In his “Wheels” column, N.Y. Times guy Nick Kurczewski guy writes about a deal offered by Sergio Cagia of Nero Tours in which a couple pays $300 to take a three-hour tour of Rome on a couple of Vespa scooters. Three times I’ve rented bikes-for-two in Rome for a little more than one-third that amount. Same streets, same excitement, same sense of “fun while feeling impossibly cool.” I’m stunned that anyone would be dumb enough to pay $300 just so they can look swift on a classic Vespa.

Out of nowhere I decided yesterday morning to drive out to El Monte to buy this gal, an eight-week old Siamese. I told myself the kitten would be good company for an older cat, a gray tabby, I’m taking care of for a few weeks. That wasn’t the actual reason, of course, but I didn’t explain it to myself until the kitten — I’m calling her Mouse — arrived home. I added her to my life as a reaction to the deaths of my father and sister. Funny how the subconscious works.

Charles Lyons has delivered a sky-is-falling summation piece for the N.Y. Times about the ills plaguing the independent film sector right now, and particularly poor hard-luck ThinkFilm. It’s basically covering the same ground that Film Department chief Mark Gill talked about last weekend at the L.A. Film Festival.
For me, two remarks in the piece stand out.
The first is from the presidents of two free-standing independents, Kino International and Zeitgeist Films, who say that “the key to longevity is to exercise restraint in both the amount of money allotted for purchasing completed films and in how advertising dollars are spent.” Yeah, guys — instead of dropping tens of thousands on old media buys, transfer your allegiance to relatively inexpensive, bang-for-your-buck sites like HE.
The second is from publicist Nancy Willen, who’s been stiffed for services rendered by ThinkFilm and Capitol Films and is now suing both. “It pains me to do this,” she says. “I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ve had a long, productive working relationship with Mark Urman since early in my career. However I now have my own business and simply can’t afford this.”

A friend I just spoke to was under the impression I was half-and-half on WALL*E. Not in the least, I said. I’m an unamibiguous admirer top to bottom and start to finish. It’s a masterpiece of its type. It’s going to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar. I understand the impulse on the part of director Andrew Stanton to call it a robot love story and leave it at that, but it’s a lie, of course — a disinforming of pig-trough moviegoers who might think twice about going to a “green” movie that satirizes their lie-around, fat-ass lifestyle.

The plan seems to be working because WALL*E is going to make a lot of money this weekend. Between $52 and $57 million, according to Fantasy Moguls‘ Steve Mason.
A sweet, amusing and reasonably profound save-the-earth parable, WALL*E‘s reliance on 85% visual, mostly dialogue-free storytelling (which makes it a kind of silent film) recalls the artistry of Charles Chaplin, Harry Langdon, Jacques Tati and other others whose style of performance art has been dormant for so many decades. It lives again.
Of course, not everyone is going to understand how good this film is. A woman who saw it with me said to a young publicist on the way out, “It’s nice but I was bored.” So beware — some are going to say it’s not…whatever, snappily entertaining enough according to current popcorn-munching standards. Anyone who says this, trust me, is a plebe and a moron in terms of their cinematic taste buds.
Six months into 2008 and WALL*E is one of the two or three best so far, if not the best of the year. It’s a major film and an occasion for enormous pride on Pixar’s part.

Proud Obama supporter Rod Lurie (Nothing But The Truth) coughed up $28 grand to be part of a select group who got to “hang with Barry” in a fourth-floor banquet room at L.A.’s Dorothy Chandler Pavillion the night before last.

