I spent most of this morning tapping out thoughts about that high-expectation prestige movie that I saw yesterday afternoon. I also did a phone interview with a real-life guy who’s portrayed by a major actor in this film. I searched around online for everything I could find out, and I mulled and mulled and mulled.
It’s too early to pull the trigger, but I’m going to be a coy tease and say at least this, which is that yesterday afternoon’s film is absolutely one of the ’07 Big Ones — a movie that will definitely be on the top of the list of Best Picture contenders. I felt I was swimming in holy water five minutes into it. It’s a supremely sad broken-heart movie, a gripping procedural and a monumental political film that never once steps onto overt political turf.

I went over to Book Soup last evening to talk with Variety critic Todd McCarthy about his new book, Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies fo Racing, which is about the world of pre-corporate American race-car competition in the 1950s and the women — Denise McCluggage and Evelyn Mull receive the lion’s share of McCarthy’s attention — who were a vibrant part of that scene. Here’s an mp3 of our chat, which I had to finish quickly in order to see Danny Boyle‘s Sunshine on the Fox lot at 7:30 pm….yeesh.

Todd McCarthy, author of Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing

A restored version of William Wyler‘s The Big Country, a liberal-minded western about the pointlessness of dumb machismo and turf wars (and perhaps even a metaphor about the mentality behind the Cold War of the 1950s), is playing at the Academy on Friday night at 7:30 pm. This is a photo-chemical restoration funded by the Motion Picture Academy and the Film Foundation, with the hard work and heavy lifting done entirely by AMPAS preservationist Josef Lindner.

Country was shot in 35mm Technirama, which was an 8-perf process in which the negative went through the gate horizontally and was then optimized for 2.35 to 1 anamorphic. “It looks very nice, but it still has fading issues,” says Lindner. Fading issues? “Not generally but now and then, here and there,” he says. The restoration budget was the restoration budget, and apparently the cost of delivering a version that would look as full-out colorful and 100% dead perfect as the film did in 1958 was a little beyond the Academy’s means.
If you go by a description in the Technirama section of Widescreen Museum, Country‘s dp Franz Planer “gave the image a slightly desaturated look that conveyed the parched countryside in this film about a feud over water rights.” So maybe “slightly faded” is another way of describing the intended look of the thing.
In any event, protection masters have now been made and MGM/UA, which holds the video rights, can now create a much better looking DVD than the nickle-and- dime cheapie version they have on the market right now.

This is a textbook example of an “up” mood movie poster — Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett bathed in caramel sunlight, Jackson reaching for God’s grace, Hartnett and his kid smiling, etc. It’s a poster that says, “If you see our movie, you will feel as if you’ve taken an emotional quaalude.” No point in dissing this — feel-good sells have worked before and will work again — but Resurrecting The Champ is more measured and mature and matter-of-fact than this. It’s not into pushing highs, which I’m saying as a statement of respect.

“I go to see the films because I like them. I like to be scared anyway. And I think you have a tendency to see things come in waves. If one thing is successful others follow in its wake. And the thing is, Hostel 2 is actually a better picture in every way. It’s very clever and Eli Roth is a tremendous talent, and has a tremendous eye as a director. The material makes a lot of people uneasy; it makes me uneasy.
“There’s another side of that too. The gore obscures, particularly in the minds of critics, some of the reasons why those movies are successful. The gore in movies like Last House on The Left was so new that it kind of slapped audiences in the face, ‘I can’t believe I saw that, let’s go see it again!’ Like driving past an accident.
“But people get desensitized to that in a hurry and you cease to get involved on a level where there are characters. It’s like watching people in a shooting gallery being knocked over one by one. You can’t go for gore for the sake of gore in movies anymore.” — Stephen King speaking to L.A. Times writer Mark Olsen.

Film Independent and the Los Angeles Film Festival is staging a poolside chat at Westwood’s W hotel next Tuesday night (6.26) from 7 to 8 pm called “Who Let The Blogs Out?” Possibly to be hosted by Variety columnist Anne Thompson and definitely to be attended by yours truly, the topic will be “the on-line merging of celebrity, industry news, and popular culture, and the rise of the blogger as the arbiter of information in modern day Los Angeles.”

There’s no telling if Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke, Kevin Roderick, MCN’s David Poland, Defamer‘s Mark Lisanti or Perez Hilton will show, but the organizers are trying to reach these guys and/or get them to commit. It’ll be entertaining if Poland shows just to see his “I’m looking at you but I don’t see you because you don’t exist” look that he gives me whenever we cross paths.

