This columnist is hereby saluting Steven Spielberg for announcing he won’t participate in Beijing’s Summer Olympic Games as an artistic adviser, citing the lack of progress in ending the genocide in Darfur. A respectful salute is extended also to Mia Farrow, whose guilt-tripping of Spielberg last March led to the dawning of his political conscience in this matter.

“After careful consideration, I have decided to formally announce the end of my involvement as one of the overseas artistic advisers to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games,” Spielberg said in a statement released today and reported at 2:23 pm by Variety‘s Ted Johnson.
“I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan,” Spielberg wrote. “Although some progress has been made …the situation continues to worsen and the violence continues to accelerate.”

Never say die, won’t back down, sisters unite, down to the sea in ships, remember the Alamo.

20th Century Fox filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros on Friday, 2.8.08 over The Watchmen, claiming they have the rights to develop, produce, and distribute a film based on the D.C. Comics property. Here’s a PDF file of the paperwork. The Zack Snyder adaptation is due for release in March 2009. Why did Fox wait until the film was up and rolling?

Live-blogging during a screening of Fool’s Gold by 23/6 guys Ricky Camilleri and Alex Leo. Mildly funny. An amusing way to go with the right kind of film. Don’t review — experience it!

Definitely Maybe, opening tomorrow, is tracking at 53, 25 and 3. The big opener this weekend will be Jumper, which is running at 70, 42 and 20. Demographics are strongly male. The Spiderwick Chronicles will get a shot on Friday from the Indy 4 trailer, but otherwise the tracking is 69, 23 and 6. Step Up 2 the Streets is at 67, 32 and 7.
2.22 openers: Be Kind Rewind at 40, 32 and 2. Charlie Bartlett at 25, 20 and 1. Vantage Point at 59, 38 and 7. Witless Protection at 38, 15 and 0 2.29 openers: The Other Boleyn Girl at 27, 22 and 2. Penelope at 26, 16 and 0. Semi Pro at 53, 31 and 4.

A Chandler-esque noir in the vein of Miller’s Crossing, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union will be the next Coen brothers film to be shot. (The comedic Burn After Reading is in the can and coming out later this year.) Based on the Michael Chabon novel and set in an imaginary Alaska that’s “been turned into a homeland for Jewish refugees displaced after the second world war, following the collapse of Israel, etc. A Guardian story about the project claims that the book’s plot suggests that the “murder victim may well have been the Messiah.”

Yesterday’s news but these conflicting-message videos need to be posted for future reference. Exhibit #1: MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann saying in an editorial rant last September that “in pimping General David Petraeus,” blah blah. Exhibit #2: Olbermann apologizing profusely for David Shuster‘s having used the same term in a question about the Clinton campaign’s use of Chelsea Clinton as a political emissary.

Vantage Point (Sony, 2.22), a possibly well-crafted Rashomon-type thriller, opens in ten days with a shot at some decent business. Monday’s tracking has it at 59, 38 and 7, but that should bump up. But I’m not hearing about any screenings from anyone (not even an all-media screening) so…you tell me. I called Sony publicity this morning to ask what’s up. I’ll tell you what’s up. “Silencio” is what’s up.

The trailer has an intense, mad-camera jolt quality but there seems to be something…I don’t know, facile and tricky-feeling about it. Something about the sell seems to say “paycheck.” I’d like to feel differently and just go with this thing and have a good time, but Sony is sending out signals that would give anyone pause. The stars are Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver.
Update: As several regional screenings are being reported here, I presume the Sony folks are just being their usual lovable selves as far as Los Angeles viewings are concerned.

Hillary Clinton‘s firing of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a Latina, is going to help Barack Obama with Hispanic voters in the March 4th Texas primary. The N.Y. Post‘s Maggie Haberman reported last night that Steven Ybarra, a California superdelegate who heads the voting-rights committee of the DNC Hispanic Caucus, has stated in an angry e-mail to fellow Hispanics that “loyalty is not a two-way street,” that the firing gives “Latino superdelegates…cause to pause,” and that whacking Solis Doyle, a child of Mexican immigrants, “just weeks before the Texas primary, [in a state] where 36 %of the population is Hispanic, was ‘dumb as a stump.'” In a 2.12 editorial, La Opinion wrote that “what effect Solis Doyle√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s resignation will have on Hispanic voters remains to be seen. But it cannot help [the Clinton campaign].”

Either your agent hammered out a contract/agreement that gave you profit participation and everybody signed off on this, or you agreed to just take a writing fee and you weren’t crafty or pushy enough to demand more. Nobody wants to hear about anything else.

An interesting observation on the Coen Brothers Wikipedia page, to wit: “Several of the Coen brothers’ films feature a character that embodies the archetype of ‘unstoppable evil.’ In many cases, it is hinted that these characters are inhuman, or feature demonic overtones.”
Example #1: Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen) in O Brother, Where Art Thou? matches the description of the Devil given by one of the characters. He further indicates his otherwordliness when, advised that it would be illegal to hang pardoned fugitives, he sneeringly opines that ‘the law is a human institution.’
Example #2: Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman), the hitman in Miller’s Crossing.
Example #3: Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb) in Raising Arizona.
Example #4: Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) in Barton Fink also fit the description of this archetype.
Example #5: In No Country for Old Men, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) personifies the violence and death in a world that Tommy Lee Jones‘ Sheriff Bell tries to make sense of…but can’t.

Variety‘s Leslie Felperin reviewed Elegy out of the Berlin Film Festival two nights ago, but I somehow missed it until this morning. It isn’t a rave — I can feel a certain hesitancy — but it’s definitely a thumbs-up response. Key passage: “Scenes unfold in a series of near-musical dialogue duets, with Ben Kingsley offering finely-phrased arias of self-deprecation and despair. Despite the age difference, he and Penelope Cruz (who’s never been better in English) look somehow chemically balanced and credible as a couple in a way Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins never did in The Human Stain.”
got it wrong Sunday morning when I wrote that the drama (which also stars Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard) was being called The Dying Animal, after the Phillip Roth book that the script is based upon. It’s a shame that it’s not. Elegy means nothing — it’s an all-but-meaningless, watered-down wimp title. I’ll bet they went with Elegy because Craig Lucas‘s The Dying Gaul was still-born at the box office when it opened in ’06. Any title with the word “dying”…forget it.