“In short, 300 is a perfect combination of moral wrongheadedness and inept filmmaking. On any level beyond the pictorial, Snyder makes clunky Cecil B. DeMille epics like The Ten Commandments look positively deft. It presents itself as an instructive case study in nobility and bravery, but the only lesson I came away with was, ‘When in doubt, kill the hunchback.’ Go tell the Spartans, indeed. Tell them to go fuck themselves.” — excerpt from a review by L.A. City Beat film critic Andy Klein, the Alexander-the-Great of 300 haters.

According to an article in today’s Taiwan United (which only I can read because I own the necessary question-mark decoding software), the Taiwan (Taipei) Golden Horse Film Festival is angling to invite Gong Lias the festival’s jury president, pending the Taiwan’s News Bureau’s approval. (What the…?) But Li said she hasn’t received any invitation yet, that the job is demanding and tiring, and that she may not have time to do it as “she may play in a big-budget Hollywood film in June, which she’s now in negotiations [about].”

(l. to r.) Gong Li, Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford

Because Steven Spielberg ‘s Indiana Jones 4 is going to start filming in June, there’s obviously no other conclusion than to presume that it and Gong Li’s “big-budget Hollywood film starting in June” are one and the same. Absurdities aside, I’ll say this — Gong Li is exactly the sort of mainstream Asian actress that Spielberg and George Lucas would be hot for/comfortable with for whatever they might have in mind.

“There are about five things to write songs about: I’m leaving you. You’re leaving me. I want you. You don’t want me. I believe in something. Five subjects, and twelve notes. For all that, we musicians do pretty well.” — Elvis Costello to Esquire‘s Tom Junod for one of those “What I’ve Learned” pieces.

On last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Maher asked guest Chris Rock, “So I hear you’re running for president?” And Rock answered, “Yes, and I’m all black.”

It’s insipid but allowable to draw a link between Lena Headey‘s 300 hot-bod character being named Gorgo (i.e., “Queen” Gorgo) and Kal Penn‘s character in The Namesake being named Gogol. Especially with both films opening on March 9th…what are the odds?

Lena Headey, Kal Penn

Both names imply some kind of ogre-ish appearance or essence, but which is more problematic? I can roll with Gorgo, actually — Headey and director Zack Snyder have made her into a strong but sexually ruthless character, and the name is obviously similar to “Gorgon,” a Greek mythology term that refers to a “vicious female monster with sharp fangs and hair of living, venomous snakes,” according to Wikipedia, so I guess it half-works.

But Gogol (taken from Nikolai Gogol, a respected 19th Century Russian writer) is a frightfully coarse and lumpy-sounding first name for any kid growing up in America, and this alone turned me off Mira Mair‘s film, frankly. Penn’s character is given this name by his Indian-immigrant dad (played by Irfan Khan). He does this out of admiration, we’re told, for the Russian writer.

The film is obviously about ethnic identity and the factors that sometimes dilute or degrade this, but I was very soon asking myself what kind of father gives his son a name like that? Only a sadistic or collossally ignorant parent living in the U. S. of A. would name his son “Gogol.” That’s worse than naming him “Ezekiel” or “Sue” or “Hortense.”

The likely motive for Khan’s Indian immigrant probably isn’t too far from the one that motivated that ne’er-do-well dad in Johnny Cash‘s song “A Boy Named Sue.” Khan is looking to obnoxiously (you could almost say brutally) impose an ethnic apartness upon the kid, and thereby instill a sense of native character. He doesn’t want the boy to flow and groove with materialist WASP culture as he grows up. He wants him to have to deal with constant shit from his peers all of his young life. That’s a pretty loathsome thing for any dad to do. It’s certainly not a pleasant or informative thing to watch or contemplate.

The offshoot is that I’d rather sit through 300 a second time than watch The Namesake again….and that’s saying something.

When it’s all said and done on Sunday evening, Zack Snyder‘s 300 (renamed in a roundabout way by L.A. City Beat critic Andy Klein as Go Tell The Spartans to Go Fuck Themselves) will end up with $30 million give or take. That’s a more-than-50% plunge from last weekend, but it’ll still be at $110 million or thereabouts by tomorrow night. God help us…God help us all.

Some commentators have been clucking, “My, look at the stunning disparity between what the critics and the ticket-buying public love and hate…critics sure are out of step with Joe Gorilla.” That’s certainly true on this end — I am way out of step with fans of 300, and I’m absolutely beaming with pride as a result. This is a stale and tired-ass thing to say, I realize, but every firing synapse tells me that 300 is yet another metaphor for the end of moviegoing civilization as some of us have known it for the last, oh, 30-plus years.

Snyder, in my book, now ranks at the top of the list of villain-class Hollywood directors like Michael Bay, Stephen Sommers, Shawn Levy and Roger Kumble. There’s never been a dumber, emptier and more sub-simian influence upon narrative cinema than the graphic novel, and 300 is the clank of a sword striking a metal shield and the dumb-thunk sound of tens of millions of graphic-novel-worshipping moviegoers going, “Whoa…looks cool.”

