I sat down yesterday afternoon with Cristian Mungiu, the 39 year-old Romanian director of the undeniably brilliant and masterful 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. I finally saw the Palme d’or winner a couple of weeks ago and was convinced right away it’s all but certain to take the Best Foreign Language Oscar next February. It shows that Mungiu knows exactly what he’s doing mise en scene-wise. This fact is fully underlined in conversation.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu in Almond Room at Four Seasons hotel — Friday, 11.2.07, 3:55 pm

Calm, confident and obviously whip-smart, Mungiu speaks with a vast English vocabulary and a very faint accent. He’s a believer in pared-down, less-is-more realism, and he knows how to explain his cinematic aesthetic in a very clean and concise way. He listens carefully and knows his stuff. I could talk to Mungiu for days. The same “instant comfort” thing happens whenever I meet a good director from any culture.

A recently-announced European Film Awards nominee for Best Film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days will show at 6:45 pm this evening at the AFI Film Fest. The show is sold-out but there’s always the scalper option.

Mungiu said he next plans to produce an anthology film or two with fellow Romanian directors. He’s also intends 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to be the first part of a trilogy about life in Communist Romania called The Golden Age. He says he’s also intending to shoot a film about the last 48 hours in the life of Romania’s long-time dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was overthrown and executed in December 1989.

As there are very few cinemas in Romania, Mungiu organized a travelling cinematic caravan around the country last summer (in the wake of his Cannes Film Festival triumph) in order to show 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days to the citizenry. He shot a documentary about the experience, and promised yesterday I’d be given a chance to see an early cut of it on Monday. Mungiu wants to include the doc on the 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days DVD.

“Anyone who sees this film and doesn’t feel shaken and humbled has a major aesthetic blockage thing going on,” I wrote about 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days on 10.23. “There are times when viewers saying ‘good film but too depressing’ can’t be and must not be tolerated. This is one of those burn-through movies that says basic things in ways that make other filmmakers say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ (Or, in the Mike Nichols-Giuseppe Rotunno sense, ‘Why didn’t I revisit that?’)”

IFC Films will release 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days in early January after the awards and nominations will have accumulated.

outside the Almond Room — Friday, 11.2.07, 4:15 pm

Thanks to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone for passing along this link to the interior page content of the Juliette Binoche French Playboy interview/photo thing.

American Gangster did just over $16 million yesterday (the lines were huge at Universal Citywalk plex last night) and will wind up with something like $46,421,000 by Sunday night — $15,000 a print. Jerry Seinfeld‘s Bee Movie earned almost $11 million yesterday and will end up with $38,390,000 for the weekend. The DreamWorks insect comedy is enjoying its one moment of triumph before the weak word-of-mouth catches up and Vince Vaughn‘s Fred Claus steals the family business away next weekend.

Saw 4 is off over 60%, looking at $10,800,00 for weekend. Dan in Real Life is down only 30% from last weekend (a decent hold) and will have tallied $8.2 million by tomorrow night. Michael Clayton did $2,600,000 and will have a grand total of $32,900,000 by Sunday night. Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is in 42 theatres, will do $341,000…a little over $7 thousand per screen, which is fairly good.

The idea in persuading Into The Wild song composer Eddie Vedder to perform a short acoustic set at the Paramount theatre last night was to promote Vedder’s soundtrack album (featuring nine originals, two covers). It was also, naturally, about refreshing everyone’s thinking about Sean Penn‘s film being a serious Best Picture contender. Which it seems to be. Penn’s best-directed, much-admired film has caught a kind of current; ditto Emile Hirsch‘s Oscar-calibre lead performance and Hal Holbrook‘s supporting turn.

Into The Wild star Emile Hirsch, director-screenwriter Sean Penn at tonight’s Eddie Vedder performance (i.e., songs he composed for the film plus two or three others) at Paramount Studios — Friday, 11.2.07, 10:10 pm.

Penn and Hirsch introduced Vedder around 10:10 pm following a screening of the film. (I was off seeing the 3-D Beowulf at Universal Citywalk until 9:30 pm.) Vedder sang six or seven tunes, the stand-outs being “Rise Up,” “No Ceiling,” “Drifting” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” We all love that rough gravelly voice, don’t we? I was standing ten or so feet away as he performed, and admiring his fret work as he went through the chords of the John Lennon song.

(l. to r.) Penn, Hirsch, Eddie Vedder following performance — applause, cheers, whoo-whoos.

Long-haired and bearded, dressed in denim and work boots, Vedder seemed healthy, alert and in good spirits. I noticed and for some reason considered the fact that Vedder has relatively small feet.

I saw Mark Ruffalo milling around, didn’t say hi. Kris Tapley reported last night that former HE hombre Cameron Crowe (hasn’t responded to e-mails in ages, probably hates me for bringing up the post-Elizabethtown fetal-tuck position syndrome), Ringo Starr and Wynona Rider were there also.

Cinematical’s James Rocchi interviewed me three or four days ago about various Oscar-race issues (“Does Into the Wild play better for Baby Boomers than younger audiences? Can Once get a second chance? And do movie journalists have a responsibility to reflect the Oscar race, or to try and influence it?”).

The answer to the third question is that (a) it’s derelict for Oscar prognosticators to not try and influence the Oscar race so that better films are considered and rewarded, and (b) it’s absolutely rancid for movie journos to just sit back and merely “reflect” it — i.e., report on the race and trying to predict Academy favorites. There’s an uploadable podcast version attached to the piece.

An ecstatic but completely unreliable fanboy review of Robert Zemeckis‘ Beowulf has appeared on Aint It Cool. The guy is calling the 3-D Paramount release “a fucking masterpiece…really epic… superb [with] Oscar-calibre performances …one of the best animated films ever made…heart-pounding action sequences and a good dose of edge-of- your-seat scares (especially in the first hour).” Except he says if Beowulf had been a live-action film it “would have been nominated for Best Picture.” Take high-school English much? His entire review is suspect because of this one grammatical wrongo.

Anyone who goes the distance in the New York City Marathon has my respect and then some. But having done some running in my time, I’m wondering if Katie Holmes, who is after all surrounded by minders, “yes” people and Scientologists 24-7, will be able to run the entire distance this Sunday.

Like everyone else, Holmes will have to hump all the way from the foot of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in Staten Island and up through Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and finish somewhere in southern Central Park. Life doesn’t get much lonelier or more grueling than when you’re running a marathon, and for the first time since she hooked up with Tom Cruise, Holmes will be entirely alone. No goons, no Xenu, no obsessive assistants…it’ll be entirely between herself, her leg muscles and her spirit.

“The WGAW Board and WGAE Council have unanimously approved a strike, based upon the unanimous recommendation of the WGA Negotiating Committee. The strike will begin on Monday, November 5, 2007, at 12:01 a.m. Note: Picketing and other strike support assignments will be finalized and communicated over the weekend. All WGAW members should monitor the www.wga.org website for more information.” — message received by WGA member at 1:52 pm, sent by wgawest@wga.org.

Red Carpet District‘s Kris Tapley has thanked Cigarettes & Red Vines for pointing out an array of Out Now photos from There Will Be Blood, and here I am joining the daisy chain.

Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson

I’m not doubting that The Envelope has undergone some kind of redesign, but I’m not seeing what it is that’s different. It would help if someone would send me a couple of “before” and “after” screen-grab shots.

“If you only see one movie at AFI Fest, see the one with Devin Faraci in it!” — written by a fan of Michael Addis and Jamie Kennedy‘s Heckler.