Some of the finest title sequences of all time are viewable on Art of the Title. DVD-quality clips of the entire damn things and way better than YouTube except there are loading problems. The first two played for me — I watched the sequences for Bonnie and Clyde and Se7en — and then they stopped. You click on them and the wheels just whirl around and around and you’re just sitting there while life outside goes on all around you.

Some great opening title sequences that aren’t listed on the site: North by Northwest, Moby Dick, Raging Bull, Teh French Connection, The Hustler, Volver, the 1953 War of the Worlds, Zodiac, The Man With the Golden Arm, White Heat, L.A. Confidential, Dr. No, The Wizard of Oz…there are hundreds and hundreds that are very sharp and pizazzy and well presented. I could go on all day. They don’t have to be stylistically avant garde to be “good.” They have to arrest your attention, get you into the right mood, jack up the energy, etc.
The memory plays tricks but I’m pretty sure that the worst title sequence of all time was used for Neil Simon‘s The Cheap Detective (’78), a ’40s detective genre spoof directed by Robert Moore and starring Peter Falk. There are no opening visual titles whatsoever, as I recall. Falk says them to the camera. He literally says his own name and that of his costars, the screenwriter, the production designer, the editor, the composer, the director and so on. Am I mis-remembering? Am I describing some other film? I’m pretty sure it was this one. I remember sitting there and saying to myself, “My God, this is awful.”

Why are both Ed Norton and his Hulk incarnation looking down? They’re obviously troubled, forlorn, dealing with the weight of the world…but I don’t find this alluring. I’ve got troubles of my own, and I don’t go to movies to add to them. Of all the elements, themes and emotions contained in The Incredible Hulk (Universal/Marvel, 6.13), they chose to sell moroseness. Brilliant.

“Senator Clinton and Senator McCain question my respect for the workers of Pennsylvania,” Barack Obama said yesterday to members of the Alliance for American Manufacturing in Pittsburgh. “Well, let me tell you how I believe you demonstrate your respect. You do it by telling the truth and keeping your word, so folks can know that where you stand today is where you’ll stand tomorrow.

“The truth is, trade is here to stay. We live in a global economy. For America’s future to be as bright as our past, we have to compete. We have to win.”
Then, reports The Nation‘s John Nichols, “Obama did something that rarely happens in the trade debate. He spoke to worried American employers and workers as adults. He treated their concerns seriously.”
Read it or not, but the guy seems so much straighter and wiser and less consumed and in the grip of the usual shit than Hillary Clinton or John McCain, that it seems amazing to me that people are actually still dithering about whether he’s right for the job or whether or not he’s going to make it, etc. None so blind as those who will not see.

Patrick Goldstein‘s 4.15 “Big Picture” column is about The Soloist, a kind of uplift drama about the relationship between real-life L.A. Times journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) and a schizophrenic musician named Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx). I don’t know what it is, but it sounds like a blend of Awakenings, The Fisher King and The Killing Fields with mental illness taking the place of the Khmer Rouge.

One noteworthy thing about Goldstein’s piece is that the release date is revealed to be 11.21.08. This means, obviously, that DreamWorks, the distributor, believes it may turn out well enough to at least compete as an Oscar hopeful.
Based on a series of columns that ran in the L.A. Times in 2005, The Soloist has been written by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) and is being directed by Joe Wright (Atonement). It’s about friendship and healing, but I’m worried by any drama about a colorfully crazy guy whose life is gradually saved by a guy who is healthier and more grounded but (I’m guessing but I’ll bet $100 that I’m right) is a bit eccentric himself and who is sorta kinda restored also by the act of helping the homeless guy.
I’m sorry, but on a certain level movies like this scare the living shit out of me. Guys who push their crap around in a shopping cart get on my nerves almost instantly. I don’t like movies about healing unless they’re absolutely genuine. If there’s even the slightest hint of Hollywood confection….brrnnnggg!
Quick — name another film that’s (a) partly set in downtown L.A., (b) costars Foxx as a delusional guy whose life is not working out but (c) is saved at the end by an eccentric benefactor.

