The forthcoming Xmas season is looking weak, weak….exhibitors are crying. Prior-to-Thanksgiving holiday-tracking is always one indicator, and the only title with any kind of potential heat (i.e., build factor) is Will Smith‘s The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia, — 12.20) — 69, 35, 3. Otherwise nothing is over 6 or a 7 in the first choice category. Night at the Museum and Dreamgirls may ignite a month from now, but right now early tracking isn’t pointing to anything really big — nothing Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter level. It’s almost all low-flamey.
The only thing that has any kind of strength this coming five-day weekend (starting on Wednesday) is Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer and Denzel Washington‘s Deja Vu — 85, 43, 15. Those are good numbers, but not overwhelming — if it was going to really burn the house down the first choice would be in the 20s. It could maybe reach $50 million as of Sunday evening.
Deck The Halls (20th Century Fox, 11.22) is looking okay — 71, 25, and 4….but the survey guys aren’t talking to the kids. For Your Consideration (Warner Independent) is mezzo-mezzo — 26, 23 and 1. The Fountain (one toke over the line, sweet Jesus) is at 44, 24 and 3. Tenacious D — 63, 27 and 5. Bobby…57, 35 (decent), first choice 7…but not overwhelming.
The Nativity (New Line, 12.1) is at 38, 27 and 2. Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8) is 53, 22…negative number (i.e., definitely not interested) are at 14 and holding…and the first choice is 2. The negatives and the first choice haven’t moved — that means trouble. Blood Diamond (Warner Bros., 12.8) is puttering along — 58, 31 and 4. The Holiday (Columbia, 12.8) — 61, 25 and 2…not much. Eragon , 38, 30 3.
No numbers yet on the other prospective biggies. Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox, 12.20) is supposed to be pretty good, and it may take off big-time. Dreamgirls (Dreamamount) isn’t opening wide until 12.25 — early numbers will be in tomorrow.

I’ve just heard about the death of the irreplacable, eternally influential Robert Altman. There are hundreds of things I could riff on, but death’s honesty always seems to be a little too blunt — too sudden — when it comes to really special guys like Altman. I guess the Academy got around to giving him his gold-watch award last year none too soon. His health was getting shakier and shakier over the last three or four years.

I’m more than a little startled by this. I was always thinking Altman might just have one more bulls-eye in him. Something satiric and snappy, but in a gentle-trippy- haunting way. That’s what I think of when I think of his great films.
He was a beautiful ornery man, occasionally touched by genius. That’s how genius is — it visits, whispers, flutters down and lights you up…and then it’s gone. And you can’t even show the world that it’s touched you unless you’re lucky as well. Altman was lucky and imbued enough to have things really work out maybe six or seven times in his life, and that’s pretty impressive.
I’m talking the usual litany, of course: Nashville, The Long Goodbye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Player, M.A.S.H., California Split, Thieves Like Us, Tanner on HBO, Gosford Park…what is that, eight? A Prairie Home Companion was warm and very spirited…an engaging mood piece (I loved Garrison Keillor and Meryl Streep‘s singing), but not quite pantheon-level.
I used to get a real kick out of Altman’s ornery-ness. He was always friendly, but he never smiled unless he really meant it. He tended to scowl and he didn’t suffer fools. He sure as shit didn’t tolerate any of my bullshit when I first started to talk to him in early ’92, when early screenings of The Player were happening and I was trying to spread the word that Altman was back in a big way.

When I asked to do a second Entertainment Weekly interview with him prior to the opening of The Player in April ’92, he thought I was being inefficient and taking too long and flat-out said so: “What are you, writing a book?” A month or two later we were both at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was trying to get quotes for an EW piece about celebrity reactions to the Rodney King riots that had just happened in Los Angeles. I asked Altman for a quote at a black-tie party on the beach, and he scowled again. “This subject is too important to comment about for Entertain- ment Weekly,” he said, and then turned his back.
You can’t hear me, Bob, and if you were here you wouldn’t give a shit anyway, but I’ve been telling people that line for the last 14 years and getting a good laugh from it every time.
I lived in a studio on Hightower Drive in the Hollywood hills in ’85 and ’86 precisely because it was on the same little street where the way-up-high, elevator-access, deco-styled Long Goodbye apartment was located — the one that Elliot Gould‘s Philip Marlowe lived in. You know, the one with the naked hippie-girl neighbors who used to ask him to pick up some brownie mix on his way out to the super market at 1:30 am?

