Two or three days ago I passed along that comment about Sean Penn being “so great” in Gus Van Sant‘s Milk (i.e., from an actor-director friend with reliable early-buzz connections),and thereafter concluded that Milk could be regarded, if you’re into mindless spitballing, as the #2 contender for the ’08 Best Picture Oscar, right behind David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The only thing that scares me about Milk is Van Sant himself, which is to say my uncertainty about who he is or wants to be right now. The c.w. is that there have been three significant Van Sant phases thus far — (a) the assured street-poet chapter that included Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For and Good Will Hunting, (b) the misguided, bordering-on-deranged ’98 to ’00 period when he made the Hitchcock-aping Psycho and the repulsive Finding Forrester, which led to a kind of spiritual withdrawal-or-collapse, and (c) the verite rebirth period, lasting five years so far, consisting of raw, deconstructed extended-take art films — Gerry, Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park.
If Van Sant who made Drugstore Cowboy is making Milk, terrific. If a blend of that Van Sant along with the guy who made Elephant is directing Milk, beautiful. But if the Finding Forrester Van Sant is anywhere near the Milk set, watch out.

Three or four recollections about Charlton Heston, who passed this evening at age 84 after grappling with Alzheimer’s Disease for the last six years or so. In such a condition, departure for realms beyond is not the worst option.

(1) I saw Heston speak at a black-tie dinner at the Beverly Wilshire maybe nine or ten years ago. He didn’t carry a cane but he could barely walk — he was just shuffling along. I considered him a kind of enemy at that point because of his support of the NRA but my heart went out when I saw what lousy shape his legs were in. That brawny muscular guy in the loincloth who played oar-rower #41 in Ben-Hur had become a frail old coot in a toupee. What a rotten thing it is to suffer the infirmities of age.
(2) His best screen moment happened in the last act of The Big Country, when his ranch-hand character in The Big Country decides to abandon a short-lived ethical mutiny against his ruthless employer, played by Charles Bickford, and follow him into Blanco Canyon and an almost-certain gun battle to the death. When the rest of the hands who had briefly sided with Heston catch up and join them, Heston looks at Bickford with utter revulsion, in part because he knows he can’t defeat him but mainly because he’s come to hate himself.
(3) The best story he ever told was when Ben-Hur director William Wyler spoke to him in his dressing room after the first or second day of shooting and said, “Chuck, I’ve thought about your performance over the last couple of days and you’re going to have to be better.” Sure, Willie, said Heston — just tell me what you want, what to do. “I can’t say exactly because I don’t know,” said Wyler. “I just know you have to be better.” And then Wyler said “see ya” and left the room. Heston said something about pouring himself one or two stiff ones and taking a long walk.

(4) Heston should have shown more humanity about gun laws in the wake of the Colombine shootings. He and the NRA should have thought more carefully about gun users being tested for a license, and about the proliferation of automatic weapons. If there was such a thing as answering for your sins at the gates of paradise, right about now St. Peter would definitely be asking Heston to join him on a nearby park bench and explain the gun thing.

In my very limited readings and discussions about David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is certainly, I’ve begun to tell myself, a formidable contender for the ’08 Best Picture Oscar, it never hit me that Eric Roth‘s original March 2005 script is 205 pages long. I’m sure it’s been compressed and pruned down, like any other script that goes before the cameras, but it does seem as if the final film, which comes out 12.19, has a chance of being on the longish side.

“The decision to go to war should be a simple decision. It should be based on whether or not a President is willing to send his own son to war. If he isn’t, how can he send the sons of others?” — former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, speaking on CNN within the last 24 hours. The thinking here is too simplistic to be called truly wise or perceptive, but I respect it. You can’t be too thread-county in your moral-political evaluations. You have to be willing to listen to Jesse Ventura-type guys, and give them their just due.

It is unattractive for any writer to use the word “I” with any constancy, not to mention unwise and unpersuasive. But this 4.6 N.Y. Times article by Matt Richtel is unmistakably and unavoidably the life of yours truly. Reading it ten minutes ago was the heaviest Roberta Flack “Killing Me Softly” moment I’ve experienced in a very long while.

