Anne Thompson‘s 10.4 Variety column about the pitfalls and benefits of long running times observes that “every film has its own shape and focus, to be sure, but figuring out a movie’s ideal scale requires a delicate balance of art, commerce and talent relations.

“Cut a would-be epic too slim,” she writes, “and you wind up with truncated frustrations like Ridley Scott‘s Kingdom of Heaven, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America or Oliver Stone’s Alexander, three forced edits that later blossomed in longer form on DVD. [But] let a film run too long and you limit its audience appeal. Think Martin Scorsese‘s meandering Gangs of New York, Michael Bay‘s inflated Pearl Harbor or Peter Jackson‘s King Kong, which added 1and 1/2 hours to the 1933 film’s 100 minutes.”

The universal maxim is that every film has its own fighting weight, so there ‘s no hard and fast rule.

The “fighting weight” line was given to me roughly 14 years ago by Universal marketing guy Marc Schmuger (who is today the studio’s co-chairman). It was for an L.A. Times piece I wrote about Martin Brest‘s Scent of a Woman, which was released at two hours and 39 minutes. Long, yes, but after testing shorter versions (including one running a mere 110 minutes) Universal decided it worked best at that 159 minutes.

Brest’s Scent experience no doubt strengthened his hand, but this, it turned out, worked against him. The length of his next film, Meet Joe Black, was 178 minutes, and this time most reviewers and audiences said “forget it…way too long.”

From Lou Lumenick‘s N.Y. Post movie blog, posted this morning: “One of the biggest compliments I can pay a movie is that I wish it were longer. Such is the case with Ridley Scott‘s masterful American Gangster. At 158 minutes, it left me wanting more — only the second film this year (after Zodiac) that I can say this about. Like David Fincher‘s film, it’s an exquisitely detailed period piece set in the early 1970s that warrants a full three-hour running time.”

From my own Gangster review of a week or two ago: “I was a wee bit disappointed at the 158-minute running time. I wanted more. This is one of those movies that is so good and cocksure in its New York textures and tough hammer-like attitude, that you’re saying to yourself early on, ‘I don’t want this to end.’ I wanted the indulgent director’s cut right then and there. I wanted Ridley to swing for the bleachers and make it three hours. Hell, I could have gone for three and a half. I wanted to pig out.”

I was speaking a little while ago to Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy, and we got into the subject of actors speaking English with foreign accents in movies set in foreign-speaking countries. We agreed on two things: (1) It’s entirely the right thing for Benicio del Toro and his costars tp speak Spanish in the two Che Guevara films (The Argentine and Guerilla) for director Steven Soderbergh but (2) Tom Cruise and his mostly British costars speaking with a German accents in Bryan Singer‘s Valkyrie might be a problem.

Maximilian Schell in Judgment at Nuremberg

It might be difficult also if the Valkyrie Germans speak a plain, unaffected mid-Atlantic accent, and it may be okay — I’m not sure. But Cruise trying to sound like Walter Slezak in Lifeboat would be a huge speed-bump. 50 years ago audiences accepted Marlon Brando, May Britt, Parley Baer and Maximillian Schell speaking with German-accented English in Edward Dmytryk‘s The Young Lions, but that belief system may not work any more. Right now I’m hearing Cruise’s voice going through the Brando/Young Lions paces, and I’m going “uh-oh.”

Singer, I think, will have to begin Valkyrie with everyone speaking actual German and then do a sudden Stanley Kramer switch. I’m referring to an early courtroom scene in Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (’61) when the camera zooms in on the German-speaking Schell — a kind of visual announcement to the audience that the film is suddenly shifting gears — and then wham, Schell is speaking English. It works perfectly.

“In Hollywood, there’s redemption, and then there’s redemption,” writes Business Week‘s Ron Grover. “For most folks who make or star in films, redemption is having a hit after a real stinker — when, say, Jim Carrey actually makes another movie that someone other than his immediate family wants to see. The other type of redemption is the kind that superstar Tom Cruise and his longtime producing partner Paula Wagner hope to enjoy soon.”

Fair enough — Cruise and Wagner have bounced back. But then Grover goes into a little tap-dance. This is a piece about redemption, but first Grover has to deal with the very first film coming out of the new Cruise-Wagner United Artists/MGM pipeline..

“On Nov. 9, Lions for Lambs, a political flick starring Cruise, hits theaters,” he writes. “It’s the first in an expected long line of films produced by the duo through United Artists, the company they jointly own with MGM. Will it be a hit? Who knows. The gods of Hollywood can be cruel.” In other words, he’s heard it’s a tank. There isn’t an industry journalist, analyst or pulse-taker out there who hasn’t picked up this scent, and usually — not absolutely but more often than not — this much smoke indicates fire.

I’ve heard one good thing. A friend recently spoke to an actor who has a friend who’s seen it, and this friend-of-the-actor (and you have to watch out for friends- of-actors, as they tend to gladhand) that Cruise’s performance as a right-wing U.S. Senator is “very good.” That’s not surprising, if true. Cruise is excellent at playing adamant and dead-sure-of-himself — think of his interrogation of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, his misogynist messiah in Magnolia, his Today show argument with Matt Lauer.

The unpleasant bump-in-the-road acknowledged and dispensed with, Grover recovers and gets back to the basic theme: “The fact that Cruise and Wagner are in business making films again,” he says, “speaks volumes about human determination, the power of an A-list superstar, and, well, mountains of money.”

