Why is the N.Y. Times Sunday magazine running a pages-long John Wray piece on Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games with the distributor, Warner Independent, not opening it until next February? I can imagine what might have happened but….

Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern has finally joined HE in dissing those idiots employed by various bars, hotels and electronic stores who show images that are obviously intended to be seen on conventional 4 x 3 TV screens in a horizontally expanded format on their 16 x 9 flatscreens. This looks absurd to anyone with a sense of visual and biological proportion, and yet the people who understand that it’s infuriating to watch incorrectly widened images seem to be very much in the minority.

Is it fair to say that the people who look at these stupidly distorted 16 x 9 images in sports bars and say nothing as they chit-chat and sip their vodka and tonics are complacent to a fault? Maybe, but let’s not go there. However, the people who run the bars and hotels and electronic stores who deliberately set their widescreen TVs so that the entire screen is filled to the brim even if the images are from a 1.33 to 1 film from the 1930s or ’40s need to be taken out back and slapped around.

These bozos have been insisting on showing distorted images for one reason only — they paid for the damn 16 x 9 flatscreens and are determined to subject their customers to the full width of the image even if it looks ridiculous. So that people know they’re looking at a 16 x9 image that they’ve paid for (!), and not some old TV leftover from the ’90s.

I saw Wes Anderson‘s The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight, 9.29) the other night. I’m going to wait until it opens the N.Y. Film Festival before riffing on it, but I have to at least mention two stand-out music tracks — Peter Sarstedt‘s “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” and Joe Dassin‘s “Les Champs-Elysees.”

Both cuts are old and and kinda schmaltzy — the Sarstedt tune was first recorded in the mid ’60s, the Dassin is (I think) from the early ’70s — but they work perfectly within the context of the film, and I haven’t been able to get either one out of my head since. In a way the tunes are reborn — imbued with new life, meaning, resonance — by serving as Darjeeling mood enhancers.

Say what you will about the increasingly mannered, embryonically stylized tone of Anderson films starting with The Royal Tenenbaums, but Anderson’s taste in music is fairly sublime. I don’t remember a knockout track from The Life Aquatic, but you can almost always count on good music turning up in a Wes film. Perhaps my favorite thing about The Royal Tenenbaums is that Nico track,”These Days,” and I’ve never thought so much of the Rolling Stones’ “I Am Waiting” (a track off Aftermath) as I did when Anderson used it for a late second-act scene in Rushmore.

Novelist Nick Antosca (“Fires“) has penned “a breathless, extemporaneous appreciation” of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on the Huffington Post and called it “a majestic accomplishment….a film had me so deeply in its reality” that he’s found it hard to remember when it last happened.

“I experienced Assassination in my skin and my blood and my bones. It’s such a powerful piece of art… spooky, absolutely beautiful, and so richly put together.

“From the trailer and early reviews I expected a tone poem, something lovely to look at but not necessarily affecting in any profound sense — like Terrence Malick‘s The New World, with its mumbling and utterly inscrutable characters framed by gorgeous forest — so what initially startled me was the genuine humor and deftness of Andrew Dominik‘s script (and of Ron Hansen‘s dialogue — Hansen wrote the novel). Every character is achingly human and distinguished with care, given dignity and pettiness and strange quirks and spotlit moments.”

Forget the talk about Resident Evil and Good Luck, Chuck being in a neck-and-neck competition this weekend — the Milla Jovovich horror flick will be the absolute, far-and-away champ with a $20 million-plus weekend haul. Evil did about $9 million yesterday and is being projected to earn $23,444,000 at $8200 a print while the second-place Chuck is looking at a projected $13,2000,000 and $5000 a print.

The Brave One followed its underwhelming 9.14 debut with a 48% second-weekend dropoff — a decently made film but forget it, it’s done, that’s all she wrote — with $7,025,000.

The fourth-place Eastern Promises will do about $5,672,000 and $4000 a print.

James Mangold‘s 3:10 to Yuma will come in fifth with $5,6549,000 — this will put the cume at $37,200,000 with the final tally expected to ring up between $40 and $45 million, which is what Lionsgate was hoping for all along. Why won’t it make $60 or $70 million? Russell Crowe has a limited following and the western is a bygone genre.

