I would normally have Thursday night’s All The President’s Men 30th anniversary screening at the Academy (which will include a chat between producer-star Robert Redford and Newsweek critic David Ansen) at the top of my list, but there’s a big-deal Children of Men screening in Westwood with an after-party that Alfonso Cuaron and Clive Owen are attending… so that’s that.

I’m not all that heartbroken because I felt I’d connected with the All The President’s Men mystique and present-tense relevancy factors after watching two brilliant mini-documentaries last Fenruary that were part of Warner Home Video’s All The President’s Men double-disc special edition DVD. (Which I briefly mentioned at the time.) Both were made by Los Angeles-based documentarian Gary Leva .
The docs — an 18-minute piece called Woodward and Bernstein: Lighting the Fire and another called Out of the Shadows: The Man Who Was Deep Throat — are especially valuable and noteworthy because they’re serious looks at the state of U.S. journalism today rather than typical celebrate-the-movie puff pieces. They’re basically about how journalism has gone downhill since the days of Watergate and, by implication, how attempts to muscle journalists under the Bush administration are just as bad if not worse today than they were under the Nixon administration in the early ’70s.
The Academy people should make video-audio recordings of tomorrow night’s event and put them up on their site.

I have one or two quibbles with this generic early Oscar buzz rundown from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Ruthie Stein, but none that are worth arguing about. Naah, let’s argue. Her second-tier Best Picture group (i.e., not the most likely but hanging in there) include Little Children (all but dead due to non-existent box-office and Jackie Earl Haley ick factor), The Illusionist (pic’s little-engine-that-could hit status has won industry-wide respect, but Best Picture talk is zip), Flags of Our Fathers (Stein acknowledges mixed reviews and a disappointing audience response but theorizes that the Academy’s respect for Eastwood may see it through — that was the case three or four weeks ago, not now), and the tag team known as “German Shepherd” — i.e., The Good German (which won’t happen), and The Good Shepherd (ditto).
Stein also has Factory Girl‘s Guy Pearce in as a possible Best Actor contender …nope. His Andy Warhol is the best I’ve ever seen (and his screen time is being expanded as we speak) but the part if obviously a supporting one, and I can’t imagine anyone saying different.

Borat producer Jay Roach telling MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz that there’s “hope” for a Borat sequel makes for an insubstantial item. As in very. “We’ve talked a lot about [a sequel]… we have talked about ideas to try different stuff,” Horowitz quotes him as having recently said. To have not discussed a sequel after that $26 million opening weekend would have been moronic The Borat character could obviously just keep rolling and offending ad infinitum in sequels or on the tube. (And to make it worse, MTV.com is running those awful Da Vinci Code special-edition DVD video clips as I write this.)

Martin Campbell‘s Casino Royale (Columbia, 11.17), which I finally saw Tuesday night (a certain Sony strategist kept me from seeing it beforehand), is more killer than I expected. It’s a hard package of smart, not-too-formulaic, tough-as-nails filmmaking with barely a remnant of the smart-ass sexual conquistador attitude that permeated the late Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan Bonds. I’d read it was exceptional and had a return-to-early- Connery quality, but I suspected this talk might be overblown. It’s not.

Color still from a scene that’s presented in black-and-white during the first five or six minutes of Casino Royale

That whole shaken-not-stirred, sexual-smoothie-in-a-tuxedo, Walther PPK stud-with-a-quip thing has been thrown out the window, finally and praise God. The influence of producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli is finally dead, dead…and ding-dong to that! Wilson-Broccoli have naturally been trying to sell the notion they were four-square behind this new incarnation, but don’t buy it. They’ve been the invisible-car bad guys — stooge caretakers — since they grabbed the reins in the mid ’90s. The startling coolness of this new film happened in spite of Wilson-Broccoli, not because of them.
Due in no small part to Daniel Craig‘s totally-unto-itself, ace-level performance, Royale is certainly the best James Bond film in over 40 years and is close to being the best Bond ever. I still feel on some level that Dr. No and From Russia With Love have an old-hat specialness because the early ’60s era in which they were made isn’t that far removed from the early ’50s zeitgeist that informed the early 007 novels from Ian Fleming, and because they’re lean and unencumbered by the high-tech, bigger-is-better stuff that began to envelope the films in the mid ’60s.
But that’s what’s so pleasurable about Casino Royale — the return to low-techitude. No Q, no outlandish gadgets, lots of running and hand-to-hand fighting and straight shootings. I’m too whipped to write well (it’s been one of those days) but cheers to Craig, Campbell, screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis. And a big pat on the back to whomever dreamt up the ending, which is the first bulls-eye in the history of the franchise. Every single Bond film including Dr. No and From Russia With Love has ended on a chuckly romantic kick-back note, but not this time.
People actually applauded at the end tonight’s screening, which is something I haven’t heard from a Bond crowd since The Spy Who Loved Me.

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that in lieu of the near-collapse of Flags of Our Fathers, both commercially and as an Oscar contender, Warner Bros. and the Clint Eastwood team have rethought their Letters From Iwo Jima game plan and decided to release it in late December after all, which obviously puts it into the Best Picture Oscar competition. Technically, I mean.

