Henceforth it’s just “the Wachowskis” — no more “brothers” — because the former Larry Wachowski is definitely, fully and biologically “Lana” these days. That took a while, no? His/her intention to do a “gender reassignment” was announced four years ago, but it actually took more like three years. According to this 7.21.06 report on a site called Rated-M.com, Larry’s intention to opt for womanhood in the summer of ’03 (the news broke just before the debut of The Matrix Reloaded) was substantially complete as of last summer.

Lana and Andy Wachowski

A more recent report that ran on 8.28.07 said Lana “will actually speak to the press” — possibly an exclusive chat with Dateline NBC — about the sex-change thing down the road, but not until Speed Racer (Warner Bros., 5.8.08) has opened. No junket appearances for Lana, the report says, because “the current feeling is that his sex change could hurt the family image that Speed Racer film is going for.”

I can understand the motive in Warner Bros. wanting to play Lana down for the sake of Speed Racer box-office, if a junket duck-out has in fact been planned. (It’s many months off so I doubt it.) But shouldn’t we all be trying to relax about this and accept things as they are and not pretend there’s something askew?

Hiding from the press doesn’t feel like an enlightened move on Lana’s part. She’s obviously a talented director and something of a visionary (although the Wachowskis’ work on the re-shoots of The Invasion have called this notion into question), and in a perfect world she would sit down, look people in the eye and talk about the work.

This Nicole Kidman shot has been used for the cover of the new Vanity Fair. White bra, milky-creamy alabaster skin, a push for Margot at the Wedding. The interview highlights are summarized in a Daily Mail piece, but gazing works better.

Sony chairman and CEO Michael Lynton has written a Wall Street Journal piece that says because American films and TV shows are taking ideas from other nations and cultures and vice versa, “What can be seen in the cinemas and on television screens from Bangalore to Barcelona these days is any indication, globalization does not mean homogeneity. It means heterogeneity.”

Wait a minute…uhmm, that means “the quality or state of being heterogeneous; composition from dissimilar parts; disparateness.”

“Instead of one voice, there are many,” Lynton continues. “Instead of fewer choices, there are more. And instead of a uniform, Americanized world, there remains a rich and dizzying array of cultures, all of them allowing thousands of movies and televisions shows to bloom.

“Audiences around the world are applauding this explosion of home-grown content, because for them, Hollywood is not simply a place in Southern California. It is a symbol of an entertainment culture which is becoming as diverse as it is universal.”

This is why I keep a safety pin near me at all times.

Hand of fate #1: “And what is that, John? What? Bad luck. That’s all it is. I pray in your life you will never find it runs in streaks. That’s what it does, that’s all it’s doing. Streaks. I pray it misses you. That’s all I want to say.” — Shelley “the Machine” Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Hand of fate #2: “So you’ve had a bad couple of months. Well, I’m sorry, but I’ll tell you what you do and it’s no different if you’re J. Paul Getty or Irving the Tailor — you ride it out.” — Lawrence Tierney‘s “Joe Cabot” in Quentin Tarantino‘s Reservoir Dogs.

Moviegoing would be an immeasurably richer thing if exhibitors were to allow the showing of an occasional brief short before the feature. I know…fat chance! But Venice Film Festival audiences saw a “beguiling” 13-minute short film titled Hotel Chavalier — directed by Wes Anderson, costarring Jason Schartzman and Natalie Portman — just before the showing of The Darjeeling Limited. Very cool, and thematically linked yet!

Jason Schwartzman, Natalie Portman in scene from a 13-minute Wes Anderson Darjeeling Limited short called Hotel Chevalier. [still provided by Dazza Buser of www.natalieportman.com]

But Chevalier will not, according to trade reports, be shown in theatres along with Darjeeling when it opens on 9.29 — only at other festivals (i.e., the New York Film Festival), on the internet and eventually on the DVD. Bad call, guys. A pre-feature Chevalier hors d’oeuvre would lend a special dimension — an “echo” or rebound effect — to Darjeeling. Fox Searchlight should definitely reconsider. At least show it at the upscale venues — Landmark, Arclight, etc. — where such a novelty would be appreciated.

