Ben Brantley‘s 1.26 pan of the just-opened Hedda Gabler is a corker. The spirit was truly with him when he wrote it. “Ian Rickson, who this season delivered a nigh-perfect Seagull on Broadway, one of the best revivals I have ever, ever seen, is now responsible — oh, break, break my heart — for one of the worst revivals I have ever, ever seen. It’s not just that everyone is bad in this Hedda — it’s that they’re all bad in their own, different ways.

“Could it be that this production has fallen under the spell of Twilight, the hit movie from fall about the price of loving for teenage vampires? I mean, think about it. The forever fresh-faced Mary Louise Parker, one of our most delightful actresses, has traded in her usual air of easy, quirky spontaneity for the robotic petulance of an I-hate-everybody adolescent in a yearlong sulk. With her hair darkened, her face ghostly pale and her frame skeletal thin, her Hedda brings to mind a valley girl who’s given up cheerleading to be a goth because it’s way cooler and it matches the place her mind’s at now.”

What agent in his/her right mind would put his/her actor client into a lowball Bonnie and Clyde movie — an effort sure to be either ignored or urinated upon — under a director whose last effort was a “family” flick starring Lee Majors?

Once costars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are no longer conjugal. “Too bad,” Jett wrote an hour ago. “Not that I’m surprised. Age difference killed it.” Hansard is 38, Irglova is 20. 18 years can seem like a fairly big gap from the vantage point of the younger person. Gaps diminish once you get older, of course. A 30 year woman with a 48 year-old guy is a bit strange, but only a bit. A 40 year-old woman and a 58 year-old guy…who cares?

When I was in my early 20s I used to regard people who were 30-plus as somehow soiled and lacking in spiritual buoyancy. On the other hand I used to worship the idea of women in their mid 30s, and I finally got down with one — a 37 year-old divorcee — when I was 22 or 23. It was heavenly in a sensual milkshake sense, but she wasn’t as interested in the present and future tense as I was — she was settled into her child-less suburban home, drank too much scotch, thought too much about her lost youth and opportunities. She was Maggie May.

I saw Danny Boyle‘s Slumdog Millionaire for the second time last night at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre. It didn’t improve or diminish. It’s still a scruffy, extreme-cinema poverty-tour Dickens fable — vigorously well done for what it is. My impression of Mumbai hasn’t changed — i.e., that it’s populated by some of the nastiest and cruelest people on the planet. And I’m still bothered by Dev Patel‘s halting, deer-in-the-headlights response to anything and everything that arouses, challenges or threatens his Jamal character.

Boyle Durling from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

Boyle came out afterwards and did a 30-minute chat with SBFF director Roger Durling. As an theatre-of-life observer and raconteur, Boyle is a complete pleasure. He’s one of the most fully alive filmmakers I’ve ever sat with. (We did a 20-minute video interview in Toronto.) I could listen to him for hours. He knows everyone and everything. Durling asked the right kind of questions — i.e., very general — and just stood back and let Doyle go to town.

For me, European TV commercials have always been the Holy Grail. This one’s dead perfect, and far more effective than this said-to-be-sexy PETA vegetable ad (rejected for Super Bowl airing) that is obvious, metallic and way too pushy.

Ice Cream from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo

Lee Daniel‘s Push** won enough respect and rave notices at the Sundance Film Festival to be on everyone’s must-see list when it eventually arrives in theatres. Well and good. But I was unaware until today of the other Push (Summit, 2.6.09) — a seemingly low-rent sci-fi actioner.

The website for this Paul McGuigan-directed programmer tells me it’s not likely to be loved or remembered for very long. But I wonder which Push decided on its title first. It’s just weird for two of them to punch through (McGuigan’s is screening for the press in early February) in the space of a couple of weeks.

** The full title of Daniel’s film is Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.

Sharon Waxman‘s The Wrap, a new entertainment website, has been up and running for a few days now. Waxman is a sharp, go-getter reporter and a solid writer, but the site is…well, it’s fine. But it needs time to find itself. All websites do. It takes months, usually. Whatever you think a site is going to be when you start out, it always adapts and reconfigures.

Right now it seems a little familiar. Kinda Salon-y. A bit of a stripped-down Daily Beast thing going on. I don’t know. I know I could use some more sass and attitude and deep-dish stuff in my daily reading. Somebody who writes about Holywood from a high and confident perch, like Michael Wolff has written about Rupert Murdoch.

Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale is spitballing a scenario in which The Curious Case of Benjamin Button goes 0-for-13 on Oscar night. No way. It has to win for the CG face-pasting stuff.

People West Coast bureau chief Elizabeth Leonard has been demoted to senior writer, I’ve been told. I don’t know why they’ve slapped her down or what the corporate strategy is. I called a couple of staffers; nobody picked up. Leonard has been replaced by senior People staff writer J.D. Heyman, although not 100%. (Some of her bureau chief duties will be handled by other People staffers, apparently.) It’s a mess over there. Sooner or later all the Time, Inc. dead-tree publications are going to be remnants of their former selves — downsized, diminished, scrapped.

Dogs like this have the jaw-power to bite your hand off. But this guy’s a real sweetheart. He’s lost weight in recent months so he doesn’t seem as scary. He’s gentle, expressive, emotionally responsive. I’ll always be a Golden Retriever man but this guy’s all right.

Dog from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo

I feel as if the 2nd Great Depression has finally hit me personally, as Nikki Finke is reporting that Variety columnist and reporter Anne Thompson — an excellent reporter and commentator, and one of my oldest friends in this racket — is among the Variety staffers who were laid off today.

Anne will keep her blog, Thompson on Hollywood, and is now talking with Variety about some kind of freelance revenue-sharing deal with them. Or she may tough it out and run her own site and sell her own ads, like myself and David Poland and others are doing. She will will continue teaching film criticism at USC and hosting Sneak Previews at UCLA Extension.

Film Festival editor Mike Jones has also felt the kiss of steel; ditto Jeff Sneider (i.e., “the Jeff”), Alys Marshall, Phil Gallo, Andrew Barker, Byron Perry, Lisa Weinstein, Martha Hernandez, Diane Garrett and Ben Fritz.

This is a terrible time we’re living through. May Barack Obama find and deploy the wisdom, strength and heavenly guidance to get us through this. Shame on the Republican ay-holes who are fighting Obama on the stimulus package, and whose lying, loathsome rationales were identified today by N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman. And remember this list of 25 people who brought us to this place.

“The Biggest Movie Event of the Year”? I don’t want to sound like a sourpuss, but this line doesn’t seem to quite get it. Next month’s Oscar telecast promises to be both more and less than this. The copy doesn’t begin to express the kind of Oscar year this has been. It seems oblivious to the Dark Knight, WALL*E, Kristin Scott Thomas and Gomorrah blow-offs. It ignores all the panicking going on right now. Barack Obama, ethical/cultural transformation and the current economic nightmare are “big” — what are the Oscars alongside these?

What should this poster say? If someone has a better line and can Photoshop it into the original, please send along.