Writing about Gabriele Muccino‘s The Pursuit of Happyness, Newsweek‘s David Ansen gives it a thumbs sideways: “I respect the movie’s tact, its honest exploration of homelessness, its surprising refusal to exult in the rags-to-riches aspects of Chris Gardner‘s story,” he says, “but I can’t say I was transported. There’s a repetitious, one-note quality to the storytelling — the bone-density machine Chris sells gets stolen one too many times — that adds to the sense of oppression. I didn’t see the ’20/20′ show about the real Gardner that inspired the movie. But I suspect I would have come away more amazed and moved than I was by this honorable but dogged effort.” Views like these are why this film has a substandard 66% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

“Borat is also suing Fox. He thought he was part of a documentary. He didn’t realize it was a comedy. He signed the release form when he was drunk and he was weak from having sexy time. He wanted to make clear that he would have only been anti-Semitic if he knew it was not going out in America.” — Sacha Baron Cohen, speaking at the British Comedy Awards. (Acknowledgment: the preceding quote and YouTube clip is completely and absolutely owned in eternal cyber perpetuity by David Poland and Movie City News because, you know, the link showed up on MCN a few minutes before the HE version. That means I’ve effectively stolen it from MCN, and that Poland and Movie City News have been unjustly violated by yours truly.)

“Kicking off yet another projected cinematic trilogy laden with dungeons, dragons and digital wizardry, Eragon confirms that novelist Christopher Paolini is no J.R.R. Tolkien — but more to the point, helmer Stefen Fangmeier is no Peter Jackson,” says Variety‘s Justin Chang on the just-opened 20th Century Fox release.
“Appropriating all the external trappings of big-budget fantasy but none of the requisite soul, this leaden epic never soars like the CG-rendered fire-breather at the core of its derivative mythology.”

This obviously doomed Rings wannabe, incidentally, has a 15% Rotten Tomatoes rating — one of the all-time lowest in my memory. My favorite review thus far is by southflorida.com’s Chauncey Mabe: “For those who love the fantasy genre known as sword and sorcery — and I count myself in their number — sitting through the movie version of Eragon will suck the will to live right out of you.”

The idea in Guillermo del Toro wanting to direct a Tarzan movie for producer Jerry Weintraub — I can’t think of two smart players who are more fundamentally unalike than these two — is what exactly? To take Tarzan out of the naturalist realm and have him fight monsters? Del Toro can’t make a movie without some kind of monster-demon of the id or supernatural element, and yet the writer is said to be John Collee, whose Master & Commander script was nothing if not tethered to the real worlds of men and the sea. What could be the basis for believing that audiences are about seeing another Tarzan movie anyway? Doesn’t Weintraub realize that John Derek’s 1981 Tarzan, The Ape Man ruled the earth and that any attempt to overcome its impact is futile?

AICN’s Harry Knowles vs. the fiendish mutant vomiting anorexic celebrity quartet — animated. It goes on a wee bit too long, and the animator over-emphasizes Harry’s jug-breasts but otherwise…

N.Y. Times writer Cindy Price on four “other” January film festivals — Slamdance, Santa Barbara, Smogdance (in Pomona) and one in Beloit. “Film festivals have a tradition of being for the elite, but they shouldn’t be,” SBFF director Roger Durling tells Price. “It should be like a candy store. Anyone should be able to walk in and grab whatever they want.”

“‘And I Am Telling You,’ for all the defiance of its lyric and the triumphal swell of its orchestration, is an anthem of impotence, a proud woman’s protest in the face of humiliation and defeat. Like it or not, Effie is going. She has no choice in the matter. But it’s not often you go to the movies and see a big-boned, sexually assertive, self-confident black woman — not played for laughs or impersonated by a male comedian in drag — holding the middle of the screen. And when was the last time you saw a first-time film actress upstage an Oscar winner, a pop diva and a movie star of long standing? Jennifer Hudson is not going anywhere. She has arrived.” — N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott in his otherwise lukewarm review of Dreamgirls.

A 12.14 “Page Six” item says L.A. Times/ “Envelope” writer Paul Lieberman couldn’t get Martin Scorsese to talk to him for a Departed article, so he allegedly dug up nearly two-year-old quotes that Scorsese supplied for an Aviator interview and re-used them for a 12.13.06 “Envelope” piece, which ran yesterday.
Okay, not good at all…but at least the old Scorsese quotes that were used seem to actually apply to The Departed. Sample #1: “I did not want to do another gangster movie” but Scorsese read William Monahan‘s script to be polite, “as a matter of form.” Sample #2: But by the time he got to page 26 and thought, “What the hell’s going on here? [The characters] “are all duplicitous and all deceiving each other and ultimately all wind up in a kind of elegant, how shall I say it Gotterdammerung.”
So to be in the clear, all Lieberman had to do was say Scorsese wasn’t available but that he said the following back in ’04, etc. What would have been so hard about that?

This happened last year and here we go again: with Sundance Film Festival lodging suddenly in doubt, enterprising columnist needs a clean place to flop and file and take showers. Being part of a house share is fine as long as there’s good wi-fi. Get in touch before Xmas and we’ll all breathe easier. In Park City only….thanks

Richard Roeper and (in Roger Ebert‘s absence) co-host Aisha Tyler get into Dreamgirls (opening limited tomorrow).

Roger Durling‘s Santa Barbara Film Festival (1.25 thru 2.4) has lined up Factory Girl as its gala opening night attraction, with Sienna Miller, director George Hickenlooper and costars Guy Pearce and Hayden Christensen expected to attend. (It would be extra-neat if Bob Dylan were to show up also, but that’s on the doubtful side.) This in addition to Helen Mirren Will Smith, Forest Whitaker and An Inconvenient Truth‘s Al Gore and David Guggenheim lined up for special tributes. (Note: THE SBFF website was posting the dates for the ’06 festival until yesterday, hence HE’s error in passing along same.)

The CG-plus-live action Charlotte’s Web (Paramount) and The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia), the Will Smith feel-good drama, are both going to do $20 million-plus this weekend. Tracking has Web running 85, 31, 9 — very good for an animated film — and Pursuit is at 81, 51 and 18. 20th Century Fox’s Eragon will be close behind them — 61, 34 and 13. Rocky Balboa (12.20) — 84,29, 6; The Good Shepherd (12.22) — 62, 34, 4; Fox’s A Night at the Museum (12.22) — 73, 41, and 7 (still looking big); We Are Marshall (12.22) — 57, 31, 4; Black Christmas (12.25) — 37, 25, something. Dreamgirls (12.25) — 70, 30 , 5.