Come 12.18 you’ll have the option of paying between $55 and $70 dollars for the Blade Runner Five-Disc Ultimate Collectors’ Edition DVD set from Warner Home Video, and you’ll get no less than five versions of Ridley Scott‘s 1982 sci-fi noir. There’s something insane about a package like this. You don’t have to be a Blade Runner obsessive living in your parents’ basement to want to own one, but it would help.

The thing for us level-headed types to do, of course, is buy or rent a stand-alone of Scott’s all-new, restored and remastered “final cut” with added and extended scenes, added lines, new and cleaner special effects and all new 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio track…and forget the rest.
The five-movie set includes (a) Scott’s latest cut (what’s he going to do — improve it again in three or four years?), (b) the 1982 Ladd Co. cut — the truncated theatrical version with that awful Harrison Ford/Deckard narration and has a “happy ending” getaway scene, (c) the “international ” seen on U.S. home video, laser disc and cable releases up to 1992, (d) the 1992 Director’s Cut version sans narration, no “happy ending” finale plus the “unicorn” sequence that suggests Deckard may be a replicant, and (e) something called a “work print” version (altered opening scene, no Deckard narration until the the end, no “unicorn” sequence, no “happy ending,” etc.). Plus a documentary called “Dangerous Days: Making of Blade Runner.”

Bidisha, a British author and art critic, is claiming in a Guardian piece that it’s the gossip publications and not the whacked-out celebs who are the true orchestrators of pain and meltdown and ruination. And not so much the publications as the women who work for them.

“The media that deal in pop freakouts don’t report these stories so much as create them,” she says. “If Britney Spears has had any kind of meltdown, who can blame her? She is followed wherever she goes by stalker-violators: some have cameras and call themselves paparazzi; some have notebooks and call themselves journalists; some have vaginas and call themselves concerned women of the world. All relish the harassment that they perpetrate.
“It is women (writers and readers) who are enjoying and encouraging the exposure of Lohan’s drink and drugs hell or Spears’s identity crisis, while saving space for a snide comment about their outfits. It is women who are getting off on other women’s difficulties, while men in power carouse, abuse (and self-abuse) with impunity.
“Who are the real ‘bad girls’? Not Lohan or Spears. The gossip magazines may be as punchy as a dose of Splenda, but they offer evidence that women have obediently taken on the values of a woman-hating world. We must recognise the part women play in the degradation of women: the ultimate betrayal.”

I’m slow from time to time, but I hadn’t seen the headless Statue of Liberty art for J.J. Abrams‘ monster film (i.e., the one that absolutely cannot be called Monstrous) until last night. Was it revealed at some earlier point?

Wait…Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There, the long-awaited Bob Dylan mystique movie with six actors inhabiting Dylan at different life-stages and incarnations, is going to open on two screens at Manhattan’s Film Forum on 11.21? That’s what The Reeler‘s Stu Van Airsdale is saying. Doesn’t this news constitute a kind of advance review?

The Simpsons Movie made $28,689,000 last night and is looking at a projected $72,102,000 for the weekend. The tracking projected only $30 to $40 million, but this often happens with kid movies. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will come in second with $19,291,000….off 44%. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix will earn $16,151,00 by Sunday night — off 60%, at $240 million now, probably won’t reach $300 million. Hairspray, off 44% from last weekend’s opener, will make $15,402,000.
Transformers — $10,965,000, now at $284 millon, will crest $300 million. No Reservations will make $10,937,000, or about $4500 a print in 2400 theatres…dead. Ratatouille will earn $6,848,000 — now at $179,000,000, looking at a strong push to make $200 million. Live Free or Die Hard — $4,905,000, now at $125 million. I Know Who Killed Me — $3,620,000 projected by Sunday night. Who’s Your Caddy?— $2,965,000.
Moliere died…$28,000…a little over $4000 a print. Arctic Tale is dead also — $17,000, four theatres, $4300 a print, $24,000 cume. Evan Almighty‘s cume is at $96 million..trying to hang onto theatres so it can clear $100 million. Sicko did another millon this week…$21.3 million so far, $1200 a print. Indie films are getting killed this year. All these equity funds…it’s a glut…most of the upcoming indie pics are going to get hurt or die, and it’s going to get worse.

I was talking to a nice-enough twentysomething guy from Thousand Oaks before last Monday night’s Bourne Ultimatum screening. He doesn’t work in the business and it was clear soon enough he wasn’t a film buff, but he seemed an intelligent, well-groomed adult. So I asked him at one point, “Have you seen Once? One of the best films of the summer, the best date movie in years?” Not only had the guy not seen it — he hadn’t heard of it.

