Hey, there’s going to be a Cannes Film Festival showiing of the original 3-D version of Hondo, the 1953 John Wayne western that John Farrow (i.e., father of Mia) directed, with Geraldine Page, Lee Ackers and Ward Bond costarring. I’ve never seen it, much less in the original 3-D process. All I know is that it’s (a) well photographed and (b) not considered to be on the same level as Red River, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Rio Bravo. Has anyone seen it and is there any kind of consensus?

An actual 3-D image from Hondo, with (l. to r,) Lee Ackers, Geraldine Page, John Wayne and Ward Bond

The Hondo screening will be part of Cannes Film Festival’s Cannes Classics program that Martin Scorsese will be introducing and photo-opping for. Jane Fonda will drop by on Friday, 5.26 for a special screening of Sydney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men, which her rather Henry produced and starred in.

And Curtis Hanson‘s Lucky You, an unquestionably half-decent poker movie, has, so far, a 20% Rotten Tomatoes rating with guys like the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt calling it “dull, dull, dull.” Wrong, wrong, wrong — it’s simply one of those films that chooses to stay with character and the reality of the setting and the story. I didn’t slump, nod off or shift in my seat once….it’s fine. The only two guys who seem to get this so far are the Arizona Star‘s Phil Vallarreal and Kevin Laforest of the Montreal Film Journal.

The Spider-Man 3 Rotten Tomatoes situation as of Thursday morning at 9:45 a.m.: a 68% positive by the rank and filers, and a 53% positive from the cream-of-the-croppers. Homie #1: “Yo, dawg…we really sure about this, man? 53% rating cream of the crop…sounds dicey. Hell, it sounds bad,” Homie #2: “Yeah…a little scary, man…I know. Shoot, hang it…let’s see Lucky You instead.” Homie #1: “Down wit dat.”

Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker pan is glorious fun; it makes you feel as if you’ve almost seen it:

“In an early scene, a meteorite crashes to Earth, and from it crawls what seems to be a tiny garbage sack with half a mind of its own: not a bad image of where this film belongs. And, would you believe, the first person this superblob attaches itself to is, yes, Peter Parker ((Tobey Maguire). It doesn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t choose him; nobody has targeted him — of all Earth√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s inhabitants, he just happens to be close by.

“Is this truly the best that the filmmakers can be bothered to do for our delight? Just how easily and stupidly pleased do they presume we are? Peter√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s college professor (Dylan Baker) declares that the black stuff ‘amplifies characteristics of its host.’ Fine, and I vaguely understand what occurs when it latches onto Eddie. The first host, however, is Spider-Man himself, and this is where the film becomes so embarrassing that you have to crouch down and stuff popcorn in your ears.

And this: “It is thrilling to imagine what Guillermo del Toro, who made Pan√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Labyrinth, or the James Cameron who brought us Terminator 2: Judgment Day, would do with Thomas Haden Church‘s Sandman. Both directors are obsessed with shapeshifters — with their sad restlessness, their ability to conjure threat out of the apparently fragile. The director of Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi, is unconcerned by such niceties; to him, Sandman is just a bullying baddie against whom Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) must pit his web and his wits.”

“I’m glad you liked Lucky You,” the Las Vegas Review Journal‘s Carol Cling wrote earlier today. “As I did. It’s one of the few Las Vegas movies to accurately capture the feel of living here — especially the contrast between glitzy vs. gritty, older neighborhoods vs. shiny new suburbs.

“But it’s an indication of how fast things move in this town that many of the things that are in the movie have changed. Including the Aladdin, which became Planet Hollywood Resort a week or so ago, and Binion’s Horseshoe, which is no longer the Horseshoe — just Binion’s — and no longer hosts the World Series of Poker.

“Also: I tracked the Lucky You production in my weekly ‘Shooting Stars’ column, which covers movie and TV location work here. According to my archives, the reshoots took place the week of Nov. 28, 2005. The original shoot took place March 28-May 6, 2005.”

Pirates of the Caribbean costar Keira Knightley has told the BBC that being accused of being anorexic has forced her to reconsider her acting career. “I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether,” she said. “I couldn’t have kids in the situation I’m in now. But I could just do something else. That’s probably what’s going to happen. I’m just not so hungry any more. I made a decision very recently that I wanted a life instead.” If Knightley were to quit the business, I think I could live with that. As I more or less said in September 2006.

