I can’t say I’m into drag queens, but I’d like to think I’m sharp enough to recognize a guy who’s really good at it. And who knows how to be funny. And can act with a certain whatever…snap, juice, pizazz. Anyway, I have this conviction that Humberto Busco, the star of a Puerto Rican- produced, La Cage aux Folles-y farce called Manuela y Manuel, which is playing at the AFI Film Fest tomorrow (11.5) and Wednesday (11.7), definitely qualifies.

I wound up seeing Manuela y Manuel out of a sense of kinship. Partly because an agent friend had slipped me a DVD screener, but primarily because I was talking to the film’s producer, Frances Lausell Diaz, when I was popped three nights ago for jaywalking in front of the Cinerama Dome. We’d only been talking two or three minutes when two of L.A.’s finest, glaring at me like I might be the new Hannibal Lecter, stood on a sidewalk and began writing me a ticket.

Frances held my camera and provided a semblance of emotional support. She then invited me to join her and the Manuela gang for dinner. I was too pissed off at the cops to think about food, but Diaz is my idea of a good and gracious person. She didn’t know me, but she stood by me like a friend.

The next night I watched the screener and decided that Busto, whom I’d seen six or seven years ago in a small role in Amores perros (a friend of Gael Garcia Bernal‘s character), is the new Michel Serrault — i.e., recently-deceased French actor who played “Zaza” in La Cage aux Folles in ’78. It’s too bad Busto wasn’t around when Pedro Amodovar was making his sexual farces from the ’80s and mid ’90s. He’d have fit right in.

Busto plays a cross-dressing performer who agrees to pretend to be the straight fiance of a woman friend, Coca (Elena Iguina) who doesn’t want her conservative family that she’s been knocked up by some guy she had a one-night-stand with. I know — sounds a little too Cages au Folles, but there’s something about the intense Latin temperament, not just in the actors but in the direction by Raul Marchand Sanchez and the screenplay by Jose Ignacio Valenzuela.

“You could argue that a nation’s character is defined at least in part by its sense of humor, and [that] Jerry Seinfeld gave us the sense of humor of self-satisfaction. Anything that didn’t fit the suburban Massapequa mindset was something to be held up for piddling laughs. He was so deeply in love, so deeply satisfied by his own trivial quirks that those who didn’t share them were alien subjects of ridicule.

“The promotional booklet really [for Bee Movie] says it all. I’m not going to waste my time or yours reviewing this saccharine little animated fable which is NSFD (not safe for diabetics). Instead I invite you to stare at a drawing of Jerry’s bee ‘Barry B. Benson,’ and tell me that you don’t eventually see Satan.” — from an 11.2.07 Slate piece by Ron Rosenbaum.

I’e brought up the idea of this or that filmmaker injecting satanic values into movies or movie culture (George Lucas, Michael Bay, McG, Stephen Sommers), but Rosenbaum ascribing the same to America’s most laid-back, mild-mannered comedian is a surprise. It may signify a turn in the road. It could mean that with the dislikableness of Bee Movie Seinfeld has awakened the dormant wrath of the smart-guy writers and pundits of the world, and that he’d better watch it from here on in. Perhaps that line about Seinfeld being “the new Chevy Chase” is more than a line.

An interesting on-stage chat between the great Errol Morris and Werner Herzog at Brandeis University. “Is there such a thing as the meaning of meaninglessness?,” Morris asks. “My answer is yes. There is an abundance of that in this man’s [i.e., Herzog’s] work.”

Robert Zemeckis‘s Beowulf is an exceptional film on its own terms, but the 3-D version I saw last night is, no exaggeration, something close to stupendous. Which naturally makes me regret having passed along an idiotic negative comment (originating from some Hollywood Foreign Press guy) last Wednesday. I’m not going to run a “review” until 11.12, but I have to at least correct the impression that this earlier item instilled, so I’m going to run portions of an e-mail I sent this morning to Beowulf exec producer and co-screenwriter Roger Avary.

“I’m not a huge fan of this type of film — animated sword-brandishing brawny heroes on mighty steeds fighting dragons, etc. — but Beowulf is really and truly something else. For me it’s a new permutation of movie thrills along with an underlying adult intrigue — a sense of spiritual complexity and even existential angst — that fortifies thematically.

