A Friday meander, late-morning downshift, Inglorious Bastards script-reading break…take your pick.

I had heard during the Cannes Film Festival that jury president Sean Penn was a big fan of Steven Soderbergh‘s Che. Now there’s a transcription of a Penn quote about the film on Kris Tapley‘s In Contention, taken from a new issue of Sight & Sound and provided by Guy Lodge:

“Right through the festival I had no awareness of what the `buzz’ was, and I shut people down if they tried to talk about movies in front of me. But when I did a little bit of catch-up browsing afterward I read some of the stupidest, ugliest, most cynical responses to what had gone on, and I had the front-seat to be aware of their inconsistencies.
“Che is a great example. I pray it finds distribution in the four-hour-plus form I saw, because otherwise people will be missing out. The filmmaking is stellar: there are so many details in the execution of that huge story. Every sentiment about Guevara I’ve heard passionately expressed when I’ve travelled in Cuba and South America was not only dramatized, but without exposition, seamlessly, fulfilling the narrative.
“Then you have one of the first tour de force performances in film history [i.e., Benicio Del Toro‘s] that doesn’t rely on the close-up.

Che director Steven Soderbergh during filming of 1956 Mexico-to-Cuba sea voyage.

“This was a film, I later found out, that had some negative responses. [But] I was in a jury room of nine people with more expertise in their big toenails than any of the people writing in these papers, and nine out of nine wanted to go out and change the world afterwards.”
It has been sad and frustrating on my end to see what has happened with Che since Cannes — next to nothing — and to hear how so many distributors are saying “no effin way” to releasing it into U.S. theatres. I have heard that Wild Bunch is now asking for a lot less than their earlier $10 million demand for U.S. distrib rights.
Saying it again: the two Che films — The Argentine and Guerilla — have to be released in some limited but highly visible and vigorous way by someone in the fall or the holiday season so they can have their shot at awards season. And as sad a comment as this may be about American viewing appetites, they probably have to go straight to HBO right after this as this seems like the only viable option. The films will be be seen by many millions of viewers this way. Whereas in theatres alone, let’s face it, the customer count would probably be in the hundreds of thousands, if that.
Travel outside of educated blue territory and it’s a cultural wasteland out there. The WALL*E tele-tubbies will allmost certainly flip the channel if Che turns up their personal video screen.

I arrived at the AT&T store at Beverly and La Cienega at 7:45 am, looking for that iPhone 3G, presuming the crowds might not be as heavy as they were last summer. Wrong — I was either the 112th or 113th person in line. At about 7:50 a shlubby-looking AT&T guy with a black 3G T-shirt came out to explain they only had 110 phones, so 35 or 40 of us might have to come back tomorrow when new phones will arrive. But…you know, we could stick around regardless and hope for the best.

AT&T store as Beverly and La Cienega — 7.11.08, 8:20 am.

Right away my forehead was dark and furrowed. All these weeks and weeks of prep and advance hype and all the WeHo AT&T store guys ordered (or all the Apple guys were able to ship) was a lousy 110 units? For a major West Hollywood location that services almost nothing but dinks (double income no kids) and yuppies?
Fine, I said to the guy, but of the 110 phones you have how many are 8 gig (selling for $200) and how many are 16 gig ($300)? “We’re working on that,” he said, grinning slightly. “You’re working on it?,” I asked. “You don’t know what you have in your own inventory?” His smile tightened. “We’re finding that out now,” he said.
I then suggested the obvious to the guy, which would be to go down the line with a clipboard and ask each person if they intend to purchase only the 8 gig or only the 16 gig, or if they’re determined to buy one or the other no matter what. That way the store guys could calculate more accurately how many customers they can service, and then they could tell those customers with a low likelihood of purchase they can…whatever, scoot home and come back later.
On the other hand I understood where the smiling T-shirt guy was coming from. It takes focus and concentration to ask questions and write down figures, and he was dealing with enough aggravation as it was. If you’ve ever tried to hire people for a relatively low-paying job (as I have), you learn soon enough that 80% or 90% of the applicants are dumb as fenceposts or have sluggish attitudes or both. It’s very hard to find someone who might be competent, much less someone who might be exceptional.

7.11.08, 8:17 am.

Here’s a report on the initial sales in Japan, Europe and New York by Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer.

Can’t say I much care for the girly song playing over Matt Harding‘s “Dancing” video. And the vigor of his dancing argues on some level with the Pillsbury doughboy bod. The 31 year-old is well on his way to being a major moose by the time he’s 40. Over four million viewers have seen Harding’s four and 1/2 minute video, which has been running since…what, early June? Charles McGrath‘s 7.8 NY. Times article may have been the first MSM report.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I finally got my hands on the Inglorious Bastards script earlier this afternoon. Two separate PDFs. A little humiliating to be the last one on the block, but looking forward to the read.

Matteo Garrone‘s Gomorrah, an Italian-mafia crime film, was perhaps the best 2008 Cannes Film Festival selection that I didn’t see. (Of course, not having seen it I can’t say this absolutely, but everyone spoke of it very highly.) IFC will distribute in this country. It’ll probably play Toronto and then open in late September or October. Here’s a 7.9 N.Y. Times story by Elizabetta Povoledo that discusses Gomorrah and another big Italian title, Il Divo.

But what’s this odd-looking photo that ran with the Times piece? It looks like the shooter on the scooter is using an anti-gravitational levitation weapon that stuns the victim and causes him to float two or three feet above the ground. Of all the photos and frame captures, someone selected a still that almost suggests some kind of dark comedy or sci-fi piece? I’m not saying it fits either bill, but it certainly flirts.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in mid to late June has Barack Obama leading John McCain nationally 48 to 40. Obama is faring better with under-50 voters than John Kerry was at this point four years ago; is still weak with over-65s. About 30% of former Clinton supporters are resistant to Obama (i.e., PUMAs). A steady and dependable 12% of voters still insists on believing Obama is a Muslim with ulterior motives. A third of registered voters say they are undecided or may change their minds. But two new Zogby International polls have Obama leading McCain in the must-win states of Pennsylvania by 10 points and in Michigan by 14 points. So things are looking okay or at least decent for the most part. But don’t get cocky.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2oth Century Fox, 7.25) is, I feel, a fairly bad title. I would prefer a title like, say, Believer: X-Files 2. A title should always convey something you understand without having to think it through. What does I Want to Believe mean? In the existence of aliens? What does wanting have to do with it? Either the obtainable facts support their existence or they don’t.

Just as I was sorting all this out, a non-journalist in the loop sent me an e-mail calling it “this year’s Star Trek: Nemesis.” Jeez, I can’t even remember if I’ve seen that film. Released six years ago, directed by Stuart Baird. “No real scope or excitement…feels like an series episode projected onto a big screen,” he then said. Well, naturally one might think that, given the TV origins and Chris Carter directing. But what’s “scope” these days and what’s “tube fare”? I’m not sure the definitions have remained static.
Anything positive to say? Yes, the guy said — the DVD release “is where the real revenue lies.” Two more plus factors: “It didn’t cost much and the stars — David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson — weren’t as expensive this time out.”

Gala Presentations at the Toronto Film Festival will include Secret Life of Bees (dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood, Fox Searchlight) with Dakota Fanning, Hilarie Burton, Paul Bettany, Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo and Alicia Keys; The Duchess (dir: Saul Dibb, United Kingdom) with Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, DominicCooper, Hayley Atwell and Charlotte Rampling.
Special Presentations will include Religulous (dir: Larry Charles, USA), the Bill Maher anti-religion doc; Every Little Step (dir: James Stern, Adam Del Deo, USA), a doc about the creating of A Chorus Line; Ghost Town (dir: David Koepp, USA) with Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni; Happy-Go-Lucky (dir: Mike Leigh, United Kingdom) ; RocknRolla (dir: Guy Ritchie) with Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Chris Bridges, Jeremy Piven and Idris Elba; and Waltz with Bashir (dir: Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany), the celebrated animated film.

Eddie Murphy‘s Meet Dave (20th Century Fox, 7.11), a sometimes bad, often mediocre but occasionally funny family comedy about an alien visiting New York City and causing trouble, screened last night at the Westside Pavillion.

Don’t trust this Meet Dave photo as it misrepresents the size of the little guys, who are actually about one-fifth the size of the mini-Murphy shown here.

The audience was packed with Murphy fans (descriptions shouldn’t be necessary) and included very few journalists. I went expecting something dreadful and came away…how to best put this? I was glad when it ended but I wasn’t angry. It made me laugh a few times. It’s a second-rate kids movie but at least it’s not offensively “off.” Well, it is that here and there. But the people around me seemed okay with it. They knew it was crap but they were grateful (or at least content) that it had some funny stuff popping through from time to time.
Murphy plays an alien robot who slams into earth — New York’s Liberty Island, right next to the statue — in order to retrieve a baseball-sized space meteor that has crashed into the Manhattan area a few hours earlier. (Or was it a few days earlier?) I never understood or gave a shit why the mini-meteor was important to retrieve. No one in the theatre did either, trust me. They were just vegging out, munching away, sitting there like zombies…whatever.
Murphy’s robot is controlled by a crew of tiny Star Trek-styled leprechauns living inside his head and body cavity. Yeah, that’s right — in the same way the fellow trying to seduce Erin Fleming in Woody Allen‘s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex was run by a team of tiny guys controlling various parts of his body and brain (Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds among them).

