Newsweek‘s Sean Smith has written that Lady in the Water director M. Night Shyamalan needs a career intervention. He tries to provide it, in fact, with this piece. “It feels like the entire town is rooting for him to fail,” a studio exec tells Smith. “Is there a 12-step program for egos?” In a remarkable display of maturity, Newsweek implicity accepts some of the blame for Shyamalan’s arrogance. “When your fine magazine proclaimed him ‘The Next Spielberg’ on the cover, this was all fated,” says a studio exec.

Oh, and by the way, I very much agree with this quote about about a once-great director who, I feel, lost it at the end of his career: “The smaller you make your world, the less of an artist you can really be,” says an indie exec. “Look at Stanley Kubrick. If you see Eyes Wide Shut it’s clear he hadn’t left the house in 20 years.”

I’m being told by someone who doesn’t necessarily know anything solid that Paramount/DreamWorks’ plan on the second Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima film — Red Sun, Black Sand — is to bring it out in early ’07 and not release it, platform-style or otherwise, in late ’06. If this is the determination (and I say “if”) I don’t know if this is the right way to go, as I tried to explain the other day.
The reason I think they may be wrong is that I’m a little uncertain about the Oscar worthiness of Flags of Our Fathers, based on a reading of a draft of Paul Haggis‘s script. Eastwood’s film might have much more going for it than is indicated by Haggis’s script (which I didn’t read a recent draft of), but last March I ran a piece about how it reads, and wrote the following:

“I’m not saying Flags [doesn’t look like] a possible Oscar favorite, or that it doesn’t have the earmarks, in fact, of a presumptive front-runner. But all I can really say for sure, having slept on Haggis’s 119-page script, is that I’m genuinely impressed, but at the same time I’m wondering how much broad-based appeal the film will turn out to have.
“Put bluntly, the script reads like Saving Private Ryan‘s artier, more glum- faced brother. It has a lot of the same battle carnage and then some, a bit of the old-WWII-veteran-looking-back vibe and minus the manipulative Spielberg tearjerk factor but also with less of a narrative through-line.
“Fathers is a sad, compassionate, sometimes horrifically violent piece that’s essentially plotless and impressionistic and assembled like a kind of time- tripping poem — a script made from slices of memory and pieces of bodies and heartfelt hugs and salutes from family members and politicians back home, and delivered with a lot of back-and-forth cutting.
“So it’s basically a montage thing that’s obviously more of an art film than a campfire tale, and that means that the sector that says ‘give us a good story and enough with the arty pretensions’ is going to be thinking ‘hmmm’ as they leave the screening room.”

“I’d like to introduce a new term into the Hollywood vernacular: Shyamalanfreude (n.), defined as a malicious pleasure taken in the failures of M. Night Shyamalan. I have a feeling it’s going to reach epidemic levels this coming week.” — Eric Williams

A rave review of M. Night Shyamalan‘s Lady in the Water (yes…a rave) by Coming Soon’s Edward Douglas , and a total rip-job by Variety‘s Brian Lowry. Lowry starts his piece with almost the same words I wrote in an item three or four days ago, to wit: “Vindication is rarely as swift or complete as that likely awaiting the Disney execs who passed on M. Night Shyamalan‘s latest effort Lady in the Water. After Disney balked, the director carted the project to Burbank neighbor Warner Bros., then lambasted his former studio for a lack of vision in a tie-in, tell-some book. Disney’s misgivings were well founded.”

I saw King Kong twice last December, and then I tried to watch the DVD a couple of months ago. Not even bothering with the nothing part — i.e., the first 70 minutes — I started my viewing with Kong taking Naomi Watts into the jungle and Adrien Brody and Jack Black and the other guys following. I sat down and I tried but I couldn’t stay with it. In fact I couldn’t stand it.

