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!”

Seeing three movies today — John Dahl‘s You Kill Me at 11 am, a high-expectation fall release drama at 2 pm, and Danny Boyle‘s Sunshine at 7:30 pm — so I’ll be out of commission for a while. I’ll try and post some stuff in the late afternoon.

I remain a loyal Obama supporter, but this Sopranos finale spoof is the best thing Hilary Clinton has done for herself and her campaign since she announced her candidacy.
And it was done so quickly…my God! It costars Bill Clinton (“No onion rings?…my money’s on Smashmouth”) and the Sopranos‘ “Johnny Sack”, it alludes to Chelsea Clinton parallel parking her car outside, and it has a lot of the same shots and some of the same rhythm.
The spot was shot to announce that Hilary’s official campaign song is Celine Dion‘s “You and I.” I am constitutionally opposed to any and all things Celine Dion so that’s a problem as far as this column is concerned.

A friend has seen Ben Affleck‘s Gone Baby Gone (Miramax, 10.17.07), a Boston-based crime drama about the search for a missing four-year-old girl by a pair of private detectives, played by Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan. And he’s telling me it’s a break-out performance for Casey, which makes the early fall an especially flush time when you add the younger Affleck’s reportedly exceptional turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which Warner Bros. is bringing out in September.

Gone Baby Gone is based on Dennis Lahane‘s novel (one of four he’s written about the two fictional detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro). Ben Affleck both directed and co-adapted the screenplay (with Aaron Stockard). How can it not be at the Toronto Film Festival in September? In fact, how can Jesse James not show up there? Easy — it’s a Warner Bros. release, and there’s a view among WB marketers and publicists that a Toronto Film Festival association isn’t necessarily a plus (or else they would have offered The Departed last year).

The saga of George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl will be reshuffled once again with a third version set for release on July 17th. The cliche would be to call the film’s arduous shape-shifting “a long strange trip,” but it really has been that.

I was lucky enough to see the first version — ’60s Andy Warhol-ish, instinctual and somewhat raw, downtownish — last summer, and I raved about it soon after, and particularly about Sienna Miller‘s tragically fluttery performance as Edie Sedgwick.

Then I saw the second version — Harvey-ized, newly shot footage, Santa Barbara psychiatric flashbacks, beefed up Guy Pearce‘ dialogue — last December. I wrote that the second version “is a much better film — far more precise and filled in and rounded out — but I liked Factory Girl a bit more when it was funkier, rawer and less ‘complete’. Strange but strangely true.

I realize, of course, that the choppier, more instinctual, not-quite-as-layered version that I liked or believed in a bit more wouldn’t play as well with general audiences. I’m just saying that the old Factory Girl felt less self-conscious — it seemed hipper and more fuck-all Warholian.”

The third Factory Girl is apparently closer to the first version. Hickenlooper reports that Factory Girl producer Harvey Weinstein “was so happy with it he is only releasing my version on DVD…he isn’t going to release the theatrical cut at all.”

Hickenlooper further reports that the New York Times got wind of this and wanted to get to the bottom of all the mythology, and so critic Charles Taylor is writing a piece about the whole back-and-forth mishegoss. The piece will run be in the 7.15 Sunday edition, or two days before the release of the Factory Girl DVD.

Of course, you’d never know any of this from the DVD packaging, which is only selling it as sexier (i.e., a presumed reference to Sienna Miller‘s nude scenes). But that’s DVD marketing for you.

2019 Update: An HD version is now streaming on Amazon.

“Ratatouille is not only the best animated film of this year and the best animated film to land in American theaters since Spirited Away, it is the best work of Brad Bird‘s already legendary career, and the best American film of 2007 to date. If that is not enough, there are only a couple of films due this summer that have any hope of matching this film for quality.”
If the previous words were written by anyone but David Poland, I would be even more jazzed about Ratatouille (Disney, 6.29). But unfortunately they were in fact written by the man who couldn’t stop praising Dreamgirls, who told everyone that Quills was miraculous, who trashed Brokeback Mountain and United 93 and Zodiac, who banged the tin drum for Munich and who once wrote about shedding a tear (he may have mentioned more than one) over Finding Forrester.
Ratatouille may indeed be wonderful, but I’ll be the one to decide this yea or any after I see it this Saturday morning — five days from now.