Isn’t this the same funny trailer for Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox, 12.20) that’s been kicking around since Labor Day, if not before? That Robin Williams/Teddy Roosevelt bit is hilarious. (Meaning it’ll be tired when we finally see the film.) Thing is, it says “January 2007” at the very end — I just checked with a Fox rep and the opening date is definitely 12.20.06, so it appears the “human element” kicked in and somebody erred. The rep said they won’t be screening it until sometime in early December due to the scores of visual effects that have to be tweaked just so.

“While many critics were impressed by Children of Men‘s virtuosity and bravado,” writes Hollywood Reporter/Risky Biz blogger columnist Anne Thompson, “the industry types were seeing a downer film that’s going to lose money. The movie is a brilliant exercise in style, but it’s another grim dystopian look at our future — like Blade Runner or Fahrenheit 451 — that simply cost too much money.”
Wells to thoughtful industry types: (a) Yeah, it’s “grim” but, as you well know, only in a general milieu-ish way — it’s mostly an action-driven chase movie, the story has a clear “maybe things aren’t so bad after all” theme, and the finale is all about relief, reverence and shelter from the storm, and (b) When a movie is photographed with as much genius as Children of Men and is so thrillingly well-done, it can’t be called downerish unless you’re a total moron because the whole thing is so exhilarating to sit through. Going to this film and calling it a “downer” is like standing in front of Pablo Picasso‘s “Guernica” and complaining that it’s not colorful enough (i.e., Pablo painted it in grays, blacks and whites).
Thompson reports that Men cost between $72 and $90 million, which I’ll admit seems like a lot. “So what if it makes money or not?,” she rhetorically asks. “It matters because we want smart, risky movies to return some cash so that the studios are encouraged to make more of them.
“One could look at this as the passion project that [director-cowriter] Alfonso Cuaron finally got to make after delivering a blockbuster like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. That’s how things work. He can afford a noble failure. The studios all want to be in business with him.”

Before reading this item, please click on this mp3 file — it’ll set the proper mood. Done? Here we go: We all know what the words “directed by Nancy Meyers” mean — glossy, carefully lighted comedies about smart-but- quirky career women who (a) usually have shiny copper pots hanging in their kitchens and (b) have been hurt in past relationships but are looking to make a new unlikely relationship work, even if they start out hating the guy.

If you look at the trailer for The Holiday (Columbia, 12.8), Meyers’ latest romantic comedy, you may say to yourself (as I did), “Well, at least it has Jack Black in it.” But it may be okay. I haven’t yet seen it (and I most likely won’t until the first week of December) but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Naaah, can’t do that. Because the damn poster won’t stop irking me. Because it keep telling me “same old, same old” and “asleep at the wheel.”
You’ve got two couples — Cameron Diaz and Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Black — making goo-goo eyes at each other. (Black’s dippy grin makes him look toothless and deballed, on top of which he looks airbrushed within an inch of his life. We seem to be looking at a John Belushi-romances-Blair Bown Contintental Divide situation here.)
I’m just saying there’s something deeply untrustworthy about any poster that says, “Trust these smiling faces.” The Temptations didn’t trust them and I don’t either. What are they smiling about? Nothing, the poster says. It’s just chemistry — Cameron likes Jude and Kate likes Jack and vice versa, and you can count on them getting down in Act Two and putting another log on the fire and turning on the Sinatra and getting to know each other.
It’s just too bad that the Columbia ad guys didn’t try to convey something besides the same old Nancy Meyers stuff. It tells you it’s not exactly the most angular or unusual film she’s ever made. I mean, Columbia has actually made an effort to convey this to audiences. I can’t be the only one having this reaction.