I know what you’re thinking because I thought the same thing for a second or two — the guy’s not into movies at all (probably more into ESPN and hanging with his friends) and therefore his CRM-114 discriminator is blocking the transmissions. And yet he seemed alert and conscientious, and was very keen on seeing Matt Damon whup ass so he obviously pays attention to the movie world to some degree. I decided that if a guy like this hasn’t even heard of a movie as good and spirit-lifting as Once, something’s not right.
Since opening in mid May, Once — a low-budget musical about a platonic love affair between a Dublin street musician (Glenn Hansard) and a Slovakian singer-pianist (Marketa Irglova) who works as a flower girl and a house cleaner, and who’s also a mother of a little girl — has become a rousing indie-level success. Made for $150,000 U.S., give or take, it’s grossed $5,541,181 as of 7.22.07, according to the IMDB. And it’s still in theatres after nine weeks of play because it keeps selling tickets — not in massive numbers but steadily…hanging in there.
And now Fox Searchlight, which acquired Once for $600,000 last February, is hoping that business will increase from a fresh surge of TV ads (I saw one a few days ago) and from the attention that Hansard and Iglova will be attracting from their modest Swell Season tour over the next few days — a 7.28 performance at Chicago’s Old Town theatre, an August 1st performance at L.A’s El Rey, an August 4th show at San Francisco’s Noe Valley Ministry — along with three talk-show appearances on Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson and Carson Daly. (Hansard and Irglova will also be performing and schmoozing at a small L.A. industry event this Tuesday evening.)

And yet there’s something slightly whacked about that $5,541,181. The bottom line is that the vast majority of U.S moviegoers aren’t interested or haven’t heard or aren’t able to see Once because it isn’t playing nearby. A movie this honest and touching and transcendent should be doing better. It should at least be topping out in the $15 to $20 million range, and not looking at a push to $10 million. Are main- stream auds really that shallow, that uncomprehending? This is a film that gets people where they live when they see it. Once is the musical of the year and yet the callow, repetitive, emotionally coarse Hairspray will make about $15,402,000 this weekend.
Every so often you have to throw water in your face and resign yourself to the reality of life in the U.S. of A. No movie can become even a mid-sized hit in this country without stars or broad-ass selling points or a big marketing budget. Apparently the combination of Irish accents, broken hearts, beat-up guitars and fixing vaccuum cleaners on the side doesn’t play to the American dream, which is always about challenge, winning, beating the odds or at least being cool. On the other hand I’m thinking of a line that Jose Ferrer said to Peter O’Toole in that leadup-to-the-torture-scene in Lawrence of Arabia — “I am surrounded by cattle.”

Talk to any impassioned, ahead-of-the-curve film snob about classic westerns, and he/she will probably tell you that Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (1959) is a much better, more substantial film than Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon (1952). More deeply felt, they’ll say. Better shoot-em-up swagger, tastier performances, more likable, more old-west iconic. Many people I know feel this way. And now here‘s director Peter Bogdanovich saying it again in a New York Observer piece — Rio Bravo is even better than you thought, High Noon doesn’t hold up as well, etc.

Something snapped when I read Peter’s article this afternoon. Goddamn it, the Rio Bravo cult has gone on long enough. Bogdanovich calls it “a life-affirming, raucous, profound masterpiece” I’m going to respond politely and call that a reach. I admire Hawks’ movies and the whole Hawks ethos as much as the next guy, but it’s time to end this crap here and now.

High Noon may seem a bit stodgy or conventional to some and perhaps not as excitingly cinematic to the elites, but it’s a far greater film than Rio Bravo.

It’s not about the Old West, obviously — it’s a metaphor movie about the Hollywood climate in the early ’50s — but it walks and talks like a western, and is angry, blunt, honed and unequivocal to that end. It’s about the very worst in people, and the best in a single, anxious, far-from-perfect man. I’m speaking of screenwriter-producer Carl Foreman, who was being eyeballed by the Hollywood right for alleged Communist ties when he wrote it, and receiving a very tough lesson in human nature in the process. He wound up writing a crap-free movie that talks tough, cuts no slack and speaks with a single voice.

You know from the get-go that High Noon is going to say something hard and fundamental about who and what we are. It’s not going to poke along some dusty trail and go yippie-ki-yay and twirl a six-gun. It’s going to look you in the eye and say what’s what, and not just about the political and moral climate in some small western town that Gary Cooper‘s Willl Kane is the sheriff of.

Both are about a lawman facing up to bad guys who will kill him if he doesn’t arrest or kill them first. The similarities pretty much end there.

