“I’m trying to satisfy your need to probe into my private life and thoughts, but uh….I’m not going to give you any revelations. Just not going to happen.” You should to try and guess who said this to a would-be interviewer inside a trailer parked in a Toronto suburb in 1986. If it takes you more than five or ten seconds to identify the person, then you probably need to see a certain film by Todd Haynes, and I don’t mean Velvet Goldmine.

I’ve twice read Alissa Simon‘s Variety review of Marc Forster‘s The Kite Runner (posted last Thursday after a Chicago Film Festival screening), and it feels so dry and dispassionate that a computer program could have written it. Trade reviews are supposed to assess the merits and demerits of a film (including how commercial it may turn out to be), but you can feel the presence of perspective, personality and even emotion in the Variety reviews by Todd McCarthy, Robert Koehler and Derek Elley. Simon seems to be saying that it’s a modest achievement, but offers no real hints about how she really and truly felt deep down.

Jamie Stuart‘s 2nd New York Film Festival short is a lot trippier and more engaging than the first, which I posted on 10.2.07.

He’s still using that Forbidden Planet music on the soundtrack to suggest a feeling of being disengaged as this or that filmmaker answers a question, but the overall cutting is sublime and the first 40%, in which images and dialogue from various post-screening press conferences are digitally projected upon (and made to fit within) various Manhattan ad spaces, is flat-out brilliant.

The first portion of this section shows Stuart emerging from the Columbus Ave. subway station, hearing the voice of Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead director Sidney Lumet behind him, and then turning around and seeing a video of Lumet’s press conference playing on a plasma screen mounted just above the subway stairs. He stands there transfixed as Lumet prattles on about…well, not much.

We later see a clip from Willem Dafoe‘s press conference projected on a Times Square billboard, another clip shown within a car’s side rear-view mirror, and an assortment of clips pasted upon a group of outdoor display posters.

I asked Stuart to send me a frame capture of of this last scene. Maybe he’ll respond later today.

Yesterday Wilson Morales of blackfilm.com posted a chat with WGA negotiator Terry George (culled from an interview George gave to promote his latest directing effort, Reservation Road) about the state of discussions between producers and the Writers Guild regarding a possible strike. DGA and SAG have related issues, says George, but right now the suits and the writers are miles apart.

Terry George

The studios, George said, are saying “this an antiquated system [we’re living under] and we want to revisit the residual situation. The residual is what most actors and writers live off. It’s that little bit of money you get back when a film shows. They say they want to go back to a profit-based distribution thing.”

And the hell with that because the studios are world-famous for using an account- ing system that, George says, “is beyond mafia bookkeeping.” That David Mamet/Speed-The-Plow line, “There is no net,” is part of the lore and legend of this town. And WGA negotiators understandably feel that allowing their incomes to be governed by studio accounting notions of what is and isn’t profitable is, to put it mildly, bordering on comical.

“I still get statements on Hotel Rwanda which basically say we are $20 million dollars in the red and [ones that say] In The Name of the Father is $16 million dollars in the red, so the notion that writers and actors work until they declare a profit is ridiculous. It’s a smoke screen to get away from what this all about, which is that the whole industry is moving over to the internet and the new media.

“All we are saying is to give us a little piece of that and we would be very happy with it. I don’t know if they think they can bust the WGA or the whole industry or make a change here, but we’re not going for it. We’re not asking for a lot. We’re asking for a portion of this; and they have been trying over the last few years with reality TV shows and non-union writers just to chip away at that.

“My mood and the mood of some of the Guild is `Let’s not wait til June 30th’. They all think we are going to wait [until] June 30th and wait for the actors to come out and by that time they would have stockpiled 200 films and it will be a de facto strike anyway. I’m all for going as soon as we can. Let’s get it out there and see. Given the level of profit that’s been made now and the ‘Frank Purdue-ization’ of the whole product, to turn around and say the writers and eventually the actors shouldn’t have a piece of that is ludicrous.

“We’re not stupid enough to call a [strike] date” — October 30th or November 1st have been mentioned — “that everyone else decides for us. We are going to look at the most strategic time if they are not willing to negotiate and then make that move then or go the membership and say, ‘Look, this is basically is an attempt to destroy this union, which I think it is or to weaken everyone to the point of where, the future of the whole industry, being a virgin again or something.'”

According to a story posted two days ago, three different producers have told Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke that Warner Bros president prexy Jeff Robinov has declared that “we are no longer doing movies with women in the lead.”

Finke concludes that Robinov’s “Neanderthal thinking” is a kneejerk reaction to the tanking of two WB female actioners — The Brave One, a Jodie Foster urban revenger, and the Nicole Kidman pod-people thriller The Invasion.

She fails to mention that still another Warner Bros. femme-topped thriller — Hilary Swank‘s The Reaping — tanked last April, and that four years ago Halle Berry‘s Gothika, another WB action flick, also performed unremarkably.

Finke is missing a key distinction, of course. Would Robinov be saying “no more movies with women in the lead” if WB had recently made a film as good and successful as The Silence of the Lambs, Aliens, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Kill Bill? Not likely. If a sweeping statement is required, Robinov should actually be saying that Warner Bros. “is no longer doing female-starring thrillers and actioners produced by Joel Silver.” Silver, after all, produced The Brave One, The Invasion, Gothika and The Reaping.

I’m not saying that that sweeping statements of any kind are wise (they usually make the speaker sound stupid or short-sighted), and I’m also guessing that Finke’s interpretation of what Robinov actually said (or may have said) misses certain shadings and qualifications. Finke can be very strident and simplistic when it comes to female-power issues in the industry.

