Two and a half years ago New Line marketing chief Russell Schwartz made a decision not to release Mike Binder‘s The Upside of Anger — an emotionally affecting adult relationship drama with two exceptional performances from costars Joan Allen and Kevin Costner — during 2004’s Oscar season (i.e., October- November), bumping it instead into a March ’05 release. Anger was well received, but there’s no question it suffered in esteem (and possibly at the box-office) because it wasn’t in the ’04 “derby.”

Now the same thing is happening and then some with Binder’s Reign Over Me, an exceptionally strong adult relationship drama with a surprisingly affecting lead performance by Adam Sandler and a very respectable one by Don Cheadle. Sony marketing execs Jeff Blake and Valerie Van Galder aren’t exactly “doing a Russell Schwartz” — they’ve got their own style. But it boils down to not showing the love, not really, and Blake/Van Galder being either unwilling or unable to sell Reign Over Me with the heart and TLC that it needs.

Reign, which I saw in a nearly completed form late last summer, could have been released during the ’06 derby season but Blake/Van Galder didn’t want Sandler’s performance competing for honors with Will Smith‘s in The Pursuit of Happyness (especially with Sandler and Smith being mainly known for their comic skills), so they bumped it into a 3.9.07 release. And then they bumped it again to 3.23.07.

I’ve been getting indications all along that Sony is a wee bit fearful of press reactions (a lot of critics are down on Sandler no matter what he does, and some have recoiled at Reign‘s anecdotal use of the 9/11 tragedy as a backstory element) and aren’t 100% behind it. I’m not at liberty to divulge one apparent indicator, but I can report that Sony turned down an opening-night slot at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which could have started the ball rolling with Sandler showing up and chatting on the red carpet, etc.

It just seems to me that Binder’s film is going to get faintly pissed on in the way all smallish adult relationship movies get faintly pissed on these days by big-studio marketing departments. Reign needs a Fox Searchlight or a Picturehouse-style marketing effort, which Sony./Columbia is renowned for not understanding or being the least bit good at.

I am not alone in this view. Sony’s Reign Over Me attitude seems to basically be about hesitancy. There seems to be an underlying attitude of, “Let’s get Sandler to go on Kimmel, SNL, Letterman and O’Brien…and if it dies or trails off after a week or two, we did our best!”

The reasons for this attitude have nothing to do with research screening scores. Not according to what I’ve heard, at least. Average Joes allegedly love Reign Over Me. And there’s no tracking to go by yet. Sony’s half-heartedness is probably tied on some level to Sandler’s yes-maybe passive-aggressive mindset, by which I mean he’s been saying he loves the film and wants to support it but is not really using his clout to make this or that opportunity happen.

Sandler is holding to his usual policy of not doing print interviews, despite his performance (which I think is brilliant) being a kind of career breakthrough for him. He’s playing a guy who’s dealing with extraordinary grief (i.e., the film is actually about a dentist who refuses to deal with his having lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash), and it’s fascinating the way Sandler uses anger and rage and adolescent withdrawal to pull the character together while looking like Bob Dylan’s twin brother on the Blonde on Blonde cover.

And yet Sandler doesn’t seem to be standing up and saying “let’s really go to the mat with this one.” Like Blake/Van Galder, he seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach.

The underlying feeling seems to be, “We’re hoping for the best, naturally, but it would be simpler and less hard for all of us if we just opened this film in the usual blah-blah way and let whatever’s going to happen, happen. Obviously we don’t want Reign to die — we love Adam, we love Mike — but we don’t really believe in it, not really, and we don’t want to do anything exceptional because we’re not seeing any kind of big buck reception.”

In short, they’re taking the usual big-studio attitude about smallish, sensitive films which is to go through the motions without really feeling the spirit and acting upon it. They obviously get Ghost Rider because the fans get Ghost Rider — a $35 million dollar opening later this month!. — but they’re acting as if they feel stuck with Reign Over Me. No one thing you can put your finger on, but the attitude is there.

I tried to engage Sony marketing execs in a conversation about the Reign campaign, and all I got back was an e-mail saying I would be invited to see a slightly re-edited version during the next round of screenings. I talked to Binder about what I was feeling and he’s not as worked up. His attitude is that he’s very happy with the film, that he’s proud of it (particularly with Sandler and Cheadle’s performances), and that whatever’s going to happen when it opens is in the cards either way, and that he’s got other movies to write and shoot.

Sony is planning Reign Over Me screenings sometime this month. All distributors think of their films as little children, but all children have to make their own way in the world,. If Reign Over Me gets traction on it own when it opens, Sony will of course smile and pop open the champagne…but if it doesn’t find its own traction, c’est la vie.

