I received a DVD screener of Shortcut to Happiness last week, but I lent it to a friend last weekend and only got around to watching it this morning. It opens in six mid-size burghs (Las Vegas, Rochester, Fort Myers, Columbus, Albuquerque and Santa Fe) on 7.13 on its way to the bargain bin.

Alec Baldwin directed a version of this film six years ago (in addition to starring and producing) before washing his hands and having his name taken off — the direction is now credited to “Harry Fitzpatrick.” I reviewed the whole story last October, and the N.Y. Post ran a little thing on it today.
I knew this reputed train wreck of a movie would be problematic, but you always have the hope that it won’t be totally forgettable and that at least part of it — a scene, a line of dialogue, anything — will be worth the effort of watching.
There’s one moment that qualifies. It’s an anger scene with Baldwin, who’s playing the lead role of a frustrated, somewhat talented writer who sells his soul to the devil, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, in exchange for “success.” We all know that Baldwin does anger pretty well, and here he gets to do one of those self- loathing, had-it-up-to-here, “I can’t do this anymore!” scenes that climaxes with his throwing an IBM Selectric out of his living-room window. It comes around 20 or 25 minutes into the film, and it’s the first scene that doesn’t feel poorly written or badly acted or just plain inert. It feels hard and real.
It got me in particular because I’ve experienced a little writer’s rage myself. Most of it when I was younger and hadn’t yet figured out how to let it out, and or at least write with a semblance of assurance. Mainly when I was struggling with low-pay freelance work and living on Bank Street in the West Village, back when I had to use white-out to fix errors and when little dabs of white-out would stain my jeans and shirts.
On top of which Baldwin’s flying-typewriter scene reminded me of Jane Fonda doing precisely the same thing in Fred Zinneman‘s Julia (1978), when, as Lillian Hellman, she sends her Underwood crashing through an upstairs window of a Cape Cod cottage she’s living in with Dashiel Hammett (Jason Robards).

Yesterday’s big argument on CNN’s “Situation Room” between Sicko director Michael Moore and host Wolf Blitzer was splendid, riveting television and one of the strongest truth-in-media grenade blasts that has ever been felt on a mainstream news show. Here’s the YouTube video and here’s the transcript.

Before bringing Moore on Blitzer presented a video report by CNN’s medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that reviewed Moore’s occasional fact-fudging and simplifying in Sicko (which is true in some instances), particularly focusing on Moore’s unmitigated admiration of Canadian and European health systems. But it was a typically slanted report that quoted a typical corporate-minded anti-universal health care analyst. Moore was understandably pissed and hit the roof when questioned, calling the report “biased” and “crap.”
Moore then derided Gupta and Blitzer for spinning the Big Lie. He asked Blitzer to “tell the truth to the American people…just once…you guys have such a poor track record, and for me to come on here and listen to that kind of crap….you fudged the facts about this issue and the war in Iraq…why did it take you so long, Wolf, to take on Vice President Cheney? I’m just wondering when you’re going to apologize to the American people and the troops….I just wonder when the American people are going to turn off their TV sets and stop listening to this stuff.”
And then at the very end Lou Dobbs comes on and says Moore “as more of a left-wing promoter than Cesar Chavez, for crying out loud!” Dobbs is my idea of a real establishment prig, and the Cesar Chavez that I came to know in The Revolution Won’t Be Televized isn’t such a bad guy.
Moore will return to “Situation Room” at 5 pm eastern for Part Two of the debate, and then he’ll go up against Gupta on Larry King this evening at 9 pm eastern.

Variety reported on 7.6 that a 44-second promotional clip posted by the European Commission on YouTube has angered a politician or two. Called “Film Lovers Will Love This,” the montage shows 18 couples doing the mambo in various European films (Breaking The Waves, Goodbye Lenin!, Amelie, Bad Education, et. al.) with a concluding slogan — “Let’s come together.” All of the excerpted films are supported by the European Union’s MEDIA Program, which supports the circulation of films in other EU countries.

Fantasy Moguls‘ Steve Mason is reporting that yesterday — Monday, July 9 — Paramount Pictures passed $1 billion in domestic ticket sales for 2007. This is apparently the earliest date that any studio has ever topped the billion dollar mark. And sometime this weekend, Paramount will surpass $1.046 billion for the year, breaking its annual record set in 1998, i.e., the year of Titanic.

In the ’80s Roland Joffe was a class-A director who made two prestige-level films — The Killing Fields and The Mission — and one pretty good one called Fat Man and Little Boy. His stock dropped in the ’90s with City of Joy (Patrick Swayze in India), The Scarlet Letter (a Demi Moore embarassment) and Goodbye Lover (a femme fatale drama with Patricia Arquette, Dermot Mulroney and Mary-Louise Parker). Then he showed up at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival with Vatel, a Gerard Depardieu period drama, and then disappeared for seven years. Now he’s finally back with Captivity, which looks from a distance like torture-porn. Joffe’s descent-from-grace story has to be coming out soon.