Pay any kind of attention to HBO and you’ll see that Recount teaser over and over. You know…the docudrama about the Florida vote count muddle that followed the November 2000 election, directed by Jay Roach. I don’t care if Politico‘s Jeff Ressner warned last December that it might be too cautious a dramatization. It feels enticing and is the only thing I really want to see now, but HBO won’t be showing it to reviewers and entertainment writers until the tail end of this month.

Recount will debut for HBO viewers on May 25th. I should grow up and be patient, but I know it reads pretty well and my blood is up. I ran an enthusiastic a piece about the script a year ago this month (and got ridiculed by HE readers for being overly impressionable). I can just sense a certain juiciness, is all. Kevin Spacey, Dennis Leary, Tom Wilkinson as James Baker, John Hurt as Warren Christopher, Bob Balaban, Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, Bob Balaban and Al Gore and George Bush as themselves.

I don’t know if portions of the Cannes Film Festival slate are being announced on Thursday, 5.17, or if just an official confirmation about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull playing there is being planned, but some kind of Cannes proclamation, apparently, is being readied for that day. Variety‘s Anne Thompson and Tatiana Siegel reported a while back that Skull is not being planned as the Cannes opening-nighter, perhaps as a way of avoiding the aggressive missiles that were directed at the DaVinci Code. The plan may be to show it in Cannes on Sunday, 5.18 or thereabouts.

Paramount is showing Iron Man (opening 5.2) to select press (guys doing long-lead interviews with Robert Downey, Jon Favreau, Jeff Bridges, etc.) but playing things close to the chest when you call about screenings. It will be shown, of course, to journos attending the New York junket, but that’s not until 4.25, or 12 days from now. It will also be shown, I’m told, at an L.A. all-media at the Arclight on Monday, 4.28.

Snapped with iPhone last weekend on La Brea near American Rag

No argument with Media Bistro’s observation that Ross Johnson‘s December 1997 piece for the Hollywood Reporter about client poaching (“Poached! Poached!”) is a catchier, zippier, better reported article than John Horn‘s 4.14 L.A. Times piece about the same topic.

A byline-free Telegraph story posted on 4.11 heralded the arrival of the Geek Action Hero, a Hollywood phenomenon that is probably linked on some level to the Romantic Galumph. Instead of studly musclebound machismo figures who can beat up and outshoot any bad guys who come their way (like the Arnold, Sly, Bruce, Mel and Jean Claude paradigms of the ’80s), “the new breed of action star is more likely to be skinny, awkward and studious-looking,” the story proclaims.

It mentions Shia LaBeouf, Emile Hirsch, James McAvoy and the as-yet unknown Ben Barnes as examples of this mini-trend. It also mentions the sensitive, semi-dweeby Tobey Maguire‘s turns as Spider-Man, and the brainy-flip-sardonic Robert Downey Jr.’s upcoming performance as Iron Man. Has anyone been left out?
LaBeouf (Transformers) plays Harrison Ford‘s son in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hirsch has the title role in the Wachowski’s Speed Racer. McAvoy stars in the action thriller Wanted. And Barnes (Stardust) plays the lead in action-y Chronicles of Narnia film, Prince Caspian.
“The geek is god in Hollywood,” publicist and Oscar campaigner Tony Angellotti tells the nameless Telegraph writer. “Every generation redefines its heroes and the heroes of today are slight of stature and geeky looking.”

Ben Barnes

“Do these kids even shave?” Angellotti continues. “For decades, we wanted our heroes to be who we could never be, but this generation of filmgoers wants heroes they can relate to, who are similar to them. They see themselves in these somewhat awkward, geeky, hairless-faced guys. They can relate to them.
“Stars like Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis were men; these are boys, and they’re appealing to younger audiences. Who would think of Robert Downey Jr. as a superhero? Where did that come from?”

