I have this idea that Oliver Stone, Nic Cage and Michael Pena will be a good group on The Charlie Rose Show this evening. I’m seeing World Trade Center a second time for good measure this evening.

Waaay down at the bottom of his Film Convictions page, with a Permalink anchor, is a “Hangman” review written about two months ago of Steve Zallian‘s All The King’s Men. Take it with a grain, but at least there are hints and indications. About what may be up with it, I mean. As explored here, here and here.

I was going to report that Jennifer Lopez‘s Bordertown, a drama about several unsolved murders of poor women in the El Paso-Juarez areas, would finally see the light of a projector lamp on 10.20.06. Except it’s not happening, and nobody you call seems to have a clue when it might be seen.
10.20 is when the IMDB says MGM will be releasing the Gregory Nava-directed drama about a reporter (Lopez) looking into the murders. Not true, according to MGM publicist Jeff Pryor. And pay no mind to the fact that there’s an MGM-related Bordertown website either. MGM had negotiations about distributing it but nothing came to fruition, says Pryor, and you can definitely forget about it opening on 10.20. So who’s distributing Bordertown? No idea, says Pryor.
Two reps working for Lopez at William Morris said they didn’t know either “but why don’t you try Warner Bros.?”, one said. I did…nothing. I also tried New Line, which looked at possibly distributing Bordertown when they were working in the spring of ’05 on the Monster-in-Law opening, but I was told “nope…never happened.” A New Line friend told me that Bob Berney‘s Picturehouse considered distributing Bordertown also, but they also backed off. Five’ll get your ten Bordertown will show up sometime in early to mid ’07 as a straight-to-video thing. Bets?
Same deal, I’m guessing, for Minnie Driver‘s Virgin of Juarez, which is about the same subject with Driver playing a reporter digging into the heart of El Paso-Juarez darkness.

There was an either-or work situation that Owen Wilson was looking at not long ago — a high-paying role in Steven Brill‘s Drillbit Taylor, some kind of simple-ass Paramount comedy, or a role in Wes Anderson‘s not-as-well-paying “India movie”, the title of which has now been revealed by Production Weekly as The Darjeeling Limited. But something worked out or Owen just chose the right thing, but he’s now doing the India flick. It begins shooting in December. Cowritten by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, it’s about three brothers travelling through India. And the brothers will be played by Owen, Jason and…Luke Wilson? HE suggestion to Wes: drop the “The” in the title and just call it Darjeeling Limited. The three-word title doesn’t roll off the tongue that easily. Naturally I’d like to score a copy of the script, and it’s starting to get around so it’s just a matter of time. If anyone wants to trade an Adobe PDF version for one of my scripts….

This Devin Faraci CHUD interview with Brett Ratner is four days old (by internet standards that’s almost like saying it’s a parchment scroll found in an underground tomb) but it’s a worthwhile education about where Ratner is at these days and how he sees himself. He acknowledges that “people have always hated me” and mentions that Paul Thomas Anderson threatened to put a bullet in Ratner’s head if he carried through on his plan to remake John Cassavettes‘ Killing of a Chinese Bookie ,and talks about Roman Polanski’s willingness to play a small part in Rush Hour 3 which Ratner will start shooting in seven or eight weeks time.
“I think there√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s a blurred line between my public persona and my work,” he says. “It just happened. I think eventually people are going to look back and go, Wow. I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m not going to be in the tabloids anymore, I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m not going to be in Us Magazine, and they√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re going to be able to look at the film and how it holds up as a film on its own. It won√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t be about √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìBrett Ratner speaks in the third person, so he√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s an asshole.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ And I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t speak in the third person, but that√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s what they say. People have always hated me. It√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s not annoying at all. The meanest group is Defamer and Harry Knowles. I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t take myself that seriously. It√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s like, come on. I totally laugh at it. If I did take it seriously, it would probably be worse than what it is.
“I love what I do. I love filmmakers. Werner Herzog is here [in Los Angeles] — how cool is that? The biggest star could be in the room and I care about the filmmakers √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Ǩ≈ì the directors and cinematographers and the producers. These are the people that I admire. And I love movies. I drove up from LA and the whole ride we played The Movie Game. We did movies with animals as the star. I went on and on and on and I was like, √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√ã≈ìWoah, I have seen a lot of movies!√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢
“At the end of the day I want to leave a mark somehow. If one of my films holds up 100 years from now I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ll be happy wherever I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m watching from.”