A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is up; ditto one from the L.A. Times‘ Kenneth Turan. Scott is thumbs-up, Turan is thumbs-down, and both are out a day and half before opening day. (Both reviews will be in the print editions tomorrow.)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is tracking at 98 general awareness, 52 definite interest and 31 first choice — figure $70 to $80 million for the weekend and $110 million or more for the five days. Roland Joffe‘s Captivity (opening Friday, 7.13) is tracking at 27, 18 and 2…meh. John Waters‘ Hairspray (New Line, 7.20) is at 65, 30 and 5 with a definitely not interested rating of 13. (Musicals always draw moderately high negatives — Dreamgirls had them in the mid teens just before opening.)
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Universal, 7.20) is now at 70, 35 and 6 — half-decent, needs to improve. I Know Who Kiiled Me, the Lindsay Lohan thriller out 7.27, is looking at 27. 17 and 1…not too good. No Reservations> (Warner Bros., 7.27) is at 42, 22 and 2. The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox, 7.27) is at 77, 37 and 6 — best July score besides Harry Potter.

“It’s probably more enticing to not quite know what is that they’re putting across. It’s always better when you can arouse imaginations and get them wondering without making things too explicit. That’s not the age and aesthetic of today. Everybody wants things right on the nose.” — a pseudo-knowitall talking to USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican about J.J. Abrams‘ Cloverfield trailer.

East Coasters are just about finished with it, but Californians have another couple of hours to get home and turn on Turner Classic Movies in order to watch Richard Schickel‘s Spielberg on Spielberg doc, which I suspect sight unseen is going to be one of the most exuberant acts of televised fellatio ever broadcast. A Spielberg career appraisal that fails to salute his truly exceptional films would be, of course, derelict, and you can count on Schickel begin his usual vigilant self in this regard. But will he have the cojones to speak the truth about Spielberg’s so-so, second-tier and flat-out-bad films — 1941, The Color Purple, Always, Hook, Amistad, A.I., Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal and Munich?

There’s an Impeach Bush and Cheney office set up in West Hollywood now (8124 W. 3rd St., Ste #216, Los Angeles CA 90048), and until last week I was thinking “okay, nice sentiment but you’re dreaming.” But then three things happened in rapid succession that changed my thinking.
First was the Scooter Libby commutation the weekend before last, and then being floored by the Bush-Cheney record of arrogance and stupidity as I watched No End in Sight last Friday night, and now there’s Bush refusing to allow his aides testify under oath before Congress over the Justice Department firings.
The man is smug, indifferent and blinded by rightist ideology — clearly one of the all-time worst U.S. presidents in the nation’s history. And yet the conventional thinking is that an impeachment drive is out of the question. The problem, sad to say, is that Democrats legislators aren’t made of sterner stuff. Bill Clinton came close to getting put out of office by impeachment for next to nothing — i.e, because he lied about getting a blowjob — but that didn’t stop the Republicans from pushing this issue for months and months and nearly bringing the executive branch to a standstill because of it.

Please, please look at the trailer for Charles Ferguson‘s No End in Sight (Magnolia, 7.27.07 in NYC — 8.3 or 8.10 in Los Angeles), and then go to the site and read the synopsis and reviews. Having seen it last Friday, I can say I’ve never been made to feel so real-world enraged by a movie in all my life. Ferguson’s merciless analysis of the Bush administration’s handling of the ever-worsening situation in Iraq beginning in May 2003 is truly sickening.
As of this writing, No End in Sight is an absolute contender for Best Feature Documentary. I had a somewhat thorough but not very detailed grasp of the situation in Iraq before seeing it. After seeing it I felt as if someone had leaned over and turned the lens and sharpened the focus. I’m hoping to speak with Ferguson later this week by phone, and then do a sitdown with him in Los Angeles later this month. I know full well that 97% of the moviegoers out there will do the typical vegetable thing — i.e, will never see it, never rent the DVD, never think about it. It would be nice if some would think about responding differently.
The website copy doesn’t lie: No End in Sight “is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy — the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military — largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today.”
The most venal character the film is L. Paul Bremer, who was appointed by Donald Rumsfeld to be the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. He exercised authority over Iraq’s civil administration from 5.11.03 to 6.28.04. Bremer’s decision to disband the Iraqi Army and remove Ba’ath party members from top government posts “helped create and worsen an atmosphere of discontent,” according to his Wikipedia page.

Sky News is reporting that some bad guys (the report isn’t specific) are waging a kind of online psychological war aimed at U.S. troops by posting a series of mock-up Hollywood film posters containing “a chilling message for U.S. troops in Iraq.” I would imagine that most U.S. soldiers over there will look at these images and go “haw!,” or certainly without breaking much of a sweat. If you ask me the zombies-in-Iraq-by- way-of-George Romero poster is the best.