I saw Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild at a special early screening on the Paramount lot several weeks ago, and came away impressed and stirred up. This is an essential “trip” movie — you can’t be any kind of film lover and wait for the DVD — as well as an experience that’s certain to provoke primal passions and arguments. And in terms of focus, passion and visual splendor, it’s easily Sean Penn‘s best-directed film — evidence of serious artistic growth on his part.

It also contains the best performance Emile Hirsch (Alpha Dog, The Girl Next Door) has ever given, even though, truth be told, he’s not the most charismatic of actors. There’s something vaguely feral and muskratty (and even, at times, other-planet-y) about Hirsch. And yet this quality works for Wild and Hirsch’s strange, quiet performance as a misanthropic loner, especially as he seems to uncover every last shade and mood of misanthropic loner-ism there is.

Everyone presumably knows that Penn’s film is the story of Chris McCandless, the idealistic/disaffected son of privelege who died of starvation in 1992 while trying to be Jeremiah Johnson in the Alaskan wilderness, and that it’s based upon a respected and popular book by Jon Krakauer that covered McCandless’s life and death.

The fact that Into The Wild is a very fully felt spiritual journey stems from Penn obviously being a major believer in the McCandless legend. It’s also a wide-open atmosphere movie about the wonders of nature’s grand cathedral, and this seems especially welcome in this day and age when 99% of the population lives inside artificial environments.

But when you boil the spiritual and visual snow out of it, Wild is about a very self-absorbed, somewhat arrogant, not-exactly-genius-level guy who could have found his way out of the Alaskan wilderness area he died in if he’d thought to buy a decent map. I read an opinion piece by an Alaska forest ranger that clarified my suspicions.

McCandless’s dream — to live a primal life free of meaningless, spirit-draining crap — is something we can all relate to or at least understand, but I’m not sure that Penn’s mostly sympathetic portrait of McCandless (although Into The Wild doesn’t shove anything down yoru throat — it lets you come to your own conclusions) is the entire truth of the matter. I don’t think McCandless took nature quite seriously enough (if he hadn’t found that abandoned school bus he probably would have been dead a lot sooner), and that he wound up paying the price.

I respect that Penn has made a longish film — it’s something like 2 hours and 25 minutes — and that he gives it a kind of drifting, wandering feeling, like you’re wandering through the Louvre only more so. This was the right way to go for a film with this subject and story. And the ending definitely works — you can actually feel a sense of release in the death of a twenty-something guy, which is quite a feat when you think about it. And I agree with everyone else about Hal Holbrook giving an award-quality performance as a kindly old guy whom McCandless/Hirsch meets toward the end of the film.

I’ve other questions and comments, but I have to jam. To be continued….

Ang Lee‘s Lust, Caution, which I was respectful of (if not entirely over the moon about) after seeing it Friday, was handed the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion trophy two or three hours ago. Rodrigo Prieto‘s cinematography for Lee’s film also won a festival award. The festival’s Silver Lion for Best Director went to Brian De Palma for Redacted (hey, Chris Willman…any reactions?). A special jury prize went to Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There and Abdellatif Kechiche‘s La Graine et le mulet. Cate Blanchett was named Best Actress for her role in Haynes’ I’m Not There (for playing Blonde on Blonde-era Bob Dylan), and Brad Pitt was named Best Actor in Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein reported two or three hours ago that Helen Hunt‘s Then She Found Me, which she’s both directed and starred in, has been acquired by ThinkFilm and Equinoxe Films (the latter being a Canadian distrib) sometime this morning for a fee in the region of $2.5 to $3 million.

A romantic comedy, And Then She Found Me is about a teacher (Hunt) who is tracked down by her biological mom (Bette Midler) just as her adoptive mother has died, her husband (Matthew Broderick) has left her and as a relationship with a new guy (Colin Firth) is starting to happen. Honestly…doesn’t a movie directed by a woman called And Then She Found Me sound like it could be about something else?

And buyers are also sniffing around Tom McCarthy‘s drama The Visitor, the Saturday morning press screening for which I didn’t attend because I was seeing David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises. There was a furtive screening of it last night, apparently.

Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is predicting a $15 million-plus tally for 3:10 to Yuma this weekend, but I’m hearing it’ll make closer to $13 or $14 million.

Yuma could have crested $20 million but “the perception of Russell Crowe ever since he threw that phone is that he’s a thug,” a marketing guy contended this morning. “Women don’t want to see him anymore.” Maybe, but he’s a quality-minded thug, I replied, and people trust in the fact that he doesn’t do crap. (A Good Year, I felt, was a nicely made, reasonably decent change-of-life film.)