“I found it far more exciting and complex in every respect than 300, a homoerotic meathead flick that I pretty much hated. Beowulf, however, is a fascinating story about a hero with feet of clay made into the most visually arresting and exciting adventure of this type I’ve ever seen.

“I was open-mouthed with awe at the amazing clarity of the 3-D aspects alone. Did Zemeckis really say that ‘to call performance-capture animation is a disservice to the great animators’? Is he nuts? This film is obviously animated through and through. It deserves the Best Feature Animation Oscar, bar none. I don’t care what anyone says — this is not live-action except in the most rudimentary sense of the physical acting aspects, which represent, in my view, a relatively small portion of the whole.

“If the Academy committee decides against qualifying Beowulf for the Best Feature Animation Oscar it at least deserves some kind of special Oscar for having moved the 3-D form forward to a vivid and spectacular new place. The 3-D is the absolute best I’ve ever seen, bar none. Light fills every corner of the screen, no soft or murky edge elements, wondrously sharp focus. What’s the precise name of the 3-D process exactly? It’s a definite improvement — far and away the best quality 3-D these eyes have ever beheld.

“The only thing that doesn’t quite work are the galloping horses — their forward movement lacks the fluidity and the biological muscular complexity of actual steeds.

“I’m amazed this we were shown the PG-13 version. It seemed kind of R-ish because of the dripping wet hot-bod Angelina scenes and two or three other sexual-content moments.”

“Tech aspects aside, Beowulf is much, much better than I expected. I thought I’d be slightly bored from wading through the usual dead spots a la 300 or the Rings trilogy…not! You and Neil Gaiman have written a very sharp, well-structured script that gets right down to it. No dullish exposition, no narrative flab, no philosophical geek-movie bullshit. Plus I love that it doesn’t fully explain the curse to the idiots in the audience.

“I was forced to read ‘Beowulf’ in ninth grade, and of course I paid as little attention as possible. I now realize it’s a very powerful and unusual story.”

Footnote: The vast majority of US theatres are going to show it flat, of course, but just under a thousand screens will be showing it in 3-D — the largest 3-D opening in history. No excuses, no evasions…it’s absolutely essential to see it in 3-D. “Flat” is for flatheads.

I sat down yesterday afternoon with Cristian Mungiu, the 39 year-old Romanian director of the undeniably brilliant and masterful 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. I finally saw the Palme d’or winner a couple of weeks ago and was convinced right away it’s all but certain to take the Best Foreign Language Oscar next February. It shows that Mungiu knows exactly what he’s doing mise en scene-wise. This fact is fully underlined in conversation.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu in Almond Room at Four Seasons hotel — Friday, 11.2.07, 3:55 pm

Calm, confident and obviously whip-smart, Mungiu speaks with a vast English vocabulary and a very faint accent. He’s a believer in pared-down, less-is-more realism, and he knows how to explain his cinematic aesthetic in a very clean and concise way. He listens carefully and knows his stuff. I could talk to Mungiu for days. The same “instant comfort” thing happens whenever I meet a good director from any culture.

A recently-announced European Film Awards nominee for Best Film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days will show at 6:45 pm this evening at the AFI Film Fest. The show is sold-out but there’s always the scalper option.

Mungiu said he next plans to produce an anthology film or two with fellow Romanian directors. He’s also intends 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to be the first part of a trilogy about life in Communist Romania called The Golden Age. He says he’s also intending to shoot a film about the last 48 hours in the life of Romania’s long-time dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was overthrown and executed in December 1989.

As there are very few cinemas in Romania, Mungiu organized a travelling cinematic caravan around the country last summer (in the wake of his Cannes Film Festival triumph) in order to show 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to the citizenry. He shot a documentary about the experience, and promised yesterday I’d be given a chance to see an early cut of it on Monday. Mungiu wants to include the doc on the 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days DVD.

“Anyone who sees this film and doesn’t feel shaken and humbled has a major aesthetic blockage thing going on,” I wrote about 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days on 10.23. “There are times when viewers saying ‘good film but too depressing’ can’t be and must not be tolerated. This is one of those burn-through movies that says basic things in ways that make other filmmakers say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ (Or, in the Mike Nichols-Giuseppe Rotunno sense, ‘Why didn’t I revisit that?’)”

