In another piece about comedians trying their legs at drama (i.e., on the heels of Caryn James‘ 3.25 N.Y. Times article), MSNBC’s Stuart Levine begins his version thusly: I’m very excited to see the new Adam Sandler movie, Reign Over Me, for one big reason: It’s not an Adam Sandler movie.

“In other words, this one’s not geared for 12-year-old boys who’ll collapse in laughter at the sight of any and all bodily functions. Reign is for adults (the story centers around a man trying to deal with the grief of Sept. 11) and I credit Sandler for stepping out of his financial wheelhouse for a chance to do something that won’t be nominated for a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award.”

Except Levine doesn’t say anything the least bit descriptive about Sandler’s Reign performance. For this you have to go back to James, to wit:

“There is also something endearing about Sandler’s character, an empathetic quality that comes from the actor, not the role. He looks like the young Bob Dylan rather than a guy too distraught to get a haircut, and gives a two-note performance (near catatonic with a late explosion of grief), yet even here Mr. Sandler displays the appealing everyman persona and ability to hold the screen that he carries to all his films.”

N.Y. Times columnist Caryn James is on probation with an ankle bracelet for having gone sweet on Will Ferrell, the world’s dorkiest-looking and, I feel, the most monotonous and not-all- that-funny comic performer around today. I’m feeling this more acutely than usual because of the impending Blades of Glory (Dreamamount, 3.30), which I’m dreading like the plague even though it’s going to wail at the box-office five days from now.

Will Ferrell, Ron Perlman

I know what the Will Ferrell treatment is all about, and I’ve been wanting a break from it since he did that cameo in The Wedding Crashers. (I haven’t really and truly enjoyed the guy since the days of his George Bush impressions on SNL.) Plus I’m starting to feel more and more turned off by the New Homophobia (straight comedians getting laughs by pretending to be passionately gay while alluding fifteen ways from Sunday that having anal sex with another guy — be it a girlish blonde like Jon Heder or an ape with hairy legs and a five o’clock shadow — is a fate worse than death, or roughly akin to getting nailed by a smelly horse), and it’s quite clear that Blades of Glory is mired in this attitude up to its ears.

James actually states that Ferrell gave “one of last year’s most affecting performances” in Stranger Than Fiction, and that he makes the character of Harold Crick, an I.R.S. agent who hears a woman’s voice narrating his life, “a sweet, believable, heart-tugging guy.” James is a irst-rate writer and well within her rights to say this, but my knee-jerk reaction to these words was “aaaahhhh, God!”

Ferrell’s face “is often still, but you can see the thoughtfulness in his eyes,” she explains. (Ferrell actually delivers the same double-track element in all his performances, which is to project exceptional uptown intelligence that is nonetheless dominated by a bone-dumb, cement-head yahoo mentality.)

“His small facial expressions and underplayed delivery,” writes James, “become extremely funny as he registers surprise at the absurdity of his situation, then quiet, quizzical acceptance.” (Okay, this worked in Stranger Than Fiction…I’ll give him that.)

“This astute realism is not at all divorced from his comedy,” James goes on, adding that Ferrell “may be the best actor” among a group of funny guys — Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Bill Murray — who’ve ventured into big-screen drama.

The fact is that Ferrell, however brainy or perceptive he may be in actuality, is ruled by a certain facial-ness that shouts out Quest for Fire and features that resemble no other actor as much as the great and widely respected Ron Perlman. There’s nothing wrong with looking like Perlman in any way, shape or form, but it you lack the soul and the sadness that Perlman can convey at the drop of a hat, and you have the same kind of beady, close-together eyes and a somewhat similar overhanging forehead, you end up exuding a certain oppressive doofusness. Which is to say that servings of this over and over and over have led me (and I suspect, thousands of others) into a kind of stupefication.

I was told at last night’s Grindhouse screening, by the way, that Planet Terror and Death Proof will be released as separate films in Europe.

I asked a couple of Weinstein publicists how long each film is on its own, but they weren’t sure. Chris Nashawaty‘s EW piece says they both run 85 minutes. Each, presumably, will have the fake trailers for the fake crappy movies attached when they play overseas.

“Hollywood is bracing for a new government review of the marketing of violent entertainment to the young,” reports N.Y. Times guy Michael Ceipley. “The Federal Trade Commission is putting the final touches on a follow-up to its September 2000 report on the marketing to children of violent movies, music and video games. The first such assessment in three years, it will examine the selling practices of a mainstream entertainment industry that in the interim has become increasingly dependent on abductions, maimings, decapitations and other mayhem once kept away from studio slates.” Uhhh….yeah. These are the times we’re liviing in, and a lot of people want a taste of that Eli Roth Lionsgate horror moolah. (Including Lionsgate.)

A film critic friend wrote a couple of days ago to ask “who are Richard Brody and Ken Marks, and why are they sullying The New Yorker‘s critical reputation?

