In a June 2nd address to the World Newspaper Congress, MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton said that, in his estimation, 19 of the top 50 U.S. newspapers are losing money. And, he warned, “that number will continue to grow.” Speaking later to Businessweek‘s Jone Fine in a 6.12 article, Singleton said “it’s reality…you can’t get to the other side of the river unless you face reality.” (Thanks to MovingPictureBlog’s Joe Leydon for passing this along.)

A friend spoke the other night to a guy who’s familiar with the comings and goings of Vincent Maraval‘s French-based Wild Bunch, the financier of Steven Soderbergh‘s two-part, 260-minute Che, which screened at Cannes to sharply divergent reactions. My friend’s first question to the guy, naturally, was, “So what about a U.S. sale of Che?” The guy, he said, “just looked” at him.

Ticket for Che party in the hills of Cannes that I never got to.

When he finally spoke, the gist was that he doesn’t believe the film will sell to a U.S. distributor “until Soderbergh cuts it.”
The odd thing, my friend said, is that the guy conveyed a kind of laissez-faire, “que sera sera” attitude about this. Wild Bunch’s mindset, he seemed to suggest, is also somewhere in the vicinity of “well, okay…whatever…we’ll see.”
Soderbergh, who is currently shooting The Informant, a corporate skullduggery drama with Matt Damon, isn’t working on cutting the Che film. Another source close to the action told my friend that Soderbergh “hit a wall” in the cutting of it prior to Cannes, and that whatever its final shape and length, fixing the Che situation is not a major Soderbergh priority as this moment. Not while The Informant is shooting, at least.
I don’t know that this is true, but if it is….it seems weird. As if Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch half almost given up on Che as far as the U.S. market is concerned. I’m not saying they have, but they seem to be putting out signals that they don’t precisely know what to do at this stage.
I’m not the only one who feels that Che is close to a masterwork. It breathes and seethes with political realism, you-are-there immediacy and high drama that doesn’t feel like “drama” — which is what makes it so brilliant. I felt levitated by it when I caught it in Cannes. But it wasn’t universally admired, and so the only move that makes any sense to me is to try and build a head of critical esteem by entering the fall awards derby, which will kick off in September. So Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch have to get it into theatres somehow this fall — no ifs, ands or buts.

Matt Damon during recent filming of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant in Los Angeles.

Even if they decide on an HBO small-screen deal, which will assure the showing of the entire thing and put to an end all talk about cutting it, they need to structure the sale so the film will go out theatrically first and then into the HBO airings. I don’t care about all the previous HBO deals which have demanded an HBO premiere. The awards derby is absolutely vital. Soderbergh’s direction is certainly deserving of a nomination. Ditto Benicio del Toro‘s performance as Che Guevara, Peter Buchman’s screenplay, the cinematography, etc.
Che has been pre-sold to most (all?) foreign territories, but with a negative cost of a reported $61 million or thereabouts. The Wild Bunch guys were reportedly demanding somewhere between $10 to $12 million for U.S. rights during Cannes. But if you’re talking about separate releases of the two films that comprise Che — The Argentine and Guerilla, which even Soderbergh has said will be the way to go after it plays as a special event movie that audiences will see all in one sitting — you’re talking a marketing budget of at least $12 to $15 million, if not more.
Add it up: $10 or $12 million plus $12 to $15 million equals a tab of $22 to $27 million.
The problem is that the likelihood of Che recouping anything close to this figure is highly unlikely. A prominent director told me after the Cannes showing that “this movie is going to make $5 million [theatrically] in the U.S….if that.” The solution, it seems, is that it has to be sold to HBO, but that its value will be diminished if it doesn’t first compete in the derby. Which means that someone — Mark Cuban? – has to put it out theatrically before 12.31.08.
If I were calling the shots, this, at least, is how I would be assessing the situation.

“Every movie probably suffers from logic flaws,” notes Artful Writer Craig Maizin in a piece he posted on 6.8. “The goal, of course, is to avoid crossing the threshold of tolerance. There are some flaws in The Godfather, for instance. If Tessio can figure out where Michael is meeting The Turk and have enough time to plant a gun, why can’t he plant a few guys in the back kitchen? Or in a back alley? Have them do the murders, and not put Al Pacino‘s Michael on the hook?