Okay, I’ll roll with the $40 million weekend projection for Evan Almighty, but I say again it hasn’t been tracking all that fantabulously. By this I mean pretty well, but not necessarily big enough to indicate a slight or decent profit. Not for a movie that cost over $200 million and is costing the usual-usual to market.
Okay, the numbers have been climbing somewhat this week, and if those Christian families show up…aaah, leave it alone. Evan Almighty is the big media beat-up movie of the moment, but its first-weekend fate is in God’s hands now. I know it’ll fall big-time when Ratatouille comes out on 6.29.
I couldn’t make last night’s 7 pm screening due to being at Todd McCarthy‘s Book Soup book signing for Fast Women: The legendary Ladies of Racing, so I should really leave it alone and just pay to see it on Friday and suffer along with everyone else, like a good citizen.

This is the end of the once-respected Marc Forster — a total capitulation of a man who showed he knew how to make emotionally sensitive material play on-screen in Monster’s Ball, but whose instincts have been off ever since, especially in the woefully sloppy Stranger Than Fiction. (His direction of Finding Neverland was the first serious indication of trouble), And now, finally, comes the final dropping of the pants with this Variety story announcing that Forster will direct the 22nd James Bond film.

Michael Moore piracy quote #1: “I’m glad that illegal downloaders] were able to see my movie. I’m not a big believer in our copyright laws. I think they’re way too restrictive.
“I just read Don DeLillo‘s book √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìFalling Man’, a wonderful book. If I were suddenly to take this out of my bag and say to you, √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìHey, you should read this, it’s great’ would I be breaking the law? No. I’d be sharing something with you. I’m sharing a work of art with you, and what happens is that if you like that book, there’s a very good chance you might go on Amazon next week and order three more of Don DeLillo’s books, because you got the free book from me.
“I’ve never supported this concept of going after Napster. I think the rock bands who fought this were wrong. I think filmmakers are wrong about this. I think sharing’s a good thing. I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭ¶ but I first got it for free. C’mon. Everyone in here’s either young or were young, and that’s how it happens, right?” — as reported by Coming Soon‘s Edward Douglas.

Michael Moore piracy quote #2: “Every filmmaker intends for his film to be seen on the big screen. [The mass pirating of Sicko] wasn’t a guy taking a video camera into a theater. This was an inside job, a copy made from a high-quality master and could potentially impact the opening weekend box-office. Who do you think benefits from that?” — from a Hollywood Reporter article by Gregg Goldstein.

Nikki Finke is reporting that Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese will team on a Paramount film called The Winter of Frankie Machine, based on Don Winslow‘s book about a retired hit man, although the title will be shortened, she says, to just Frankie Machine. The story’s about an aging hit man (De Niro) who’s hounded out of a respectable retirement as the target of a hit himself.

I really can’t stand the idea of watching another movie about another hit man. I’m hit-manned out, although this one sounds more like a meditation on old age and the end of the road. The real problem is that De Niro is looking way too bulky and roly-poly these days. It’s good that Scorsese will be doing another mob movie, but he needs to summon the courage to tell De Niro that he’s over the hill and has lost his mojo. He’s eaten too many plates of rich food and gotten too soft and jowly….he looks like an old Russian wheat farmer.
Howard Hawks (or was it John Ford?) came to the conclusion sometime in the ’60s that John Wayne had gotten too old to convincingly play the same tough-guy hero he’d been playing since the early ’40s. It was a hard decision to come to, but Hawks/Ford bit into the leather and stood their ground because they were men of their word who could hear the bell tolling. You think I’m making this up? I’m not. When you’re past it, you’re past it….and that’s that.

Jett and I were at a Carl’s, Jr. around 1:15 pm today, and there were about 25 or more Latino kids there, and every last one was either bulky, chunky, over-fed or fat.

I was watching a Braves-Red Sox game yesterday on ESPN, and I was struck by two Atlanta pitchers — one who was relieved in the ninth inning, and the guy who relieved him — who were both pretty big…barrel-chested, round faces, Babe Ruth-ish.

Earlier this month Jett and I stayed for two nights at a youth hostel in Positano, Italy, and I noticed several zaftig American college-age girls…female Seth Rogen‘s with surprisingly large girths.

“What’s with all the pot bellies on the girls?” I asked Jett. “If you’re going to be in great shape, there’s no better time than your early 20s.” Jett, about to start his sophomore year at Syracuse University, laughed and said, “All college girls look like that…well, almost all of them. It’s college and all those fatty foods.”

I don’t think it’s college as much as good old American sloth. This is not my usual-usual — this country is getting fatter and fatter. I know, I know…who cares? Order another whopper, have some more fries, turn on the tube.

Were the Greeks fat? Were the Romans waddling around like Jabbas in togas? What great civilizations have had populations who were this roley-poley? It’s another sign of the wind-down of the American empire.

If the ghost of Julius Caesar were to visit this country, he would take one look and sneer, “These people aren’t warriors or conquerors…look at them! They’re cattle!”