For years I’ve made do at the Cannes Film Festival with a regular pink pass, which at least is better than blue and way above yellow. A couple of days ago I found out that I’ve been slightly upgraded to a pink-with-a-yellow-pastille pass — the first time this has ever happened despite years of persistent pleading. The highest-grade press pass is all white, but that’s a privelege extended mostly (only?) to veteran dead-tree types. Has an online journo ever been granted one? I’m asking.

Am I understanding correctly that Saturday Night Live has just started its political blog? Now they do this? With Amy Poehler‘s HRC front and center just as the Real McCoy is entering her final cycle? Or is it that people are just starting to notice…?
Accurately or not, the general impression has been all along that Poehler and former SNL costar Tina Fey have been Hillary campers. If we lived in a Balkan country or a banana republic, they’d both be going into hiding right about now. Instead, we live contentedly in a society in which political differences are mostly tolerated and every scummy race-card tactic is regarded as politics as usual, sometimes even lightheartedly. I wonder how Fey and Poehler feel about Hillary’s Imperial Wizard strategy?

One of HE’s fundamental attitude foundations was, after all, laid out in an excerpt from The Film Snob’s Dictionary back in the summer of ’05 (even if the book itself wasn’t in stores until February ’06), to wit: “The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent film buff, the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell-Pressburger movies.”

The Film Department CEO Mark Gill has told Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Schuker that “the quality of independent films [this summer] is higher, less bleak and dark, and the studio films are more cartoon stuff and less for a college educated audience. Last summer, everybody in my snobby crowd saw the Bourne movie and loved it, [but] this summer there are fewer of those big blockbusters to go to.” Is The Dark Knight not expected to appeal to film snobs? I know for sure that Tropic Thunder will. Iron Man is clearly a hit among know-it-alls. Others in this vein? If the Snob Site wasn’t so elitist, this would be right up its alley.

Remember the days when vampire movies didn’t need super powers and the ability to fly in order to compete with other CG thrillers? I do. Their peculiarities aside, vampires used to be shlep around and suck blood somewhat normally. No longer. When did they become flying bullets? Was it with Len Wiseman‘s Underworld? Before? If vampires can stop cars from slamming into people, does this mean they can also stop falling jumbo jets from slamming into baseball stadiums? Can they now theoretically lift ocean liners out of the water and hurl them into space orbit?

Thriller- and monster-movie producers these days don’t respect anything. Accepting boundaries or a semblance of within-the-genre genre credibility be damned! The term for such behavior is “professionally sociopathic.” All they want to do is put enough cool stuff in their films so kids won’t say “the other film was cooler.” Directors are just as guilty (i.e., willing). Twilight will make money, but this is malevolent thinking all the same.

In its second weekend, Paramount and Marvel’s Iron Man has again taken the #1 position. With my California number-guys currently experiencing REM sleep, Fantasy Moguls‘ Steve Mason is reporting earnings of $14.7 million yesterday with an expected $49 million by Sunday night and 10-day earnings total of roughly or close to $175 million.
Poor Speed Racer, forecast for weeks as a likely disappointment, apparently took in only $6.5 million yesterday and will hit about $23 million by Sunday nigh. This ranks below even Thursday’s downgraded projection (based on tracking figures of 90, 29 and 16) of $25 to $30 million. “Normally” I wrote, “a 16 first choice means $15 to $20 million, depending on the demographic, but the family-trade current will kick this one up.” Not enough!
Mason, clearly affected emotionally, adds that Speed Racer “may be a disappointment domestically, but it will play very well internationally. The movie’s anime origin and the presence of Asian pop star Rain will almost certainly make it among the top grossing films of the year in key markets like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.” And the people who made it are loved by their wives, children, mothers and coworkers.
What Happens in Vegas (Fox) will come in third, having made a little over $6 million yesterday with $17.3 million projected for the weekend. Made of Honor is fourth with an expected $7.83 million for its 2nd weekend, and Baby Mama (Universal) will be fifth with a likely $5.84 million by Sunday night, pushing past a $40 million cume.
David Mamet‘s Redbelt (Sony Classics) will eanr less than $1 million despite being on 1,300 screens.

…but this is a somewhat clever ad, pushing the idea that it’s advisable to see an optometrist now and then. The actor playing the driver/would-be recipient does a very good job. The last shot would, of course, never be permitted on American television. So what else is new?

Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet has posted new stills from three major Cannes attractions — Steven Soderbergh‘s Che, Charlie Kaufman‘s Synecdoche, New York and Fernando Meirelles‘ Blindness.

God forbid that the Democratic primary fight goes to the Denver convention (which of course it won’t), but watch this climactic scene from Franklin Schaffner and Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man (’64) and ask yourself which of the two present candidates — Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama — is closer to the character of Cliff Robertson‘s Joe Cantwell and which somewhat resembles Henry Fonda‘s William Russell? (Thanks to HE reader John Muller for passing this along.)

Before zotzing Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Warner Bros. management “did look at various permutations of keeping the companies in discussion,” the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein and Borys Kit wrote last night, including having Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and WI honcho Polly Cohen co-manage a merged specialty division, “something the execs agreed to do shortly after the New Line absorption was announced, Cohen said.”

“The decision to cease operations was made only about a week ago, and many inside the company were caught off-guard — including Cohen, who said she was having meetings about a merged division with Berney as recently as Friday. She said she was informed about the decision Wednesday, and she dismissed word that the decision was made earlier than then. ‘I doubt they’d pull a whole Truman Show on me,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’ve been at Warners so long they say derogatory things about me in front of my face.’
“‘It was similar to what happened at New Line. Warners made both of them (Cohen and Berney) jump through hoops for weeks,’ says a Berney associate.
“‘They said, ‘Will you streamline your staff? — OK.’ ‘Will you use the Warner Bros. distribution network? — OK.’ With every obstacle they threw at them, they came back with a PowerPoint presentation on how to deal with it. It’s almost like they wanted Bob to quit.’
“‘Bob wasn’t getting a lot of calls from other studios since the New Line announcement was made, but he was getting a lot from people with venture capital,’ the colleague added. ‘Now the call volume is getting really crazy.’