Steven Spielberg has told N.Y. Times reporter Laura M. Holson that he “insisted, contractually, on autonomy for DreamWorks if I was going to continue under the Paramount and Viacom funding arrangement. So I take exception when the press is contacted by our friends and partners at Paramount, who refer to every DreamWorks picture as a Paramount picture. It is not the case.”

Steven Spielberg, Brad Grey, Stacey Snider

Spielberg and DreamWorks production chief Stacey Snider, who also talked to Holson, are clearly irritated with Paramount chairman Brad Grey‘s tendency to try and take credit for as much stuff as he can. I don’t know if the term “credit hog” fully applies, but Grey does seem to be so inclined And now Spielberg is saying to Grey in a public forum, “Back off, chill…we’re feeling threatened in terms of our identity.”

There’s definitely been an impression since early last year that Paramount is so entwined with DreamWorks that neither fully exists on its own, brand-wise — that they are in fact a new mingled entity called Dreamamount. That’s been my impression, at least. It’s much simpler to just say “Dreamamount” than to sort it all out every single time you write about a movie that DreamWorks has developed and produced but Paramount is distributing, blah, blah.

“The best marriage is when the husband and wife are always open to compromise, and the most important thing is dialogue,” Spielberg tells Holson. “I think this marriage is going to be dependent on a healthy amount of dialogue.”

A video preview of a 33-page film-noir spoof section — “Killers Kill, Dead Men Die” — in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, which will reportedly be purchasable on Wednesday. Photos by Annie Leibovitz, conceived and styled by Michael Roberts, and narrated by Ben Shenkman.

I’m truly stunned that the Vanity Fair gang, which is always supposed to be a little bit in front of everyone else, has gone in for something as retro-cheesy as this. The smoky romance of ’40s noir has been aped and re-aped to death over the last 30 to 35 years. Why Liebovitz & Co. would want to play dress-up with an idea that high school talent shows in Iowa, inspired by Steve Martin‘s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, have probably been fiddling with since the early ’80s is beyond me.

The poseurs are Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Pedro Almodovar, Alec Baldwin, Adam Beach, Jessica Biel, Abigail Breslin, Jennifer Connelly, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Robert De Niro, Robert Downey Jr., Kirsten Dunst, Aaron Eckhart, James Franco, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Hudson, Anjelica Huston, Rinko Kikuchi, Diane Lane, Derek Luke, Tobey Maguire, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, Jack Nicholson, Bill Nighy, Ed Norton, Peter O’Toole, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Kerry Washington, Naomi Watts, Forest Whitaker, Bruce Willis, Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood.

Oh, and Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Chris Rock and Jack Black are on the cover.

The Colbert Report rips into the forthcoming Oscars, throwing its heaviest artillery at the Mexicans who are taking over this town.

The Santa Barbara Film Festival awards have been announced, and the highlights are: (a) Independent Audience Choice for Best Feature for Best Feature went to Logan Smalley‘s Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life; (b) The American Spirit Award went to Michael Schroeder‘s Man In The Chair, starring Christopher Plummer and Michael Angarano; (c) The Best International Feature Film Award went to Beauty In Trouble; (d) the Gold Vision Award winners are Spiral, directed by Adam Green and Joel David Moore and starring Moore, Amber Tamblyn and Zachary Levi; (e) the Nueva Vision Award for the best Spanish and Latin American film went to Daniel Sanchez Arevalo‘s DarkBlueAlmostBlack; and (f) the award for Best Documentary went to Dan Klores‘ Crazy Love.

This weekend Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth “became the highest-grossing Spanish-language film released in the U.S., passing Like Water for Chocolate with a cume of $21.7 million,” according to Variety‘s Ian Mohr.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Best Picture race. More than a couple of people have said since the Oscar noms were announced that Little Miss Sunshine probably can’t make it, not without an accompanying Best Director and/or Best Editing nomination, which it doesn’t have. Will Babel pull through after all? Will Academy voters take a look at that 11th place box-office showing for the re-released The Departed this weekend and say, “Wow…still an earner” and give it the Oscar out of monetary respect? The Queen and Letters From Iwo Jima can’t take it…right? I’m lost.

“The United States [has] been able to broker [peace agreements] at other times. Obviously we did not do anything in Rwanda, but we played a big part with NATO in ending the Bosnian situation. We used to be able to do that. But in our meetings with all of the heads of government they said to us, “Your policies in Iraq have made it impossible for you now to threaten anything.” We have no moral high ground. We have to look to anyone but ourselves to be able to broker some sort of a peace treaty. That is a very frustrating place to be.

