“I think we need a trial, in this country, where Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush would be brought up on charges for causing the deaths of so many people.” — Michael Moore on Chris Matthews‘ Hardball, 7.23.07, on MSNBC. A portion of a PBS documentary called “The Dark Side” that supports this view. Rep. Dennis Kucinich explaining three months ago (to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer) his reasons for wanting Cheney impeached.

It’s hard not to sympathize with the Walt Disney Co.’s decision to become the first major Hollywood studio to ban depictions of smoking [by] “saying there would be no smoking in its family-oriented, Disney-branded films and it would ‘discourage’ it in films distributed by its Touchstone and Miramax labels,” according to a 7.25 Reuters report. They’d be wrong to push this too far with Touchstone and Miramax films, however. Life is life and some people still smoke for this or that reason, and any film that artificially suppresses that reality will devalue itself.
Last May the MPAA decided to consider giving R ratings to movies that “glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating.” I said at the time that “this is almost akin to prohibition and will probably raise a stink among who make their living playing bad guys, but anything that cuts down on a truly offensive acting tendency is okay with me, even though the MPAA’s idea is on the dopey side.
Point #1: “Smoking is a shorthand device for characters who are meant to be seen as outlaw-ish or anti-social. But what about an actress playing a middle-aged divorcee with self-destructive or low self-esteem issues? What about a nervous 15 year-old who’s trying to look cool in front of his friends. There are all kinds of characters who could light up in a valid way.” Point #2: “It’s not smoking in movies per se that’s so bad, but actors who use constant smoking as a behavioral crutch. Smoking can look marginally cool depending on how skilled or preternaturally cool the actor is, but it becomes extremely tedious and off-putting when done to excess.”

Last October 15th a Charles Lyons piece appeared in the N.Y. Times about Marina Zenovich‘s documentary about the great Roman Polanski. I ran a shout-out and followup that same day. The Lyons article described Zenovich’s film as “untitled and unfinished,” but the timing of it, as I noted, indicated “a possible debut at [the 2007] Sundance Film Festival and some kind of commercial exposure in ’07.”

Sundance never happened, and a commercial opening is now an ’08 prospect, at best. But it’s been nine months since the Lyons’ piece so something must have happened. Zenovich didn’t respond to a call and an e-mail but Lyons got back. He says “she isn’t locked on the film yet– as it turns out, she never would have been ready for Sundance ’07. I’m not sure if she’ll even be ready for Toronto, were that a possibility.” I’m given to understand from another party that a booking at Sundance ’08 is “tacitly firm.”
Zenovich will, of course, have to include footage of Polanski’s Cannes press conference tirade against the banal questions being asked by journos.

I don’t know if this Lindsay Lohan figure was actually snapped at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum or not, but if it was, the staff is to be commended for some very fast work.

Clean My Ride is a pro-ethanol, anti-big oil website pushing fuel efficiency and ethanol use as a means to reduce global warming. The webmaster is a guy named Phin — a spirited, 32 year-old, Michael Moore-sized activist from Springfield, Vermont. No last name, man beard, and chummy with GenX celebs like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Sarah Silverman. These four have appeared in four Phin videos. Excellent message, meh quality. The best moment is in #4 when Damon slugs Phin.

Brutal, urgent, devastating — the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible,” N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has written. “An up-close, acutely painful call to action, the movie pivots on a young American, a former Marine captain named Brian Steidle, who for six months beginning in the fall of 2004 worked for the African Union as an unarmed monitor in Darfur.

“What he saw in Darfur was unspeakable. And then he returned home, his arms, heart and head filled with the images of the dead.”
The most stirring portion is in the final two paragraphs:
“There’s really nothing more to say– and there’s everything else to say — but because I cannot improve on [N.Y. Times columnist Nicholas] Kristof‘s passionate words on Darfur, who wrote about Steidle in a March 2, 2005, column titled ‘The American Witness.’ I will repeat the final lines of his 2005 column about Mr. Steidle, which are worth repeating again and again until peace at last makes them irrelevant.
“But if our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, that’s because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur’s genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then our political system would respond,” he wrote. “As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: `Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.’ ”

Shattering news — Ulrich Muhe, 54, who delivered one of the most touching and devastating performances of ’06 as the Stasi agent in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others, has died of stomach cancer. I’m told he had an operation immediately after the Oscar ceremony five months ago, but he lost the fight last Sunday.

