For those who saw Meet Dave this weekend…

“The dinner cost at least two grand / She made a point to order wine / Later on she moved my hand / Well across her borderline / I boldly went where many, many / Many men have gone before / Dennis Rodman, Warren Beatty, Vanilla Ice, and dozens more / Dear diary, can sex be love? / She’s so responsive, so adoring / She called my hand a golden glove / And Cynthia is huge and boring.” — Song lyric from “A-Rod: The Musical,” composed by The New Yorker‘s Ben Greenman.

God’s natural law says that 70% to 80% of all films (or any creative work of any kind) will be irksome, problematic, mediocre or just crap. What, then, to make of a critic who’s given positive reviews to 19 out of 25 recent films? It’s an old saw and an old refrain, but Eric Childress‘s mission in life is to scold those critics given to excessive warmth and generosity.

Another mixed response to The Dark Knight, this time from Newsweek‘s David Ansen. Calling it an “impressive, and sometimes oppressive, epic,” he says “there’s not a touch of lightness in Christian Bale‘s taut, angst-ridden superhero, and as the two-and-a-half-hour movie enters its second half, the unvarying intensity and the sometimes confusing action sequences take a toll. You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn’t be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not ‘Hamlet.’ Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.”

The two new Jolie-Pitt kids — a boy, Knox Leon, weighing 5.03 pounds, and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline, weighing 5 pounds even — began their journey last night (i.e., Saturday) at Lenval Hospital (57, avenue de la Californie, northeast of the airport) in Nice. Obstetrician Michael Sussman delivered the twins. Brad and Angie now have six kids — the adopted Maddox, 6, Pax, 4, and Zahara, 3, plus the au natural Shiloh, 2, and the twins.

My interest is in Chateau Miraval, the $70 million dollar, 35-room estate near Aix en Provence which they’re reportedly intending to lease for three years. Who needs 35 rooms? Little kids always share bedrooms, Brad and Angie will share a room with the twins plus..what, a nanny and a couple of assistants? They could all probably make do with a ten-room mansion. Fifteen might be a wee bit extravagant. Twenty would be, like…whoa, take it easy. But thirty-five friggin’ rooms?
This isn’t my business but everyone is in everyone else’s face these days so why not? I’m talking about passing along decent values to your kids. I realize that Chateau Miraval is a working wine vineyard so you need facilities for the guys who work it, but it’s not a good thing to instruct your children through day-to-day experience that nouveau riche extravagance is the norm. Even if you pass along the best kind of emotional and spiritual upbringing by your words and deeds, an opulent lifestyle will always create a sense of swagger and entitlement and a nonstop litany of lusts and appetites.
The best thing you can do is give your kids to a natural, non-flamboyant, modestly-scaled life. They should have love and comfort and occasional perks, but mainly within the framework of a life based upon need and nutrition and not whimsical indulgence. Brad and Angie’s kids’ life should not be about what they’d like to taste or fuck around with or splash around in on a daily whim because their parents are loaded and “why not?” The Jolie-Pits are doing their kids no favors by bringing them up this way. 99% of the world lives in a world of limits and natural proportion.

The studio estimate I posted on Saturday morning for Hellboy II‘s opening weekend was $35 million and change. This estimate was made with a presumption that Saturday grosses for Guillermo del Toro‘s film would dip a bit on Saturday, as sequels tend to do. This is precisely what happened. After taking in $13.7 million on Friday, Hellboy II dropped to $11.7 million yesterday. GDT and Universal are savoring their first-place victory while it lasts, knowing that next weekend’s box-office heat will be almost entirely about The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia!.

W costars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright were arrested at a Shreveport bar early Saturday morning, apparently for refusing to leave at closing time. Five other W crew members involved in filming the Oliver Stone movie were also involved. Wright was reportedly maced and stun-gunned, but otherwise no kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer. The W guys got arrested by the bulls, however, and were all taken down to the station and had to post bail.

Josh Brolin’s mug shot, taken early Saturday morning at a Shreveport police station

The Shreveport Times reported that Brolin was booked and posted $334 cash bond to be released. Police did not say Saturday night whether he or the others had been released. Brolin is portraying President George Bush in the film, and Wright is playing Colin Powell. W began filming in May in Shreveport.
“Officers were called to the Stray Cat, a bar in the 200 block of Travis Street, just after 2 a.m. to deal with a rowdy patron, according to a Shreveport police patrol report. As more officers arrived, several other patrons at the bar, including Brolin and fellow actor Jeffrey Wright, tried to impede the officers, according to the report. In all, the report lists 10 officers called to the ruckus.
“Brolin, Wright and four other people were charged with interfering with police, a misdemeanor.
“City Jail booking records show Brolin had $130 in his possession he had to hand over to police in addition to his driver’s license, a belt, a cell phone, a lighter, a ring, his wallet and a watch.”

Ismael Martinzez, Jeffrey Wright, Cherilyn Young.

Evan (or Eric) Bates, Amy Draughlin, Eric Felland.

A KSLA news story said that “workers at the Stray Cat Bar [said] they asked Brolin, Wright, and about five other crew members to leave the bar twice. When they didn’t leave, they say bartenders called downtown police who responded just after two in the morning.
“Police reports list officers arresting a 29-year-old Eric Felland for remaining in the bar, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness. Officers say five others who were hanging out with Felland, including both 40-year-old Brolin and 42-year-old Wright, interfered with the arrest. Police charged them with just that — interfering with an officer.
“A man who works the graveyard shift at a nearby downtown business says he saw most of the incident, where he claims there were at least four police cars and several bicycle police on scene.
“‘”I’ve seen my share of disturbances and for the most part the cops just send them on their way, but that was the first time I’ve seen that many people at once get escorted into cars, I mean I think it was getting to the point where the cops were checking with each other to see who had room to put [people] in,’ said downtown worker Anthony Thompson.”