IFC Films will release 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days in early January after the awards and nominations will have accumulated.

outside the Almond Room — Friday, 11.2.07, 4:15 pm

Thanks to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone for passing along this link to the interior page content of the Juliette Binoche French Playboy interview/photo thing.

American Gangster did just over $16 million yesterday (the lines were huge at Universal Citywalk plex last night) and will wind up with something like $46,421,000 by Sunday night — $15,000 a print. Jerry Seinfeld‘s Bee Movie earned almost $11 million yesterday and will end up with $38,390,000 for the weekend. The DreamWorks insect comedy is enjoying its one moment of triumph before the weak word-of-mouth catches up and Vince Vaughn‘s Fred Claus steals the family business away next weekend.

Saw 4 is off over 60%, looking at $10,800,00 for weekend. Dan in Real Life is down only 30% from last weekend (a decent hold) and will have tallied $8.2 million by tomorrow night. Michael Clayton did $2,600,000 and will have a grand total of $32,900,000 by Sunday night. Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is in 42 theatres, will do $341,000…a little over $7 thousand per screen, which is fairly good.

The idea in persuading Into The Wild song composer Eddie Vedder to perform a short acoustic set at the Paramount theatre last night was to promote Vedder’s soundtrack album (featuring nine originals, two covers). It was also, naturally, about refreshing everyone’s thinking about Sean Penn‘s film being a serious Best Picture contender. Which it seems to be. Penn’s best-directed, much-admired film has caught a kind of current; ditto Emile Hirsch‘s Oscar-calibre lead performance and Hal Holbrook‘s supporting turn.

Into The Wild star Emile Hirsch, director-screenwriter Sean Penn at tonight’s Eddie Vedder performance (i.e., songs he composed for the film plus two or three others) at Paramount Studios — Friday, 11.2.07, 10:10 pm.

Penn and Hirsch introduced Vedder around 10:10 pm following a screening of the film. (I was off seeing the 3-D Beowulf at Universal Citywalk until 9:30 pm.) Vedder sang six or seven tunes, the stand-outs being “Rise Up,” “No Ceiling,” “Drifting” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” We all love that rough gravelly voice, don’t we? I was standing ten or so feet away as he performed, and admiring his fret work as he went through the chords of the John Lennon song.

(l. to r.) Penn, Hirsch, Eddie Vedder following performance — applause, cheers, whoo-whoos.

Long-haired and bearded, dressed in denim and work boots, Vedder seemed healthy, alert and in good spirits. I noticed and for some reason considered the fact that Vedder has relatively small feet.

I saw Mark Ruffalo milling around, didn’t say hi. Kris Tapley reported last night that former HE hombre Cameron Crowe (hasn’t responded to e-mails in ages, probably hates me for bringing up the post-Elizabethtown fetal-tuck position syndrome), Ringo Starr and Wynona Rider were there also.

Cinematical’s James Rocchi interviewed me three or four days ago about various Oscar-race issues (“Does Into the Wild play better for Baby Boomers than younger audiences? Can Once get a second chance? And do movie journalists have a responsibility to reflect the Oscar race, or to try and influence it?”).

The answer to the third question is that (a) it’s derelict for Oscar prognosticators to not try and influence the Oscar race so that better films are considered and rewarded, and (b) it’s absolutely rancid for movie journos to just sit back and merely “reflect” it — i.e., report on the race and trying to predict Academy favorites. There’s an uploadable podcast version attached to the piece.

An ecstatic but completely unreliable fanboy review of Robert Zemeckis‘ Beowulf has appeared on Aint It Cool. The guy is calling the 3-D Paramount release “a fucking masterpiece…really epic… superb [with] Oscar-calibre performances …one of the best animated films ever made…heart-pounding action sequences and a good dose of edge-of- your-seat scares (especially in the first hour).” Except he says if Beowulf had been a live-action film it “would have been nominated for Best Picture.” Take high-school English much? His entire review is suspect because of this one grammatical wrongo.