4.5.08, 6:55 pm

“A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
“it is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.
“Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
“Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
“Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the internet.
“To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
“The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.
“‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.’
“‘This is not sustainable,’ he said.
Even as I read this, I am thinking about the four or five stories that I’ve outlined but haven’t yet written as part of today’s quota. There is no release from this because I can’t imagine not doing it. I feel I have to or else. I know if I don’t I’ll pay the price very soon. The trick is to get beyond feeling this way (the exhaustion and lethargy comes and goes like seasons or rainstorms or Jewish holidays) and flip it over and enjoy it like a pool or a hike or a weekend softball game. The Richtel piece, obviously, is sobering. How could it not be?
But no more sobering than reading statistics about cancer deaths when I was in my early 20s and smoking a pack a day. I did my first quit when I was 24 or 25. It was the first of at least ten attempts that happened on and off for the next 15 years. But I got there.

Every so often, sometimes inadvertently, movies comment about themselves. Sometimes amusingly, sometimes not. In George Miller‘s The Road Warrior, you’re expected to chuckle when the Humungous says after lots of high-velocity mayhem, “There’s been entirely too much violence.”

Keanu Reeves (center) in David Ayer’s Street Kings (Fox Searchlight, 4.11)

In Chapter 27 , the recently-released drama about the build-up to the killing of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman (Jared Leto), it’s hard not to smirk when Leto, speaking in a strongly actor-ish southern drawl, says he can’t stand movies in which actors seem to be showing off.
Another such moment happens in David Ayer‘s Street Kings (Fox Searchlight, 4.11) in which someone — Keanu Reeves or Forest Whitaker, I forget which — says, “Too many guys have been shot.” Which, from my perspective, was certainly one of the problems with the film, if not the problem. Few things irritate me more than a crime film with an excessive body count. It’s not an absolute law, but it tends to be true more often than not: the less gunshots a crime thriller has, the better it tends to be.
I don’t know for a fact that Street King‘s co-screenwriter James Ellroy has problems with it also, but telling L.A. Times staffer Scott Timberg, in a 4.6 article about his relationship with Hollywood, that he wouldn’t discuss it certainly indicates a reservation or two. Ellroy shares screenplay credit with Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that Ellroy isn’t much for accomodating himself to the views and visions of others.
There may be several crime thrillers that have worked just fine with gunshots galore, but I can’t think of any right now. Back in the ’70s and ’80s the prevailing rule was that any crime thriller with a big car chase was definitely suspect, and quite possibly bad. (Because a film looking to ape the legendary car chases in Bullitt and The French Connection always seemed to be doing just that.) Too much burned rubber = a lack of style and imagination.
One more thing: when Forest Whitaker is a good film, like The Crying Game or The Last King of Scotland or The Great Debaters, he’s a champ and a prince. But when he’s in a bad or problematic one, like Street Kings or Vantage Point or Species, he seems to almost make it somehow worse.
Maybe it’s because Whitaker is such a committed whole-hog type who’s intensely into whatever he’s acting. Put him in a crummy film and he always seems to be saying to the viewer, “Man, I’m not gonna rest or hold back until you understand — completely, totally, without a doubt — that this movie I’m acting in right now is pretty damn awful. I’m not gonna leave you alone about this. I’m gonna hammer and hammer and make it hurt. You will be in pain by the time I’m finished with you.”

An “amazing gathering of film luminaries” are attending a weekend of mourning in and around London for the late director Anthony Minghella. A three-hour Catholic service was held this afternoon St. Thomas More church in Swiss Cottage, a suburb of London. Elegant and heartfelt words were spoken about Minghella by Talented Mr. Ripley costars Matt Damon and Jude Law, English Patient author Michael Ondaatje and costar Juliette Binoche, and Minghella’s producing colleague Harvey Weinstein (who also delivered a message on behalf of the ailing Sydney Pollack, who was Minghella’s producing partner).
Dominic Minghella (the director’s brother), Cold Mountain costar Renee Zellweger and Truly Madly Deeply costars Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson also attended. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, the present and former Prime Minister of the UK, were there as well. Ditto widow Carolyn Minghella, daughter Hannah Minghella, an exec at Sony, and son Max Minghella, an actor.
Also attending was Richard Curtis, who recently collaborated with Minghella on the screenplay of The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which was partly shot in Botswana. Bishop Trevor Mwamba, an Anglican bishop from Botswana who met Minghella during the shooting of Detective, spoke at length, and cathartically. John Seale, who shot English Patient and Ripley, was there. Ditto producer Saul Zaentz, editor-producer Walter Murch (who came from Argentina, where he’s working with Francis Coppola on Tetro), and Working Title honchos Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.
There was a big Minghella dinner party last night at the Groucho Club, a ilm-industry watering hole on Dean Street in Soho. Harvey Weinstein is giving a dinner as we speak at Lucio’s restaurant.

