunting trip. Piffle.

A scene showing “two naked men attempting oral sex in a hot tub while one of them holds a baby” is, according to a Universal spokesperson, “not on the list that the MPAA finds objectionable.”

Another story I missed last Friday (and all weekend, for that matter) was the last gasp of L.A. City Beat, the smallish alternative weekly. They’re dead, buried, a memory. I was going to use “financially afflicted” as an adjective, but is there any print publication anywhere that isn’t sliding down the slope?

The only reason I picked up City Beat year after year was to read the esteemed film critic Andy Klein, and when they whacked Klein last January in a cost-cutting move I said to myself, “The hell with these guys.” I was actually thinking of a scene in Out of the Past when Jane Greer hopes for the quick death of Kirk Douglas . To which Robert Mitchum replies, “Give him time.”

“The New York Times, as we know it, has been disappearing for some time,” Newser‘s Michael Wolf wrote last Friday morning. “It may — diminishing as though by half-lives — have degraded to the point where, in any practical sense, it has long since ceased to be the leading voice in either journalism or the establishment.

“This is partly of its own doing: Almost all of its strategies to deal with the changes in the newspaper business — its national strategy, its online strategy, its regional strategy (buying the Boston Globe), its international strategy (buying the International Herald Tribune) — have bitten it in the ass. Nor have its strategies to deal with the changes in news itself been so successful — the featurizing and softnews-ifying of the front page has made the must-read Times a not-so-important read.

“But mostly the problem is that the New York Times is a newspaper. Once there was the New York Times, which, while in the form of a newspaper, represented something so much more significant–it was a daily bible. But now it is just a newspaper — no better, no worse. And there is nothing that it can do to escape the problems and the fate of all other newspapers. Technological obsolescence doesn’t discriminate. (The Times’ game efforts to compete in this world have only meant that it’s seen a faster undermining of its main revenue source — the newspaper).

“The last of the Times Mohicans — that band of journalism devotees (something more and more like railroad hobbyists), retro-Jewish liberals, and those remaining establishment types who depend on the Times to write about them — with their belief that the Times is unique and necessary, continue to hope against hope for a white knight solution.

“They will supply the whimper.”

I woke up this morning and looked up at the ceiling — or rather, at the low-cost bullshit styrofoam ceiling (favored by low-end contractors, all the rage in North Bergen) that I’m stuck with for the time being. And it hit me that each styrofoam rectangle is precisely the same proportion as a widescreen 70mm aspect ratio — 2.21 to 1. I was recalling this and that scene from Apocalypse Now, particularly Martin Sheen inside that bamboo cage. This is my life.

A friend sent along this video piece featuring Once Upon a Time in America costars Rusty Jacobs and Scott Tiler — the guys who played young James Woods and Robert De Niro in Sergio Leone‘s 1984 gangster classic — visiting some Manhattan-Brooklyn locations. “But they’re wearing T-shirts!,” came my reply. “So it was taped last summer. Or maybe two years ago. Or five. In any case, what’s the point?”

It’s interesting to hear Tiler say the following about Leone: “It’s almost unheard of that a director spends 11 years conceptualizing a film and not making any other movies in the interim….this movie was so in his blood, so in his conscious and unconscious, that he understood every last element…every line in the script.”

If he knew it that well, I asked myself, then how could Leone have come to an agreement with the Ladd Company that said/stipulated that Once Upon a Time in America would run no longer than two hours and change? (Or two and a half hours or whatever it said in the original contract.) And yet he comes up with a six-hour cut that is gradually pared down to 227 or 229 minutes. Nearly four hours long.

Of course, it’s been widely accepted for decades that the longer OUATIA is a much better film than the chronological, pruned-down Ladd Co. version, which was put into theatres at a running time of 139 minutes, or 90 minutes shorter.

Once Upon A Time in America, but I’m not in love with it. I’ve never been much of a Leone fan. I’ve felt from the get-go that he was over-rated. All those relentless close-ups of sweaty guys wearing sombreros and chomping on unlit cigars. I know that one is expected to swear by Leone, but I’ve never been able to make myself re-watch his films on DVD. Once is enough.

It’s criminal and appalling, but the apparent fact is that quality-level DVD rips of The Hurt Locker have been on Pirate Bay for a long while now. And last night a journalist pal told me that a bootleg bum sold him a “clean” DVD of Kathryn Bigelow‘s film the day before yesterday in the Bronx. For a dollar. Which means that other bootleg gypsies are selling it also, not just in New York but in grubby, down-at-the-heels areas of every city in the country.

A Manhattan all-media Observe and Report screening is happening tomorrow night. I consider it vital to attend and report. I was told last night that the ending is (this may be putting it too specifically) Travis Bickle-ish. Whatever. The guy I spoke to called it Seth Rogen‘s last fat role — his no-holds-barred kiss-off to the fat chapter in his life.

Collider‘s Steve Weintraub has just posted some pics of various new standee posters being displayed at Showest, which starts tomorrow in Las Vegas. The only one that got me besides the Hurt Locker poster is the one for Robert Downey, Jr., and the Curse of the Crystal Indiana Holmes.

“If he doesn’t die today, there’s always tomorrow.”

As I began to say last Thursday, Greg Mottola‘s Adventureland (Miramax, 4.3) is modestly pleasing — a period relationship drama with comedic spritzing that’s unforced, settled down, not bawdy or coarse, and proportionately buyable. That’s another way of saying it’s a piece of recognizable realism with two solid, nicely unpretentious performances from Jesse Eisenberg and the always sublime, rock-sexy Kristen Stewart.