“But the logic flaws in The Godfather simply don’t cross the threshold of tolerance. Because they don’t, no one really gives a damn. In fact, many people will instinctively argue that the logic flaws aren’t flaws at all. So we gloss by logic errors in films that don’t cross the threshold of tolerance, because they haven’t done enough damage to shake the illusion of intention.
“But you can only suffer so many shots below the waterline before the ship starts to sink. If the audience’s illusion of intention is repeatedly or grossly challenged by logic problems, they will revolt.
“Make up any rules you’d like for your fictional system, but adhere to them. For instance, in the latest Indiana Jones film, the crystal skull is presented as an object so magnetic, it can literally attract metal shavings out of the air from hundreds of feet away. But sometimes, it doesn’t seem to be magnetic at all. Like when it’s in a jeep. Or near guns. Or bullets.

“That was a glaring logic flaw that pulled a lot of people out of the moment, including myself. On the other hand, the filmmakers were smart to include a fast shot of the words ‘lead-lined’ on the refrigerator that Indy climbs into just before the nuclear blast goes off. That’s enough to satisfy the Logic Nazi.”
But not me. Indy locking himself inside that lead-lined refrigerator was my first big logical break with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The reason — very simple — is a universally recognized law that says anyone who crawls into a refrigerator and closes the door shut is locking him or herself into a tomb and will soon suffocate to death. I’ve been taught that since I was five friggin’ years old. I don’t care if the refrigerator is blown a mile or so into the desert by an exploding atom bomb, banging and rolling around like a ball bearing. The door will never open unless you pull the latch handle. Once you’re inside, you can’t get out.
A big logic problem for some in M. Night Shyamnalan‘s The Happening is that everyone responds to the plant toxin effect, which has destroyed the natural human instinct to self-preserve, by deliberately killing themselves in all sorts of different ways. It’s been argued that a loss of the self-preservation instinct would more likely result in people offing themselves in much more casual (i.e., not immediately homicidal) ways — absurd binge-drinking, family arguments escalating in to homicides at the drop of a hat, Mad Max-style speeding on the freeway resulting in all kinds of fatal pile-ups, a resurgence of unprotected ’70s and early ’80s-style gay bathhouse sex, people binging on Ben and Jerry’s, etc.

This didn’t bother me as much as it did others because I (like Shyamalan himself) was so taken with all those chilling images of bodies falling from buildings and hanging from trees.
I’ve always said that James Cameron‘s T2: Judgment Day should have ended with a completely illogical occurence that nonetheless would’ve worked emotionally. As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg is saying goodbye to Eddie Furlong as he deliberately lowers himself into that steel-mill inferno, a single tear should have leaked out from the corner of one of his lifeless eyes.
The movie clearly has established in an earlier scene that Arnie’s cyborg can’t cry and in fact has no idea what crying is. (Schwarzenegger asks Furlong at one point to explain it.) But Schwarzenegger has also been learning certain phrases and social habits from Furlong (hand slaps, “eat me,” “hasta la vista, baby”) so it’s conceivable that a resourceful super-robot might have somehow generated the ability to weep by the end of the film. Illogical, yes, but it would have worked.

Having recently seen Jay Roach‘s Recount, Cinemascopian‘s Yair Raveh has posted a reminder about Spike Lee‘s We Wuz Robbed, a ten-minute 2002 doc that relates many of the same basic points that the two-hour HBO feature does…only shorter.

We Wuz Robbed is included in the anthology movie 10 Minutes Older: The Trumpet, which Raveh calls “a true masterpiece of documentary storytelling and political filmmaking told in breakneck speed.”

A minor matter that boils down to a mere typo, but a recent Arclight news letter has listed M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening as a “comedy.”

A member of the W. team who’s been on the set of the Oliver Stone film says that Josh Brolin, who’s playing George W. Bush, “is giving a stellar performance — acting without a speck of irony, a purely interpretive performance. I also think that Elizabeth Banks, as Laura Bush, will turn some heads.” He wrote because W. is “presumed to be a comedy in some quarters, which it isn’t. Yes, it is rife with black humor here and there — how could it not be? — but it is not a lampoon of Bush, but an exploration of the man√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s psyche and an attempt to capture his essence.”

A friend saw Andrew Stanton‘s WALL*E (Disney, 6.27) and says it’s (a) sort of an animated Jacques Tati film in the vein of Mon Oncle, in part because there’s almost no dialogue for the first 45 minutes or so, (b) it’s a kind of companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth in that it’s a strong message movie, set in a ruined post-apocalyptic world, about how we’re killing our world with poisons.

