This is not a significant thing, but on an insignificant level I thought I’d report that this Choke T-shirt is the first one I’ve ever received in my 15-plus years of receiving free-T-shirts that I’d consider wearing, due to the fact that it’s not a schlubby low-thread-count Hanes T-shirt with a dork collar but a high-thread- count one with a semi-slim European cut. Close to astonishing, given the history. Fox Searchlight will release Choke on 10.3.

A Los Angeles-based collector of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia named Mark Bellinghaus is claiming that photographs and descriptions of various stored-away Monroe letters, jewelry and keepsakes in this month’s Vanity Fair are to some extent bogus, particularly in the matter of a letter sent by W. Somerset Maugham to Monroe in January 1961.

A scan of an allegedly authentic January 1961 letter sent by W. Somerset Maugham to Marilyn Monroe.

Bellinghaus is calling the Monroe article and photo spread a “hoax,” although he told me this morning that some of the materials, all of which are from a collection owned by another Southern California collector named Millington Conroy, are authentic and legitimate. But many or most of them aren’t, he claims.
Vanity Fair spokesperson Beth Kseniak wasn’t up to speed on the matter and said she’d get back to me tomorrow.
An article by Sam Kashner called “Things She Left Behind” and an accompanying photo piece called “The Marilyn Papers” reviews all the Monroe materials found and recently revealed in two filing cabinets.
I also wrote Kashner about this, to no response.

Vanity Fair‘s photo of an identically-worded January 1961 letter, also allegedly sent by W. Somerset Maugham to Marilyn Monroe. Bellinghaus claims the pink Somerset letter is a fake.

“I’ve read the claims by Bellinghaus about the VF Marilyn Monroe article,” I wrote, “and without getting into a whole big rigamarole he has made a legit-sounding claim that the pink Somerset Maugham letter printed in the magazine (and on the VF website) is bogus and that the white-colored one he owns (including the envelope), which he says he purchased at a legit auction and has been somehow verified as the real deal, is legit.
“Leaving aside the tons of material that Bellinghaus claims is illegitimate, what do you and VF have to say about the Maugham letters? I’m publishing something on HE about this very soon. Do you mind getting back quickly?”
I told Bellinghaus that he isn’t helping his assertions any by misspelling the name “Somerset,” which he spells in his letter with two “m”s.

If you’re looking for definitive proof of how our culture (and particularly our film culture) is steadily devolving and dumbing itself down, check out the new Ben Lyons-Ben Mankiewicz version of “At The Movies“, which premiered a few days ago. This is not a TV show about how good or bad the latest movies are. It’s a show about the End of Civilization as some of us have known it. If the Eloi of George Pal‘s The Time Machine were to produce their own movie-review show, this is how it would play.
The Two Bens’ views on Burn After Reading pretty much say it all.
The whole show feels way too rushed — the producers apparently said to everyone involved, “Just keep it simple and keep your foot on the accelerator and take no detours.” The show is obviously aimed at under-35 morons who just want to see a few clips and maybe absorb a couple of fast cracks before they channel-surf onto the next distraction.
Lyons is the glib lightweight — one of those empty but sociable motor-mouths for whom the expression “if I ever have an original thought it would die of loneliness” was originally coined. Mankiewicz is clearly the more thoughtful and reflective of the two, but he’s been told by the producers to repress his natural instincts and to keep things fast and shallow.
Don’t even think of comparing this to the original Roger Ebert-Gene Siskel show of the ’70s, which was primarily aimed at people who (a) read movie reviews on occasion, (b) had at least a couple of years of college under their belt, and (c) actually liked movies as experiences with all kinds of layers and echos and reflections contained within. The Two Bens show is aimed at the apes.

Yvete Mimieux as “Weenah,” the prettiest and most obviously sexual “Eloi” in George Pal’s The Time Machine.

Ask yourself this — if and when a subsequent “At The Movies” show is produced for the 2025 generation (i.e., 17 years hence), how can it be more dumbed-down than the current one? I’m going on the assumption that each generation henceforth is going to be less educated, less literate, less worldly, more ADD, more into video games, less cultured, less travelled, etc.
Variety‘s Anne Thompson hates the show also.

Being longer and whatnot, this is a much fuller taste of Scott Derrickson and Tom Rothman‘s The Day The Earth Stood Still (20th Century Fox, 12.12) than the trailer that appeared a few weeks back. I’m cranked, but at the same time vaguely depressed that no one in this town seems the least bit interested in depicting the arrival of a great and powerful alien spaceship without summoning memories of Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and, to a much lesser extent, Roland Emmerich‘s Independence Day).

Indeed, TDTESS seems to be literally flaunting its Spielbergian-ness. The question is why? Why do such stories have to be depicted with the totally cliched visual sensibilities of a once-great director whose hot wunderkind period peaked 25 years ago? It’s like we’ve all been sentenced to a life-without-parole term in Spielberg prison, located in upstate New York. Think of the tingly excitement if this film had used another kind of film language, another set of references. But no — the masses have to be drugged and placated.
Just as tourists are offered the chance to stay in corporate Ramada Inn-style hotels when they visit Prague or Dubrovnik or Tel Aviv, 20th Century Fox is telling moviegoers that they will not be challenged in the least, that they have nothing unusual to fear, that TDTESS will be — trust us — just another family visit to Spielbergland in Orlando. (Thanks to Brad Brevet‘s Rope of Silicon for the embedded code to the new product reel.)

Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex, the terrorist drama I wrote about yesterday, has been selected as Germany’s candidate for the Best Foreign-Language pic Oscar. Produced and adapted by Constantin Film’s Bernd Eichinger, the period drama is based on Stefan Aust‘s book about the New Left gang of commie-guerilla outlaws who kicked up dust from the late ’60s to mid ’70s.

Weary of AOL’s bullshit bean-counter attitude about in-depth film coverage, critic/editor Kim Voynar has walked away from Cinematical. She’s back in Seattle and weighing offers — she’ll be fine. (For purely selfish reasons I’d like to see Kim back at a regular berth as soon as possible.) But what about Cinematical‘s critic-commentator James Rocchi?
If this episode were to be made into a mid 1980s movie, Voynar would be played by Sally Field, the AOL bosses would be played by Ronny Cox (as he was in Robocop) and Paul Reiser (as he was in Aliens), and Rocchi would be played by Kevin Costner…no, Sean Penn.

My favorite dialogue clip from John Huston‘s Beat The Devil, lasting all of 17 seconds.

Watch this trailer for Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex and tell me it doesn’t look like an exciting, tough, complex “ride” movie, and not just some dense political drama. Based on the book by Stefan Aust, it’s about the infamous German terrorist group behind all kinds of bombings, killings, robberies and kidnappings in the late ’60s and ’70s.

Martina Gedeck in Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex

The word on the film has been iffy ever since Constantin Films and its German p.r. agency, Just Publicity, tried to threaten German and other European critics with heavy fines if they reviewed or even spoke about The Baader Meinhof Complex prior to an embargo date of 9.17.08 (for the film’s 9.25 German and Austrian openings).
And yet I’ve been told by a buyer-distributor whom I know and trust that Edel’s film is better than pretty good.
And the top-notch all-German cast, he says, is totally killer — Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Bruno Ganz, Simon Licht, Jan Josef Liefers, Alexandra Maria Lara, etc. And yet The Baader Meinhoff Complex didn’t show at the Toronto Film Festival, and the Telluride Film Festival’s Tom Luddy wasn’t even shown it for possible consideration.
And although It’s opening in Europe this fall, starting in Germany and Austria ten days from now, Baader Meinhof has no U.S. distributor and the people at Summit Entertainment, who are said to be handling int’l (and, for the time being, domestic) sales for Constantin Films, which produced the film, haven’t returned calls all day. I spoke to Summit’s corporate spokesperson Paul Pflug, but that didn’t go too far because he’s not in the loop.

The trusted buyer, a “name” guy who saw Baader Meinhof last spring before Cannes, said “it’s amazing….a really good movie with crazy details that I didn’t know about. A huge expensive action movie with a great cast [so good that] you want to hire all of them. But because it’s in German and because of the tough lefty politics of it…and maybe because Americans won’t understand the context or because they may be turned off by the politics and the exotic ’60s climate, the buyers are skittish.
The Baader-Meinhof gang “had public support and manipulated the German government from their jail cells…they were vicious. There’s a great scene when they go to train with the early-on Middle Eastern terrorists, except the Baader Meinhof gang is very much into the ’60s commune ideals and so there’s a culture and values clash.”
All I know is that I would have made a point to see this film at Toronto, and it wasn’t even there. I would love to see it right now and write about it and maybe nudge the buzz along, but the Summit people won’t pick up the phone. Constantin’s Bernd Eichinger is said to be concerned and perplexed that he can’t sell The Baader Meinhof Complex to a U.S. distributor, but nobody stateside seems to be doing very much about it. Or at least, not so you’d notice.
Are they (Constatin plus whomever would like to distribute) planning a Sundance opening and an early ’09 opening? One can only guess.

Update: A letter from Richard Huffman, webmaster of a first-rate Baader-Meinhof site, came after I published earlier today.
“I wanted to follow up with you on your story about the Baader-Meinhof movie,” he began.I “n addition to being a major Jeff Wells fan, I happen to have the odd distinction of being one of the world’s leading experts on the group (you can visit my site at www.baader-meinhof.com). I am personally interested in seeing this film because West German terrorists targeted my dad when he was serving at the head of the US Army’s Berlin Bomb Disposal unit while the Baader-Meinhof Gang was active.
“Anyway, I can tell you that the story of this group is stunning and as cinematic as one could possibly imagine. One of Germany’s leading journalists decides to leave her kids and and life to become a terrorist. A group dedicated to violent revolution that actually had the support of up to 20 percent of the German youth, and which brought about a horrible bombing campaign that maimed and killed dozens of Americans and Germans.
“As someone who has studied this era in amazing detail; watching clips from this movie sends absolute chills down my spine. it’s like looking through a time machine.
“If you go to my homepage you’ll see a brief clip from a history channel documentary that myself and Baader-Meinhof Komplex author Stefan Aust appear in from last year about the group.”

20 years, six months and 15 days ago, Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice opened. Great ending, more than a few great scenes, classic absurdist film. And with primitive special effects! Tim Burton was hip and happening and relatively fresh meat. Michael Keaton had been down but was now back up again in the cool role of his lifetime. And Alec Baldwin was thin and puppydog cute.

17 year-old Winona Ryder was just breaking through. Geena Davis was enjoying her last career surge (Earth Girls Are Easy and The Accidental Tourist were soon to follow). And it seemed as if Michael Dukakis might be the guy to beat George H.W. Bush.

This 23/6 “speed campaigning” piece isn’t bad either — “all your negative ads in 5 seconds.”

And by the way, the lack of interest in (i.e., response to) this John McCain voicemail message is mind-blowing. It’s one of the funnniest bits I’ve heard in weeks.