High Noon is about facing very tough odds alone, and how you can’t finally trust anyone but yourself because most of your “friends” and neighbors will equivocate or desert you when the going gets tough. Rio Bravo is about standing up to evil with your flawed but loyal pallies and nourishing their souls in the bargain — about doing what you can to help them become better men. This basically translates into everyone pitching in to help an alcoholic (Dean Martin) get straight and reclaim his self-respect. High Noon doesn’t need help. It’s about solitude, values…four o’clock in the morning courage.

We’d all like to have loyal supportive friends by our side, but honestly, which represents the more realistic view of human nature? The more admirable?

The first 10 or 12 minutes of Rio Bravo, I freely admit, are terrific in the way Hawks introduces character and mood and a complex situation without dialogue. Let it be clearly understood there is nothing quite like this in all of High Noon. I also love the way John Wayne rifle-butts a guy early on and then goes, “Aww, I didn’t hurt him.” But once the Duke and Walter Brennan, Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson settle into their routines and the easy-going pace of the thing, Rio Bravo becomes, at best, a somewhat entertaining sit-around-and-talk-and-occasionally-shoot-a-bad-guy movie.

More than anything else, Rio Bravo just ambles along. Wayne and the guys hang out in the jailhouse and talk things over. Wayne walks up to the hotel to bark at (i.e., hit on) Dickinson. It tries to sell you on the idea of the big, hulking, 51 year-old Wayne being a suitable romantic match for Dickinson, who was willow slender and maybe 27 at the time but looking more like 22 or 23.

Plus the villains have no bite or flavor — they’re shooting gallery ducks played by run-of-the-mill TV actors. Most of Rio Bravo is lit too brightly. And it seems too colorfully decorated, like some old west tourist town. It has a dippy “downtime” singing sequence that was thrown in to give Nelson and Martin, big singers at the time, a chance to show their stuff. Then comes the big shootout at the end that’s okay but nothing legendary.

Does Rio Bravo have a sequence that equals the gripping metronomic ticking-clock montage near the end of High Noon? Is the dialogue in Rio Bravo up to the better passages in Zinneman’s film? No. (There’s nothing close to the scene between Cooper and Lon Chaney, Jr., or the brief one between Cooper and Katy Jurado.) Is there a moment in Rio Bravo that comes close to Cooper throwing his tin star into the dust at the end? Is there a “yes!” payoff moment in Rio Bravo as good as the one in High Noon when Grace Kelly, playing a Quaker who abhors violence, drills one of the bad guys in the back?

Floyd Crosby‘s High Noon photography is choice and precise and gets the job done. It doesn’t exactly call attention to itself, but it’s continually striking and well-framed. To me, the black-and-white images have always seemed grittier and less Hollywood “pretty” than Russell Harlan‘s lensing in Rio Bravo, which I would file under “pleasing and acceptable but no great shakes.”

Dimitri Tomkin wrote the scores for both High Noon and Rio Bravo, but they don’t exist in the same realm. The Bravo score is settled and kindly, a sleepy, end-of-the-day campfire score. High Noon‘s is strong, pronounced, “dramatic” — so clear and unified it’s like a character in itself. And I’ve never gotten over the way the rhythm in that Tex Ritter song, “Do Not Forsake Me O My Darling,” sounds like a heartbeat.

Bogdanovich writes that Rio Bravo didn’t win any Oscars or get much critical respect, but “it was far more popular with audiences than High Noon.” He’s right about this. The IMDB says Rio Bravo earned $5,750,000 in the U.S. when it came out in ’59, and that High Noon brought in $3,750,000 when it played in ’52. Big effin’ deal. High Noon whipsRio Bravo‘s ass in every other respect.

That said, there’s an intriguing Hawks assessment by French director Jean-Luc Godard in the Bogdanovich piece. Godard doesn’t argue that Rio Bravo is pretty much what I’ve described above, but says it’s still a better film than High Noon because — I love Jean-Luc Godard — the exceptionally good things in Rio Bravo can be ignored, and therefore may be unnoticable to a good-sized portion of the audience.

“The great filmmakers always tie themselves down by complying with the rules of the game,” he states. “Take, for example, the films of Howard Hawks, and in particular Rio Bravo. That is a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception, but Hawks has made his film so that the insight can pass unnoticed without disturbing the audience that has come to see a Western like all others. Hawks is the greater because he has succeeded in fitting all he holds most dear into a well-worn subject.”