That’s obviously a lot of dough, but it’s for the right guy at the right moment, it allowed admittance for both the contributor and a plus-one, and it also bought a special pass into the Democratic convention in Denver. “It just seems to me that human beings so rarely have an opportunity to take part in something pivotal in world history,” Lurie says, “and I want to be there.”
Sam Jackson, 20th Century Fox honcho Tom Rothman, producer Steven Bochco, Dennis Quaid and Don Cheadle went for the same deal.
Obama, says Lurie, “arrived 45 minutes early and started going from table to table, yapping, spending a couple of minutes with each person. He was really starting to tease Sam Jackson. He said to him, ‘How many movies you make a year? Eight?’
“There was a lot more conversation than I expected,” Lurie recalls. “He said to me, ‘I just plugged your movie. Some reporter asked me my favorite movie president, and I told him Jeff Bridges [in The Contender].’ The Hollywood community has gravitated to him almost because he is like a movie hero. He really reminds me of Cary Cooper in High Noon. He is principled and noble and yet you sense that he has the capacity to unleash a torrential machismo if the time has come and that is all that is left. He likes to play poker, and he really does have a pop culture sense. He loves going to films. His favorite movies are the Godfather films…the first two, not part three. Don’t be coy. Nobody likes part three.

“Seal and David Foster performed ‘Train’s A’Comin’ together.
“You were at his Kodak debate with Clinton so you know how impressive a presence he is. There is something very elegant and noble about him in person that transcends how he appears on television. On camera (and even in the photos that we took) there is almost something flimsy or spindly-looking about him. But in person he has a kind of athleticism and bearing that will serve him well when berating Republicans in the Oval office or meeting heads of state.”

I’m also taking slight exception to Todd McCarthy‘s observation that WALL*E is dialogue free until the 16-minute mark. It’s true, technically, that Fred Willard‘s hologram dialogue kicks in briefly at this point, but it hardly constitutes the beginning of give-and-take talk. Any more than the singing Hello Dolly clips can be called dialogue.
My screening started around 7:14 or 7:15 pm and I noticed the first semblances of sustained word exchange happening around 7:50 pm. Jeff Garlin‘s character obviously talks quite a bit once we’re aboard the Axiom, but the film often reverts back to beeps, digi-sounds, crackles and blip-blips for long stretches after that. It felt to me as if a good 80% of the film was “silent,” so to speak. Perhaps even 85% or so. I’d like to see a chart from Disney or Pixar that explains precisely how many minutes and seconds of dialogue are in this thing.
I just think it misrepresents matters slightly to say it’s purely visual for only 16 minutes. McCarthy says “there is considerably less dialogue [in WALL*E] than in the generally talkative Pixar films, which creates a significant difference in feel.” But it’s way more reliant upon purely visual storytelling than almost any major mainstream film I can think of, except maybe Fantasia.

“WALL*E pushes an agenda that could, and no doubt will, be interpreted as ‘green,’ or ecologically minded,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy in his just-published positive review. “It’s a theme that is certainly present, at least as pertains to what forced humanity off the planet in the first place.

Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940)

“But in a bigger sense, the picture seems to be making a quiet pitch for taking clear-headed responsibility for the health of the planet as well as one’s body and mind. The adages about how you must lie in the bed you make, and you are what you eat — both would seem to apply here.”
Notice the respectful but emotionally arm’s length tone in McCarthy’s words? A slight but detectable tone of formality and neutrality in his acknowledgment of the film’s green (i.e., liberal, Al Gore-ian) sensibility? You can almost hear him clearing his throat as he sits up straighter in his seat and tugs on his jacket lapels. I’m sorry but I find that a little bit queer, somewhat. Each and every one of us is contributing in various ways to the ruination of our planet, and well over half of today’s American adults look and act like the immobile Tubby Tubas satirically depicted in the film, and yet a film pushing the idea of reversing the downward ecological spiral is regarded as…partisan.
Imagine the following Variety review of Charles Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator (’40), to wit: “The Great Dictator pushes an agenda that could, and no doubt will, be interpreted as ‘anti-Nazi’ or ‘anti-Hitler.’ It’s a theme that is certainly present, at least as pertains to what brought post-World War I Germany into a state of total economic ruin in the first place. But in a bigger sense, the picture seems to be making a quiet pitch against conquering neighboring countries or murdering Jews en masse. The adages about how you must shy away from German fascist doctrine by respecting other cultures and ethnicities, and that the proliferation of swatztikas can lead to catastrophic events — both would seem to apply here.”