“I was taught [when growing up] to look at the United States not from the inside out but from the outside in. The signs you see [today] are very disheartening. It is probably the worst time ever for us internationally. When you go to Europe, for the most part, they just hate us. Not individually, but they think we are just like these big bullies — and quite honestly, we have acted like that. That has been the most unusual twist in the last few years, having to defend being an American.” — George Clooney speaking to Newsweek‘s Ginanne Brownell in the 2.12.07 issue.

In a piece that asks if the Academy Awards are “color-blind at last,” Newsweek‘s Sean Smith and Allison Samuels note that “a segment within black Hollywood believes that white Academy voters reward black actors for roles that reinforce stereotypes — the angry black man, the noble slave, the sexualized black woman — rather than challenge them.

“There’s a sense that in order to be embraced by the white community, you probably did something that violates your integrity within the black community,”actress Kerry Washington, who stars opposite Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, tells Smith and Samuels.

And yet isn’t this precisely what N.Y. Press critic Armond White said about Whitaker’s Idi Amin in his Last King review? That it’s “another scary black man stereotype…by scaring the daylights out of his white sidekick (i.e., James McAvoy), Whitaker’s showcase comes off as little more than a super Training Day: King Kong Idi Amin.

“What rouses a thinking viewer’s skeptic is that the film is a deliberate fabrication. Screenwriter Peter Morgan (who also scripted Helen Mirren‘s sympathetic impersonation of Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears‘ The Queen), adapts this up-close view of Idi from a novel by Giles Foden that has scant basis in fact. There was no white Scottish confidante among Amin’s personnel.

“This simply continues that same ‘whites-first’ tactic in Cry Freedom and Mississippi Burning, where black characters are considered insufficient to dominate a narrative. The Last King of Scotland never tries to imagine Idi’s psychology or a black African perspective; Morgan leaves history to justify every demonizing cliche.

“It’s rare when a black movie actor is not playing a stereotype that comes from white fear and ignorance,” White wrote. “For that reason, it’s hard to get behind the hyperbolic acclaim for Whitaker’s sub-Emperor Jones star turn. The performance has Whitaker’s customary nuance, idiosyncratic gentleness and subtle power, so why do critics now pretend that Whitaker has created an indelible characterization?

“Critics duly noted Whitaker’s delicately detailed, deeply felt performances in Johnny Handsome, A Rage in Harlem, The Crying Game, Ghost Dog, Phone Booth and Panic Room — without crying out for Academy commendation. Those performances validated the broad span of American personality; Whitaker could be warmly masculine while changing perception of what was heroic. To single-out Whitaker’s Idi merely justifies the black stereotyping that Whitaker had avoided ever since his breakthrough in Clint Eastwood‘s 1988 Charlie Parker biographer Bird.”

Most Sundance pickups are released several months later, and sometimes not until early the following year, but Fox Searchlight will be putting John Carney’s Once into theatres in late May or early June and keep it going all through the summer. A word-of-mouth campaign, territory by territory, modest ad buys, viral marketing. Costars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova will go on tour around the country to help get the word out. I got this information last night from Fox Searchlight marketing chief Nancy Utley at the Santa Barbara Film Festival/Forest Whitaker party.

TMZ.com’s Claude Brodesser-Akner is reporting that “insiders [are saying] that Warner Bros. was caught by surprise at an unexpected announcement of a Departed sequel in the press by the loose-lipped Mark Wahlberg — the only surviving principal character from the first film. And as a result, the follow-up project’s planning is vastly complicated,” largely because of questions about the participation of Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey.

Paramount honcho Brad Grey, Warren Beatty at the Paramount party on Golden Globes night

“In fact, insiders say that all deals associated with the project are on hold until the studio can figure out what Grey’s involvement would be,” Brodesser-Akner writes. “After all, before he was chairman of Paramount, he helped create Brad Pitt‘s production company at Warner Bros., which developed the present-tense, Oscar-nominated Departed.

“Grey declined to speak to TMZ about what role he’d have in the new Departed, But now that the news of a planned sequel is out of the bag, things are complicated: For one thing, it’s being made at a rival studio, putting Grey in an odd, conflicted position if he is produces it for Warners. For another, if Grey pushes to be the sequel’s producer, it might signify that he’s thinking of packing a parachute because he suspects he’ll soon be out of a job at Paramount.

“Grey’s future is a matter of open speculation in Hollywood these days: Having just last month fired his studio president, Gail Berman, after a tumultuous run, Grey appears embroiled in a battle for control of the studio with DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. It was Geffen who last year brought in Universal Pictures chairwoman Stacey Snider to run the now Paramount-owned DreamWorks.

“As the Times‘ Claudia Eller noted on 1.29, “Though Grey signed off on her hiring, the move was widely viewed as an effort by Geffen to position Snider for Grey’s job.”