I paid to see 300 last week (I paid money to see it!) and liked exactly two things — Lena Headey‘s skimpy dress (and of course her big shtup scene) and the scene when the crouching Spartans are chuckling with each other about how the dense shower of 10,000 Persian flying arrows are causing them to fight in the shade. That was good — the film was on to something during that very brief moment.

It’ll be nip and tuck as to whether Premonition, the poorly-reviewed Sandra Bullock thriller, takes the second place prize with an estimated $18 million, or whether Wild Hogs takes in a bit more than $18 million and edges out Bullock. Hogs, in any event, will hit $100 million sometime today or tomorrow. Dead Silence will come in fourth with $7 mil or so. Chris Rock‘s I Think I Love My Wife is sputtering and may finish with just over $5 million tops….not good.

Calling Jeff Okun, the Blood Diamond teardrop special-effects ace who got into a friendly debate with me a few days ago. This Ronald Reagan teardrop photo on the cover of the 3.16 Time magazine isn’t up to Okun’s level. It looks like a glob of digital glycerine mixed with saline fake-boob solution. I just watched the Blood Diamond DVD and I’m much cooler with Jennifer Connelly’s.

Ocean’s Thirteen is going to Cannes so the festival can throw the spotlight on George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Al Pacino …fine. Nobody’s going to trash this latest Steven Soderbergh-er like The DaVinci Code or Marie Antoinette got trashed, even if it’s on the level of Ocean’s Twelve, which I have a special affection for because of the improvised Julia Roberts-pretending-to-be-Julia Roberts scene in the Rome hotel room with Bruce Willis.

I was just wondering why, in mid-March, Alison James‘ Variety story about this didn’t veer into speculation about some likely (or somewhat likely) Cannes frontliners. Like the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell did a month ago. Surely James has her sources and has heard a few things?

Howell assembled a list of Cannes-favored directors (i.e., men whose films have routinely been invited to the festival in years past) and simply cross-referenced it with their latest efforts which are slated to open in ’07.

I checked back with Howell yesterday morning, and he’s still betting on Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones being there this year — Dylan being the subject of Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There and the Stones having been portraited by Martin Scorsese in a “career-spanning documentary on the Rolling Stones, with concert footage from their ‘A Bigger Bang’ tour.”

I’m agreeing with Howell in half-expecting to see the following turn up in Cannes (and if they do it’ll he a hell of a festival): Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood, Michael Moore‘s Sicko, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country for Old Men (I read the excellent script for this last year — it told me the film could be Fargo-level), Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s The Red Balloon, Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games, Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart (the murder of Daniel Pearl movie), Wong Kar Wai‘s My Blueberry Nights, Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park, Hector Babenco‘s El Pasado and Ken Loach‘s These Times.

Howell says to scratch the Adam Sandler pic from the list in his 2.16. piece. (Alexander Payne co-wrote the screenplay, but the final version has been heavily “Sandlerized.”) And scratch David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises, which won’t be ready to show until the Toronto Film Festival in September.

I think I know this one. In fact, I’m dead certain. It’s from Pauly Shore‘s In The Army Now.

Changing your agent is like buying a new car. It feels better to drive one with that fresh-car smell, especially if it has a more powerful engine or a better-sounding music system, or because it’s more energy-efficient. I know that cars are primarily about emotion and secondarily about function. That said, I’ve been waiting for Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to jump ship since around this time last year, which is when his longtime Endeavor agent and ally John Lesher took the job of running Paramount Vantage. He stayed with Endeavor through the award-season Babel campaign out of familial loyalty, but on February 26th it was back to brass tacks. He’s now a CAA guy.

There’s nothing wrong with Cate Blanchett taking a straight paycheck job in the forthcoming Indiana Jones film, which people are somewhat interested in seeing but also skeptical about because Harrison Ford (a.k.a., the guy who catches z’s in the back seat of his girlfriend’s car while she’s shooting on a nearby sound stage) turns 65 in July.

Not only is the stringbean-thin Blanchett great at tongue-in-cheek vamping (she was the best thing in The Good German), but she’ll look like a freshly-sprouted flower in Indy IV alongside Uncle Festus. She probably wants to lighten up anyway after recently completing three heavy roles (in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Golden Age and I’m Not There) following her big melodramatic ’06 run in German, Notes on a Scandal and Babel.

Premonition, the poorly reviewed Sandra Bullock film, tracked at 75, 25 and 19 yesterday morning, which means it’ll earn somewhere north of $15 million. 300 may be #1 again but expect at least a 45% to 50% drop. Chris Rock‘s I Think I Love My Wife — 60, 31 and 11 — will do mezzo-mezzo business, maybe around $10 or $12 million. Dead Silence — 42, 20, 4 — is no Saw. Of all the forthcoming March openers, Blades of Glory (Will Ferrell as a preening, amusingly obnoxious ice-skating champ) is looking the best (64,40, 7). Reign Over Me, opening a week earlier than the Ferrell (3.23), is only at 48, 29 and 2. Not good — the gut-instinct types are shrugging their shoulders.