I’m been led to believe, beyond the implication in this “Page Six” item, that Ben Quick, Billy The Kid, Brick Pollitt, Anthony Judson Lawrence, Harry Bannerman, David Alfred Eaton, Ari Ben Canaan, Eddie Felson, Ram Bowen, Chance Wayne, Hud Bannon, Lew Harper, Professor Michael Armstrong, Butch Cassidy, Rheinhardt, Hank Stamper, Joseph Rearden, Henry Gondorff, Doug Roberts, William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, Reggie Dunlop, Murphy, Frank Galvin, Harry Keach, Gen, Leslie Groves, Sidney J. Mussburger, Sully Sulllivan, Harry Ross, Dodge Blake and John Rooney may be facing a hard situation. But it’s almost as hard to think of any 83 year-old guy working out in an oncologist’s waiting room and “doing squat thrusts” as being anywhere close to on the ropes.
On one hand, I’m told, he was taken from his home in Westport, Ct. to Norwalk Hospital last week in an ambulance. But he also drove Barbara Walters around the track at Lime Rock (also in Connecticut) 10 days ago for a program she was shooting on the topic of longevity. A tough old bird and best wishes to a good fellow.

John Adams, the seven-part miniseries, has been airing for two hours now on HBO East, and the rave reviews, I now realize, were totally on the money. It’s awfully damn good — superbly acted, atmospherically correct, absorbing at every turn, great visual compositions, “important,” delicious.

It’s the kind of thing that feature films have obviously given up on. Unless, you know, Roland Emmerich is the director and every now and then a guy’s head gets blown off by a cannonball or a church full of American Christians is burned to the ground by British troops and we can hear the screaming and the agony.
A leader in the war for independence, principally in his role as diplomat and negotiator par excellence, Adams as the second president of the United States (1797-1801). He also served as America’s first Vice President (1789-1797). He was defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson.
I love that line in Jill Lepore‘s New Yorker piece about Paul Giamatti, who plays Adams, “scowling beneath fifty-seven different wigs.” And her observation, which is accurate, that the film, based on David McCullough‘s biography, “is animated as much by Adams’s many private resentments as by the birth of the United States. It is history, with a grudge.”

For me, it’s 18th Century history starring (I’m sorry) Miles from Sideways, but in a much more fierce and passionate guise. When Giamatti gets indignant, there’s that petty sound he makes with his voice, and I’m sorry but it’s all Miles. I just see him losing it at that winery and picking up that clay pot and sloshing down the “pours.” And I wish the producers had decided to give Giamatti a prosthetic nose like the one belonging to Real McCoy. John Adams (pictured above) looked English, and Giamatti simply doesn’t. And they could’ve fixed or modified this.
If you’re in the Pacific time zone, there’s plenty of time to catch this thing. It starts at 8 pm and last three hours. The subsequent episodes will be one hour each.

“We all have our own private hells. I hope his private hell is hotter than anybody else’s.” — Home Depot founder and former New York Stock Exchange director Ken Langone speaking a few days ago about former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
People will be making cracks behind Spitzer’s back for the rest of his life because he’s an almost comical case of an unexamined life. A man brought down by a refusal to honestly examine himself and adjust his personal and political relationships accordingly. A man who was adamant about prosecuting and punishing a flawed world for the usual corruptions and lack of morality, not in spite of but precisely because he’d failed to come to terms with his own nature.
In the space of eight days the man has devolved into the status of a clown. If I were Spitzer I would agree to a divorce, move to Europe and and live alone in a small, sparely furnished apartment in a small town in Tuscany or Umbria, like Jeremy Irons‘ disgraced character does at the end of Damage.
Henry Miller addressed this very same trait or tendency in “romantic revolutionary” John Reed in Warren Beatty‘s Reds. Here’s the mp3.

Tim Murphy‘s New York magazine interview with Tony Kushner, who’s been working on the script of Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln movie, which is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s “Team of Rivals,” has inspired a thought.

Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama

Given Kushner’s observations about the parallels between Lincoln and Barack Obama (which, by the sights of certain wise HE talkbackers, automatically makes Kushner a rank sentimentalist who’s clearly lacking in seasoned judgment) and what Goodwin said about this topic to Tim Russert on TV this morning, doing a Lincoln movie would obviously be perceived on some level as a kind of Obama back-pat gesture. Which conceivably could be giving Spielberg, a Hillary Clinton supporter, a certain pause.
The Obama-Lincoln links are real, says Kushner. Two Illinois politicians. One a former president, one an aspiring one. Both skilled at reducing discord and inspiring people to find common ground. Asked what two books he would take with him in the Oval Office, Obama has named (according to Russert) the Bible and Team of Rivals. Is it that much of a stretch to wonder if Spielberg’s Clinton support may have affected his thinking about the Lincoln movie? Could he be saying to himself (and perhaps to others), “Well, let’s see what happens with the election and then we’ll pull the trigger…or not”?
Spielberg is just enough of dilettante on political matters (having to be prodded by Mia Farrow before bailing out of the Beijing Olympic Games, hemming and hawing about Aaron Sorkin‘s Chicago 7 script) and just enough of a flabby- minded side-stepper to respond this way to the Lincoln project. Why doesn’t he just walk away and wash his hands? Everything I know about him says he’s the wrong guy to make this film. He’s shown questionable aesthetic judgment when it comes his historical/political subjects (excepting movies about World War II and fighting the evil Nazis), and he has no real balls. Wouldn’t it be better all around let it go and bring in someone who’s up to the task to direct it?
If it’s not the Obama echoes, I would love it if Kushner or someone close to the project would help me to understand what Spielberg’s avoidance issues are with this thing. What is the man’s problem?
I spoke twice to Liam Neeson about this movie almost three years ago (summer of ’05), and Neeson was very, very excited. It would happen soon, he believed. Within the year or by early next, he said. But of course, Amistad and Spielberg’s (temporary) bailing out of the Chicago 7 movie taught us Spielberg is not to be trusted with historical/political films. One way or another, Spielberg’s uncontrollable sentimentality engulfs or compromises or leaves a stain. On top of which the odds are he’ll smother and artificially stylize the 1860s with that awful milky-white Janusz Kaminski light.
Note to HE trashtalkers: Yes, I just got into this topic a day or two ago but Kushner’s New York interview got me going again. If you don’t like it, tough. It’s Sunday, a catch-up day, and I’m just banging away on this and that.

“Jann Wenner isn’t the only one who finds Barack Obama ‘Lincolnesque in his own origins, his sobriety and what history now demands,'” writes New York‘s Tim Murphy. Kushner, now working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln for the indecisive Steven Spielberg [see above], notes that Lincoln “could bring together people of wildly disparate ideological bents and remind them of the moral core of their visions.” And he believes that Lincoln would endorse Obama. “They’re both from Illinois,” Kusher says. “You can really trace a line from the politics of Lincoln through American pragmatism to the politics of Barack Obama.”

My 19 year-old son, a Syracuse sophomore, doesn’t converse in Valley-speak, but my younger son, who’s much smarter than me, does somewhat. In a dry, white-ebonics sort of way. He’s an exception. Most Val-speakers do it mall-style. The fact is that tens of millions of under-30s talk in this profoundly irritating dialect — unashamedly, kind of flamboyantly — as if they’re all from the same genetically-afflicted sub-species.
Valley-speak is about conveying sincerity and a lack of pretense, and vocalized with the exact same tonalities no matter what part of the country the speaker lives in. It involves the usual Jeff Spiccoli vocabulary along with a trait that drives me insane, which is an absolute insistence on speaking every word group, phrase and sentence as if it’s a question. (Judge: “Uhm, okay…dude? Dude? This court, like, finds you guilty? And, like, sentences you to a minimum term of, well, pretty much ten years?”)
I’m not doing an old-crank routine by complaining about this. Nobody but nobody uses Valley-speak in the business world, and certainly not among jourmalists. The second I hear it, I assume that the speaker is under-educated, a slacker pothead or mentally challenged in some way. (Sales girls at Urban Outfitters use it.) A Valley-speaker is essentially conveying to the listener, in short, that he/she is, like, totally not in the game? And that you should, like, not even think about hiring them when they come looking for a job because the chances are they’re ditzoids?
What I’m wondering is, when a Valley-speaker decides to try out a more adult dialect, how do they go about this? Do they just turn off the attitude and mindset like a faucet, or do they take a language class or find a private Henry Higgins-like tutor or what?