The second-place Halloween is off 65% and looking at $9,417,000. Superbad will come in third with $7,611,00, which will put it over the $100 million mark. And poor, insufficiently-loved Shoot ‘Em Up — a better ride movie and a more complete film according to its own terms than Yuma is — will come in fourth with a piddly-ass $5.7 million, or about $2700 a print. (I’m sorry to be the bearer but that’s all she wrote — it’s finished — everyone raise a glass to Russell Schwartz‘s final marketing failure for New Line — it shouldn’t have gone up against Yuma.)

The Bourne Ultimatum will come in fifth with $5,553,000. Balls of Fury will be sixth with $5,500,000. Rush Hour 3 will be seventh with $4,050,000, The Nanny Diaries will be eighth with $3,092,000, Mr. Bean’s Holiday will come in ninth with $2,900,000 and Stardust will be tenth with $1,700,000.

I’ve had a copy of Aaron Sorkin‘s Charlie Wilson’s War screenplay on my desktop for months, but I wasn’t going to run any portions (if at all) until later in the year. It’s a good script — good enough to make me feel optimistic about this Mike Nichols-Tom Hanks-Phillip Seymour Hoffman-Julia Roberts political dramedy, which doesn’t open until 12.25.07 — but there’s plenty of time to run anticipatory warm-up pieces.

Now comes an AICN review/reaction of a Charlie Wilson’s War research screening by a guy named “PENNENINK.” It’s a 90% positive piece with three samples of Sorkin’s dialogue. Sample #1 (spoken by Hoffman’s character: “I’d like to hold a meeting to review the ten different ways in which you’re a douchebag.” Sample #2: asked why Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (Hanks) only uses big-breasted women as his secretaries, a woman in his office answers: “Mr. Wilson has a saying — you can teach a girl to type but you can’t teach her to grow tits.” Sample #3: Wilson, reflecting on U.S policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, says at the end that “as usual, we come in [to a country], change the politics and leave. But you know what? That ball? It keeps bouncing…even after we’ve left.”

Hey, how come an early Charlie Wilson’s War teaser-trailer hasn’t made the rounds? The movie opens 14 weeks from now — a flick of an eyelash — and there’s not even a bare-bones website up yet. Universal’s strategy seems to be to just stretch out in the hayloft and wait it out — i.e., create anticipation by doing nothing — and then blast ouf of the barn and throttle up the engine starting in (I’m guessing) mid to late November.

The big question, of course, isn’t whether or not the public will take to this movie, but what will Variety‘s Robert Koehler have to say? As Koehler goes, so goes the too-hip-for-words, inbred-cineaste clique…and if this crowd is against you, they can interrupt or at least interfere with awards-talk momentum. Just a thought.

HE reader Dan Gaertner grabbed some Tim Burton/Sweeney Todd music off the official website when they tested it for about three minutes this morning. The clip, he says, is missing a “huge bell “in the beginning, which I presume means some kind of big Notre Dame-like Sunday morning goohhhnng.

There’s a fairly legit-looking full trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage, 12.26) on MySpace.com. They’re calling it an exclusive. If it’s not an official trailer, it’s a pretty good rip-off of one by somebody with talent and access to the materials. Love watching Daniel Day Lewis in every clip…an endlessly fascinating actor. You can tell Paul Dano, portraying a religious wackjob type, is going to be intense, but then he always is.

My second viewing this evening of Anton Corbijn‘s Control (Weinstein Co., 10.10) resulted in even greater elation than I got from last May’s Cannes screening.

What I failed to say adequately in my previous raves is how wonderfully still and centered and untricky it is, and yet how sublimely satisfying it looks (with widescreen black-and-white photography so good it looks like monochromatic ice cream) and how authentic it all feels.

This, you’re left thinking (and even more so than Michael Winterbottom‘s 24 Hour Party People, which went for a slightly absurdist tone there and there), is how the souls of young despairing people in ’70s England truly resonated and registered, and more particularly how the Manchester scene really was or at least seemed to those who were there. (As Corbijn briefly was.)

The only thing about the film that doesn’t exactly turn me on is the gloomy story line. But I believed every line of it, every shot, every performance…all of it. It’s an absolute classic of its kind, and Sam Riley, who plays doomed Joy Division Ian Curtis, is — agree or not, believe it or not — an absolute candidate for Best Actor. Emphatically. No question. He’s dead perfect. (And I don’t mean that as a pun.)

Fox 411‘s Roger Friedman is reporting that Larry-into-Lana Wachowski sex-change story isn’t true. Stories about Larry having made the choice to reassign gender started four years ago without any disputation until now. “Disappointed?,” Friedman asks. “I know. I am too.”

You can’t say that a one-sheet using the suggestion of an old, dog-eared Bible to spread awareness of an allegedly violent period film about the oil business that’s based on an anti-capitalism book isn’t, at the very least, striking. It’s saying, obviously, that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will be Blood (Paramount Vantage, 12.26) will address bedrock moral issues. Of course, all that blackness suggests somberness, bitterness and severity as well. But this is just a teaser poster (surfacing over three and a half months from release). Other themes and designs will surely follow.