The Heartbreak Kid has obviously touched a nerve among critics. They aren’t just panning it (it has a 34% positive from Rotten Tomatoes) — many of them are vomiting on the sidewalk. A random sampling: (a) “An ugly, hateful and deeply unfunny bit of hackwork that not only stinks on its own but also tarnishes the reputation of a genuinely funny and inspired comedy.” — Peter Sobczynski, efilmcritic.com; (b) “A grim, shrill, deluded and incredibly depressing movie…bewilderingly mean-spirited.” — Carina Chocano, L.A. Times; (c) “Based on the 1972 movie… much in the same way that a breakfast of Pop Tarts and Mountain Dew is based on a petit dejeuner of fresh-baked croissants and cafe au lait.” — MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Philosopher; (d) “A shabby, sleazy train wreck…anyone who backed it should feel, if they can feel at all, something like shame.” — James Rocchi, Cinematical.

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott says he’s “not dogmatically opposed to remakes, and I’ve admired much of the Farrelly brothers’ earlier work. At their best — in Shallow Hal or Kingpin, say — they show a rare ability to mix the nasty and the nice, to combine humor based in the grossness of the body and its functions with a sweet, humanistic spirit.

“But that generosity seems to have abandoned them here,” Scott observes. “Their squeamish, childish fascination with bodily ickiness, when crossed with the iffy sexual politics of the original, yields a comic vision remarkable for its hysterical misogyny.”

Precisely, and the Farrellys don’t present this squeamishly. They stick to their guns. They stand up, don’t back off. Their viewpoint probably won’t wind up warming the hearts of a significant moviegoing sector — i.e., intelligent women, not to mention guys like Scott — and you have to at least respect the willingness of the Farrellys to ride that horse right into the valley. The Heartbreak Kid is not “nasty and nice” — it is much more single-minded in its view of male-female relationships, and it explains this pretty well.

To repeat: “I’ll tell you the secret to a happy marriage. It is grovelling and kowtow- ing and jumping through hoops whenever she barks for decades and decades as you wait for the sweet embrace of death.”

Caught up in the usual, I should’ve run this clip yesterday of Hardball‘s Chris Matthews suffering a “book interview from hell” on the Jon Stewart Show Tuesday night (10.2).

Matthews’ book is called “Life is a Campaign.” Review the Amazon page before watching the clip — everyone the world over has had this argument with themselves.

Owen Wilson showed up tonight — his first public appearance in several weeks — at the Darjeeling Limited premiere at the Academy. Snapped from the ninth or tenth row after the 7:35 pm screening of Hotel Chevalier (and just prior to the Darjeeling screening) — (l. to r.) Adrien Brody, Wilson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Natalie Portman. Darjeeling director-co-writer Wes Anderson was standing to the right.

“It’s forever being drummed into us that movies are a visual medium,” writes New Yorker critic David Denby. “Screenwriters are chastised with this half-truth all the time; they may be told to keep dialogue terse or suggestive or to drop lines altogether. After the movie is shot, directors may cut good as well as bad dialogue.”

But in Michael Clayton, director-writer Tony Gilroy “pitches us into a high-pressure world of law-firm shenanigans and corruption with irresistible relish, and the talk is copious, detailed, and both smart-assed and soulful.

“It takes a while to figure out who some of the players are and what, if anything, the big case and the London merger have to do with each other. Yet I’m not actually complaining — it’s all fascinating. Gilroy is an entertainer, and he wants to show us everything — dirty secrets held by prestige law firms, the moral squalor of big-time corporate power and what it does to people, the moments of conscience and decency in messed-up lives.

“[Gilroy is] good with actors, and Michael Clayton has pace and drive — it’s enormous fun. But I hope that as Gilroy continues directing he will let his movies breathe more. I was grateful for a single uncanny pause, in which Clooney, driving around Westchester on a wild night, stops at dawn, walks up a hill, and silently confronts three horses, as if they were the only instance of reason in a convulsive world. Gilroy holds the moment, but only for a moment.”

The trailer for Tim Burton‘s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Dreamamount, 12.21) is up on Yahoo movies. A friend “knows some post people working on Sweeney and they’re all saying it’s Depp’s best performance ever.”

“In The Darjeeling Limited, director Wes Anderson “toys with those who believe all fiction is autobiographical: Jason Schwartzman‘s Jack, a writer, is frequently protesting that his stories — which the audience knows to be taken directly from his life — are pure fiction.

“I don’t think I’d want to write about three brothers if it weren’t for the fact that I have two brothers and there were three of us growing up and that comes from my own experience,” Anderson tells Globe and Mail writer Simon Houpt.

“So does Anderson understand why he keeps gnawing at the theme of fractured families?

“He pauses as if he’s never been asked the question. ‘I guess, maybe — well, you know what? It’s very hard for me to answer,’ he says. ‘I certainly, you know, couldn’t help but be aware that that’s something that’s always in these movies, but umm, I don’t know why I feel that drawn to that material.’

“He pauses again. ‘Umm, I’ll think about it.’ He laughs quietly, to himself. Nothing more is forthcoming.”

I’m going to try and get the “pure” Oscar Balloon box (i.e., IF THERE WAS A GOD…) up by 5 or 6 pm. I have to go to a 1 pm screening of Things We Lost in the Fire, but if anyone wants to follow Ian Sinclair‘s example rom yesterday and list a bunch of deserving Oscar nominees that don’t necessarily correlate with what the Gurus of Gold and Gurus 2.0 are predicting will be Academy favorites (although it’s perfectly allowable to include a likely Academy pick), post ’em here and I’ll give them a full think-through.