Because I disliked his tweedly-deedly performance as the Lord of the Rings “Gollum,” and because he seemed so closely allied with the grand designs of Peter Jackson, I had a kind of negative-reflex thing going with Andy Serkis. That changed when I saw his quietly menacing portrayal of British psychopath and child-killer Ian Brady in the ’06 HBO drama Longford. I was totally on the team from then on.
In any event, I read in an Indie London interview piece this morning that Serkis is about to start on work Tintin, an animated feature about the Belgian comic-strip character “and his faithful dog Snowy.” (Good God.) Bagging paychecks as co-directors are Steven Spielberg and Jackson. (Spielberg is “directing the first one, Jackson the second…the bulk of the shoot starts in September but things got a little bit moved around after the writers√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ strike.”)
Spielberg, I decided after reading this, has become a kind of delaying sadist regarding the Abraham Lincoln film with Liam Neeson. Chicago 7 this, Tintin that…and we never hear diddly about the Lincoln project. It’s a classic avoidance syndrome thing (a kid avoiding a homework assignment, a guy who keeps putting off doing his taxes). If a benevolent God took any kind of interest in human affairs, Spielberg would (a) officially abandon the Lincoln film and (b) arrange for another esteemed director to step in so it can finally move forward.
Spielberg would just screw it up anyway. He wouldn’t do a Schindler’s List to the story of the nation’s 16th president from 1861 to ’65 — he’d probably Amistad it. I’ll never forget the way John Williams‘ musical score almost overwhelmed the voice of Anthony Hopkins during his big courtroom oratory scene. I remember watching this in a screening room some 11 years ago and saying to myself, “Yep…Spielberg is at the controls, all right.”

I’m presuming HE readers understand that the ’08 Oscar Balloon has its own page now with a feedback/comments option. Should I double up by pasting it at the bottom of the page, where it’s been for three and a hlaf years, or will people adapt to the new click-through deal?

HE’s weekend projection for Horton Hears a Who, the animated Dr. Seuss film from 20th Century Fox, is $45,878,000. Roland Emmerich‘s 10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros) will be off 57% from last weekend’s debut for a Sunday-night tally of $15,720,000. Never Back Down (Summit) will wind up with $9,386,000. The repulsively low-grade College Road Trip (Disney) will rake in $8,946,000 for a fourth-place finish. Vantage Point will come in fifth with a $5,592,000 weekend total.
The weekend’s best hold will come from Roger Donaldson‘s The Bank Job, off a mere 21% for a weekend total of $4,679,000 and a $9.600,000 cume. (People obviously like it, arre telling their friends, etc.) Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games (Warner Independent) has opened disastrously with a projected weekend haul of $516,000 at $1700 a print. One might surmise that all those split-decision reviews — a thoughtful first-rate exercise that also ranks as one of the most agonizing films to sit through in human history — had something to do with this, but people don’t read reviews so maybe not.

Agence France Press published an article two days ago about the rumors surrounding the ’08 Cannes Film Festival line-up. The confirmed Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the rumored Sex and The City were mentioned, of course. Both would show out-of-competition like Ocean’s 13 andU2-3D were last year.
The usual Cannes suspects and their new movies were mentioned: Steven Soderbergh‘s The Argentine, Abel Ferrara‘s Chelsea on the Rocks, James Gray‘s Two Lovers, Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Barbet Schroeder‘s Inju.
Also mentioned were some French films — Agnes Jaoui‘s Parlez-Moi de la Pluie, Arnaud Desplechin‘s Un Conte de Noel, Michel Houellebecq‘s La Possibilite d’une ile, Laurent Cantet‘s Entre les Murs and Marina de Van‘s Ne Te Retourne Pas.
The Dardenne Brothers, who won the Palme d’Or twice, might be offering their new film, Le Silence de Lorna, in competition.
Either one of the two legendary Brazilian filmmakers Walter Salles (Linha de Passe) and Fernando Meirelles (Blindness) could have their film in competition. AFP also expects a movie from the one or more of the new generation of Argentinian directors: Lucrecia Martel (La Nna Santa), Pablo Trapero (Leonera) and/or Lisandro Alonso (Liverpool).

An interesting Geoffrey Macnab piece in the Independent (dated 3.14) about the best Irish “troubles” films currently viewable on DVD. It includes a chat with Paul Greengrass, who directed one of the very best, Bloody Sunday (’02), which I could never fully understand until the DVD came out with English subtitles.
My favorite Irish conflict fims, in this order: Bloody Sunday, The Informer, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, The Boxer, Michael Collins, Cal, Odd Man Out, The Outsider, A Casualty of War. Two TV movies dealing with this subject/background that I’d very much like to see are Alan Clarke‘s Contact and Elephant.