Sidney White will be sixth with $4,631,000 and 2000 a print….done. Mr. Woodcock will be seventh with $2,997,000. Superbad will be eighth with $2,793,000 (the cume will hit $116 million). Across the Universe in 200-odd theatres will come in ninth with $2,096,000 and $7800 per print.

And Paul Haggis‘s In The Valley of Elah, playing in over 300 theatres, will be tenth with $1,076,000 and almost $3400 per print…finished. American “empties” have blown off one of the strongest and most stirring films of the year. I’m ashamed for these drug addicts (i.e., people doped on innumerable lifestyle diversions) and furious at them at the same time. They need to be disciplined. They need to be taken out behind the outhouse and given the belt.

The Hunting Party, in 300-odd theatres, will come away with $342,000 and about $1000 a print….graveyard.

Into the Wild is a corker, though — playing in just 4 theatres it will manage $50,000 a print and a $200,000 tally — that’s very strong.

The Assassination of Jesse James will do $151,000 and $10,000 a print…not bad but not strong enough. Half-inch-deep Americans have turned their backs on a landmark art film that audiences of taste and breeding will be watching 20, 50 and 100 years from now and saying to themselves, “What could have been wrong with average moviegoers back then to have ignored this amazing film? Were they alco- holics? Heroin addicts?”

The Jane Austen Book Club, in 25 theatres, will do $145,000 and $5800 a print…fizzle.

The 1080p high-def version takes forever to lead, but here are three trailers for the new, re-edited version of Richard Kelly‘s Southland Tales (Samuel Goldwyn, 11.9).

George Clooney got banged up today in a motorcycle accident in northern New Jersey. The bike he was riding collided with a car and wham… off to Palisades Medical Center and treatment for a broken rib. Clooney’s girlfriend Sarah Larson (described on Clooney Studio as a “model, former waitress and Fear Factor contestant”) suffered a broken foot.

Some of the voice-over dialogue in the first ten or twelve minutes of Juno (Fox Searchlight, 12.14) is a little too clever, but this impression doesn’t linger. An impression that has lingered and is gaining cred by the week is that the film’s screenwriter Diablo Cody is a likely contender for Best Original Screenplay.

I’ve been telling myself this, at least, since seeing Juno at the Toronto Film Festival, but after looking at this 18-month-old video of Cody talking to David Letterman, I’m thinking it’s all but locked. She’s doing a bit here but it’s great material — brash and bawdy but curiously innocent and unaffected.

On top of which there’s this shot of herself she posted last January. The lady reminds me in an odd way of mid ’70s Patti Smith in that she’s absolutely fearless about saying whatever’s on her mind (and without precisely knowing what that might be). There’s also a dose of Sarah Silverman in there along with a little dab of Tallulah Bankhead (although Cody doesn’t sound like a drinker). In short, the stuff of instant legend.

From Diablo Cody’s blog, dated 1.22.07

“Don’t tell Bryan Singer, but I want to get through this movie without once giving a Nazi salute. That’s my secret plan. It also denotes rank. Only the desperate go around shooting their arm up in the air all the time. If you’ve got any class, keep your arm down, in my view.” — Valkyrie costar Bill Nighy on his portrayal of anti-Hitler conspirator General Freidrich Olbricht, speaking to the Telegraph‘s John Hiscock.

Postal director Uwe Bohl has passed along some dismissive opinions to the Arizona Daily Star‘s Phil Villarreal: (a) “Steven Spielberg is a great director, but a lot of his movies are not really interesting.” [HE comment — agreed on the “not really interesting” part, but not on the “g” word. Spielberg clearly seemed on the road to greatness in the ’70s and early ’80s, but that illusion has been since dispelled.] (b) “Alexander was shit.” [HE comment — Oliver Stone‘s farts are more interesting than any Bohl film.] (c) “I love Terminator 2 but Titanic is kind of meh. It won the Oscars and then one year later you’re watching it on TV thinking `how did this fucking movie make all this money? I couldn’t stand it anymore.” [HE comment — Titanic‘s deserved success is all about the last 25 minutes.]