Here are two trailers for Joe Wright‘s Atonement (Focus Features, 12.7), an adaptation of an Ian McEwan period drama which will play at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in early September. The film doesn’t appear to be monumental art, but it’s almost shocking how differently these two trailers sell the film.
This cooler trailer makes it appear serious, adult, thoughtful, grounded; the other trailer makes it seem tawdry, vaguely cheap and almost soap opera-like. The differences are really amazing — the cooler version is posted above but watch the other one and compare.
The film, working from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, seems to borrow a tiny bit from Lillian Helman‘s The Children’s Hour. Set in 1935 and moving into the World War II years and beyond, it’s about a 13 year-old girl who ruins at least a couple of lives when she accuses the lover (James McAvoy) of her older sister (Keira Knightley) of a crime he hasn’t committed. Shock from the observing of sexual intimacy seems to be part of her motive. Costars include Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn and Vanessa Redgrave.

This video footage from the fatal crash this afternoon of those two Pheonix news helicopters is, of course, ghastly — there’s a crash sound and then the picture goes out. (Four guys died — two pilots, two news phtographers.) But what was that Stepford Wife blonde anchor thinking as she totally ignored the visual and aural implications of what had seemingly just been broadcast?
Obviously something of a sudden, possibly catastrophic nature had just happened — it at least warranted a question or a moment of pause — and all this bimbo could could do was talk about a just-concluded car-chase scenario on the ground, which was what the choppers had been trying to shoot.

Here’s a fairly engrossing teaser for Chris Nolan‘s The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18.08) — medium and high. It’s mainly about darkness and voices and laser light piercing same, and a simulation of what might happen to a Batman logo if it were to enter the earth’s atmosphere and start to flake apart like a faulty heat shield. Plus a relatively recent still of Heath Ledger as “the Joker” — the crude stitchwork applied to a sliced-open mouth makes for a Leatherface effect. This shot has already turned up on AICN and other sites:

And here’s one that was sent to me today from Comic-Con:

What do Michael Clayton, Dolores Claibourne, Jerry Maguire, Audrey Rose, Susan Slade, Mildred Pierce and King Kong have in common? They’re all titles of movies that are named after their main characters because…well, hard to say. Nothing poetic or allusive in them. Were they so named because a first and last name sounds straight and unpretentious? You tell me.

(l. to r.) George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, Kathy Bates in Dolores Claibourne, King Kong

Using a plain, simple-sounding “name” title that doesn’t imply or suggest anything thematic or tonal or alliterative. All these titles say is, “This is our main character’s name as it appears on his/her driver’s license.” (Except, obviously, in the case of one.)
I’ve heard from a friend of Michael Clayton (Warner Bros., 10.3), said to be a first-rate adult drama with George Clooney in the lead role, and he tells me that one reason for the title was that “the script/film starts with four page monologue voice-over from the Tom Wilkinson character” and so director-writer Tony Gilroy “didn’t want anyone to mistake his focus.”
Once “Michael Clayton” was typed on the cover page, the guy says, “everyone assumed they’d find a better title, and they were all still toying with alternatives until they saw the very first assemblage [of the film]. It’s so George’s movie. Suddenly, it felt dead-on.”
I had a question about this because “Michael Clayton” is just…well, a guy’s name. Nothing ironic or double-layered or smart-assy. And it’s not like the name rings a bell in a history-book sense, which was the justification for Neil Jordan and Liam Neeson calling their Irish rebellion story Michael Collins.
There’s obviously nothing “wrong” with Gilroy calling his film Michael Clayton — it’s fine — although it seems analagous to, say, Sydney Pollack deciding to throw out John Grisham‘s book title The Firm and call his 1993 Tom Cruise-Gene Hackman thriller Mitch McDeere instead.

Or Gregory Hoblit deciding against calling his 1998 Richard Gere-Edward Norton thriller Primal Fear and going instead with Martin Vail (i.e., the name of Gere’s lawyer character).
Or Howard Hawks decided against calling his 1948 western classic Red River and going instead with Matthew Garth (i.e., Montgomery Clift‘s character) or Tom Dunson (i.e., John Wayne‘s).
Or Changing Lanes being thrown out by director Roger Michell in favor of Gavin Banek (i.e., the name of Ben Affleck’s character).
Or Brian DePalma deciding upon Tony Montana instead of Scarface.
Greer Garson‘s Mrs. Miniver isn’t the same kind of deal because of the “Mrs.” — that lends a certain titled distinction. And it’s not like Andrew V. McLaglen‘s McLintock! because that was just the last name of John Wayne’s character, and it used an exclamation point. Napoleon Dynamite was a different deal as well — the weird goofball sound of that name made for a kind of attitude statement.