Movie City News is saying that Google “seems to be policing the full, uncut, single-file versions of Sicko posted to their video sharing system, removing not only the one that was up all weekend, but another couple of new ones that cropped up this morning.” Okay, but what possible difference does that make when you type in “Sicko download” on Google’s search engine (as I just did ten minutes ago) and nine — count’ em, nine — sites come up offering free Sicko downloads?
Obviously pirates are pirates are pirates, but I’m also starting to consider a couple of scenarios: One, there’s a cabal of right-wing Moore haters who are behind the stealing and distributing of his film. Or two, that said haters, even if there was no political motive behind the original theft of the film, are at least relishing what’s happening and clapping their hands and fanning the flames any way they can.
A line from a recent news story about the YouTube offering of Sicko wasn’t used for obvious reasons, but the reporter passed it along. “While the motivation of the leaker(s) remains unclear,” it read, “one full copy of Sicko uploaded to a pirate website includes ‘suckourdicks’ in the file name.” Does that suggest anything to anyone? “Suck our dicks” as in “fuck you, Moore!!…and we hope this hurts as a kind of payback for stretching the truth and flim-flamming in order to push your cause in Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11“…or words to that effect.
I’m just thinking out loud and nursing a gut suspicion, but we all know how the right hates Moore. Would anyone be surprised if what I’m saying turns out to be even half-true?

Three links — a visual shot-by-shot analysis, an in-depth analysis on Gawker and another one from Bob Harris — that make a very strong (damn near unchallengable) case that Tony Soprano sleeps with the fishes. The guy with the Members Only jacket (curly haired, cold-eyed …looked a little bit like a young Phil Leotardo) came out of the bathroom and put a bullet into Tony’s right temple.

Tony Soprano’s killer takes a second look before heading for the john

Torture porn and the general gross-out horror flicks are running out of steam, but does that mean people are cool to any kind of scary movie, even an upscale, quality-level gothic horror flick like 1408? It’s tracking at 56 general awareness, 30 definite interest and 9 first choice — not bad but not a volcano either. The definitely-not-interested percentage is 12, which obviously indicates a turn-off element.
Paramount Vantage’s A Mighty Heart is only at 44, 22 and 6. There seems to be a feeling out there that people aren’t interested in anything Middle East-y or 9.11-ish. (Damn milquetoasts, ostriches, too-sooners.) This is Michael Winterbottom‘s best film ever in that it doesn’t seem to have been directed by him but by Michael Mann.
The reviews have been good-respectable-decent, but not that many critics have been saying “drop everything and see it.” Plus it’s being said that Angelina Jolie is “not that big a star, and never has been,” a guy says. Whatever that means. The knee-jerkers are going all “meh”? Jolie is a major name and (take this to the bank) she gives a first-rate performance here.
For a movie that cost more than $200 million (is it higher?), Evan Almighty‘s tracking isn’t looking all that great…89, 40 and 15. It appears fated to take in $25 million by Sunday night — that’s not big enough for a big-studio (i.e., Universal), super-sized gamble movie.
Live Free Die Hard (20th Century Fox, opening Wednesday, 6.27), the slam-bang Bruce Willis action tentpoler, is at 92, 36 and 5 — decent opening (maybe a better-than-decent one) but not through the roof….yet.
Dull-as-dishwater Evening (opening 6.29) is at 22, 2 and 1…forget it.
Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille (6.29) is going to be huge. Word-of-mouth is soaring, and it wisely snuck last weekend across the country. It’s now at 78, 36 and 7…definitely on track to be the #1 picture that weekend.
Sicko (6,29) is at 38, 22 and 3. And yet 22 % are saying “definitely not interested.” Neg-heads, cynics, rightwingers, ostriches. “A lot of the country doesn’t want to see Michael Moore,” a friend told me. Except Sicko is a major eye-opener, it delivers basic real-world truths and (trust me) it makes you choke up at the end.
License to Wed (opening 7.3), the supposedly atrocious Robin Williams comedy, is at 69, 22 and 2.
Michael Bay‘s Transformers (7.3) is at 87, 41 and 12…good but not yet sensational. It has time to build so we’ll see what’s doing next week. Obviously has the highest definite-interest and first-choice numbers.

Five films opening this weekend (6.22 to 6.24) are, quality-wise, exceptional. It’s almost irritating that they’re bunched into a single weekend because one or more is sure to suffer from the competition, especially given the wrist-slitting likelihood that Tom Shadyac‘s allegedly lame-o Evan Almighty (Universal, 6.22) is going to get the crowds and make the most money.
I’ve seen three of the five goodies opening this weekend — Mikael Hafstrom‘s 1408, Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart and Zoe Cassevetes‘ Broken English. (Click on titles for links to HE reactions.)
I can’t say anything definitive (let alone personal) about Jon Dahl‘s You Kill Me or Black Sheep (seeing them both within the next couple of days) but their respective Rotten Tomatoes ratings — 100% and 85% — are obviously encouraging.
Why couldn’t one or two of these five have opened last weekend, which was fairly dead by the standards of anyone with taste or a brain? What persons of consequence gave a shit about seeing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer?