Collider‘s Steve Weintraub is, it seems, justifiably fumed over the continuing refusal of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter to credit online entertainment sites when one of the latter has broken a story.
Example #1: On 5.24.07, Weintraub posted a scoop about Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio agreeing to write an upcoming Lone Ranger movie. Ten months later — on 3.27.08 — the Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit and Carl DiOrio wrote a story which pretty much repeated Weintraub’s story.
Example #2: Two days ago (5.14), Weintraub says, Latino Review posted a story that broke the news of Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air project. At 9 pm the same day, Variety‘s Michael Fleming and Tatiana Siegel posted the same story with no mention of Latino Review. (Unfortunately, Latino Review didn’t post an exact time when its story went up.)

Walter Salles‘ Linha de Passe “is very subdued and intimate,” says a buyer who caught it this morning. (Unlke myself.) “Closer to Central Station then Motorcycle Diaries, it’s the tale of four brothers and their pregnant single-mother in the poor neighborhoods of Sao Paulo, with each family member dealing with some sort of problem throughout the film.
“It lacks a bit of direction and focus here and there. My favorite brother has to be the soccer prodigy who desperately tries to make it into a semi-professional team. There’s also an interesting cynical look between the evangelical faith — one of the brothers in a born-againer — and how this is losing its hold amid the surrounding madness that is overtaking the world.
“My bet is someone like IFC, Roadside Attractions or even Sony Pictures Classics could give it a small stateside release. Now, let’s hope Walter decides to finally make On The Road.”

“For all the warnings of history, the makers of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will stage their film’s world premiere at the festival on the French Riviera tomorrow night,” writes Times Online correspondent Dalya Alberge. “The film, which opens in the setting of 1957 at the height of the Cold War, is arguably the most anticipated movie release of 2008. Such is the interest that the trailer was seen more than 200 million times in its first week of release on the internet.

{[But] the last time a studio dared to premiere a major blockbuster in this sanctum of high-brow cinema, it was savaged. The actors and director of The Da Vinci Code barely escaped with their lives.”
Except The DaVinci Code made lots of money after that. The ’06 Cannes beat-down was embarassing, sure, but the general public didn’t care. Hundreds and hundreds of millions were spent on DaVinci Code admissions. And nobody in ticket-buying land will give a damn if Cannes critics whack Indy 4. At all. Obviously Paramount marketers know this, and that’s why they’re here. The Cannes spotlight will boost the film’s European, Eastern European, Russian, Asian, African and South American earnings. And that’s what matters.

Bust ’em, sic ’em….slap ’em down.

I’ll be attending press conferences for Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona at 2:30 pm and James Toback‘s Tyson at 4 pm. I’m trying to bang out a Tyson piece as we speak. There’s an Indiana Jones party starting at 5:30 pm (I saw George Lucas the other night at the Kung Fu Panda party.) There’s a party being thrown by the Turkish ministry starting at 9 pm — presumably an opportunity to speak with Three Monkeys director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I was told last week I might get into the Vanity Fair party at the Hotel du Cap, but that’s starting to look dicey.
There’s also Pablo Larrain‘s Tony Manero, which is having a Director’s Fortnight showing at 10 pm this evening. I missed the 8:30 am screening of Walter Salles‘ Linha de Passe. I don’t have to make journalistic history every day. I can just attend a few things and shufle around and write what I write when I get to it.

Four days since I’ve arrived — today begins my fifth day without a change of fresh clothes — and Air France is still hanging onto my little black suitcase. It was driven from Paris to Nice on a truck late Wednesday night, I was told, but the driver hasn’t shown up and Air France is having trouble locating him. The bag sure as shit hasn’t been dropped off at the Majestic — I know that much.
Maybe the driver stopped for a couple of drinks and he needed time to sleep it off. Maybe he met a hot lady at a truck stop. Maybe he’s seriously distraught over a recent divorce or financial loss and decided to drive the truck off a cliff.
The upside is that Air France has an alleged policy about compensating passengers who’ve been without their luggage for over 48 hours. We’ll see how that one goes. I wonder if they’ll just say “okay,” or will I have to go into the whole song and dance about how they’ve screwed me financially, cost me time and extra money (I bought a pair of pants) and so on?

Postal director Uwe Boll, angry at journalists for not paying attention to the fact that his film Postal is opening on very few screens as well as Boll’s suggested reason for this (i.e., political censorship), has written the following:
“You are all not getting that I’m the guy who made it against the big Hollywood system and you are all busy trying to destroy me and finish me up, and [from this] you’ve won what? The attention of the studios, Michael Bay…?? If you damage me you feel closer to Hollywood? What is your game plan?
“If you want [to see] only movies like Jumper, Speed Racer, What Happens in Vegas, then keep going and your dreams will be fullfilled. Postal makes some very important points, but you don’t wanna see that. That Bush used 9.11 to start a war against a country what had nothing to do with Bin Laden, etc., but none of this matters because you’re all busy thinking that Indiana Jones or Narnia are important movies.
“In reality real they are empty shells of an industry what wants to make money and what wants to keep you looking “escape movies” with nothing in it. in between they are putting some controversial movies to show that they can do also important movies, but ones that are not really critica. They only supporting the system and not showing the “big picture,” which Postal does. It nails the absurd situation with all the stupid religions, races and nations we are living [among].
“Postal is not accepting bullshit politics. Postal has not the opinion that Bush made mistakes — it has the opinion that it is a scandal that Bush is not in jail. What’s happened in America over the last seven years is the biggest joke since Columbus stepped on that land.”

I was invited to last night’s party for James Toback‘s Tyson doc. This morning’s, I should say, as it wasn’t expected to begin until after midnight. “Everyone will be there by 12:30,” a publicist told me. The event was at the Palm Beach Casino, which is way out on the eastern side of the bay. I arrived a few minutes after midnight and stayed until just before 1 am. I saw no Tyson people, no friendly faces…nothing.

Les goons

All I did was talk fruitlessly to four or five door apes who didn’t give a damn about my printed invitation. They waved in their friends (lizardy Euro-clubber types) and gave me the old “if you want to get in, wait patiently and bow down to our gangster power and we might show benevolence” routine. Sure thing. The night air was cool and invigorating as I walked home. I had a nice warm Panini sandwich and a bottle of water, and got to bed just before 2 am.

The only parts of Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Weinstein Co., 8.29) that feel truly alive and crackling are the Spanish-language scenes between Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. These two, portraying a pair of tempestuous, self-obsessed painters whose marriage has fallen apart due to an overload of heat and impulse and Spanish vinegar, are dynamite together. They create spark showers when they rage and taunt and rekindle their mutual hunger and disharmony. Cruz, especially, is electricity itself. When she loses her temper, it’s sheer bliss.

Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruiz, Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen during filming of Vicky Crhistina Barcelona.

Unfortunately, there are many more scenes of them speaking Allen’s English- language dialogue, and that’s a significant problem. Not only for Bardem and Cruz but for costars Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall (the Christina and Vicky of the title) and secondary players Chris Messina, Patricia Clarkson and Kevin Dunn. I never thought I’d see the day when one of the great comedy writers of the 20th Century would write unintentional howlers, but this happens every so often in VCB, and I was not happy to witness this.
An even bigger problem is a persistent, obnoxious and thoroughly unwanted narration track that makes this story of overlapping, off-and-on love affairs in present-day Barcelona so on-the-nose and over-explained that I was feeling actively hostile less than 15 minutes in. Until Javier and Penelope went into their crazy-love routine, that is, and then everything was well again. In brief spurts.
There were boos in the Salle Debussy as the closing credits began to unspool. I don’t know who was doing the booing, but I know I heard at least five or six guys letting go.

I haven’t the time to write any kind of comprehensive review of this sometimes unintentionally comedic, frequently cliche-ridden parody of a Woody Allen film, but it dawned on me early on that it plays exactly like a Ben Stiller Show parody of a typical Allen effort. Allen has been accused of parodying himself for years, but now he’s really done it. And it pains me to say this. No one filmmaker has given me greater pleasure for a longer period of time than Allen. I worship the guy, but VCB is agony to sit through at times. Some of it is fine or passable. You could call it a light romp and let it go at that. But when it goes off the rails…my God!
If it turns out that Allen was in fact spoofing himself (and thereby having us off) by mocking the kind of anguished, sometimes very funny, sometimes darkly subversive relationship movie he’s been known for since the release of Manhattan nearly 30 years ago, then I will be hugely impressed.
But I seriously doubt if Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a jape. I think he made it with the same earnest spirit and intent that have fueled all his films. This is another story of artist- and intellectual-class characters falling in and out of affairs, sorting things out as they stroll through art galleries and other picturesque points of interest, betraying each other, acting badly (and sometimes hilariously), serving each other great meals and good wine and bringing out the hurt, lust and confusion.

Again, if only Allen had decided to make a Javier-and-Penelope movie in Spanish, and just gotten rid of the whole American-girls-visiting-Barcelona-and-learning- about-the-complexities-of-adult-love angle, he might have had something good and possibly great. A critic friend said on the way out that he believes Bardem and Cruz made up a lot of (if not all of) their inflamed Spanish-language dialogue. It’s a sensible theory. Their back-and-forth is much sharper, explosive and more flowing than the English-language dialogue, so go figure.
During their fighting scenes Bardem repeatedly tells Cruz to speak in English. He does so out of consideration for the English-speaking Johansson, who, having become Bardem’s live-in lover, is a constant witness. By my count he says this line to Cruz at least 9 or 10 times. Why it’s repeated so often is mystifying. Every time he said this, of course, I was saying to myself, “No, no…keep it in Spanish!”
Oh, and the much-touted make-out scene between Johansson and Cruz, shot in a red-tinted dark rooom, is, at best, diverting. It’s just a slow kiss or two and a slight embrace. It certainly doesn’t build into anything. Allen cuts away just as it gets going.
It also seems strange that Allen has imposed a no-naked-breast-shot rule upon Vicky Cristina Barcelona. He’s telling a story that’s swimming in mad erotic currents, and yet he’s clearly decided against boob exposure — not even a casual random glimpse. It’s obviously unnatural and very un-European. Presumably this was about avoiding an R rating, but the oddly prudish vibe works against the story and the general mood, so why even pick up the brush if you’re afraid to paint a nipple?