With President-elect Barack Obama having nominated Colorado Senator Ken Salazar for Secretary of the Interior, a 12.19 Public Policy poll revealed that Democratic Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, cousin of film director George Hickenlooper and subject of a forthcoming GH mini-series called Hick Town, is a very strong contender against the top two potential GOP opponents. JH beats Bill Owens 54 to 40, and Tom Tacredo 54 to 37. So maybe he’ll be appointed to fill Salazar’s seat.

George Hickenlooper, Barack Obama during filming of Hick Town.

Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ, perhaps the most fully and radiantly spiritual Hollywood-funded film about Yeshua of Nazareth ever made, opened 20 years and 4 months ago. I saw it on opening day at the Plitt theatres in Century City. I came out of the theatre moved and moist-eyed, and outside there was a raging mob of Orange County goons protesting the sexual-marital scene between Willem Dafoe ‘s Christ and Barbara Hershey‘s Mary Magdelene — completely missing what the last temptation meant, too fearful and ignorant to even see the film.

It was then that I fully realized what a haven for moronic thinking the Christian right represented and in fact was. I’ve never forgotten that experience and that lesson.

I just re-watched Last Temptation on DVD and it still blows me away, the last 20 minutes in particular, and double-particularly that magnificent death-and-salvation simulation with the leader running off the reel and the white, red, yellow and blue lights piercing through. I’m imagining a right-wing Christian zealot watching it and saying, “Jeffrey, this film is against the law that we believe in!” and my saying, “Then your laws are against my heart, and the art of Martin Scorsese.”

As much as I love and cherish Bottle Rocket, shelling out an admittedly reasonable $26 and change for a Criterion Blu-ray version doesn’t seem all that vital. It’s not like it’s renowned for its shattering, eye-melting visions of Dallas, Fort Worth and Hillsboro, Texas. Although I’ll probably spring for it anyway because of my Blu-ray heroin habit, which requires a fresh new experience every week or so.

Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson during the final scene in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket.

…two days ago (which makes it the fourth time) and the only thing that’s been bothering me is that Leonardo DiCaprio ‘s Frank Wheeler tends to speak in cliches when he’s feeling awkward or emphatic — “don’t make me laugh!,” “you were swell,” “ain’t that somethin’?” and so on. And I don’t like the actorish way he always says “huh?” after every declaration or suggestion. But those are the only beefs.

Obviously the critics groups, SAG and the HFPA have greater concerns or there would be more awards love for Revolutionary Road than just that Golden Globe Best Actress nom for Kate Winslet‘s performance. What bothers me is the suspected banality of their reservations, which you can sum up as follows: “Go sell the hopeless emptiness of life someplace else — we’re all stocked up here.”

I abhor people who text in movie theatres with others sitting around them. Loathsome behavior. But if two guys are sitting in a den or living room and texting each other about a show they’re watching, who cares? That’s almost the way it was when Bill McCuddy and I texted each other through the last 60% of Seven Pounds as we sat in Sony’s seventh-floor screening room on Madison and 55th.

One, there was no one in our vicinity at all — we were in the rear seats, and the other two guys in the theatre were several rows in front of us. And two, sitting passively and open-pored while watching Seven Pounds was simply not an option. If this had been even a semi-absorbing, half-tolerable film, it would have been boorish and unacceptable to text…but we had to do something. It was Will Smith and Gabriele Muccino vs. poor little Jeffrey Wells and Bill McCuddy — we had to fight back and respond WHILE THE FILM WAS PLAYING. It demanded immediate action.

If anyone had been remotely near us, or if there was the slightest chance that our text screens might have provided even the slightest distraction for anyone, I would just sat there and taken it and suffered silently.

The Washington Post‘s Dan Kois has written a sharp, concise but slightly too contained profile of the Oscar publicist trade, with special attention paid to the highly accomplished Lisa Taback, based in Los Angeles, and 42West’s Cynthia Swartz and Amanda Lundberg. “It doesn’t matter what [journalists and Oscar bloggers] think,” says Lundberg. “It matters what people who have a ballot think.”