You might think from the trailers that it’s basically a robot love story, but that ain’t the half of it. It’s “not your typical wheee, happy, up-up-up animated family entertainment,” the friend says. “Once again, Pixar is pushing the buttons. It has a lot more on its mind.”
WALL*E is this little robot going around in this huge junkyard that used to be the earth, now inhabitable due to some toxic poisoning, saving remnants of what life once was. He’s obsessed with Barbra Streisand‘s Hello Dolly and plays these clips over and over,” he says. “The story later shifts its base to this massive shopping-mall space station, a floating planet of some sort with all these overweight fat people who can’t walk on their own, moving through a giant mall…an exaggeration of our culture today.”

I don’t what’s so red-bandy about this Wanted trailer. The only concern I have at this point is that I’m getting really tired of Morgan Freeman delivering one phone-in performance after another for another fat paycheck. I love his mellow zen quality but he’s done the wise old smoothie thing too much and it has to stop. He’s becoming Robert De Niro.

What a shock about Tim Russert…good God. The 58 year-old Meet The Press host was recording voiceovers for the upcoming Sunday show earlier today when he collapsed and died. I’m not finding the cause but I would guess a heart attack. The NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, shrewd and whip-smart and always with the smile and the charm, was 58.

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokawmade the on-air announcement around 20 minutes ago — 12:40 pm Pacific. He reported that Russert had collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work. Russert had just returned from a brief vacation in Italy with his family.
Russert was large and beefy but was far from what anyone would call “a guy with a major weight problem.” Very strange and shocking. Boomers with weight issues are probably convulsing coast-to-coast right now, wondering what they should change about their diet or their life. Sometimes your number is just up. Death knocks, the door opens and you’re gone. No time for a farewell note or goodbye wave…bam.
A N.Y. Times account says that Brokaw said “this was one of the most important years in [Russert’s] life, with his deep engagement in the network’s political coverage” and that he “worked to the point of exhaustion.”
Russert became Meet the Press moderator in December 1991. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Jesus…now Russert will never know how the election will turn out — what the margins will be, which states will break for Obama, etc. Wherever he is, I’ll be he’s at least a little bit pissed about this. I would be if I were he. The force on the other side of the river who pushed the button on Russert should have at least waited until after November. Bad form, Mr. Death.
I’m also half-persuaded, however, that once you’re gone you’re on a cosmic plane that is so far above and beyond the day-to-day of the planet Earth that such thoughts never cross your mind, if your post-death consciousness can be said to be graspable by a “mind,” which is probably not the case.
I’m watching NBC’s Andrea Mitchell talk about Russert and how he began to address her one day by her nickname of “Mitch,” and she just crumbled a bit. She held onto her composure but her voice cracked and her eyes watered over.

Last night’s AFI Warren Beatty tribute at the Kodak theatre, which lasted three and a half hours, was an exceptional evening even by the emotionally gushy standards of such affairs. Or so says Pete Hammond, who’s been to several of these shebangs over the years. A fantastic list of A-level talent and heavy-hitters, and much eloquence and with and warmth.

