According to Kim Masters‘ 2.24 Daily Beast article about Peter Chernin‘s resignation from 20th Century Fox, former Fox Studio chief and present-day producer Bill Mechanic is an “outspoken detractor” of Chernin.

“Peter’s in the Peter business,” Mechanic tells Masters. “That’s his job. Every day is focused on, `How do I do something for myself?’ Certainly when I was there, he was not a popular guy.”

Certainly, people who play their cards too much in a “me, me, me” vein lose out in the end. You have to try and be a mensch in life, in business, on the subway, on the golf links….everywhere you go, whatever you do. Everything starts to taste like ashes if you don’t.

But I also have to say that few of the people I know in this business are selfless good samaritan types. Most of them are friendly and supportive as far it goes but in the final analysis who isn’t out for number one? I appreciate favors as much as the next guy, but I don’t expect anyone to pave my way or make my bed or pick up my dry cleaning. We all try and mitigate our selfish tendencies with as much kindliness and generosity and graciousness as we can muster, but c’mon…how many people can you turn to in a pinch and rely upon for serious help, knowing full well that they’ll stand up for you? Be honest.

I’m seeing Departures, the Japanese-produced film that won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, late this afternoon in Manhattan. Two press screenings are also set for Los Angeles on Friday, 2.27, and Wednesday, 3.4. Regent Releasing will be opening Yojiro Takita‘s drama sometime in May.

Take this with a grain but I’ve been told that Departures won due to a very old but still effective hide-the-ball screening strategy. The fact that it won the Oscar surprised a lot of people so theories have been kicking around. The hide-the-ball strategy, while hardly complex, certainly sounds clever.

Since those foreign-film committee members who vote for the foreign film Oscar have to verify that they’ve seen all five nominees, the Departures team decided to try to eliminate potential votes for their chief competitors, Waltz with Bashir and The Class, by simply restricting the number of Departures screenings.

The fewer the screenings, the fewer chances existed that Bashir and Class supporters could get to see Departures. The odds that they might miss the Japanese film altogether were therefore increased, as well as possibly disqualifying themselves from casting final ballots.

This scenario basically alludes to the efforts of L.A.-based publicist Fredel Pogodin and not so much Sophie Gluck in Manhattan, who mainly looks after local journalists. Pogodin obviously couldn’t control who liked which film, but being an experienced publicist she does know, I’m told, who the older impressionable softies are among the foreign-film committee. So her strategy became to make sure that the softies voted and also to try and increase the odds that hipper, edgier, more discerning voters — the ones who were theoretically more likely to vote for Bashir or The Class — might potentially be kept from voting by failing to see Departures. Simple.

The older and more conservative types, according to this theory, were likely to respond to the delicate emotional character of Departures. They also might also be more uncomfortable with Bashir‘s unusual combination of animation and documentary realism, and with its criticism of Israel’s conduct during the Lebanon war.

The oldies, one hears, also tend to be a bit bored with a film like The Class, which uses an intellectual, underplayed, soft-spoken approach in telling a story of a group of French high-school teachers and students.

To keep Departures as hidden as possible, it wasn’t shown to press at all during the Oscar campaign time. Not for nothing was Pogodin’s first e-mailed invitation for the two press screenings (or at least the first one I received) sent out on 2.17.09 — the deadline day for final Oscar ballots. (Gluck, in turn, didn’t invite New York-area press until 2.23, the day after the Oscar telecast.)

How did In Contention‘s Kris Tapley see Departures ? A publicist (not Pogodin) slipped him a DVD screener.

When Doug Liman‘s Fair Game arrives sometime in 2010 or the following year, we will have had two movies based on the the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson — Liman’s, which will probably costar Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, and Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth, which was also partially based on the trials and incarceration of Susan McDougal.

It still blows my mind how Lurie’s film was abruptly scuttled and gone in a flash when Bob Yari’s company went belly up a little more than two months ago. Nothing But The Truth cost $11 million and change to produce, and it took in just over $3 grand before being pulled from theatres. I can’t verify this with a link that I like, but a friend tells me that Sony is releasing the Nothing But The Truth DVD on 4.28.09.

That deliberately degraded, snow-grained Blu-ray of William Freidkin‘s The French Connection is out today, and I’m searching for reactions from non-reviewers. You can’t trust regular DVD reviewers since they tend to bend over backwards to say nice things because they don’t want to alienate the folks who send them free copies. If anyone was dumb enough to buy this thing (as I was), please send along your reactions. You don’t have to hate it.

