Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is reporting that Kung Fu Panda is the weekend’s #1 ass-kicker, having grabbed an estimated $17.75 million on Friday with a likely $55 million haul by Sunday night. Adam Sandler‘s You Don’t Mess With The Zohan earned about $13.25 million and is looking at an estimated weekend take-down of $36.25 million. Sex and The City: The Abomination and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will apparently be duking it out for third place.

A tribute to the late Sydney Pollack by Bill Horberg, who worked for him a long time at Mirage, on Anne Thompson‘s site. And here, finally, are those Husbands and Wives clips I was looking for before.

A seemingly new site for The Dark Knight.

Looking to explain coming editorial staff cuts at the L.A. Times, Tribune Co. chief operating officer Randy Michaels yesterday told Variety‘s Cynthia Littleton that “the average journalist in Hartford or Baltimore does over 300 pages a year. [And we have found that] you can eliminate a fair number of people while [not] eliminating very much content. We think we have a way to right-size the papers and significantly reduce our costs.”
I wonder what the average output is for internet columnists? You probably can’t measure it in “pages” (well, maybe) but I’ll bet it beats “over 300 pages a year” all to hell.

“People talk about this grand, epic quality in [David] Lean‘s films, but I love them because they are pure. Clean, simple — even minimalist. He never uses anything he doesn’t need, and, like the match and the sunrise, it encapsulates more than a million words.

“No one else comes close, but it gives me something to aspire to.” — Atonement director Joe Wright writing yesterday (6.5) in the Times Online on the occasion of a British Film Institute tribute.

I wish I could think of something to add to the Clint Eastwood-Spike Lee argument. I do at all. I don’t see why there’s a debate at all because (and I got this straight from my old man, an ex-Marine who fought at Iwo Jima) there were no black solders doing any early-wave fighting during that horrific encounter, so Lee is wrong.
My beef with Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers has never been addressed or answered, to wit: why were the grunts who went for a swim at the finale wearing white underwear when every G.I. in the Pacific theatre wore skivvies, socks and T-shirts colored olive drab?

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up…Barack Obama. He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’llhave to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù — Bob Dylan speaking to Times Online‘s Alan Jackson in a 6.6 interview piece.
This is what visionary poet-gods do when they get older. They come down to earth and say sensible things and stand on the side of positive upheavals. Which is fine. Of course, the Dylan of Legend — the one who held mountains in the palm of his hands — would have never endorsed anyone. Not out of apathy or disdain, but because he had bigger fish to fry. Politicians — the brave ones — endorsed him.

The fact that TV commentators are genuinely wondering if Hillary Clinton will say the right things tomorrow (and in the right way) speaks volumes. Her reputation for egocentric ungraciousness is now the stuff of legend.

Clint Eastwood did a little drop-by last night in front of a packed house at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre. The visit followed a screening of Michael Henry Wilson‘s Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film, a tribute doc about aspects of Eastwood’s life and career.

Following last night’s Clint Eastwood visit to Santa Monica’s Aero theatre — Thursday, 6.5.08, 9:40 pm

Wilson’s film has exactly one talking head — Eastwood. The descriptive terms are “intimate,” “straight,” “unfettered” and “revealing.” The other Eastwood doc, Bruce Ricker and Dave Kehr‘s Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, is more comprehensive, but Wilson’s doc, being less of a show and less slick, gives you a quieter, gentler appreciation of the man within.
Clint was his usual low-key, reflective, straight-dopey self during the discussion. He shared the small stage with Wlson and L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas, who moderated. Foundas’s questions were intelligent but a little too inside-baseball. Ditto the audience questions, which were also a little suck-uppy. Nobody asked about the Spike Lee brouhaha. Nobody asked about Gran Torino. Nobody asked whether Clint likes McCain or Obama. (The former, I’m guessing.)
When I arrived around 7:15 pm and given my ticket, I was told that the Aero management didn’t want me to ask “any journalist questions.” What’s that supposed to mean? I asked. I’m supposed to…what, ask only fanboy kiss-ass questions? It turned out to be a moot discussion because Foundas never picked me. I was sitting about halfway back on the left side.
There was also a rule about no photos, which I respected.

Here I am finally running a piece about Surfwise and its director, Doug Pray, whom I interviewed on the phone over a month ago. My apologies to Doug and the PMK/HBH publicist who worked with me on this. Here’s our chat, at least. All vital information lies within.

The Paskowitz clan

It’s not that I didn’t like the film. Surfwise, a doc, is a wild and surprising thing, really. A portrait of a large family (dad, mom and nine kids) who lived as surf vagabonds in the ’70s and ’80s, roaming around in a small-sized camper, and especially about what a dictator-prick the father of the brood — Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz — turned out to be.
And yet he raised his children to be strong and aware and resourceful; not one turned out “badly.” And yet they all clearly have issues with the guy. And Doc, now in his mid ’80s and doing pretty well health-wise, is shown as still feisty, still headstrong, and not all that concerned with his children’s opinions of him. Father knows best.
What matters in the end is that Surfwise starts out as one thing — something light and good natured and even Brady Bunch-y at times — and then gradually veers into the darker imagnings of Eugene O’Neil.

A doctor who eventually got fed up with the straight and narrow, Paskowitz is first portrayed as an admirable rebel. Pray shows us how Doc, his wife Juliette, and their nine kids spent nearly 20 years driving around the U.S., driving from beach to beach and living hand to mouth. No formal education for the kids — they were camper-schooled. Doc eventually started a successful surfing school in Orange County. But his tyrannical purist ways finally pushed the kids away and into their own lives and into apartments and homes with actual plumbing.
By the time Pray began working on Surfwise in ’04, many or most of the kids haven’t seen the old man in ten years.
One thing that inspired them to leave was Doc and Juliette’s insistence of having sex every night inside the camper, loudly, whether their kids were asleep or not. Good God.
I’ve just realized, I think, why I hesitated writing about Surfwise. It’s because Doc reminds me in a very roundabout way of my own father, who inspired me to emotionally “leave home” at a very early age because of his brusque and aloof manner. A dark cloud hung over him night and day. He was a good dad — took care of three kids, paid the bills, kept a roof over our heads, paid for everyone’s education — and a bright and witty fellow, but a negative influence in almost every other way.

My father was like Doc, I believe, because he lived his life the way he wanted to (which included drinking until he went into AA in the mid ’70s), and because his manner and emotional attitude was finally alienating. He never hit anyone (except for me, once) or caused a scene or acted cruelly in any blatant way. He was and is a decent and well-behaved man, but a good portion of my life has been guided by a strong wish not to be resemble him in any way.
Except for the part about being a writer, that is. My dad began in journalism, but became a successful advertising copywriter and account executive.
Apologies to Doug and Magnolia Films for my personal stuff getting in the way of Surfwise ink. Update: Apologies for the bad grammar and syntax that I didn’t correct until Friday, 6.6.