Average Joes don’t want to know from Leatherheads reviews — Thursday’s tracking suggests that George Clooney‘s period football comedy will do about $20 million this weekend — but if they did they’d be sullen. The Rotten Tomatoes creme de la creme has given it a lousy 33% positive and the non-elite has passed along a dispiriting 53% positive.
That said, it’s only fair to acknowledge that Leatherheads has a guy-buried-in- mud gag in the final act that’s pretty good. Even though I’ll bet Clooney stole it from a similar bit in Henry Hathaway‘s North to Alaska. During a big slapstick street fight at the end, Ernie Kovacs, playing a card-shark villain, gets thrown into a pond of quicksand-like mud and is half-submerged. Then a big wooden barrel rolls on top of him and buries him completely. Not that there’s anything wrong with theft. The best artists do it.
Like I said on 3.31, a comedy “without a serious foundation can feel too much like a jape, and so the mood humor in Leatherheads has a kind of ceiling. You want to give yourself over to it, but you can’t. The movie won’t let you. Because it only wants to make you feel good and spritzy, after a while it almost makes you feel a little bit bad. Even though it’s mostly ‘likable.’ A curious effect.”

The hearts of many Los Angeles-based, Hollywood-covering journalists were broken (mine included) this morning when a Michael Cieply N.Y. Times piece reported in today’s edition that Paramount had screened Ben Stiller‘s Tropic Thunder the night before last.

It takes me a while to process these things. I guess I succumbed to a kind of fog or numbness. An hour or so after I first read the article I found myself wandering the streets of West Hollywood, wondering who I was and what my life amounts to if I can’t get into an early-bird screening attended by “several hundred Hollywood agents, managers, publicists and reporters,” for Chrissake.
I called Paramount publicity to kvetch and was told I’m on the list for the next screening. Paramount is planning several, apparently.
Cieiply reported that Tom Cruise “brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools. The joke being that Cruise was essentially playing Viacom/Paramount honcho Sumner Redstone, who terminated Cruise’ s on-the-lot production deal in August ’06.
Ceiply adds a little rah-rah by declaring that Tropic Thunder is (a) a “raunchfest” and (b) is “shaping up as one of the studio√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s best prospects for the summer. Besides Cruise, it costars Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Nick Nolte.

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Jon Carroll pays a visit to a large dusty Quonset hut in an abandoned airfield some 15 miles east of San Bernardino — the former headquarters of the National Film Critics Training and Storage Facility (NAFCRIT). “Back when the demand for movie critics was high, NAFCRIT was turning them out by the score,” he notes. “There are a few old movie posters on the walls, all of them tattered. There’s also a desk, although it doesn’t appear to have been used for desklike purposes for some time.”

Another poll has detected a neck-and-neck situation in Pennsylvania following yesterday’s PPP survey that showed Barack Obama with a two- point lead over Hillary Clinton. A poll conducted on 4.2 by InsiderAdvantage/ Majority Opinion in Pennsylvania shows Clinton at 45% and Obama at 43% — the same situation given the usual margin of error. Clinton is ahead among whites by 49% to 40% — a fraction of her earlier lead — while Obama is ahead 56% to 29% among African-American voters. Clinton is ahead 49% to 38% among women; Obama edges Clinton 47% to 41% with men.

“A perennially tan, silver-haired agent was …the kind of man other men liked and women loved — a charming, martini-drinking, storytelling Irishman…gentlemanly yet gruff, easy-going yet stern…[part of] a showbiz breed that is too rapidly dying out along with their enormous repository of Industry history…scrupulously loyal to clients, he was also a tough, shrewd negotiator who knew the politics and the rituals of Hollywood as only a true insider can.” — from Nikki FInke‘s nicely written appreciation to 71 year-old Guy McElwaine, the Hollywood agent, producer and former studio chief who died early this morning.

For whatever reason, characters in movies of whatever slant or character rarely say the word “grotesque.” It’s hardly ever used in regular daily conversation, now that I think of it. Too judgmental, too assertive, too baroque. Perhaps because of this exotic usage, I always feel a certain arousal when a character pops it out. Only people of exceptional confidence and mental acuity seem to do so. And when they do, a little voice inside me goes “yes…perfect.”
George C. Scott says it in The Hospital (“And you don’t find something a little grotesque about all this?”); ditto Robert Duvall in Network (“…this grotesque incident…”). I’m especially pleased with Oscar Werner‘s use of the word in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold because he’s referring only to what he feels is an inappropriate logical conclusion or inference.
I am waiting patiently for the right moment to say “grotesque” in my own life. I will never say it just to say it. The moment and the circumstances have to be exactly right. The stars need to be aligned.

Every so often matters that don’t immediately concern or feed into the writing of the column gather mass and force like a huge wave swell. It doesn’t seem like much at first, but then the wave starts to break big-time and the roar becomes louder and louder and before you know it you’re being slammed and knocked upside down and gasping with water up your nose. This happens every so often. You cope with it as best you can. Not the end of the world, but it eats the day.