Brolin filming W scene.

Admittedly, Gillian Armstrong‘s Death Defying Acts (Weinstein Co., 7.11) fared poorly with the Rotten Tomatoes gang (50% positive with the homies, 20% positive with the elites). And yes, it’s my own fault for missing the one screening that was made available by Weinstein Co. publicity (i.e., last Thursday night at the Grove). Still….

It seems strange or head-scratchy or something that this not-inexpensive drama about magician Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) being conned by a fake medium (Catherine Zeta Jones) in a search for his dead mother has opened so quietly. It’s as if the film slipped into theatres through the back door. Part of the reason for the deafening silence is that the Weinstein Co. isn’t very flush these days, okay, but this was a really quiet opening. You could hear a pin drop.

Here‘s a 7.13 chat between Patti Smith and N.Y. Times reporter Deborah Solomon, the subject primarily being Steven Sebring‘s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which I saw and fell for six months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. When will Los Angelenos get to see it? Or San Franciscans, for that matter? No clue.

Palm Pictures is opening it at Manhattan’s Film Forum on August 6th. Some scattered openings will follow in September and October. San Diego, it appears, will have it before Los Angeles.
Six months ago I called it “an authentic spiritual adventure film — a mostly black-and-white exploration of Smith’s life, loves, history, poetry, music, alliances, relationships, etc. It feels at times like a companion piece to D.A. Pennebaker‘s Don’t Look Back (the monochrome classic about Bob Dylan touring England in the mid ’60s), at other times like a patchwork meditation, a home movie, a concert film, a fashion show. It’s about music, heroes, rants, chants, parents, deaths, declarations and determinations.
“For me, the authenticity is in the way Sebring has captured (or emulated) the grit and textures of Smith’s prose, and the fierce spiritual tension that her band music has always injected in one form or another. ‘Life is an adventure of our own design…a series of lucky and unlucky accidents,’ yes…but having a locomotive inside you helps. There is no boredom or lethargy in this lady’s life…not a lick of this. The movie is a pleasure, a journey, an attic sift-through, a huge charge.”

A clip of Heather Ledger‘s “Joker” taunting the actual Sen. Patrick Leahy — awesome.

I finished Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards this morning at 2:30 am, and yesterday’s opinion (based on having read the first 80 pages) is basically unchanged. I’m still calling it a categorically insane World War II attitude comedy on top of a quasi-“exploitation film” about angry Jews paying back the Nazis for their many atrocities. It begins and ends in QT’s movie-nut head, and is very entertaining for that.
The film is going to seem loony-tunes to some, and that’s good. The Cinema Paradiso section (pretty young Jewish refugee running a Paris cinema, changing reels, not smoking for fear of burning the stored silver nitrate film reels) goes on a bit, page 50 to 100, give or take. A lot of bodies hit the floor from page 100 to 165. A lotta blood and bullets. The violent finale is wackjob. It’s either insane beyond measure or wildly imaginative in a good way, or both.
Oh, and the actor who gets to play the role of Colonel Landa (a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter”) is going to have a field day. Brad Pitt‘s “Aldo the Apache” part should be beefed up a bit; he’s too peripheral over the last 30 or so pages.

“Clearances” are gentleman’s agreements between theatrical chains that are basically about respecting territory and boundaries. One L.A. clearance arrangement that’s been in effect for some time is between the Landmark plex on West Pico Blvd. and the AMC Century City 15 plex, located about a mile or so to the northeast. The basic deal has been to give each other economic breathing room by not showing each other’s films. Simple.

Landmark plex on Pico

But all that has recently changed. The Landmark has essentially decided that with times being tough all over, their indie-movies-for-upscale-audiences plan hasn’t been bringing in enough dough and it’s time for a new strategy. And that means showing more mainstream-y films even if their AMC cousins are showing the same titles. Which is a roundabout way of saying fuck the Diaz brothers.
Situation: The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! will be opening at both the Landmark and the AMC C.C. plex next weekend, and it may be that the Landmark will beat out the AMC as far as Mamma Mia! business is concerned due to the latter having a stronger 25-and-over female customer base.
“Landmark just decided to do it,” a friend confides. “They decided they really wanted The Dark Knight and WB was perfectly willing to let them show it. Landmark, meanwhile, had Mamma Mia! exclusively for that area, but now AMC is going to go show Mamma Mia also.” In short, a little tit-for-tat, quid pro quo action.
Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff was unavailable, but his sentiments were summed up by a professional colleague: “Let’s just show good films that everyone likes and not be so exclusionary.”

AMC Century City 14

The friend believes that the Dark Knight booking is as much about appealing to Landmark regulars who are serious Chris Nolan fans (Memento, Insomnina) as much as anything else. I’m not sure I can buy that one but whatever. I myself am a Nolan fan first, a Heath Ledger fan second and a Batman fan second.
Before they altered or broadened their identity by letting mainstream popcorn movies in, Landmark had been…how to say it? The term is either “suffering” or “somewhat hurting,” but then so has everyone else in the indie exhibition sector. It’s not a flush time right now. The Landmark has been plugging along, but the biggest indie films they’ve been showing have been The Visitor, Mongol and Guillame Canet‘s Tell No One. That’s fine as far as it goes, but an operation like the Landmark needs more grease on the axles.
As someone else put it, “There’s so much good product around now. Why not just just give people what they want?”