Oscar publicist/strategists Lisa Taback, Cynthia Swartz

This 12.19 Bagger video is the best in days — i.e., a chat with N.Y. Times critics Manohla Dargis (on voice-box) and Tony Scott (live in the flesh) inside the paper’s carpeted Eighth Avenue sanctum.

I had a pretty good current going when I tapped out my 12.12 pan of The Day The Earth Stood Still. But my Seven Pounds review hasn’t panned out at all, in large part because I’m not allowed to talk about the basic shot — i.e., the climactic third-act revelation that tells viewers what Will Smith‘s character has actually been up to, which has been kept obscure throughout 98% of the film.

Unless the viewer has simply read the IMDB reader comments about the plot particulars, which have been sitting there plain as day for many months.

Seven Pounds is about a guy played by Will Smith trying to make amends, save himself, save others, find redemption, etc. An important third-act component is a big white jellyfish. Suffice that there’s a satirical Seven Pounds poster, inspired by one for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, on my back-up drive that I’d like to post some day.

I saw Seven Pounds in the company of former Fox News entertainment guy and stand-up comedian Bill McCuddy. We were sitting maybe three feet apart in the 7th floor Sony screening room with no one else around, but just for fun we began texting each other with impressions as the film went along and got worse and worse. About 45 minutes in McCuddy wrote, “If only Smith could save this movie.”

Always be suspicious when a big movie star plays a nice guy looking to help people who need it. Especially if the good guy is played by a guy with perfect white teeth who writes checks for Scientology. Double-especially if the fictional do-gooder has decided to limit his largesse to a specific number of recipients (which automatically indicates an overly schematic and precious mentality), in this case seven. And triple-especially if the doer of good things has chosen the recipients based on a judgment call — upon his personal reckoning that they “deserve” it.

I’ve always disliked the word “deserve.” Nobody ever deserves anything except for the fee or salary that they’ve earned with good respectable work. But nobody deserves anything in the greater sense of the term — to live or die, to become rich or not, to have a pleasant or unpleasant life. Life has always happened without moral rhyme or reason or any sense of justice or fairness, certainly without a cosmic entity deciding that this or that should or shouldn’t happen because the people involved “deserve” their fate.

The characters who’ve been chosen to receive Smith’s help, according to the Seven Pounds merit-badge system, are in their own way centered, fair-minded, even-mannered — people with kindly, positive, compassionate attitudes who — I can certainly reveal this much — are between a rock and a hard place health-wise.

I don’t agree with arbitrary decisions about this or that person’s moral, humanistic worth. As long as Smith is playing a guy engaged in a kind of Christ-like endeavor (despite his motive being primarily about self-redemption), why not adopt Christ’s attitude during his time on earth about spending time with the sinners on the theory that they need his help more than the morally disciplined? This movie would have a lot better if Smith had gone this route and decided to help only scumbags, criminals, drug users and the like.

McCuddy wrote me a day after the screening with this thought: “Think how much better Seven Pounds might might might have been without Smith’s baggage. For once the well-oiled Smith machine actually takes away from what could have perhaps been a gut-wrenching little indie starring a bunch of unknowns.”

McCuddy also came up with the title of this piece — “Organ Grinder.”

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott was truly feeling his oats when he wrote this pan. Read and enjoy — it’s pretty damn delicious.

While I was piddling around the apartment and making rental-car reservations, TMZ and Defamer reported this morning that the sushi-afflicted Jeremy Piven “was worried he was suffering from mononucleosis” two months ago (i.e., October), near the beginning of the run of the now-Pivenless Speed-The-Plow.

Plow‘s producer told TMZ that Piven had “complained of illnesses from the beginning of the show’s run in October. First, says the producer, Piven reported ‘low-level mono.’ After that, Piven told producers he was worried he might have Epstein-Barr virus. The final diagnosis, as his doctor stated publicly, was mercury poisoning from a two-a-day raw fish habit.”