The full-boat trailer for Guillermo del Toro‘s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal, 7.11). Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Luke Goss and Thomas Kretschmann costar.

Sex and Death 101 opens the day after tomorrow (4.4.). Directed and written by Daniel Waters (Heathers), and starring Winona Ryder and Simon Baker. A malevolent R-rated comedy. If only someone had persisted in offering me a chance to see it.

A reliable friend in the creative community (i.e., no suspicious agenda) has written two things in response to the 2008 roundup piece: (a) “I’m hearing Doubt is really good and a likely Oscar contender” and (b) “Also hearing excellent things about things about Milk. Everyone is flipping out about how great Sean Penn is.”

At the end of Monday’s business day (3.31), Variety‘s Pamela McLintock posted a story about the 2008 awards season starting to shape up. It’s impossible to find it through Variety‘s sluggish search engine, but here’s a rundown of the titles she mentioned and my thoughts about same.

I know next to nothing and can sense even less at this stage, but my blindshot hunch (based on a little siren call I’m half-hearing, like the sound of a mosquito) is that David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Gus Van Sant‘s Milk are potentially the two strongest Best Picture contenders right now.
By HE bullshit meter standards, I mean. Hairs on the back of the neck, etc. Which isn’t to say they won’t morph into serious contenders down the line, which I think will happen. Probably. But it’s only April 2nd.
The first because an adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald work bestows an aura of class and aspiration, because the reverse-aging story contains a powerful metaphor, because the de-aging process that Brad Pitt will go through may touch people on some level, and because Fincher is owed for the Zodiac blowoff at the hands of Paramount and the Academy. And the second because The Times of Harvey Milk, the 1984 Oscar-winning doc, makes people cry every time they see it.
Universal and Imagine’s Frost/Nixon from director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan, opening 12.5 with Frank Langella and Michael Sheen as Richard Nixon and David Frost. I’m hearing//deducing that it’ll more of an acting shot for Langella than anything else.
U and Spyglass’s Flash of Genius, opening 10.17, toplines Greg Kinnear as a fucked-over genius inventor of a special kind of windshield wiper. I’m spitballing here and now that dramas about geniuses getting screwed over my corporations, like Francis Coppola‘s Tucker or the possibly forthcoming The Farnsworth Invention, contain very little intrigue or suspense or emotional potential. We know the basic story going in. I’m presuming it’s basically a yaddah-yaddah unless the writing and acting are spellbinding. Life is unfair and corporations are run by pricks — we know that going in.
Sony’s Will Smith drama Seven Pounds, from Pursuit of Happyness director Gabrielle Muccino is almost certainly going to flirt with emotional manipulation. Flirt, not overwhelm. No call or premonition beyond this.
The Coen brothers‘ Burn After Reading isn’t Oscar material. Strictly a sardonic comedy.
The Duchess, a Keira Knightley-Ralph Fiennes drama opening on 9.12 (Paramount Vantage), may show at Cannes, so we’ll see what’s when if that happens.
Another Cannes possibility is Fernando Meirelles‘ Blindness (Miramax, 9.19) with Gael Garcia Bernal, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Nobody knows nuthin’, but I sense a competitive edge here. Meirelles is a first-rater.
Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise‘s Valkyrie (United Artists/MGM, 10.3) doesn’t strike me, script-wise, as Oscar material. It’s a well-written historical thriller, etc., but a question mark in terms of its emotional element.
Ridley Scott‘s Body of Lies (Warner Bros., 10.10) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe is basically another thriller also with a moral undercurrent. No comment beyond this. Haven’t read it, let it go for now.
Baz Luhrmann‘s Australia (11.14) with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman is…I don’t know. Does anyone? Haven’t read the script here either.
John Hillcoat‘s The Road (Weinstein Co., 11.26) with Charlize Theron, Viggo Mortensen and Guy Pearce. Cormac McCarthy again?
Sam Mendes‘ Revolutionary Road (Paramount Vantage/DreamWorks, 12.19) is looking, right now, like a fairly likely Best Picture contender because of the marquee power, the release date and so on. Unless, of course, it turns out to be Little Children or something close to that.
Another big contender, as previously noted, is David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount, 12.19), which has an intriguing story and a certain high-pedigree aura.
McLintock reports that several possible awards contenders have yet to be dated, including Miramax’s Doubt, Focus’ Milk, DreamWorks’ The Soloist, Universal’s The Changeling, Paramount Vantage’s Defiance and Fox Searchlight’s The Secret Life of Bees. The Weinstein Co. hasn’t assigned release dates to Shanghai and The Reader.

Universal intends to make a movie about Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the face of the moon and easily one of the dullest famous guys of all time. The film will be based on a book by James R. Hansen called “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.” It will be adapted into screenplay form by Nicole Perlman — if the poor woman manages to stay awake while writing it.
In his 1971 book “Of a Fire on The Moon,” Norman Mailer compared Armstrong’s responses to questions from journalists to the way a cow grazing in a field deals with flies by flicking them away with its tail. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. Universal is essentially going to make a movie about that cow.