The process that refines raw life into art is often necessarily harsh. And one thing that seems to work against good art or well-crafted entertainment is when the artist-filmmaker has chosen to absorb life from within the comfort of a protected membrane and is thereby absorbing less of the stuff that tends to inform and clarify and lead to some droppings of insight. It follows, therefore, that an artist who’s been through an especially rough and traumatic patch is on some level better positioned to create something richer and fuller than one who’s been gliding along on his own fumes.

Owen Wilson, Wes Anderson

Nothing too earthshaking in this, but it does, I believe, cast light upon the situation of Owen Wilson and his longtime collaborator Wes Anderson, as well as, accor- ding to Venice Film Festival reviewers, the “smug“, “airless“, “chilly,” “under glass” and “self-satisfied” element that colors The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight, 9.29), which Anderson directed and co-wrote and Wilson costars in.

Put bluntly and at the risk of sounding insensitive, Wilson’s recent attempted- suicide trauma may very well — in the long run, at least — make him a better artist, a better actor and a much funnier man. (Anderson’s comment during a Venice Film Festival press conference that the recovering Wilson has “been making us laugh” indicates an admirable rock-out attitude.) Lying crumpled at the bottom of a dark pit does wonders for your game if you can climb out of it. Ask any artist who’s been there.

Perhaps Wilson’s near-tragedy will rub off on his good pal Anderson (how could it not?) but what this obviously gifted director-writer with the carefully-tailored suits seems to desperately need — and his critics have been saying this for years, beginning with the faint disappointments of The Royal Tennenbaums — is to somehow climb out of his fastidiously maintained Wes-zone (i.e., “Andersonville”) and open himself up for more of the rough and tumble.

I’m not saying Anderson is necessarily leading a bloodless life (he’s very tough and exacting, and can get pretty damn angry when rubbed the wrong way). And I’m not suggesting that he try to become someone else. Wes has obviously found a highly developed style and a sensibility of his own, and it would be folly to veer away from this in any drastic way. (Jacques Tati was Jacques Tati, Luis Bunuel was Luis Bunuel, etc.) At the same time Anderson needs to…I don’t know, do something.

Maybe there’s no remedy. Maybe we’re all just stuck in our grooves and that’s that. What’s that Jean Anouilh line from Becket? “I’m afraid we can only do, absurdly, what it has been given to us to do. Right to the end.”

What do I know about all this? Not that much. But I know — remember — Wes a little bit, and I know people who know him.

Working with Wilson again on screenplays might help. (Although I’ve been told that Wilson’s writing-discipline issues may have gotten in the way of this in the past.) The general consensus seems to be that the somewhat stilted, self-enclosed qualities have seemed more pronounced in The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, which Wilson didn’t co-write. Another thing to consider might be to focus more on two- or three-character stories (a la Rushmore) rather than ensembles.

Paul Schrader told me in an early ’80s interview that the two things that tend to kick your art up to the next level are (a) a jarring episode that turns your head around and reorders your thinking and (b) a mentoring by or a collaboration with someone you trust sufficiently to allow for experimentation and growth. Anderson has now had a taste of the former, and there’s nothing stopping him from at least attempting the latter.

A recently-published study in the Journal of Epidemial Community Health, compiled by researchers at the Center for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University, has determined that rock stars are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age — brilliant! “More than 1,000 British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.” Nope, not a put-on.

“Arriving late in a movie confab like [Telluride], after days of standard film-fest death-and-degradation fare, a blithe-spirited confection like Juno has some odds in its favor when it comes to becoming a festival’s runaway popular hit,” EW/Popwatch‘s Chris Willman has noted. “But Jason Reitman‘s movie earned that unscientific honor here largely on merit, not just its unfair comedic advantage.

Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody

“Even coming down the mountain into the less mirth-deprived or oxygen-deficient environment of the multiplex later this year, Juno is still going to play like gangbusters. Fox Searchlight certainly thinks so. They recently made the decision to start rolling Reitman’s film out on December 14 — which, as screenwriter Diablo Cody says on her blog, ‘is not a messin’-around release date. It’s kind of a scary release date. It’s a we-believe-in-you release date. I believe in me, but I also believe in Crystal Light, so it seems my trust is easily won.'”

Here’s an audio interview with Reitman and Cody, recorded at Telluride.

So which films were upped, elevated and enhanced by showings at the Telluride and Venice film festivals (i.e., the first half of the latter), and which ones were dinged, damaged or dismissed?

The praise showered upon Joe Wright‘s Atonement at Venice has apparently put it into the running for the Best Picture Oscar race. (Although, as I’ve said, that status won’t be confirmed until Toronto reactions are fully absorbed and considered.) Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild flew pretty well at Telluride with just about everyone calling it Penn’s best film ever. And the pleasures (or is “contentments” a better word?) generated at Telluride by Jason Reitman‘s Juno is sending it into Toronto with a full head of steam.

The hard-to-classify trio of Woody Allen, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach took some lumps. Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream and Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited suffered severe Venice slapdowns. Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding didn’t fare very well at Telluride either.

Ang Lee‘s Lust, Caution, which played Venice, took some serious hits also.

Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford emerged as a hotly debated title although the vast majority offered ecstatic raves. Reactions to Brian DePalma‘s Redacted were sharply divided at both Telluride and Venice with a slight majority tipping negative.

Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There is another title awaiting further discussion at Toronto, although the Telluride reactions seemed to elicit a fair share of half-and-halfs, whatevs and passive-aggressive chortles. Nobody I read or heard from was doing cartwheels, I can tell you that.

Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly picked up refrains of the deserved praise that came its way during Cannes, but Alison Eastwood‘s Rails and Ties pretty much went thud in Telluride.

The strongest buzz after Atonement was generated by the 20-minute Telluride reel of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood. Hard festival experience has taught time and again that reels can’t be trusted, of course, but that hasn’t curtailed expectations about this reportedly longish (155 to 160 minutes?) epic about greed and black gold (“really, really, really, really loosely based on Upton Sinclair‘s “Oil“, according to star Daniel ).

The ghastly incident that consumes Brian DePalma‘s Redacted — the real-life rape and murder of a 15 year-old girl and her family by U.S. troops in Mahmudiya, Iraq, in March 2006 — “was almost the exact same incident we [dramatized] in Casualties of War,” the filmmaker has told Variety‘s Anne Thompson. “You can’t tell the insurgents from the people they’re supposed to be protecting. In Casualties of War they were abducting a farm girl. There was the usual frustration trying to tell someone about it. It was impossible to get justice. Everyone wants it covered up and forgotten. I wanted to tell that story again, about Iraq.”

Profound sadness about the passing last night of 42 West publicist Robert Garlock, who’d “been sick for a while,” I was told this morning. A longtime PMK (and then PMK/HBH) veteran, Garlock joined 42 West in May 2005 as a partner and chief of the talent division. He’d personally repped Penelope Cruz, Uma Thurman, Clive Owen, Hilary Swank, Hugh Grant, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet. He also helped guide campaigns on more than 40 feature films, including Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The English Patient and The Hours.

Robert Garlock, Uma Thurman

Andy Warhol once said “there’s nothing more middle-class than being afraid to look middle-class.” By the same token, in the realm of film columnists and critics there’s…now I can’t figure the analogy. I’m trying to say that if you’re afraid to sound downmarket and/or gut-level in your opinions, you’re lacking a certain degree of integrity.

Not that anyone is obliged to sound like Oscar Madison or Rufus T. Firefly or Roger Avary after three cans of beer in discussing new films, but most of us have these guys (or aspects of them) living inside us. And yet most high-end critics accept or at least recognize that they’re all obliged to express themselves in a manner that will be deemed “aesthetically correct” by their peers.

The secret to good writing is having the brass to begin a sentence with only a half-formed notion — and certainly without knowing exactly — what you’re about to put into words, but pushing ahead and writing it down anyway, knowing or at least trusting it’ll come out right in the end.