For the usual motives, Manhattan memorabilia collector Keya Morgan has told New York Post reporter Hasani Gittens that he recently brokered the $1.5 million sale of a 15-minute silent stag film showing Marilyn Monroe doing some guy on her knees. Morgan is a reputable collector so authenticity doesn’t seem to be an issue. Obviously icky information, especially on a Monday morning, but I’m mentioning it because of a bothersome timeline thing.
Gittens’ story says that “the footage appears to have been shot in the 1950s,” although elementary logic would indicate the late 1940s. Why would an up-and-coming actress who’d finally broken into the big time, having been cast (most likely in late 1949) in John Huston‘s The Asphalt Jungle, which came out in May 1950, and then Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s All About Eve, which opened six months later, want to risk her reputation by performing in a sordid 16mm sex film? Doesn’t add up. Monroe was no dummy.
It’s much more likely that this black-and-white quickie was shot in ’48 or ’49, when Monroe was struggling to make do. That’s all I’m saying. Morgan or Gittens didn’t think it through. If the film seems to have been shot in the mid to late ’50s, which would be confirmed by Monroe’s hair being platinum blonde as opposed to her natural light reddish brown (which is how she wore it in until ’50 or thereabouts), Gittens should have at least reported this aspect. It’s sloppy reporting any way you look at it.

Hillary Clinton “is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsman, how she values the second amendment. She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley. She’s out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter.” — Barack Obama riffing earlier today on Hillary’s very recent stump fetish about guns, being taught to shoot by her dad and drilling ducks with buckshot. Play this while reading and reflecting.

Some random responses to John Horn‘s 4.14 L.A. Times piece exploring the why and wherefores of the recent talent-agency shakeups. I’ve read it twice and I still haven’t absorbed the “there” that is presumably there. I’m in the middle of a third read as we speak. I’m down to reading sentences out loud and repeating them until the “oh, now I see!” kicks in.

The intra-agency trades “are related to growing anxiety over the future of the film business,” he writes. How do you quantify “growing” anxiety? The talent representation business runs on anxiety. Agents feed on it. It’s the one constant that has permeated the business since the days of silent pictures. A monkey with claws dug in to every player and every career. John Horn, trust me, is himself haunted by it. I eat anxiety for breakfast. To me it isn’t a monkey but a gorilla, but on some level I’m resigned to that.
Robert DeNiro going from CAA to Endeavor is a big “whoa”? In whose mind? In the eyes of the critics and reading public the man is finished as any kind of heavy talent or formidable player. He’s made too much crap, taken too many paycheck jobs. One look at that godawful Righteous Kill trailer and you go, “Jesus, God… what happened?” Every second or third film the man makes could and should be something smallish, soulful, risk-taking. Whoever you may consider to be the Robert Bresson, Luis Bunuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini or Michelangelo Antonioni of our time, DeNiro should at least be trying to hook up with these talents. Has he? Doesn’t seem like it.
“Instead of gambling on a broad and eclectic slate of movies, the studios are making creative decisions as much on spreadsheet projections as gut reactions to great screenplays,” Horn reports. “Studios not only are making far fewer films but also allowing concepts and marketing hooks to govern greenlight decisions rather than a specific actor’s availability and interest.” Haven’t producers been lamenting “high concept” thinking since the early ’80s? Groaning how difficult it is to get a movie going that isn’t driven by a simple, easy-to-digest marketing hook? This has been a Hollywood malaise issue for a long time now. What’s new here?
Two of the significant talent switches listed by Horn are those by actors Ashton Kutcher (from Endeavor to CAA) and Jennifer Connelly (ICM to CAA). No offense, but who cares what Kutcher is up to? I admired Connelly’s work in House of Sand and Fog and A Beautiful Mind, but are her representational loyalites matters of any real interest to anyone? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just asking.
“The head of production at one studio said that when his movie budgets now grow too expensive, he insists that actors give up one of their prized perks: a percentage of every dollar that comes in.” Ooohh, poor babies!
“Several managers said that many actors who were once guaranteed to open a film at the box office are no longer a sure bet, as was proved by the poor openings for Will Ferrell‘s Semi-Pro and George Clooney‘s Leatherheads.” Ferrell has done fairly well until recently, but when has Clooney (whom everyone loves) ever opened anything?