The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Sean P. Means continues the lament about dead-tree film critics being shown the door by major newspapers and syndicates. “It seems like every week we in the news business hear about another paper cutting staff,” he writes, [“and] every time it happens, it seems, at least one of the jobs cut is the movie critic’s.”
Besides the obvious economic reasons, a key reason for this, as I said to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein a few days ago, is that today’s moviegoers are far less interested in meekly accepting the word of the lofty know-it-alls. It’s all about the conversation, the community talk-back. And like I said, there’s a small group of online critics who genuinely matter and are, in the parlance of the trade, ‘conversation starters.’
This is where it’s at, where it’s all going. Obviously not among the moviegoers of Hillary Clinton‘s and John McCain‘s generation, but among the GenX Barack Obama crowd and younger.

Juliette Binoche has written a little poem about the departed Anthony Minghella, who directed her in The English Patient. She sent it to Entertainment Weekly, whose editors posted it three days ago.

Fox’s Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! is the weekend’s #1 film with studio counters estimating earnings of $26.3 million by Sunday night. Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns will run second with $22.5 million. Shutter, the horror film that didn’t screen for critics, is third with $11.5 million. Drillbit Taylor will come in fourth with a weekend tally of $10.1 million….off to the showers. Amazingly, the utterly dismissable 10,000 B.C. (people are actually still saying to each other, “Hey, let’s go see this!”) will come in fifth with $9.2 million.
Never Back Down will come in sixth with $5.3 million, followed by College Road Trip with $4.8 million. The eighth-ranked The Bank Job, slow but steady, will make about $4.2 million with a Sunday night cume of $19.5 million. Vantage Point, $3.7 million. Doomsday, $2.2 million. Under The Same Sun, in a limited 300-theatre run, will do about $2.1 million at $7000 a print.

This is a non-movie story, and if that’s not to your liking, tough. A Catholic service is being held for my recently deceased sister Laura on Tuesday, 3.15, in Southport, Connecticut. I can’t be there so I decided to write a little remembrance, which somebody will hopefully read to the congregation. I tapped it out this morning:

When she was young, before her mid-teen years, my sister Laura was very much in the game. She had a high IQ — higher than mine, I recently learned — and was quick and alert. She told and got jokes, and was animated, energetic, playful and full of pep. She had a wonderful laugh and had, until the end of her life, the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.

As a young girl she was sometimes feisty and scrappy. One of my vivid early memories is coming home from elementary school one afternoon (I was in the first or second grade) and telling my mother, who was lying on her bed, about something good that had happened — a good grade, a pat on the back from my teacher, something along these lines — and Laura, who was standing next to my mother’s bed, saying, “So what?”

My mother rebuked her, angrily, but what Laura said was the mark of a sharp, spunky, intelligent and competitive person. She’d listened to my classroom story and decided it was unexciting or unremarkable or inane, and, consistent with the nature of all young siblings who want to put their sisters or brothers in their place, instantly voiced a disapproving judgment.

I was never as close to Laura, then or later in life, as was Tony, our younger brother, but I’ve never forgotten this impression of her — a girl who had opinions and gumption and intelligent judgment to spare, and who gave as good as she got.

Sadly, that side of Laura never matured, much less developed. She became afflicted in her mid-teen years with schizophrenia and never left the ground, much less spread her wings. Most of her life, sadly, was about coping, about holding on as best she could and getting by with a measure of dignity. She lived in her heart and her mind, but not, truth be told, very much in the present.

A few days ago I heard a writer or journalist of some distinction (I forget his name) say that Ireland wasn’t about the present or the future, but about the past, over and over. As she got older, that was Laura through and through.
She was occasionally a scrappy, sometimes contentious person, but she was mostly quiet and gentle and meditative. She had a good heart, which is to say a better heart than mine. She cared deeply about spiritual matters, and one aspect of this is that she became a Catholic, as I recall, sometime near the start of this century.

Her day-to-day life was about what she could do within the margins of her affliction, a cruel hand that was dealt to her at birth, but her inner life was sometimes enormous and deep and radiant.

Laura and I shared a trip to Europe in the early summer of ’03. I picked her up at Nice Airport during the closing days of the Cannes Film Festival. The next day Laura came to a screening with me of Clint Eastwood‘s Mystic River, which showed at the Grand Palais. The next day we rented a car and drove east and southeast into Italy, and then to a small town in Tuscany called San Donato. The proprietor of the b & b where Laura and I stayed for two or three nights is a woman named Elisa Prati, who chatted with Laura a lot and loved her company. In the years since (I’ve written Elisa often and stayed there last year with my son, Jett), she has asked me how Laura is, and has said more than once what a beautiful person she is.

During our stay in San Donato Laura and I went to an outdoor backyard dinner — about 8 in the evening — at the home of an Italian chef named Matthias Pommer. There were six or seven of us, and candles on the table and the sound of crickets and a wonderful earthy aroma from the nearby vineyards. That moment was probably the most peaceful and settled and serene of our entire Italian visit.