“I was reading the capsule movie reviews in the current issue (3/26) of the mag, and my eye happened to fall upon raves given to two of the worst films in current release: Norbit and Reno 911!: Miami. Brody describes Norbit as a ‘raucous, vulgar comic extravaganza’ and [seemingly] loved every moment of it. He concludes that Eddie Murphy is ‘clearly having a great time, and it’s infectious.’ He’s right about the infectious part, but more sober critics determined Norbit to be the kind of infection requiring cold compresses and heavy doses of antibiotics.

“More puzzling still is the review by Marks of Reno 911!, which most critics have judged to be a bad screen adaptation of a low-brow TV timewaster. Not so the exuberant Marks, who describes Reno 911! as ‘frickin’ hilarious,’ and determines that ‘laughs this big don’t come along often.’

“You may recall that Reno 911! opened cold, without advance critical screenings. This could well be the first New Yorker rave for a one-star movie that even the studio didn’t believe in.

“These two reviews raise the following questions: (1) Has The New Yorker ceased being a high-brow publication and ceded part of its movie coverage to slobbering fanboys?; (2) How did the phrase ‘frickin’ hilarious’ happen to make it past the mag’s legendary editors?; )3) Should not Richard Brody and Ken Marks get out more often, if they are so easily impressed by movies like these? Perhaps if they were exposed to movies of the kind reviewed by regular New Yorker critics Anthony Lane and David Denby, they might develop higher standards.”

I don’t know why I’m running this, but some guys are reimagining Star Wars as if it had been created and visualized by Jules Verne. The style/aesthetic is called steampunk. I think it would be better all around if all things George Lucas (including Star Wars) was just left alone. A few steampunk sites — #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5.

I went to high school for two years in Wilton, Connecticut, and I visited there often over the next few years, and can say with at least some familiarity that Wilton was always a moderately conservative town. But I’ve always understood that the high school was a somewhat progressive institution. No longer, apparently.

A planned April performance of a play about U.S. troops and the Iraqi War called “Voices in Conflict” was recently cancelled by principal Timothy H. Canty, due to “questions of political balance and context.” Translation: conservative voices in Wilton wanted it suppressed.

A N.Y. Times story by Alison Leigh Cowan says that Canty “has tangled with students before over free speech,” and that his justification for cancelling the play was concern that it “might hurt Wilton families ‘who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak,” and that there was not enough classroom and rehearsal time to ensure it would provide ‘a legitimate instructional experience for our students.'”

In fact, the play has reportedly been blocked from appearing anywhere. It would be appalling if the play was never performed. It would be even more appalling if it ends up not being performed because the high school authors and actors don’t try hard enough to overcome or out-finagle the censors.

There are too many McMansions in Wilton, Connecticut. There are too many McMansions everywhere. People I’d rather not talk to, much less know, live in them.

I’ve read Chris Nashawaty‘s Entertainment Weekly cover story (issue #927) on Grindhouse twice, and it seems curious that there’s not even a mention — not even a wisecrack — about the emotional upheaval that resulted from Planet Terror director Robert Rodriguez‘s indiscretion with costar Rose McGowan during shooting early last year, and his wife-producer, Elizabeth Avellan, finding out and freaking and then suing for divorce, and Rodriguez allegedly suffering some kind of emotional meltdown and the shoot being somewhat more difficult because of this.

As this was reportedly seismic at the time (i.e., to judge from what Planet Terror crew people told other people), you would think it might rate a brief mention. (Can one discuss the making of Cleopatra without at least mentioning the Liz Taylor- Richard Burton affair?) EW isn’t People and what happened off-set (or in the trailers) doesn’t belong in any substantial way in Nashawaty’s story, but not even anecdotally? The omission seems like a chickenshit call on someone’s part.

Sometimes there’s no explanation — not a simple, easy to-digest one, anyway — why a certain song seeps through and resonates at a given time. Maybe if the word “Talk” was substituted for the word “Write”…I don’t know. I’m also hearing “Jeepster”, a T-Rex/Marc Bolan track that Quentin Tarantino uses in Death Proof, over and over. Mainly because it’s good.

Forget that projection about TMNT doing close to $35 million or even cracking $30 million — it’s being projected to earn $27,492,000. (Obviously not a shortfall, but the guy who projected a possible $35 million take was feeling his oats.) 300, a Hollywood Armageddon movie that too many people are refusing to hate, will come in second with $19,352,000, off 41% from last weekend. And the third-place Wild Hogs will earn $14,328,000, off 25% from the previous round.

Shooter will come in fourth with about $13,682,000. The Hills Have Eyes 2 is next with $10,131,000. The fact that (a) we live in a sophisticated moviegoing society and (b) that Sandra Bullock fans live in a very myopic and diseased world of their own are two reasons why the unquestionably bad Premonition, in its second weekend, is expected to make a little more $2 million more than Reign Over Me, or roughly $9,494,000.

Even The Last Fucking Mimzy did better than Reign, with a weekend gross of $8,977,000.

Reign Over Me wasn’t shunned, but it will nonetheless finish in eighth place with about $7.611,000, which means if it holds decently it may end up with a little more than $20 million.

This being a very busy weekend is one reason why Pride, a not-bad competitive swimming movie with Terence Howard and Bernie Mac, tanked with only $3,719,000. Dead Silence did slightly worse with a tenth-place showing of $3,522,000.