Jackson’s shameless huckster instincts — the anything-goes, push-it-to-the-limit choregraphy and total-madman camerawork that he brings to the big action scenes — don’t just grate on you after a couple of times. They make you feel ill. The reason for this nauseau is realizing that the big Kong moments are entirely about Jackson’s Barnum & Bailey ego — the man is an incorrigible showoff and an overcoddled enfant terrible— and not in the least about his wanting to get the audience to believe in the characters or the reality of the situation(s) they’re up against.
I couldn’t help but giggle and feel turned on by the Dino Run sequence when I first saw it (my second viewing happened the next day), but try watching it on DVD and you’ll see what I mean. After a minute or two all you want to do is go into the kitchen and find a bag of tortilla chips.
Naturally…what else?…Jackson and Universal Home Video will soon be bringing out an extended version of King Kong on DVD, lasting God knows how much longer. It’ll probably make money because of the extra monster sequences and whatnot, and the visibility of the new DVD will get a boost from a special promotion at Comic Con next weekend.

I don’t think any filmmaker has answered criticisms of his film being too long in this manner since…well, since director Lawrence Kasdan came out with an even longer cut of Wyatt Earp (212 minutes) after critics said his 191 minute theatrical version was too much. (My opinion is that the theatrical cut of Wyatt Earp was satisfyingly full and rich, and that the 212-minute version was even more of a great meal…really. It’s a meditative right-wing character piece that really works.)
Last March Entertainment Weejly‘s Hannah Tucker asked Jackson if fans can”expect an extended version of Kong on DVD in the future?” and jackson replued: “I hope so — that’s very much up to Universal. Obviously, doing an extended cut of Kong is expensive…. Every extra minute of film that you add, you’re adding potentially another 20 or 30 more visual effects shots. So I think Universal are getting their heads around all that. We’re figuring out what the sequences could be, because we do have a lot of really great scenes that we didn’t put into the movie — some very very exciting dinosaur sequences — so I’m hoping there will be an extended cut.”

The big San Diego Comic Con (7.20 through 7.23) is a four-day event, but not really. Aside from Guillermo del Toro‘s visit on Thursday to discuss the great Pan’s Labrynth, the most newsworthy events are packed into Friday and Saturday.
FRIDAY, 7.21: (a) “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation” (Friday, 10:30 to 11:30); (b) “Star Trek: Year 41 and Counting” (11:00 to 12:30); (c) “Warner Bros. Presents” (11:00 to 12:30 (Hilary Swank, director Stephen Hopkins, and producer Joel Silver of The Reaping), plus Bryan Singer returns to talk things over; (d) “Ray Harryhausen: King Kong and the Colorization of Merian C. Cooper‘s She” (12:30 to 2:00); (e) “20th Century Fox Presents” (12:45 to 2:15); (f) “Warner Home Video’s Superman Through The Ages: (1:00 to 2:00); (g) “Paramount Pictures presentation, including material about the forthcoming Stardust” (2:30 to 3:30); (h) “Southland Tales” and Richard Kelly (3:00 to 4:00); (i) “Universal Home Video: King Kong Deluxe Extended DVD” — a sneak peek of Peter Jackson‘s even-longer version, with a taped message from Jackson; (j) Warner Home Video sneak peeks and Forbidden Planet: a 50th Anniversary Celebration”; (k) “New Line Cinema presents Snakes on a Plane with Samuel L. Jackson , director David R. Ellis, snake wrangler Jules Sylvester and live snakes from the movie. Plus a special preview of New Line’s upcoming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (5:45 to 7:00).
SATURDAY, 7.22: (a) Warner Bros. Presents 300 with creator Frank Miller, director Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead ) and actors David Wenham, Gerard Butler; (b) “Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems presentation” (including stuff from The Grudge 2 with Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel (12:00 to 1:00); (c) Kevin Smith talking Clerks 2 and whatever else (1:00 to 2:30); (d) “The Future of Marvel√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Film Franchises” (3:30 to 4:30); “Disney Previews: From Narnia to the Caribbean” (3:45 to 4:45); (e) “Pirates, Bikes, and Demons: The Art of S. Clay Wilson” (6:00 to 7:00).
That’s fifteen panels/events (10 on Friday, 5 on Saturday)…and that’s it.

It just feels strange to be churning stuff out day after day and not acknowledge the storms of death, hate and rage in Lebanon and Israel right now, and the gathering feeling (as articulated by Newt Gingrich this morning) that if you link all the Middle East conflicts together, what’s starting to take shape could arguably be called the beginning of World War III. The correct pronunciation of Hezbollah, by the way, requires an emphasis on either the second or third syllable, but not the first. Read this Wikipedia Hezbollah page — the key sentence is the final one: “Some argue that Hezbollah is being used by Syria and Iran as a proxy against Israel.”