I was stunned when I noticed the absence this morning of David Jones‘ Betrayal, the notoriously missing 1983 adaptation with Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodges, among films that will compose a three-day Harold Pinter tribute at the American Cinematheque from 3.26 through 3.28.

I thought after Pinter’s passing that this captivating, jewel-like drama would at begin to turn up at special venues like the Cinematheque, at the very least. Even when a rights issue has prevented a DVD release of a film, the elite venues (AC, Aero, Film Forum, Film Society fo Lincoln Center, etc.) almost always manage to score a print for a single showing. But not this time.

Written by Pinter as a play in 1978 and then adapted for the screen three or four years later, Betrayal is easily the most elegant, accessible and well-liked Pinter movie ever made. It follows that any film programmer showing a series of Pinter films can’t exclude it without having to answer to guys like myself.

“Nothing Pinter has written for the stage has ever been as simply and grandly realized on the screen as [this],” wrote N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby 26 years and 4 days ago. “I can’t think of another recent film that is simultaneously so funny, so moving and so rigorously unsentimental. The writing is superb, and so quintessentially Pinter that it sometimes comes close to sounding like parody, though, in the entire screenplay, there’s not one predictable line or gesture, the sort of thing that would expose the fake or the merely hackneyed. This is pure Pinter well served by collaborators.”

I’ve been ranting about wanting to see Betrayal on DVD for at least ten years. And yet no one in a position to explain the whys and wherefores has ever written or called. Nice.

This morning I wrote Chris, the AC programmer, and asked if he could help with info about who owns the prints and control the rights. The family of the film’s producer Sam Spiegel, perhaps? Spiegel died 24 years ago, and you know how weird and conflicted families can sometimes be about inherited assets.

“As you know, there’s no Betrayal DVD at all, and the film hasn’t been seen on video since ’84 when CBS-Fox put out a VHS version,” I wrote. “I find it mind-blowing that you guys weren’t able to at least score a print for a single showing. This means (a) there’s no decent-looking print anywhere and/or (b) whoever owns prints and the rights doesn’t give a hoot, hasn’t tried to preserve or restore the film, isn’t into the potential, etc.”

The three-day American Cinematheque program will show Pinter’s The Comfort of Strangers , The Homecoming, The Servant, The Caretaker, The Go-Between and The Pumpkin Eater.

“AmEx was shot and edited in a day and a half back in April 2006, as a sardonic response to the multitude of big-name filmmakers [Wes Anderson, etc.] appearing in American Express commercials. Three years later, with the collapsed state of indie film and the strangled economy/credit market, it seems more relevant than ever.” — Jamie Stuart.

AmEx (2006) from The Mutiny Company on Vimeo.

Is there any overlap between the folks who saw The DaVinci Code and are planning to see Angels and Demons (Sony, 5.15), and the ones who’ve seen or recently rented Bill Maher‘s Religulous and have maybe begun to consider or even accept his rational humanist views? The answer, I’m fairly sure, is somewhere between “very little” and “next to none.” And that, in a nutshell, is why things are as screwed up as they are right now.

(l. to r.) Ton Hanks, Ayelet Zurber, some guy and Ewan MacGregor in Ron Howard‘s Angels and Demons (Sony, 5.15).

Because as heartening as Barack Obama‘s election seemed to a huge number of us, it didn’t change the fundamental reality of where the vast majority of world citizens (i.e., the insufficiently educated, the flat-out ignorant) live in their heads. The intimidated and spooky-superstitious view of life still rules, and the Catholic Church (along with Islam) is one of the principal beneficiaries. You could also conclude, given this fact, that Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Tom Hanks aren’t doing too badly either.

I know that if by clapping my hands three times I could (a) convert the world over to Bill Maher’s side of the issue and (b) eliminate the feelings of allegiance and submission that people offer daily to the Catholic church, I would clap my hands three times.

I get how religious orders and traditions that seemed to radiate some kind of divine aura when we were kids can continue to offer a kind of vague but spooky comfort to adults, even those that don’t believe in religious dogma. Moral order and moral discipline are essential for the survival of any civilized society, but the humanist basics — a belief in calm and decency and charity and kindness, and a respect for all tribes, beliefs, creeds and traditions that tend to their own and don’t advocate hate or cruelty or suppression of thought — weren’t invented by the Catholics, and in fact have been undermined by them in some cases.