But if Robinov has in fact said to producers what Finke has reported, my suggested sweeping statement — ixnay on the Silver action chick flicks — is obviously more logical than the one has Robinov allegedly voiced.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese humanitarian and politician who’s been held under house arrest by military thugs since winning 82% of the Parliamentary seats in her country 17 years ago — that’s not funny. But Moving Picture Blog’s Joe Leydon has noticed something overly sincere about Jim Carrey‘s delivery of his video message about her situation, so he runs a post that snickers at Carrey’s maudlin emoting. (“But seriously folks!”) Doesn’t the reality of the Burma thing balance out the Carrey factor?

A few days ago N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr suckered me into buying the just-released DVD of Stanley Donen‘s Funny Face. I hate glossy-synthetic ’50s musicals — I’ve known that for years– and yet I allowed the smooth-talking, snake-oil-selling Kehr to lead me down the garden path.

This is the second time I’ve bought a disc based on a Kehr recommendation that I suspected deep down I wouldn’t like (the first being the Criterion Collection DVD of John Ford‘s Young Mr. Lincoln), and which I traded in later on. Kehr is a superb writer, but he’s a bit of an old-school sentimentalist. Never again.

The IF THERE WAS A GOD… box has been moved to the middle of the column, so as not to challenge the Oscar Balloon’s bottom-of-the-column position. The “pure” Best Picture contenders are only different from the regular Balloon-ers for the inclusion of Once and Zodiac, which absolutely deserve the toast. Nothing to say (for now) about three I haven’t seen — Charlie Wilson’s War, Sweeney Todd and There Will Be Blood.

The Best Director contenders follow, but the acting nominees aren’t very different at all except for Zodiac‘s Robert Downey, Jr. and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead‘s Ethan Hawke in the Best Supporting Actor category and Stephanie Daley‘s Amber Tamblyn in a Best Supporting Actress slot. In part because I haven’t really hunkered down with this. Things are especially lean on the Best Supporting Actress front. Ideas?

The GOD box reads as follows…

BEST PICTURE (6): American Gangster (Universal Pictures); Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (ThinkFilm); No Country for Old Men (Miramax); Once (Fox Searchlight); Things We Lost in the Fire (Dreamamount); Zodiac (Paramount). TAIL-GATING: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros.); Atonement (Focus Features); The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal); Control (Weinstein Co.); In The Valley of Elah (Warner Independent); Ratatouile (Pixar/Disney). HAVEN’T SEEN ‘EM: Charlie Wilson’s War (Universal); Sweeney Todd (Dreamamount); There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage).

BEST DIRECTOR (6): Ridley Scott (American Gangster); Sidney Lumet (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead); Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men); John Carney (Once); David Fincher (Zodiac); Susanne Bier (Things We Lost in the Fire). RUNNERS-UP: Anton Corjbin (Control); Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford); Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum); Paul Haggis (In The Valley of Elah); Joe Wright (Atonement). UNSEEN, UNRANKED: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood); Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd); Mike Nichols (Charlie Wilson’s War).

BEST ACTOR (9): Benicio Del Toro (Things We Lost in the Fire); Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild); Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead); Tommy Lee Jones (In The Valley of Elah); Sam Riley (Control). RUNNERS-UP: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford); Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men); Chris Cooper (Breach); James McAvoy (Atonement); Adam Sandler (Reign Over Me); Denzel Washington (American Gangster). UNSEEN, UNRANKED: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood); Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson’s War);

BEST ACTRESS (8): Halle Berry (Things We Lost in the Fire); Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There); Julie Christie (Away from Her); Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose); Keira Knightley (Atonement); Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart); Ellen Page (Juno), Amber Tamblyn (Stephanie Daley). UNSEEN, UNRANKED: Amy Adams (Enchanted).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (5): Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men); Ethan Hawke (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead); Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood); Robert Downey, Jr. (Zodiac). RUNNERS-UP: Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards (Zodiac). UNSEEN, UNRANKED: Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood); Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson’s War); Liev Schreiber (Love in the Time of Cholera).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (4): Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement); Marisa Tomei (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead); Susan Sarandon (In The Valley of Elah); Saoirse Ronan (Atonement).

“You were right and I was wrong.” Beat, beat…a full five-second pause. “About the horses. The Lipizzaners. They are from Spain, not Portgual.” Spoken by Gene Hackman at the tail end of Crimson Tide, and one of the best closing lines of the last 20 years. (As long as you’ve heard the set-up, that is, which happens about 15 minutes earlier.) Apparent closure to a story of intense conflict by suggesting a capitulation, and then pulling back. With a laugh. Perfect.

Not a huge surprise, but Sydney Pollack, Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella were three good Godfathers on Michael Clayton, according to director-writer Tony Gilroy. “The advice all the way through the preproduction process is all ambassadorial and diplomatic: ‘Can you call this person for me?’ and ‘Have you ever worked with this costume designer before?’ and ‘I didn’t rehearse the film..is that a good idea?’ It’s all that kind of process stuff. To all of their credit, they gave to me what they would all want [as directors]. They gave me absolute autonomy. They gave me final cut. They protected me. They kept everything bad away from me. They created for me, on a small scale, the situation they all would want to have.”

I’ve been hanging onto the idea of Barack Obama reviving his candidacy by beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus. Now comes a Des Moines Register poll showing Clinton at 29%, John Edwards at 23% and Obama at 22%. The Iowa caucus isn’t until mid-January — three and a half months hence — and things could change, of course, but this is awful news.