According to a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh posted late last night on theonering.net, New Line Cinema has parted ways with Jackson/Walsh over a lawsuit that they had brought aainst the distributor tied to Fellowship of the Ring revenues (i.e., product licensing, “differences of opinion”, etc.).
The positive-minded Jackson/Walsh had been expecting settlement on the lawsuit, which would then be followed by a deal to start work on The Hobbit plus a Lord of the Rings prequel. However, according to the letter, “last week [New Line bigwig] Mark Ordesky called Ken Kamins” — Jackson/Walsh’s manager — “and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on The Hobbit and the LOTR ‘prequel’…this was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.
“Ordesky said that New Line has a limited time option on the [Hobbit] film rights they have obtained from Saul Zaentz (this has never been conveyed to us before), and because we won’t discuss making the movies until the lawsuit is resolved, the studio is going to have to hire another director. Given that New Line [is] committed to this course of action, we felt at the very least, we owed you, the fans, a straightforward account of events as they have unfolded for us.”
What’s really going on here, I believe, is a reflection of the this year’s sea-change attitude among distributors and producers towards coddled, overpaid wunderkind types like Jackson — big-name talents who get rich deals for themselves and their production companies, after which they go off and strain or exceed the budget, and then their sometimes indulgent, overlong film (i.e., King Kong) comes out and does moderately well but not well enough. Result: the wunderkind makes out like a bandit and the studio is left holding the bag.
Image-wise, Universal’s King Kong experience with Jackson made him into the ultimate enfant terrible poster boy for indulgent, genius-boy tendencies. Jackson’s middle name is “wheeee!” — it’s what makes him what he is. If you make a movie with Jackson, provision #1 in his contract is that he gets to go “wheeee!” all through the making of it. At the end of the day the film will be in some ways awesome/brilliant/ eye-popping and what the fans want, and in other ways indulgent, show-offy, overlong and flooded with fake-looking bullshit CG shots that “wheeee!” types love to create because fake CG shots are so deliriously comic-book “imaginative.”
You may make a huge profit with a Jackson film and you may not, but one thing for sure is that he and his New Zealand pallies will make out like kings plus they’ll all get to go “wheeee!” for 18 months or two years, on your dime.
I’m basically saying that New Line did a good thing here. The more Peter Jackson gets cut down and has to trim his sails and stop “wheee”-ing his way through movie-making, the better. I say this because I have never suffered so acutely in my moviegoing years…I’ve never felt so awful, so trapped, so stuck on Devil’s Island- with-dysentery as I did while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the first 70 minutes of King Kong. I just know that the fewer “paints” Jackson has to work with, the better his films will turn out to be.

As the Bagger points out, the somewhat unwitting and definitely appalled Borat costar Cindy Streit is more than a killjoy. She’s also not very hip. And she may not be all that smart. Of all the angry reactions from Borat participants who didn’t get what was really happening when the cameras rolled, this may be the funniest.

46 years ago, or roughly 35 years before Harvey Weinstein began rewriting the Oscar campaign book, Burt Lancaster voiced some angry allegations to the Saturday Evening Post about certain unsavory practices involving Oscar award balloting and politicking. (Thanks to Michael Bergeron for sending this along.)

Three months after winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Elmer Gantry (i.e., when it was safe to do so), Burt Lancaster let loose.

A trailer for Evan Almighty (Universal, 6.22.07), the most grossly expensive CGI comedy of all time with the least funny, most tiresome premise in the world. The mere threat of this film seems to have undone all the good vibes that Little Miss Sunshine extended to poor Steve Carell, who’s clearly playing to the cheap seats in this apparent Tom Shadyac monstrosity. God’s (i.e., Morgan Freeman‘s) decision to cover the earth in flood waters is clearly an expression of displeasure with how man has ruined it (which he most certainly has). But how is that, you know, “funny”?

Pat Broeske has written a N.Y. Times piece about a couple of planned duelling biopics about the legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis… fascinating. The movie world certainly needs another biopic (or two) about a troubled genius musician who had drug problems and wasn’t the most likable or admirable guy in the world. I mean, that’s a story that absolutely needs to be told.