For the truth is that Laura, despite the wonder of our being in Italy and experiencing all these new sights and flavors and absorbing all that culture and history, spent about a quarter of her time there — our time in the car mostly — going over her problems and unresolved feelings about her life, mostly about things that had been hurtful or gone wrong for her in her teens and 20s.

The second best moment — or perhaps the best moment of all — happened in Rome, when Laura was sitting behind me on a dark blue scooter as we drove all through the city, sometimes getting lost but eventually finding our way, zooming around the Collisseum and through the Villa Borghese and all the campos and piazzas. As we started out I remember speeding along the main throroughfare that ran along the Tiber river, and hearing Laura going “woo!” as we went under a bridge.

We stayed on that road for two or three miles, and then we turned left on a bridge and crossed over the Tiber and turned left again to head back to the center of the city. And all of a sudden we saw Vatican City on our right and Laura said, “Jeff, Jeff…the Vatican! There’s St. Peter’s!” I pulled over and we decided then and there that Laura would visit the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel on her own and that I would return to pick her up at this very spot, three hours later. And she took off on foot and I pulled back into traffic.

As I rode along I smiled about the reemergence of the old Laura. A sharp, spunky, intelligent woman who’d seen the Vatican out of the corner of her eye and decided right then and there. A woman of gumption, vision and intelligence who knew what she wanted, made a quick judgment for the better, and who gave back to Rome as good as she got.

Starts off slowly, ambles along, not bad, heard it before, etc. And then during the last minute or so, it all comes together and suddenly people are on their feet. [Taped today — 3.21.08 — in Salem, Oregon.]

The labelling of Obama by the fear machines of both the Clinton campaign and right-wing broadcasters has been vile, and yet here I am thinking along these lines myself. I’m referring to the fact that Barack’s candidacy has made me feel more in league with the African American community than at any time before in my life. And then I think about the continued success of Tyler Perry‘s films, largely due to support by black audiences, and I go, “What the…?”

I was told a couple of hours ago that Bryan Singer‘s Valkyrie (MGM, 10.2), the Tom Cruise thriller about the plot by German officers to kill Hitler, is about to start two full weeks of extra lensing. The guy who told me this (a seasoned filmmaker) pointed out that two extra weeks of shooting is, like, a lot. Most of the time extra shooting takes two or three days. Okay, sometimes four or five.

I wrote my MGM publicity friends and they didn’t deny it. Kristin Borella said the task at hand “is the big battle scene that was always intended to be shot that didn’t occur in Berlin. These scenes took place in North Africa so they could not be shot in Berlin obviously. So they are not reshooting, but rather [shooting] additional photography.”
Publicity-marketing chief Dennis Rice added, “This is not new news. We have always planned to shoot a couple scenes in the first quarter of this year. These are scenes which were always part of the original screenplay and shooting script. Because of the nature of the scenes, they were never intended to be shot in Berlin.”
Okay, “big North African battle scene,” I wrote. And it’s additional photography. You know something? I don’t really care what it is. “Extra shooting” just means the film is probably going to be that much better, so why should anyone give a hoot? I don’t. I’m just looking to post stuff (reportage, attitude, opinion) for this column.
“So is two weeks’ worth then?,” I asked again. “Is it shooting in Africa or the California desert? If it’s shooting here, may I drive out and visit?”

A guy dropped by Panavision headquarters on Selma Avenue in Hollywood yesterday, and visited briefly with Oliver Stone as he was testing looks for Josh Brolin as George W. Bush in the movie known as either Bush or, according to the drop-by guy, W.

Josh Brolin; George Bush

“When i walked in, I thought some stand-in that looked an awful lot like young Bush was under the lights,” he says, “but it was Brolin, very skinny and looking amazingly like Bush. The hair was perfect. This may be a home run.” Visually, he means. Obviously.

“A new poll from Fox News, the first major poll taken since Barack Obama‘s big speech on race relations, shows that the effect of the Jeremiah Wright flap might not be so bad after all. By a 57%-24% margin, registered voters do not believe that Obama shares Wright’s controversial views.
The internals show only 17% of Democrats saying Obama shares Wright’s ideas, along with 20% of independents and 36% of Republicans.”
It’s still a little bit scary that almost one fifth of Democrats — 17% — believe, they’re saying, that Obama is a closet sympathizer with Wright’s wackjob proclamations. That’s pretty damn ignorant and rednecky. Plus those 20% of independents who say they believe the same thing. Earnestly. Whew.

“One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning,” Politico‘s Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen wrote earlier today.
“Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
“Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
“People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.”

It’s hard to hear this, but it starts with girl asking a guy if he wants to see a movie with her and a girlfriend. And then the guy says what he says. It’s a very audacious line of dialogue to use in any film, especially one in which the lead actor speaks in a drawly Southern accent. Guess the name of the film. Hint: it’s not out yet, but it played at Sundance ’07.