Meet Dave tries to tell two stories at once — the first about the Murphy robot’s interactions with a young widow (Elizabeth Banks) and her son (Austyn Myers) and a pair of Manhattan cops (one played by Scott Caan), and the second about a kind of emotional revolution among the leprechaun crew. In this realm Murphy plays a second role as a one-inch-tall Captain Kirk figure, with Ed Helms playing his second-in-command who’s basically feels that love and dancing and kicking back are bad for the mission.
The leprechauns’ command center has been deliberately designed to look like the set of a ’60s-era space-travel TV series, which, I guess, is director Brian Robbins‘ way of saying to the audience, “You can relax… we’re just goofing off here.”
My point is that some of the full-sized-Murphy-robot sequences aren’t half bad and are even genuinely funny here and there, but the leprechaun stuff mainly gets in the way. It was a bad idea to try and make the stories interweave and feed off each other in a way that mutually benefits. Because they mainly fight with each other.
The only sequence in which the leprechaun story works nicely with the robot tale is when a gay crew member teaches the Murphy robot to dance like John Travolta while he and Banks are on a dance floor in a Manhattan club.
If I had a couple of kids under 12, I would take them this weekend to Meet Dave and nobody would be the worse for it. I might even take a 13 or 14 year-old. But it’s a throwaway movie that doesn’t work, and Murphy, as everyone seems to agree, is in serious career trouble. He needs to do stand-up again, hit the clubs, get his groove back. He didn’t even show up for the Meet Dave premiere last Tuesday night. What kind of asshole move was that?

MGM production chief Mary Parent has “assembled [a] production team” to make a “new installment” — i.e., not a remake — of John Milius‘s Red Dawn, it was officially announced today in an e-mailed MGM press release. Horror writer Carl Ellsworth will pen a script based on a story by Jeremy Passmore. A.D. and stunt man Dan Bradley has been signed to direct. (A stunt guy?) The producers will be Contrafilm’s Tripp Vinson and Beau Flynn.

In other words, Parent is looking to push out a B-level popcorn actioner.
The 1984 original was about teenagers defending their homeland from invading Russian troops.The press release makes no mention of which country the invading army might be from this time, but since Red Dawn was a ground-level political fantasy and Islamic fundamentalists are the only decent villains around these days, it’s probably safe to assume Ellsworth and Passmore’s story will be using Middle Eastern baddies of some sort.
If so, that would mean Parent’s new Red Dawn will be a John McCain wet dream movie aimed at attracting Barack Obama‘s “bitter” brigade — under-educated, red-state-residing, work-boot-wearing, gun-clinging, etc.
Another story option is that the invaders are space aliens, but of course that would invalidate Parent’s statement that the film will be a “new installment” of the Milius film.
In acknowledgement of last July’s double-disc DVD of Milius’s classic, I wrote the following on 7.26.07: “Ruthless, ogre-ish, heavily-armed invaders descend from the sky, take over the reins of government, and before you know it rebel groups are forming into grass-roots militias, fighting back like proud guerillas and asserting their nativist rights — this is our country! Death to the invaders! Death before submission!
“Does this like, uhm…remind anyone of anything?
“This double-disc DVD of John Milius’ Red Dawn hit stores on 7.17. Do you think the MGM/UA Home Video guys had any ideas about present-day parallels, or were they just after some 20th anniversary bucks? I once asked Milius himself about the Iraqi rebellion angle — he didn’t bite, but he didn’t strenuously argue it either.”
Nobody does myopia like Americans. I’m including American filmmakers in this equation.

Overlooked in last Sunday’s Variety story by Nick Holdsworth about Robert De Niro‘s comments in front of a Karlovy Vary Film Festival audience is a comment he made about wanting to make two more Good Shepherd films. For the tube maybe. Certainly for theatrical. The want-to-see would be close to nil. De Niro is just “talking,” of course, but it gives you an idea of how off-on-their-own-cloud some hyphenates and former movie stars can be.
De Niro said he “would like to make one [sequel] bringing the action forward from 1961 to 1989, the other following its hero, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), up to the present day,” Holdsworth wrote.
Part One, in other words, would end with the collapse of Communism in the Soviet satellite countries in eastern Europe. It would of course diverge from history in that James Jesus Angleton, the legendary CIA figure whom the Wilson character is largely based upon, died in 1987.
Part Two would presumably concern itself with Saddam Hussein, the ’91 Gulf war, Islamic fundamentalism, the ’93 World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, bogus WMDs, the March ’03 invasion of Iraq and so on.
De Niro said that “although he is not working on research for the concluding parts of the hoped-for trilogy, he said [that] being in central Europe offered a good opportunity to begin thinking about the material. √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúI had not been planning to do research on that while here, but it is a good idea,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù De Niro said.