Talladega Nights (Columbia) is going to grab about $35 million this weekend…maybe more. One tracking report says general awareness is 89, definite interest is 47 (that’s big) and first choice among all pictures in release is 24 — one person out of four. And this is from an urban sample. It goes without saying it’s gonna kill ’em in the boonies — a movie like this is red meat for the red states.
Meaning it’s going to more than double the Miami Vice tally, which will probably come in around $13 or $14 million.
World Trade Center Paramount, 8.9) looks like it’ll have a pretty decent five-day opening tally (it preems on Wednesday, 8.9). It has an 85% general, 35% definite interest, 12% no interest and 10% first choice from one tracking report. It could do reasonably well — $25, $26 million. It doesn’t seem to be courting the negatives that United 93 had. (The negatives for that film were in the low teens just prior to opening.) Being on the cover of Newsweek undoubtedly helped to some extent.
Snakes on a Plane opens two weeks from tomorrow and it’s not looking like gangbusters. There seems to be a significant group that’s not getting the joke and doesn’t want to get the joke, and who just want their horror films served straight without the silly-cheesy stuff.

Studio executives who’ve said nothing about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks “are clearly not the bravest people in the world,” producer Howard Rosenman has told L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein. “They don’t want to alienate Mel or [Gibson agent] Ed Limato, one of the most powerful agents in town. They’re all thinking, what happens if he comes out of this and I’ve said something? He won’t work with me when I need him.”

The formal DUI charges filed today (8.2.06) against “Mel C. Gibson (01.03.56)” by the People of the State of California.

It’s intriguing about Hugh Jackman and Fox 2000 planning to make another film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, with Jackman producing (with partner John Palermo) as well as playing the lead, Billy Bigelow. The original 1956 film version, directed by Henry King and starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, is kind of cornball but it has some great songs and a devastating final 20 minutes. Every time I watch it, I melt.

Bigelow is a Maine carnival barker and an ignorant thug who’s managed to charm and marry a local girl named Julie. Too proud to knuckle down and find a job, Bigelow is determined to make money when he learns Julie is pregnant. This leads to his falling on his knife and dying during a botched robbery. Stuck for 16 years in celestial purgatory, Bigelow is given a chance one day by the “manager” to return to earth and try and help out his daughter, who has a lot of the same attitude problems he had when alive. Bigelow’s initial efforts to provide guidance are crude and pathetic, but things finally kick in and his daughter seems to somehow hear him at the finale.
Based on Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom”, Carousel is the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical that gets me because the dark tragic story balances the overly jubilant emotionality of their music. And that strange celestial plot line — a story of a loser who manages to show love and get his act together and help his child only after he’s dead — is affecting in some kind of deep-down way that I’ve never fully understood.
Jackman sang the Billy part in a 2002 Carnegie Hall concert to honor Rodgers & Hammerstein. He’ll have to be better than the hammy Macrae was in the older film. Frank Sinatra was initially signed to play Bigelow in the ’56 Carousel and went before the cameras for a couple days but abriuptly left the shoot when he realized he’d have to perform each scene twice — once for 35mm CinemaScope cameras, once for 70mm Todd AO cameras (i.e., the way Fred Zinneman’s Oklahoma was shot). And yet when MacRae was brought on to replace Sinatra, Carousel was filmed only in 35mm.
Sinatra’s cocky-Hoboken-thug personality would have probably made for a perfect Bigelow. He recorded most of his “Carousel” songs in the studio before shooting, and here’s his version of the famous “Soliloquy” number — the one with Bigelow dreaming and fretting about his unborn child.

O’Toole Scores Again?

As everyone presumably knows, Miramax has swapped the release dates of Stephen Frears‘ The Queen, a drama about Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) grappling with the death of Lady Diana, and Roger Michell’s Venus, based on a script by Hanif Kureishi about septugenarian sex, romance and parenting. Queen was advanced up to 10.6, and Venus was pushed back to 12.15. The motive was to put Venus into a better position for an Oscar campaign, but not necessarily for the film itself.
The main beneficiary of the Venus campaign is going to be Peter O’Toole, who reportedly plays the lead role — a randy, very straight 70ish actor named Maurice — with exceptional gusto, tenderness and O’Toolean panache.

Peter O’Toole in two cruddy-looking stills from Roger Michell’s Venus (Miramax, 12.15)

However good O’Toole turns out to be, there’s a great comeback story to be told if and when he goes on the promotion trail.
A story about a great and colorful actor, 73, being back in the saddle with a good role after years of wandering in the desert. About his flamboyant past as one of the big-time acting kings of the early to mid ’60s (Lawrence of Arabia, Becket), and as one of the great party animals of that era. About going flat in the ’70s and then briefly resurging in the early ’80s with plum roles in Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man and Richard Benjamin’s My Favorite Year…before going flat again. About the legend who came close to refusing an honorary gold-watch award from the Academy’ in 2003 because he didn’t want to be thought of as over-the-hill, and then got lucky right after this and nabbed a juicy part and hit a home run with it.
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Or so I’ve heard and read. You never know and you can’t trust anyone.
A certain Dart Group publicist in the employ of Miramax has been pushing O’Toole’s Venus work, yes, but I came across some pretty encouraging stuff on my own last May from some IMDB posters who claimed they’d seen Venus at a Convent Garden screening in very late April and then at a Manhattan screening three or four days later.
These postings inspired me to call Charles McDonald of the London p.r. firm McDonald + Rutter just before leaving for Cannes. I was hoping to get information about any Cannes market screenings of Venus, but McDonald said he didn’t know of any.