When I think of the great Lee Marvin, who’s being tributed with a Lincoln Center film series this month, I think only of Point Blank. That 1967 John Boorman film is the ultimate Marvin mood trip. His character’s perfect name (Walker), the spareness of the dialogue (“Ninety-three”) but more particularly the silences get better each time I see it. And the quintessential Point Blank scene is the clop-clop scene in LAX. Marvin striding hard down the endless hallway with the linoleum floor, his eyes glaring, his white-hair forelock flopping slightly in the breeze of indoor velocity.

The coldest, most lacerating and most misanthropic epilogue ever presented to mainstream audiences in the history of motion pictures. Was there a better one in this regard? Tell me what it was.

270 minutes of drop-dead beautiful photography and impeccable CG, basically amounting to a lot of preening eye candy…can’t wait.

“An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance, found that Democrats took in more than $4 from donors in the movie, music or TV business for each dollar contributed to GOP candidates,” AP writer Michael Blood has reported. No surprise there, not in this town.

Mindy Stearns, the only reported McCain supporter among actors; McCain

“Hilary Clinton led the list with $837,000, followed by Barack Obama with $687,000, John Edwards with $322,000; John McCain with $244,000, Rudolph Giuliani with $108,000 and Mitt Romney with $73,000.

Giuliani has collected checks from Adam Sandler, Kelsey Grammer, screen- writer Lionel Chetwynd and Paramount studio chief Brad Grey, the article says.

Obama “has gotten checks from Tom Hanks, Tobey Maguire, Eddie Murphy, Edward Norton Jr., Morgan Freeman and Ben Stiller, among others. In February he held a closed-door fundraiser arranged by DreamWorks studio founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

McCain “lists a single actress, Mindy Stearns, but [has] also received donations from producers including Jerry Bruckheimer and Lorne Michaels. ”

Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford finally has a release date — 9.21.07 — and L.A. Times guy John Horn is reporting that there’s been a big backstage struggle about the film’s “tone and length — at one point its running time was more than three hours — according to several people close to the production.”

Remember that Kevin Williamson/Calgary Sun interview with executive producer Tony Scott I linked to several moths ago? Scott said that “we have to be careful how we market [Jesse James] because it’s like a Terrence Malick film.”

Stake in the heart! When I read that remark I knew the game was over. The suits regard Malick-type films as strictly for the critics and the elites — too pastoral and picturesque, too much meditative muttering — which means they’re probably going to bitch about it and try to mongrelize it and then they’ll underfund the marketing so they can get rid of it and send it off to DVD.

The key challenge, reports Horn, “was to come up with a cut of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford that satisfied audiences and Warner Bros., the studio making and distributing the film. At one point there were competing versions — one from writer-director Andrew Dominik and another from producer and star Brad Pitt, according to a person familiar with the making of the movie. It’s unclear which version of the film will be released.”

Note to Warner Bros. marketers: remember your Departed game plan and keep this film out of the dreaded Toronto Film Festival. If the critics love it the public will get the idea that it’s really an arthouse film and then it’ll make even less money.

I’m being told that $120 million is a conservative figure regarding Spider-Man 3‘s projected weekend earnings. I’m now hearing $125 to $130 million. I tried buying an IMAX ticket at Leow’s Lincoln Plaza this weekend…forget it, every seat sold. It’s already rockin’ the sock in Europe and Asia, as this Nikki Finke column reports.

Excuse me for not popping open the bubbly and doing cartwheels on Melrose. This is going to sound like Charlton Heston lecturing the sinful Hebrews in The Ten Commandments, but the more money Spider-Man 3 makes this weekend, the darker the implications for the human condition and the spiritual realms of the American public. Make fun all you want, but it’s true.

I’ll be paying to see the damn thing this weekend so who am I to talk, but at least I’m going into it knowing I’m going to be surrendering to the corporate engulfment syndrome. All right, I’m looking forward to see it slightly…but only that.

I’ve been kept out of Spider-Man 3 press screenings (I plan on catching it commercially on Saturday in Manhattan), but last night I finally saw Lucky You, the Eric Bana-Drew Barrymore-Robert Duvall poker movie that’s being thrown up against the Sam Rami behemoth as a kind of sacrificial lamb. Warner Bros. is calling it counter-programming, but they’re basically dumping it. But I can say without question that it’s a pretty good film, and by no stretch is it any kind of burn.