In its second weekend, Robert Luketic‘s 21 has dropped only 30% and will be the weekend’s #1 film. It’s expected to do roughly $16,634,000 by Sunday night.
Tracking had indicated George Clooney‘s Leatherheads, which opened nationwide yesterday, would earn something in the $15 to $20 million range, but it will only make $13,845,000 for the weekend. Something happened out there, enthusiasm didn’t build, people had second thoughts or actually read reviews. (Time for the Saturday morning tut-tutters to write in and say if I knew how to read tracking I would have known all along that Leatherheads was a shortfaller waiting to happen.)
Nim’s Island, a family film that opened yesterday, will be the #3 attraction with roughly $12,500,000…decent. Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who is fourth with $7.5 million. The Ruins, which opened yesterday, is fifth with a projected $7.5 million, give or take. Superhero Movie! is off over 60% from last weekend’s debut with a projected $5.2 million. Drillbit Taylor is seventh with $3.5 million. Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns will end up with roughly $3.2 million by Sunday night. Shutter will be ninthg with $2.9 million and 10,000 B.C. will be tenth with $2.7 million, give or take.
On the limited opening front Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, playing on six screens, will take in about $81,000 total, or $13,000 a print. And Martin Scorsese‘s brilliant Shine a Light, which I saw a second time last night at the Universal Citywalk IMAX, is only going to make about $1.3 million on roughly 350 screens, which translates to roughly $4000 a print. The IMAX theatre I saw it in last night was close to capacity. Go figure.

Yesterday a Variety story painted another portrait of 20-somethings who don’t want to know from film critics. Except this time it was columnist Anne Thompson, and she was basing her reading on first-hand experience as a part-time USC instructor. She described her film criticism students as “film-obsessed and hardly representative of their non-cinephile peers” but says they “can’t name a working critic other than Roger Ebert, and that’s thanks to his TV fame.

“They scan Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly, but they don’t know critics Peter Travers or Owen Gleiberman. They check out film rankings at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic and dip into some reviews, but they haven’t found a particular film critic they trust to steer them straight.
“These young film lovers are just as likely to look up old (yes, even b & w) movies for their Netflix queue as new ones. On the Internet, the long tail prevails.” She mentions pajiba.com called Trading Places an “under-appreciated gem”…what? A pretty good studio comedy, okay, but a gem?
“They admire the auteurs Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers, can parse Hitchcock’s Psycho with the best of them, and have studied Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. But they don’t read newspapers, and never will. Many of them don’t even frequent like-minded blogs that share their cinephilia.”
Really? I’ll be a guest at Charles Fleming‘s USC class on April 7th (along with James Rocchi). Before setting a date Fleming told me I’d “been asked for, by name, by the students.” He was applying the usual flattery, of course, but even if you cut the b.s. down by 50% what he said sounded moderately encouraging: “I ask the students every year, on the first night, where they get their entertainment reporting, and whom they admire,” he wrote. “Your name came up several times. There was delighted surprise when I said that I knew you and that you’d often come down to talk to my students.”
And yet a voice tells me that what Thompson is reporting is closer to the truth. “Students — and today’s youth auds in general — more often get their movie info straight from the studio marketing departments,” she writes. “These kids go to YouTube, Yahoo Movies and Apple to find trailers. As they surf the Web, bits of movie flotsam and visuals planted by the studios on MSN Movies or IGN or JoBlo eventually cross their eyeballs. But they also listen to their friends more than any authority figures, and distrust obvious studio hype.”
20 year-old USC film criticism student hitting on brunette classmate: “So do you like any, like, old black-and-white 1930s or 1940s films? Any comedies or…?”
Brunette: “Oh, totally. Well, you know…some. But it’s like, I mean, like….depending? I mean, I like, of all people, I really like…uhm, Jean Arthur? Because she’s, like, so, I don’t know, her personality is, like…kinda crazy but…you know, spirited? I saw this movie about guys flying airplanes in a jungle somewhere. I think it was, like, somewhere in South America? Venezuela or Columbia and she’s this singer who comes on a boat and meets these guys in a bar who fly the planes? They, like, deliver the mail and they’re, like, hitting on her, and then…wait a minute, what happens? Um, one of the guys gets into a plane and crashes it and Cary Grant — Cary Grant, oh…my….God! And he was, like, I read somewhere, gay? — anyway he gets, like, mad at her because the guy who crashed the plane wanted to get back to the bar so he could buy her another drink..?”
Thompson explains that “these kids’ boomer parents, average age 55 to 65, are the ones who still read movie critics and follow their guidance when there’s something for them to see.”

A just-posted teaser trailer for Fernando Meirelles‘ Blindness (Miramax, 9.19), which may screen next month at Cannes (according to one trade magazine report), appeared a few minutes ago.

Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo

Based on the Jose Saramago novel with a screenplay by Don McKellar, the futuristic drama costars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Alice Braga, Danny Glover and Gael García Bernal. Meirelles is of course known for having directed City of God and The Constant Gardener.
“When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine,” the company synopsis reads.

I’ve heard some credible-sounding information from a couple of solid guys about The Argentine and Guerilla, Steven Soderbergh‘s Cannes-bound Che Guevara films. And the situation, they’re telling me, is more or less as follows:

(1) The second of the two films, Guerilla, which deals with Guevara’s failed attempt to incite a revolution in Boliva in 1967, is pretty much done, largely, I gather, because principal photography was completed on this one before it was on The Argentine, which is about the triumphant Cuban revolution from ’56 to late ’58. (I’ve written the films’ producer Laura Bickford to clarify this and other matters.)
(2) Right now, I’m hearing, Soderbergh is jacked and sweating bullets in a Manhattan editing facility getting The Argentine into showable shape in time for Cannes. One guy says he’s been told by a Warner Bros. source that Soderbergh is determined to get the film[s] done in time for Cannes. Another guy told me he’s heard the chances of The Argentine being “ready-ready” are “less than 50%.” And yet Soderbergh, he adds, repeating what the Warner Bros. guy passed along, is said to be confident he can have The Argentine in some kind of decent shape by the mid-April deadline, or roughly ten days from now. Of course, he could always screen The Argentine as a not-quite-completed work in progress a la Apocalypse Now.
(3) It’s been deemed crucial in the view of various players, including Wild Bunch topper Vincent Maraval, the film’s Paris-based financier who’ll be selling the distribution rights to an as-yet-uncommitted U.S. distributor, that The Argentine and Guerilla should be shown in Cannes as a single unit consisting of two parts. Soderbergh has said he’d wants the films to come out in tandem or something close to the same time (i.e., maybe a couple of weeks or a month apart).

(4) It’s also very important to get The Argentine done for Cannes because it’s the more “up”-ish of the two…more exciting, more rousing. It’s about struggle and success. Well written as it is, Guerilla is pretty much about struggle and failure. Peter Buchman‘s Argentine script seemed complete on its own terms, but Guerilla, I thought, needed the Argentine counterweight.
(5) A potential buyer confides that “it’s a tough deal…looks like a tough deal. Two Spanish-language films, no dubbed English versions, gritty subject matter, possible rancor in some sectors of the U.S. — the right-wing Cubans in Miami, say — when the two films open.” The upside, he adds, is you have a likely Best Actor contender in Benicio del Toro‘s performance, and possibly other award-level attributes, including, obviously, the two pictures themselves for Best Picture.
“”All you have to do is sell it to all those kids who’ve hung that Che poster on their college bedroom wall,” he said.
Variety‘s John Hopewell reported from the Berlin Film Festival two months ago that Wild Bunch’s hottest draw — very possibly the most talked-about film at this year’s Berlin festival — was Soderbergh’s two-pic Che, an action bio of large artistic ambition. Screened in Soderbergh’s presence, 10 minutes of excerpts, mainly of first-part Argentine, had buyers talking bullishly about a work with the makings of a modern classic.

“Three U.S. buyers are circling Che, said Berlin reports. The number is most probably significantly higher than that, though Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval said [that] Wild Bunch was in no hurry to close a U.S. deal.”
The grapevine says the most likely U.S. buyer at this stage is Warner Independent. And no, Focus Features is not involved at this stage. A rumor got started along these lines a year or so ago, but I’ve been told Focus is not connected.
Hey, how about showing the two films as a gargantuan Lawrence of Arabia-styled two-parter with an intermission, running at least three or three and a half hours?