O’Toole in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy

There are no prints of Venus in the States, I’m told, so maybe Michell and Kureishi have been adding or refining. It would be great to catch it in Toronto, but who knows?
The Venus log line reads, “Life for a pair of veteran actors gets turned upside down after they meet a brash teenaged girl.” Leslie Phillips, Jodie Whittaker (the young and the brash), Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Griffiths costar. The word on the film last spring is that it was good or pretty good (as in “good beginning and middle, so-so ending”). But the word on O’Toole was something else.
After seeing Venus at the Convent Garden showing, a Scottish-sounding guy named Phil Concannon wrote on 4.29 that “the real attraction [of the film] is the chance to see Peter O’Toole in a leading role once again, and he is very good indeed. He’s funny and touching, and occasionally uncomfortably lecherous, and it’s terrific to see him getting a role he can really sink his teeth into. There’s one scene in which O’Toole recites Shakespeare’s ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’, and his sheer charisma, along with that great voice, makes the scene breathtaking.”
You know what would help the O’Toole campaign, assuming he’s as good in Venus as everyone says? If that low-life, ass-dragging video company MPI Home Video would finally get it together and put out that restored Becket DVD they’ve been holding onto and embarassing themselves by not releasing for the last couple of years.

O’Toole in the opening moments of Peter Glenville’s Becket

If this Becket DVD were to hit the market in the mid-fall, say, people would obviously be reminded what a great performance O’Toole gave as Henry II (he should have won the 1964 Best Actor Oscar but Rex Harrison took it for My Fair Lady), and the general awareness about O’Toole having been a world-class actor for the last 45 years would be that much higher.
O’Toole’s Becket performance “is one of the most exciting ever seen in a main- stream movie,” I wrote early this year. “O’Toole takes your breath away half the time, and the other half he makes you grin with delight.”
O’Toole recorded a narration track for MPI in the fall of ’03 that lasts throughout the 149-minute film, and, according to MPI Home Video’s Gregg Newman, is quite entertaining to listen to. If I were a Miramax marketing exec I would contact MPI and ask them what the hold-up is and, you know, can Miramax help in some way?
Becket addendum: I didn’t even call the MPI Home Video people Wednesday about the Becket DVD situation. MPI reps have flown their colors with baldly disengenuous statements about their release plans for this DVD in the past, always saying they intend to have it out “later this year” or “soon” and never living up to these pledges. That said, an MPI spokesperson named Christie Hester ( I spoke to her during the writing of one of my previous Becket DVD articles) posted a message on an IMDB board on 5.30.06 that said “MPI Home Video intends to release Becket on DVD during the first quarter of 2007.”
Obviously, any prepared statement about a forthcoming company initiative that contains the word “intends” is not to be trusted. Hester was obviously qualifying in case things don’t pan out. (Trust me, Warner Home Video has never announced it “intends” to release anything — their p.r. releases always say flatly and unambiguously that WHV will release this or that title on this or that date, and no monkeying around .) Then again Hester’s “first quarter of 2007” is a more date-specific pledge than anything ever stated by any MPI Home Video exec about their Becket plans, so maybe the DVD will come out sometime before 12.31.07. Maybe.

Mel Gibson “has been a very bad goy,” author and New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier has told N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “It is really rich to behold Gibson asking Jews to behave like Christians. Has he forgotten how bellicose and wrathful and unforgiving we are? Why would a people who start all the wars make a peace? I have always wondered why people who believe that we control the world do not have more respect for us. Take that cop who arrested Gibson. Do you think it was a coincidence that he was a Jew? We have been following Gibson’s every move since he released that movie. The other night, when our uniformed brother spotted him bobbing and weaving in his star car, we saw an opportunity and we took it. Don’t blame us — it’s what Yahweh would do. When Officer Mee busted him, we all busted him.”

Oliver Stone is throwing together a third, extra-lengthy DVD of Alexander — 225 minutes, give or take — and Warner Home Video will put it out whenever….later this year, early ’07. Rope Of Silicon’s Laremy Legel posted this story about it 11 days ago, but I wasn’t paying attention. “”I’m doing a third version [of Alexander on DVD, not theatrical], Stone told Legel during a World Trade Center interview. “I’m going to do a Cecil B. DeMille/Oliver Stone three hour, forty-five minute thing. I’m going to go all out [and] put everything I like in the movie. He was a complicated man, it was a complicated story and it doesn’t hurt to make it longer and let people who loved the film and see it more and understand it more, I love working on it because I love the movie. I hope to have it done in two months, a month and a half and then it’s up to Warner. It will be a catalogue item. I don’t think they’ll go out and make a big thing of it.”