The Davis film most likely to get shot is called Miles and Me (shitty title!); the other one is being assembled by the Davis estate and may star Don Cheadle.
Curiously, Broeske doesn’t mention that the Davis mystique was re-energized a couple of years ago by a scene in Michael Mann‘s Collateral in which Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx visit a Los Angeles jazz club owner (Barry Shabaka Henley) who recalls a vivid encounter he had with Miles in the mid ’60s.
Davis was known to some as “the Prince of Darkness, [partly becasue] he ranted so much about race and prejudice that some acquaintances believed he was the one with racial prejudice. (Even though he never balked at working with white musicians, and he was romantically involved with several white women.) He often performed with his back to his audience, and berated fans who dared approach him.
“Famously fond of cool cars and hot women, Davis had an erratic personal life that included heroin addiction, cocaine addiction, pimping and spousal abuse,” Broeske writes.
“‘I actually left running for my life — more than once,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù his former wife Frances Davis recalled in a telephone interview. A onetime Broadway dancer, she said her own career faltered after she left the hit musical West Side Story because Davis told her, ‘A woman should be with her man.’ She now says any screen depiction must be truthful about both his artistry and his rage. ‘There√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s got to be full treatment of his genius, as well as his shortcomings,’ she said.”
Forget that quality coming through from the Davis estate version — familymembers always protect their own.

Much admired screenwriter Eric Roth is making the rounds to raise awareness about his work on Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (Universal, 12.22), which, as he promised in a phone chat a few days ago, has a lot more in the way of adult texture than most of the films out now. Here’s a N.Y. Times interview piece by Kris Tapley, out today.

Here’s a 39-minute portion of yesterday’s conversation with Children of Men director-cowriter Alfonso Cuaron. A lot of it won’t add up for those who haven’t seen the film, but Cuaron’s obvious intelligence and his very precise choice of words deliver a kind of contact high if you listen for a few minutes. That and his laughter, which has a wonderful eruption and spontaneity.

Cuaron really knows his stuff, and he obviously respects to the nth degree and swears by the great Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, his director of photography who refused to use any sort of artificial lighting or green screens in the making of Children of Men. This is a film that uses CG visuals allthrough it, but with one or two exceptions it’s very hard to identify them.

Cuaron’s long experience making Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban provided a master course in state-of-the-art visual effects, and strengthened his hand in discussing what was possible or not possible in the making of Children of Men. But I’m delighted that he and “Chivo” were dead-set against using anything that looked in the least bit like a visual effect. (One surprise for me is that a bit in which Clive Owen and Julianne Moore play a mouth-to-mouth game of “catch” with ping-pong balls is digitally composed.) And I love that Cuaron values (along with “Chivo” and their collaborator and unofficial co-writer Clive Owen ) the on-camera benefits of minor filming accidents.

And I loved that when I mentioned the apparent influence of Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket in Men‘s final battle sequence, Cuaron said that the bigger visual references in the making of this film were Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (because of the futuristic-but-battered London settings) and F.W. Murnau‘s Sunrise.

We talked about how some older viewers have expressed dismay or outright dislike, even, for the sense of futility that, in their opinion, the film imparts. It’s obvious to me that anyone who comes away with this view isn’t paying attention. “This film has gotten very strong reactions — younger people find the film hopeful, older people find the film very depressive,” Cuaron admits.

“I’ve heard people say this is just another chase movie. It’s like people are so jaded about the telling of pictures. As opposed to have to engage with the specific cinematic elements and different approaches. I have a very bleak view of the present, but a very hopeful view of the future. For me the film is about hope in the end, but you cannnot dictate a sense of hope in a viewer because that is very personal and internal. [In our film] we basically allow audiences to fill in the blanks and make their own conclusions.”

I mentioned that the head of a distribution company who saw Children of Men at the Venice Film Festival recently complained that it departed significantly from the P.D. James novel. “We used the premise…only the premise of female infertility,” Cuaron responded. “But we received a statement from [original author] P.D. James, saying she fully admires and is pleased with the film and is very proud to be associated with it. For which I’m very thankful.

“I was not interested in constructing a back-story [about what caused female infertility],” Cuaron says. “Because if I did that, a lot of the movie would then have to be about that. For me, female infertility was basically a metaphor for the fading sense of hope. And the Human Project…if I have to explain who they are and the whole background of that, that also would have consumed a significant portion. The Human Project is a metaphor for human understanding. For me that was sufficient.”