Here are some random notes which I’m not going to even try to shape into an article. This is just one recollection, and I’m not going to call over town to verify every last detail but most of this is probably on the money.
“Taped tributes from Barbra Streisand, Gene Hackman, Mike Nichols, James Toback, Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie and John McCain were played. There were specially shot clips of Beatty talking about his career that ran all through the show.
“The old legendary girlfriends from way back weren’t there, live or on tape — no Leslie Caron, no Michelle Phillips (or at least, I didn’t see her), no Britt Eklund, no Joan Collins. Poor Natalie Wood is dead, of course.
Nobody mentioned or even privately discussed Peter Biskind‘s long-gestating book about Beatty, Hammond said, so I called Biskind to see how things are going. Fine, he said. He’s finished Part Two, which starts with the making of Shampoo and obviously moves on to the present. Part One — early life, starting out, early career — is tougher because so many people who were around are dead. But the plan is to have it out by the fall of 2009.
“Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Towne (who once showed me a “fat farm” version of a script he wrote for Beatty’s Love Affair that was much better than the version that was ultimately shot) and Halle Berry delivered live remarks,” Hammond reports.
“The show opened with Earl Scruggs and some bluegrass banjo players, in tribute to Bonnie and Clyde. The first person on, I think, was Jane Fonda. She never made a film with Beatty but said that Warren and she “did a screen test together for a Joshua Logan film that was never made.” Nicholson showed up in shades a long black coat, looking a little tattered. Pacino presented the actual award to Beatty. Keaton said that of all her screen moments, she was proudest of the “don’t leave me” train station scene from Reds.
“George McGovern was there, Bill Clinton was there, Gary Hart was there. it was kind of a McGovern campaign revival. Warren Christopher, Jerry Brown. Clinton came on, looked great and gave this amazing speech, mentioning Bulworth as an important film to him. USA Today’s Anthony Breznican and Variety‘s Anne Thompson were there.
“Near the honoree’s table, Beatty hugged sister Shirley MacLaine for the longest time…they just stood there and hugged and didn’t let go.
“Somebody — it may been Don Cheadle — somebody came out and said that as directors, Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty are together typically require 140 takes per scene — Eastwood does one and Warren does 139.
Tarantino, whom Beatty blew off as far as playing the lead role in Kill Bill was concerned, “said W.B. represents the kind of thing that Hollywood isn’t any more,” says Hammond. Dustin Hoffman went on forever. Michael J. Pollard came up and said something colorful and incoherent, which was kind of cool.
The gift bag “was a collection of Beatty movies on DVD” and one of those video table frames that runs a slide show of different shots.
There was one clip shown from The Fortune. Lee Grant, who at one time was apparently working on a documentary portrait of Beatty, was not there. Ishtar director-writer Elaine May, says Hammond, was there also.
Nobody mentioned Barack Obama the entire night. What…out of deference to Beatty’s friendship with John McCain?
Beatty thanked the film industry for leading him to wife Annette Bening, “who has given me the most important thing of all, which is her love.” He said he was “particularly humbled by the presence” of McGovern, Hart, Brown and Clinton, and at one point described himself as “an old-time, unrepentant, unreconstructed, tax-and-spend, bleeding-heart, die-hard liberal, liberal, liberal Democrat.”
The event was a drinks-and-dinner deal that involved unscrewing and removing most of the seats in the orchestra to make room for tables. A much abridged version of the Beatty tribute — what, 90 minutes’ worth? — will air 6.25 on the USA Network at 9 pm.

I was mildly jolted by a paragraph in Katherine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosman‘s 6.13 N.Y. Times piece about allegations of a sexist slant in the coverage of Hillary Clinton‘s campaign, to wit: “The cable networks do not reach as many viewers as the broadcast networks — 2.6 million per night for prime-time news programs on cable compared with 23 million for broadcast — but their coverage runs in a continuous loop, is amplified by the internet and is seen by many people involved in politics.”

It felt comforting on some level to spot my little Olympus digicorder in this shot taken during a news conference aboard Hillary Clinton’s plane.

In other words, the cable-satellite TV information world that I and everyone I know lives in — MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CSPAN, etc. — is absorbed by only one ninth of the viewing population. One viewer out of nine. So the vast majority out there are…what, people who watch TV in their kitchen or bedroom with a roof antenna or a metal coat hanger for reception? Who are watching…what, Fox News, The View, Access Hollywood and their local Stepford news hour for updates?
How much smaller is the percentage of those who (like me) constantly keep up with the news cycles online via laptops and handheld devices compared to the average 20th Century slow-boater living in Nickleodeon world and driving a car that needs a new muffler? People who go to their kids to look at this or that online but otherwise haven’t a clue? (John McCain admitted a day or two ago that he doesn’t know how to use a computer.)
Every time you take a hard look at things it comes down to the same equation — a small percentage is paying real attention to what’s going on, and the vast majority is walking around in a kind of narcotized broadcast-media head space. What happened to the idea of a 21st Century information revolution and the resultant strengthening of our democracy? It can’t begin to happen with the levels of relative ignorance being what they are these days.
It would be one thing if, say, half the population was absorbing cable and wireless news sources and the other half constituted the media underclass, but when you’ve get eight out of nine still watching broadcast TV and shuffling around the house in their hush puppies…good God. And people wonder why this is essentially a Red country with tiny little Blue nerve centers in and around the big cities.

A non-USA exhibition source told me this evening that The Dark Knight‘s running time has been confirmed at 152 minutes.
HE reader Mgmax has explained the evolution in two lines: “In the 1950s and early ’60s we had long, self-important movies about Jesus. In the 21st Century we have long, self-important movies about Batman.”