“I’ve seen WALL*E and it’s the best movie I’ve seen this year,” says HE’s Austin -based correspondent Moises Chiullan. “I went into it only having seen a brief preview at last year’s Butt-Numb-a-Thon and the trailers. Do yourself the same favor and go in cold and un-influenced. I didn’t think I’d like a Pixar film more than Ratatouille, but I think WALL*E really redefines how you think about Pixar, trite as that may sound.
“Yes, the movie is fine for kids, but honestly, it’s better for adults — not more appropriate, just more of a definitive cinematic experience. The movie is a great deal closer to Modern Times than An Inconvenient Truth, even though the news media is going to sensationally mislead everyone like they have throughout the election cycle so far…in the interest of selling adverts or airtime.
“I want to take great care to not spoil one ounce of WALL*E more than others already have, and even pull back from railing against some of the accusations I’ve seen written about by both those who’ve seen it and the idiots still calling WALL*E a character design rip-off from Short Circuit (way wrong).
“The bleak, desolate planet Earth has become in the story is shown in all the trailers. The rampant consumerist devouring of resources is at fault. But the real bent of the movie is housed in the ‘little tramp’ love story at its core, even though, yes, of course, the ‘let’s not destroy the earth’ thing is in there, but there is more emphasis on hope in the human spirit.
Similar to the Chaplin-vs.-Keaton argument, the dialogue regarding “what WALL*E is ‘really’ about” may continue until all known traces of the movie are gone. From a certain perspective, you could say that Stanton and others are glossing over the ‘green’ message, but that assessment is off-base. The movie is more fundamentally about what it is to exist and believe in hope. Every science fiction film with a desolate Earth as a backdrop does not make that its main focus, and neither does WALL*E.
“I’ve let WALL*E roll around in my head for around a week and a half since seeing it, and I can’t shake it (a good thing). It would be one thing if I were exploding with praise the day after seeing it, but the factthat it’s still as captivating almost two weeks later, to me, means the movie has to be the real deal. This movie falls under the Important Cinema banner regardless of what piece of its narrative you fall in love with. This really could be one of the movies people will still argue about in 25, 50, or 100 years.”

This Gary W. Tooze review of the recently-issued Blu-ray disc of Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals (1966) reminded me in a roundabout way that Lee Marvin had one of the most beautiful-sounding voices of any actor in the history of motion pictures. And I love Burt Lancaster‘s line about “nothing is harmless in this desert unless it’s dead.”

Warner Bros. publicity has given Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers an early-ish peek at The Dark Knight, and he’s responded in his usual eager-beaver town-crier way, applying lotsa passion and saliva and goo-goo gah-gah. Knight may be a good or even great film, or at least a wild slam-banger, but there’s no trusting Travers. About anything. Especially when he’s the first one out of the gate.

“Heads up — a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies,” he begins. “The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan‘s absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There’s something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe.
“Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Whah? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil — expected to do battle — decide instead to get it on and dance. ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ Heath Ledger‘s psycho Joker tells Christian Bale‘s stalwart Batman. ‘You complete me.’ Don’t buy the tease. He means it.”
Opposites not only attracting but making each other feel whole? Hmmm. I’m not all that sure this is an especially rich observation.

“I remember exactly where and when I first stumbled upon The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which is even more shocking considering I was drunk. It was during my third year of law school in the fall of 2000 when, on any given night, the odds were distinctly in favor of me being drunk. But this was a rare night, however, as I didn’t immediately pass out when I got home. Instead, I found myself laying on my bed in a mildly drunken stupor, flipping through the channels in an attempt to find adequate background noise to the impending pass-out.

“And that’s when I came upon a scene with these two dudes talking in a diner. From the tone and color of the film, it was obviously a 70’s flick. And having no idea who Robert Mitchum was, it wasn’t until later that I realized he was the one giving this absolutely engrossing monologue about why he’s so careful when buying illegal guns. And as drunk as I was, I was so roped in by this simple monologue that I willed myself to a semblance of sobriety so I could stay awake for the next 80-odd minutes watching what is one of the best low-down gangster flicks out there.” — From a recent piece by Seth Freilich on Pajiba.com.
When in doubt on a slow news day, bring out Eddie Coyle!