A preview trailer for the final Sopranos season, including a line I’ve known was coming for many years — “Mr. Soprano, we have a warrant for your arrest.”

Half of Grindhouse (Weinstein Co., 4.6) — okay, 55% or 60% — gave me a kick that I haven’t gotten from a mainstream film in a long, long time, and I owe 100% of that pleasure to director-writer Quentin Tarantino, who is definitely back in the saddle with this one and going yippie- ki-yay.

Everyone knows that Grindhouse is a double-feature movie — a pair of late-’60s style exploitation flicks intended as a jaunty tribute piece. Created by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, it’s a film that samples and comments upon a long-dead genre without really “being” anything itself except for a showcase of hip-rich-guy attitudes. But for a film that runs just over three hours (i.e., 184 minutes) it’s a live-wire, better-than-okay ride. The problem is that it starts with a semi-dud (Rod- riguez’s Planet Terror) that you have to sit through in order to get to the really good one, which is Tarantino’s Death Proof.

Planet Terror is a tired, gloppy and mostly groan-worthy zombie movie except for Rose McGowan‘s pistol-hot action scenes with her prosthetic machine-gun leg. But Death Proof , the Tarantino film starring Kurt Russell, is a sexy, sassy hot-chick flick boasting one of the most exciting car-chase sequences in cinema history…seriously.

And no fake-ass CG footage! Every last frame in Tarantino’s car chase, shot on windy roads in the golden sloping hills north of Santa Barbara, is apparently 100% real and totally pedal-to-the-metal, and therefore on par with the car chases in Bullitt, the original Gone in 60 Seconds, Vanishing Point, Ronin, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and any other contender you can name.

My favorite Grindhouse one-sheet

But the fundamental thing is that Grindhouse is a beautifully recreated atmospheric revisiting of the world of scuzzy B movies of the ’60s and ’70s, complete with scratches, dirt, sound pops, cheesy trailer lead-ins, and all the low-rent touches that make you feel as if you’re watching the film in some sorry-ass cave in some skanky section of Oakland or Cleveland or Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1971. It’s a high-tech recreation of an analog, low-tech movie world that no longer exists.

Plus it has three (or is it four?) fake trailers for three or four other fake-scuzzy films, directed by Rob Zombie, Shawn of the Dead‘s Edgar Wright and I forget who else.

Planet Terror is a bloody, gutsy slime-gore piece about zombies stalking and devouring a small Texas town. It’s Dawn of the Dead with gobs and gobs of yellow pus and karo syrup and animal guts, but without the class or the wit or the quiet character moments. It doesn’t advance the zombie genre one iota — it’s a total cheeseball retread. In a post-millenial context I guess I’m a confirmed 28 Days Later type of guy — I believe in muscle-bound, red-eyed zombies who run a mile in under 200 seconds, and I get no kick from the old zombie-shuffle of yore.

I’m being as nice as I can in saying that this plate of Rodriguez ghoulash is barely tolerable. For me it was mostly icky, pussy, coarse, tedious, gross, sloppy and (after 25 or 30 minutes) borderline dull. I loved the hot-chemistry attitude that McGowan and costar Freddy Rodriguez bring to their battling-ex-lover roles, but not enough to change my basic feelings.

Take away the car-chase finale and the Tarantino flick is almost all sublime, groovy-chick dialogue. This is Tarantino amblin’ country, all right — a place where very cool people (i.e., ’70s “street” archetypes) talk and talk and say it just right while sipping a Corona or smoking a Red Apple cigarette or eating a Big Kahuna burger. And yet Death Proof is not, to put it mildly, concerned with notions of unity. It’s a scattershot thing that’s basically two short films in one. Two separate moods or tones and two separate female ensembles linked by Kurt Russell’s “Stuntman Mike” character.

It starts out as a cruising-chicks-in-a-muscle-car movie, then it turns into a hanging-around-an-Austin-juke-joint, Eugene ONeil/The Iceman Cometh piece with Stuntman Mike putting the zen moves on a Hispanic hottie (Vanessa Ferlito) as her friends (Sydney Tamiia Poitier and I forget who else — the press notes should have photos to go with the cast bios) offer snappy commentary. Then it suddenly shifts into a supernatural-psycho-killer-after-hot-girls movie ending in a major wipe-out/head-on collision sequence (with individual death-and-dismember- ment shots thrown in), and then finally a hot-chicks-get-even film ending with that balls-out country car-chase.

It’s a foxy, half-crazy, smirky B-movie wallow with nary a thought or a theme of any kind, but it’s a complete fuck-all pleasure to just rock and ride along with, and the car-chase finale (the star of which is New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who stunt-dubbed for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill) is the absolute shit.

No question about it — Tarantino really adores and understands women on a certain level, and nobody right now writes better tough-chick dialogue. Death Proof is junk, but it’s a tasty, revved-up thrill — a real fast-car, hot-chick high with back- country blacktop thrills a’plenty. Russell rules (although he’s much cooler in the beginning, when he’s a settled, contented barroom smoothie, than when he’s called upon to turn fierce and psycho — a shift that makes zero sense) but Zoe Bell is the break-out star.