If I’d seen Spider-Man 3 by now I could write that Lucky You is a wiser, richer, smarter movie, and that it’s much more layered and interesting and recognizably human. But I haven’t so I can’t. But if David Poland and Todd McCarthy‘s Spider-Man 3 reviews are anything to go by, Lucky You is the film to catch this weekend if you’re looking for something that’s reasonably satisfying and in many ways engrossing. It is even moderately touching and lightly amusing at times.

I know, I know…who needs adjectives like “reasonably”: and “moderately,” right? 97% of the moviegoers out there don’t want a cool seasoned-atmosphere ride in casinos of Las Vegas this weekend — they want to be smothered in CG by way of a $270 million African elephant engineered by Sony that they know deep down is going to trample them and leave them unfulfilled. Go figure.

I’m no exceptiion. If I’d had a chance to see the IMAX screening of Spider-Man 3 last night, I would have gone — I admit it. But I’m glad I didn’t because I know without really knowing that I saw a better film.

Lucky You is an absorbing, smartly written, welterweight romantic drama about a crafty gambler named Huck Cheever (Bana) who hates his father, L.C. Cheever (Duvall), and is there fore strolling around the casinos in a state of emotional retardation, and therefore in a weakened state in terms of knowing himself and playing the game in a state of full-alert readiness.

As Duvall tells him at one point, “You live your life the way you play cards, and your play cards the way you should live your life.” Or something close to that.

Huck meets and falls in love with a nice girl named Billie (Barrymore), but spends part of the movie betraying her or letting her down, and the rest of the time screw- ing up and getting knocked back and always glaring at Duvall when they face each other at the poker table, but he eventually comes to a kind of emotional epiphany — a place where he feels settled or least less conflicted.

That, more or less, is the story, and if there’s a problem with the third-act resolution it’s that it seems to come a little too easily as far as the Bana-Duvall conflict is concerned. But the deep Vegas-ness of this movie is what counts, and that’s a result of the craft and the finely-tuned polish that comes with any Hanson film. It’s layered with tangy atmosphere, thought-out older-guy dialogue, engaging performances (Bana’s best since Black Hawk Down) and an aura of believability that gets you early on.

Lucky You has at least two great scenes — a bargaining-marketing duel in a pawn shop between Bana and Phyllis Somerville (Little Children), and a kind of emotional showdown between Bana and Duvall in a Vegas luncheonette.

Plus it has an assortment of amusing wiseguy characters (including a geeky gambler who’s been implanted with a pair of fake boobs as part of a bet) and a keen sense of mathematical engagement. Like any realistic poker flick it holds your attention by making you into a player — before you know it you’re doing your best to count cards and read faces and factor the odds and decide whether to raise or check or fold.

As gambling movies go, Lucky You is almost (and sometimes is) on the level of Robert Altman‘s California Split. It felt as satisfying as John Dahl‘s Rounders, and it’s a hell of lot better (for my money) than The Cincinatti Kid. I’m giving it a solid 8…okay, an 8.5.

Bana is no longer an accursed actor whose presence invites or guarantees financial failure. Not that anyone expects Lucky You to make any real money, but Bana’s Huck Cheever performance is…I’m not going to quite say masterful or revelatory, but I quite enjoyed his company and especially his poker intelligence from the get-go.

Principal photography on this hard-luck movie wrapped almost two years ago, and the final tab is something like $50 million bucks. It doesn’t feel like $50 million — more like $25 or $30 million, tops. It obviously tested in the toilet or Warner Bros. wouldn’t have paid for extra shooting (which I think happened late last year or the previous summer — nobody will tell me when.) Lucky You was supposed to come out 9.8.06, then 10.27.06 and then 3.16.07. And now it’s being thrown to the wolves this weekend. A baahing little lamb tethered to an iron post.

John Horn reported in the L.A. Times this morning that “some half-dozen different cuts [of the film] have failed to wow preview audiences, and the studio is now cutting back on its marketing push.”

A few months ago I called Lucky You the most unloved and unwanted Curtis Han- son gambling movie in U.S. history. It is still is that, but it’s a better-than- decent film, and if you can’t get into a particular Spider-Man 3 show this weekend you could do a lot worse than pay to see it,