The Lives of Others Ulrich Muhe at Toronto’s Sutton Place hotel — Saturday, 9.9.06, 4:55 pm

I fell deeply in love with Muhe’s Lives of Others performance, yes, after seeing it at the Toronto Film Festival last September. But I felt a huge kinship with Muhe himself, partly due to interviewing him and chatting with him at a couple of TIFF parties, but also because I knew that his own disturbing history with the Stasi (they watched him very closely in the ’80s) was tied up in the role. I obviously didn’t know Muhe very well, but I feel right now as if an old friend is gone.
Sony Pictures Classics co-chairman Michael Barker called it “very, very sad news …he was a great actor, the Anthony Hopkins of Germany.” Barker said he’d first heard that Muhe “was in trouble” about two or three weeks ago.
Oregonian film critic Shawn Levy wrote this morning that Muhe’s performance “is the absolute core of this amazing film, and the images of him as an efficient tool of the state, then a man whose conscience slowly awakens, then a secret conspirator, and, finally, a man justified in his deeds if never acknowledged, are unforgettable. The film is a masterpiece and it’s impossible to imagine without him. It’s truly deflating to discover such a singular talent and then lose him in the same year.”
Muhe won Best Actor awards for his Others performance at the European Film Awards, the Copenhagen International Film Festival, the German Film Awards and the German Film Critics Association, among others.
The Lives of Others DVD will be out on 8.21.07. If you haven’t seen it, do.

James Bond is “an imperialist and he’s a misogynist,” Bourne Ultimatum star Matt Damon has told an unnamed AP writer. (Let me guess….Dave Germain?) “He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it.” Jason Bourne, on the other hand, “is this paranoid guy. He’s on the run. He’s not the government — the government is after him. He’s a serial monogamist who’s in love with his dead girlfriend and can’t stop thinking about her. He’s the opposite of James Bond.”

“I hope they put her in jail for as long as they can. Maybe she’ll realize how serious it is. I believe she’s uninsurable. And when you’re uninsurable in this town, you’re done.” — manager-producer Bernie Brillstein, whose company once represented John Belushi and Chris Farley, referring to Lindsay Lohan in a 7.25 piece by N.Y. Times reporter David Halbfinger.

“I hate these movies. I won’t see these movies. Never saw Saw or its sequels, never will. I’m not impressed with the ‘quality’ of the gore or the ‘wit’ of the filmmaking. I’m not enjoyably scared; I’m horrified, and not in the way horror fans get off, groaning and screaming with pack-mentality excitement. Instead, my horror is one of disturbance and anger: Who makes this vile crap?” — Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbuam in a column not yet on the magazine’s website, but quoted by Moving Picture Blog’s Joe Leydon.
See? Schwarzbaum has provided the thin end of the wedge. If Schwarzbaum can say “no, I won’t see these films” and get respect for this (she has mine), how can anyone point to another journalist who says “no, I will not sit through another Peter Jackson/Michael Bay/Roger Kumble/Catherine Zeta Jones/Brett Ratner/fill-in-the- blank film” and call his/ner prohibitive feelings neurotic or unprofessional or over the line? Everyone has their own lines in the sand. These are extreme and scary times. If you can’t say “absolutely no” to something or someone, what good are you?

Israeli journalist Yair Raveh of www.cinemascope.co.il reports that Israeli marketers for The Simpsons Movie “recently sent out Simpsons treats to newsrooms and writers, but the content was less than appetizing. Journos brave enough to put the red blob in their mouths said it tasted horribly. The general hope is that the movie will be better.’ Donuts, it should be added, are not easily found in Israel but it’s still unclear how they managed to mess this up so badly.”

Israeli Simpsons donut [photo credit: Ehud Kenan of http://flickr.com/photos/ehud]

The Simpson’s Movie, Raveh adds, “is being released day-and-date in Israel and the States, but was not screened here to critics at all. Fox here bans all critics, not only the online ones, but everyone is too chickenshit to rally up and counter-ban.”

J.J. Abrams wants to call his monster-on-the- loose-in-Manhattan movie (i.e., the one he’s producing but not directing) Monstrous? Absolutely doesn’t make it. Back to drawing board. Terrible title. End of meeting.