Dan Fogler‘s absurdly broad performance in Balls of Fury convinced me that he was a sworn enemy of restraint. His name went to the top of my must-to-avoid list. Then I read about his portraying the young Alfred Hitchcock in Chase Palmer‘s Number Thirteen and thought about cutting him a break. Now comes Hysterical Psycho, a Tribeca Film Festival entry that Fogler wrote and directed. Couldn’t see it last night; will try on Tuesday. Anyone?

Has anyone with a cinematic IQ over 50 even seen Obsessed since it opened, or in a press screening beforehand? The bizarre success of this faux-Fatal Attraction knockoff (to go by Variety‘s John Anderson) tells you there are two moviegoing cultures out there. One, people who have a semblance of taste in (or a healthy amount of passion about) movies, which accompanies a certain fervor and sophistication about movies in general. And two, those who flock to films like Obsessed.

Three days ago I mentioned that Jack Nicholson hasn’t made a film since The Bucket List — two years ago — and wondered what’s up. The next day I was told about a discussion he’ll be taking part in today at Brown University’s Salomon Center, in a panel arranged by the Ivy Film Festival. It starts at 3 pm. I was going to cover it, which would have involved Amtrak-ing all the way up to Providence and back within a 10-hour period. But I didn’t want to blow all that time and money.

But if anyone records this event today (or intends to take notes and report), please forward and I’ll post something tonight or whenever. Why is the usually reclusive Nicholson doing a q & a at Brown? He has a daughter, Lorraine, who’s in her junior or senior year there. Here are photos of the two of them touring Brown a couple of years ago.

N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks speaking to Charlie Rose about the Obama White House — “It is astonishing what they’ve done.”

The white-horse photo (with obvious allusions to you-name-it) is what should have been used for the new Bruno poster. But instead caution (i.e., a polite word for timidity) won out among the Universal marketers. The result is the field-of-flowers poster, which has disappointed everyone. Oh, and that “Borat was so 2006” slogan is so March 2009, guys. It was funny the first time.

This doc definitely has the heat as we speak. The first Tribeca Film Festival public screening happens this evening at the SVA theatre on West 23rd Street.

“Nicolas Sarkozy requests that Muammar Qadaffi remove the photos of Carla Bruni from his photo album,” etc.

“There are limits to artistic self-indulgence, limits to how long a filmmaker can keep spinning his creative wheels before his work approaches self-parody, and limits to the tolerance of even a devoted specialized audience for artistic vacuity, and they are all well exceeded by The Limits of Control. This discerningly photographed travelogue of modern Spain features Jim Jarmusch in shallow poetaster mode, grafting familiar quasi-philosophical doodles and trendy cameos onto a woolly hitman’s journey. The limit on the theatrical potential for this Focus Features release is extreme.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s Variety review, posted yesterday afternoon.

There have been a couple of recent bellwether showings of Judd Apatow ‘s Funny People (Universal, 7.31) in Los Angeles — a friends-of-Apatow screening plus a research screening that happened (I’m told) about eight days ago. And the word is better than pretty good, “amazing,” “James L. Brooksian,” etc. The leads, of course, are Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, with Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman in supporting.

Possibly an award-level thing, a director friend said this morning, although he was just passing along the chatter. It’s more in the realm of Sandler for Best Actor and Apatow’s script for Best Original Screenplay, he speculated, than a Best Picture shot…but you never know.

So I called a non-vested guy who’s seen it, and here’s what he said: “Really funny, a really sweet movie, a lot of veracity…really a brilliant film. Everybody’s game goes up a lot. It’s a James L. Brooks-level thing and a great role for Adam. It’s a perfect blend of everything Sandler has done in a serious vein. The film could be a bit of a marketing problem because it’s about show business but it’s so real.. It’s about a famous guy, a comedian, having to deal with the fact hat he has no life and nobody to turn to. But he gets better [through a relationship with a younger comic]…it’s basically a love letter to having a family.”

Could be a “marketing problem” because it’s about show business? Average Joes are resolved in their opposition to a movie set in the entertainment community? What kind of stupid-ass attitude is that?

A guy in the Universal loop says he “would argue a bit on the ‘marketing problem’ as the trailer [has] consistently scored tremendously well, no matter what kind of movie it’s shown with. Audiences are really responding very very well so far and the trailer does not dodge the central conceit of the sickness/rebirth.”

I’ve had the script for a long while and have been too lazy to read it. The IMDB synopsis says it’s about “George (Sandler), a very successful stand-up comedian who learns that he has an untreatable blood disorder and is given less than a year to live. Ira (Rogen) is a struggling up-and-coming stand up comedian who works at a deli and has yet to figure out his onstage persona. One night they perform at the same club and George takes notice of Ira, and hires him to be his semi-personal assistant as well as his friend.”

There are three reasons I want to attend the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Tom Hanks tribute next Monday night. One, because of his performance in Cast Away, which I’ve come to admire and respect a bit more every time I see that Robert Zemeckis film. Two, because I truly loved that Barack Obama video testimonial that he put up last May. And three, because he’s one of the nicest big-time actors I’ve ever met in my 28 or 29 years in the business.