The current heat waves all over the country, with many areas affected by tempeatures of 100 degrees-plus and with most meterologists saying the heat will continue well into the coming week, have nothing to do with global warming. It just gets really hot in mid-July… that’s all. Enough with the anti-free-choice, anti-American-way-of-life crap propaganda being spread around by Al Gore and the pinko lefties at Paramount Vantage. Just turn on the a.c., pop open a cool one, turn on the tube and chill.

Current issue of EW sitting on small table at Typhoon, the good-timey, Asian-flavored place with great views of the Santa Monica Airport runaway. Typhoon is owned by Brian Vidor, son of director Charles Vidor (Love Me or Leave Me, Gilda, Cover Girl) who wasn’t related to King Vidor. Pic snapped on Saturday, 7.15, 10:15 pm.

Just came across this old, old (6.23.06) YouTube parody trailer for an imagined Hugh Jackman/Wolverine movie called X-Men 3: The Last Standing Ovation. The basic thread is that the creator of the trailer is a semi- homophobe smart-ass. He feels that Jackman’s having sung and danced in three stage musicals (as “Curly” in Oklahoma!, as “Billy Bigelow” in Carousel , and as the girlymanish Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz) compromises the macho-stud element in his Wolverine performances. That’s is…that’s the whole thing. (Meanwhile that 6.1.06 Wolverine script — written by David Benioff, with revisions by David Ayer — is sitting on the desktop unread. Because I’m lazy, distracted, undisciplined, etc.)

Apologies for yesterday morning’s box-office typo — the projected Pirates 2 weekend total should have been $58,317,000 — not $50,317.00. This morning’s projected Pirates 2 figure for the weekend is $60,598,000, with a slightly higher overall cume of $255 million. Little Man will continue to edge out You, Me and Dupree with respective hauls of $21,910,000 and $21,338,000. Poor Superman Returns is now likely to finish at $10,881,000 (just over $750,000 higher than yesterday’s projected total of $10,058,000) with a slightly revised overall tally close to $163,000,000. The Devil Wears Prada‘s new projected weekend total is about $50 grand shy of $10 million — $9,947,000 — or about $420,000 higher than yesterday’s projected tally of $9,526,000.

A friend tells me Exhibitor Relations isn’t listing Red Sun, Black Sand, Clint Eastwood‘s Japanese-language war film lensed last spring as a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers (Paramount/ DreamWorks, 10.20), as a December release. (They always wait for an official announcement.) Coming Soon.net isn’t listing it on its December release page either, and Rotten Tomatoes isn’t even acknowledging that Black Sand is a film Eastwood has directed. And there isn’t a damn thing about it on both the Paramount and DreamWorks websites.

And yet the IMDB is running a presumed release date of December 2006, and this column is heavily dug into a belief that Red Sun, Black Sand (which stars Ken Watanebe as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi) will indeed open in December. How can it not? Two movies made in tandem by the same fast-working director about the battle of Iwo Jima — one about the Americans, one about the Japanese…and Paramount/DreamWorks is going to release only the American version on 10.20? Okay, it’s possible…but does anyone believe it’s at all likely?
I wouldn’t think Paramount’s Oscar consultants and marketers would stand for a separate ’07 release for Black Sand. (They’ll at least insist on a year-end platform debut.) They know that a sequential double-whammy in the same year will make a Best Picture nomination for one of the two Eastwood films all but guaranteed. I mean, unless they both put people to sleep.
Apologies for yesterday morning’s box-office typo — the projected Pirates 2 weekend total should have been $58,317,000 — not $50,317.00. This morning’s projected Pirates 2 figure for the weekend is $60,598,000, with a slightly higher overall cume of $255 million. Little Man will continue to edge out You, Me and Dupree with respective hauls of $21,910,000 and $21,338,000. Poor Superman Returns is now likely to finish at $10,881,000 (just over $750,000 higher than yesterday’s projected total of $10,058,000) with a slightly revised overall tally close to $163,000,000. The Devil Wears Prada‘s new projected weekend total is about $50 grand shy of $10 million — $9,947,000 — or about $420,000 higher than yesterday’s projected tally of $9,526,000.