It would be heavenly — I’m using this word deliberately — if people would just wake up and breathe in the good air and stand tall on their own, and in so doing pull the plug on the Catholic church now and forever.

That said, there’s nothing quite so dispiriting in the world of motion pictures as that glum and dutiful expression that Ewan MacGregor wears when he’s playing a character who’s part of a solemn order. He’s wearing this expression in every clip on the most recent Angels and Demons trailer.

We all know what this movie will be. The clips make it obvious. And we all understand it’ll clean up like the first one did. The question is why didn’t the trailer cutters include a line or even a word from poor Ayelet Zurer, the 39 year-old Israeli actress who plays Tom Hanks‘ “wing woman” (as Empire put it last week)?

Dan Brown‘s Angels & Demons is about a threat from the Illuminati, one of the Vatican’s ancient adversaries that still lives today in one form or another. Hank’s ‘symbologist’ Robert Langdon is hired by the Catholic higher-ups (including MacGregor’s character) to sift through the clues left by The Illuminati to find the “ticking time-bomb” they’ve planted under Rome.

The Illiuminati “have been dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism,” the copy says. Sounds like a plan.

“I didn’t hate Watchmen, but I didn’t love it either,” says a longtime HE reader who managed to snag a ticket to the London premiere, which ended a couple of hours ago.

“I’m not a cinema snob and can take a decent loud popcorn film in my stride as much as an animated Israeli documentary or the latest from Shane Meadows. I read one early Watchmen review (if you can call it that — it was more of an ejaculation of words) that seemed to praise the movie purely on the basis that it existed, and that any fan of the comic books should be grateful that a movie of Watchmen simply exists.

“I don’t think this is good enough, and is definitely not the right attitude to take. I think anyone who sees Watchmen, whether a fan previously or not, [can’t help but] walk away disappointed that it didn’t live up to its potential.

“What I want more than anything in my popcorn movies is a bit of consistency. I’m led to believe that the big blue Dr. Manhattan is the only truly superhero in the film, but in that case, why are all the other Watchmen able to leap like agile cats and fight with the power of ten men? I understand that this is an alternate universe where Ozymandias is the smartest person in the world, but just because he’s pretty clever doesn’t mean it makes sense when towards the end of the movie he comes accompanied by a new breed of big Antarctic cat with huge fucking ears.

“All I ask for is consistency in the world which we are seeing, and the movie will work. If this stuff is going to make sense, that’s fine — explain it. Tell me why he has a big cat, don’t just throw it in there.”

This went right by me last month. The guy who plays George Lucas, I feel, is a deranged genius. From IFC’s The Whitest Kids You Know.

Is there any word on how the implosion of New Yorker Films will affect the U.S. release of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Three Monkeys? Eugene Hernandez‘s Indiewire piece, posted four or five hours ago, doesn’t say if existing bookings will be honored or if someone other distributor will step in and take over. Here‘s my Cannes 2008 review.

Update: HE friend & correspondent Nick Dawson has been told that New Yorker “was handling the film as part of a service deal, so the release of the film won’t be affected by the shuttering of New Yorker Films. Apparently plans on a new release will be announced in the coming weeks.”

For most of his career John Cusack has focused on projects with a fair amount of integrity, so his agreeing to star in a self-produced lowbrow comedy called Hot Tub Time Machine certainly seems like a concession to the times. Straight paycheck, hold your nose, hunker down.

Michael Fleming‘s 2.23 Variety story says that Scott Heald‘s script is about a group of guys with the usual issues and complications in their lives returning to a ski lodge where they partied as teens, blah blah. They all find themselves in a hot tub — which happens to be a time machine — and get transported to 1987. Does this mean they get to meet up with their much-younger selves and…you know, offer advice about things they shouldn’t do when they get older?

A certain David Zucker protege was originally set to direct this, I’m told, but got dumped. Steve Pink will take the reins. (That name!) Cusack will costar with Rob Corddry and probably Craig Robinson and Clark Duke besides.

Production will reportedly start in Vancouver on 4.20. Cusack and New Crime partner Grace Loh will produce with Matt Moore.

Update: The original director attached to Hot Tub was Phil Dornfeld. He worked on at least one Scary Movie pic with Zucker as well as My Boss’ Daughter.