Let’s review the Judd Apatow comedies yet to come out and arrogantly spitball which ones seem more likely to downgrade or upgrade the brand. We know Drillbit Taylor has gotten slammed and put the brand in a position in which it needs (in the view of guys like me ) to be restored. When will that happen, and what kind of bumps in the road lie ahead? Five Apatow-produced or co-written comedies will open over the next 15 months, and an Apatow-directed and co-written comedy will open in late ’09.

Obviously we’re speaking of films Aptatow has produced, co-written or directed (or plans to direct) that haven’t come out yet. All of them delivering standard Apatow attitude humor, always with the clever stoner-slacker guy, or the space-case or the dork-dweeb or the absurdist cavemen with the one-liners, and always with these guys not only scoring with great-looking women — girls who wouldn’t spit on these guys in real life — but getting into good relationships with them and so on.
Next up, of course, is Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Universal, 4.18), which I mostly hated but which easy-lay under-40 types are apparently going for. Suspicion: Definitely not an upgrade but maybe, in the view of most, not a downgrade either. Call it a maintainer, a non-boat-rocker. I would have liked this film a bit more if it had been called Eating Sarah Marshall. I just like that title. Not the lewdness, but the nerviness.
On June 6th (i.e., 48 days later ) comes You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, an Adam Sandler comedy about a Mossad agent who “fakes his death so he can re-emerge in New York City as a hair stylist.” Apatow only cowrote with Sandler, meaning this is basically a Sandler-brand comedy. Apatow, however, did pitch in creatively and if it turns out to be pretty good and/or popular (the word is positive), it will make Judd look like he’s definitely still got it. Prediction: Faint upgrade. (Dennis Dugan, a longtime Sandler stooge, is the director.)
On July 25th Step Brothers (Sony/Columbia), an Apatow-produced comedy with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, will open nationwide. Written by Ferrrell and Adam McKay, it’s about “two spoiled guys become competitive stepbrothers after their single parents get hitched.” I know zip but a voice is telling me it’s an underwhelmer. I’m mostly just sick of Ferrell these days, and I’m figuring others are feeling this way also. Prediction: possible downgrade, possible maintainer. My sixth sense says “cuidado!.”
Two weeks later, on August 8th, comes Pineapple Express (Sony), which Apatow produced and wrote the story for. Everyone seems to agree (including one guy I know who’s actually seen it) that this Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy, directed by David Gordon Green, is going to be a hit. Prediction: Upgrade.
Oddly, curiously, there will no fresh Apatow product all through the ’08 fall-holiday season and through the winter and spring of ’09.
On June 5th Harold Ramis‘s Year One, a caveman comedy (10,000 B.C. with laughs) that Apatow produced but didn’t co-write, will open. It costars Jack Black and Michael Cera. The writers are Ramis, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. Any time you have lots of special effects, lots of physical comedy and actors wearing animal skins and sandals, the hah-hah factor goes down. Special effects are humor killers. Any scenes with Black and Cera running from saber-tooth tigers and mastodons won’t be funny. Any scenes with Black and Cera clubbing women and dragging them to their cave by their hair won’t be funny. Any humor involving Ancient History or Biblical material won’t be funny. A stunt comedy. Dicey. Prediction (subject to change): Downgrade.
Finally there’s an untitled Aptaow/Adam Sandler project that will shoot later this year and come out sometime in ’09. These two working together obviously sounds promising. Prediction: Upgrade.
Out of the six forthcoming Apatows, I see two and a half upgrades (Pineapple, Apatow/Sandler Untitled and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan), two downgrades (Step Brothers, Year One) and one maintainer (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Obviously you need to add an extra downgrade if you include Drillbit Taylor.
Capsule summary: the Apatow brand will not be enhanced between now and June, get a little bump from the Zohan, take a possible hit from Step Brothers, rise again big-time with Pineapple and stay there for eight months. It may take some animal-hide damage in the summer of ’09, but it will probably bounce back when the Apatow/Sandler comedy bursts on the scene (unless it sucks).
Am I missing something?

There’s something about pronounced sexual content, flagrant floozies and B-movie tawdriness that seems to go down well with N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. Which is one of the things I like about her — she has some kind of a soft spot for this stuff and is honest about it, and, being a talented writer, says so with flair and style. But the more you read about Boarding Gate, which I’ll see on a disc sometime this weekend, the more you go “hmmm.”
Calling it “a casually beautiful, preposterously plotted, elliptical thriller,” Dargis admits it “earned little love last year when it played at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown out of competition.” (I was there and nobody even mentioned it, much less told me to check it out. I didn’t risk seeing it because of Asia Argento-Michael Madsen casting, which indicated a possible ick or groan factor.)
Plus “it didn’t do much for [director Oliver] Assayas‘s reputation,” she writes, “at least among some critics, who had been just as eager to dismiss his other recent films, among them Clean (’04) and the much-maligned demonlover (’02).
“What Boarding Gate did do was reconfirm Ms. Argento as one of contemporary cinema’s most fascinating creatures. Her on-screen ferocity is now generating as much interest as her tattoos — an angel hovers above her pubic bone, and an eye stares out from one shoulder — or the ease with which she sheds her clothes, which explains why I can describe those tattoos with confidence.”