Broadway near Bond Street, 3.29.09, 1:55 pm

When I begin to watch a film about kids in their early 20s doing whatever, I silently pray to myself, “Please don’t let it be stupid.” Or “please let the characters not be gullible or at least have a shred or two of common sense, or at least a capability for intelligent dialogue….please.” Most of the time films of this sort fart in my face, but not this sucker. Adventureland is bright and honest and restrained in a likable, low-key way.

I didn’t like some aspects. I could have done without the stabs at humor. (They feel off-point.) The parents of Eisenberg’s character — Jack Gilpin, Wendie Malick — felt overly curt and charicatured. But I was generally pleased. Not to the point of doing cartwheels in the Brill building lobby, but a film can put you in a pretty agreeable place without making you get all gymnastic.

The irony is that this intelligent, mild-mannered quality may turn out to be a commercial problem. There’s almost nothing in it for the apes who love the downmarket obviousness of the cruder Judd Apatow comedies (I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Year One).

I can just hear the word-of-mouth outside the plexes next weekend. Viewer #1: “So is it funny? Is it foul? Do girls get naked in it? Does anyone lean out of a moving car and throw up?” Viewer #2: Uh, well…no. It’s not really a comedy-comedy. In fact, it’s not even a dramedy. Nobody gets pissed on or thrown up on. Nobody gets naked. It’s more of a nice little realistic love story between two fairly aware people. No tricks or gross-outs.” Viewer #1: “Fuck that!”

Martin Starr, Jesse Eisenberg

Set in the early ’80s Pennsyvania, it’s about a virginal college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nothing summer job in a local amusement park after being told by his parents that they can’t afford to pay for his grad-school tuition, much less a trip to Europe. He gradually falls in love with coworker Em (Stewart), who slowly begins to reciprocate despite a side affair she’s having with Connell (Ryan Reynolds), an older married guy who works as the park’s mechanic.

Secondary loser-type characters float in and out — the park owner (Bill Hader ) and his wife (Kirsten Wiig), a brainy Jewish nerd type (Martin Starr), a straight-laced hottie (Margarita Levieva ). Various obstacles, complications, and distractions manifest. But the Eisenberg-Stewart thing — will they? can she? should he? — is the main order of business.

And it all cruises along within an ’80s period vibe. Like a cousin of All The Right Moves. Everything looks and feels a bit grubby and low-thread. Terry Stacey‘s cinematography has a slightly downgraded feeling to it, like a none-too-slick New Line film of the era.

Mottola, the director-writer, uses Lou Reed‘s “Satellite of Love” on the soundtrack (and even throws in a discussion about the lyrics at one point), but the song that seems to sum up Adventureland, for me, is “It’s A Turn Down Day” by The Cyrkle. Generationally wrong, of course, but tonally or attitudinally it’s somehow right in line. I can’t explain it any more fully than this.

Interview has done Zac Efron no favors. He’s too generic, too pretty, too mild, and too accomodating to be any kind of tomorrow guy. If anything he’s the past in the sense that he’s Guy Madison, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, the Bay City Rollers, etc. His best performance so far was in Me and Orson Welles (which I saw in Toronto). His cautious manner in that film is oddly appealing in that he seems to know he’s not much of an actor and is wisely staying within a safe perimeter.

Borys Kit‘s 3.26 story about Summit Entertainment buying film rights to William Kalush and Larry Sloman‘s “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero” invites mockery, as Summit intends to do the same thing with Harry Houdini that Joel Silver and Guy Ritchie are doing with Sherlock Holmes in their upcoming film, which is to turn him into a generic bullshit superhero with washboard abs.

The operative portion of Kit’s story says that “the studio is not looking to make a biopic but rather an action thriller featuring a character who is part Indiana Jones and part Sherlock Holmes. Summit hopes to cash in on worldwide recognition of Houdini’s name while potentially launching a franchise.”

Summit is into the idea because Kalush and Sloman’s book claims that Houdini “acted as a spy for Britain and was asked to be an adviser to Czar Nicholas II’s court in prerevolutionary Russia.”

Indications are that the spy angle is, at best, a nugget. Amazon reviewer John Cox acknowledges that in 1902/3 Houdini sent “reports” from Germany and Russia back to Superintendent William Melville of Scotland Yard (who was then head of what could be considered British Intelligence). Does this mean Houdini was a spy, or just a letter writer who felt compelled to report what he was seeing to his friend in London?

Kalush and Sloman “do make some interesting connections back to America and the shenanigans with Houdini’s passport application,” says Cox, “but it’s all very speculative.”

I studied Harry Houdini extensively during the preparation and writing of a 30-page report, written for producer Ray Stark in 1989, about the viability of several Houdini scripts that Stark had optioned or bought. The bottom line with Houdini was that he was always a romantic eager-beaver who saw himself as a dramatic figure, and his letters to Melville, I believed (and still believe), were more about Houdini’s love of being involved in the espionage hurly burly of the day…nothing more.

Ramin Bahrani‘s Goodbye Solo, which no one invited me to see at a press screening but which I was going to pay to see at the Angelika this weekend (largely because of Tony Scott’s review), has reportedly grossed $40,540 from three screens in New York and Chicago. The reason I didn’t go Friday night or yesterday is because I’m only feeling intrigue and/or interest, which is not the same thing as serious hunger.