They’re doing this not just because Flags is all-but-dead as a Best Picture contender, but because it’s a weak year all around and how can a Letters entry hurt at this stage, all things considered?
“Warner Bros. will give it a qualifying run in a few Los Angeles and New York theaters during the last week of 2006, O’Neil wrote earlier today, “[and] then open it wide in February after Oscar noms are announced.” He added that it “isn’t known if Iwo Jima made last Friday’s cut-off for Golden Globe eligibility. So far the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has not responded to our inquiry.”
I got no help from Warner Bros. publicists this evening, but I’ve been told by an excellent source that the new Letters plan is indeed in place. Letters From Iwo Jima was officially booked a few days ago into select indie-type venues, I heard tonight. It’s been characterized all along as an art-house film, so that fits.
In my mid-October Flags of Our Fathers review, I wrote that in light of the weak- ness of Flags, “the Japanese movie is going to save the situation or not. It would be better, Oscar-wise, for it to be released this year instead of just Flags of Our Fathers on 10.20.

“Letters From Iwo Jima may or may not be the movie that turns the situation around, but I know this: Flags of Our Fathers doesn’t have a powerful right hook and doesn’t even box all that well, and even with the aura of this being Clint’s latest and all, I’m not sure its even going to wind up as a Best Picture nominee.
“So let’s hear it from the other team. This year, I mean. Because right now the only thing that will save matters is a Hail Mary pass.”

Right in the middle of last January’s Sundance Film Festival, I wrote that Christopher Quinn‘s God Grew Tired of Us “is the reigning ‘heart’ movie of the Sundance Film Festival.
“It’s a lusciously photographed, exquisitely edited documentary about John, Daniel and Panther — three young Sudanese men, all refugees from their country’s ongoing, utterly devastating civil war — who escape to America to start new lives only to encounter profound longings for home and family, and no small measure of guilt.
“[It stirred] feelings of humanitarian compassion and admiration for these three Sudanese men…indeed, for the indominability of the human spirit. There’s no distributor on board yet, but it can be safely assumed if and when it opens later this year that God Grew Tired of Us will nab a Best Feature Documentary nomination.”
Nope! The Academy’s documentary committee will tomorrow issue a short list for the Best Feature Documentaries, and the word I’m getting about God is “forget it.” Apparently some felt it was too similar to Lost Boys of Sudan, and that Sudan is a better film.
On top of which Sydney Pollack‘s Sketches of Frank Gehry — a wise, unpretentious joy-of-creation doc about a genius architect — may not be on the short list. (A Sony Pictures Classic source hadn’t heard definitively one way or the other, and I wasn’t able to reach Sydney) And The US vs. John Lennon is kaput.
The list isn’t finalized so nobody knows but so far Wordplay isn’t on it either.
The short-listers so far are said to be An Inconvenient Truth, Blindsight, Iraq In Fragments, Deliver Us from Evill, Jesus Camp, Shut Up & Sing (the pretty good Dixie Chicks doc…fine but no great shakes), The War Tapes, The Ground Truth, An Unreasonable Man (the Ralph Nader that was said to be too long, so they cut it down and made it betters) and The War Tapes.

You never know what will happen when something you’ve written make its way into a print ad, so I just want to go on record regarding Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain. The WB marketers liked my comment about it being “more than a movie — it’s an experience” and I said fine…with a qualification. I meant “experience” in the Jimi Hendrix sense of the term, I wrote, “so would you guys mind keeping the Jimi Hendrix part? Seriously, that’s what I meant to say. Otherwise the quote makes me sound like Jeffrey Lyons.” I said some equally flattering, somewhat more interesting things last summer.

“Things have been so moribund for so long in the [James] Bond business that it was always going to take some major defibrillation to jerk it back to life,” comments New Yorker critic Anthony Lane in the latest issue. “Die Another Day, the last film, was a gruelling nadir, although the producers would be right to point out that it earned $450 million dollars. This means that the sight of Pierce Brosnan driving an invisible car, though bound to dismay every Bond-revering adult, was catnip to the larger constituency of teenage boys, who were comfortable with a film that felt like a video game.
“What they will make of Casino Royale — no babes, no toyland, and the poker not even online — is anyone√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s guess, but the earnings of the new film will doubtless affect the look, and the casting, of the next. If Craig falters, then I guess it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s full speed ahead to Chris Rock as 007 and Borat as Blofeld. That would be a shame, because Casino Royale, though half an hour too long, is the first semi-serious stab at Ian Fleming, and at the treacherous terrain that he marked out, since On Her Majesty√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Secret Service, in 1969.”
Hollywood Elsewhere, which has officially been put on Columbia’s arms-length shitlist (i..e, graciously invited to see Columbia product but only at all-media screenings, which usually happen a week or less from opening day), will finally see Casino Royale tomorrow night. Until then…

Having spoken to a “rather large” percentage of 90-some Hollywood Foreign Press members, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that at this somewhat early stage of the game that Golden Globe voters “are absolutely crazy about Babel, The Queen and The Departed.
“The other two slots for best drama picture will probably go to two of these three — Flags of Our Fathers, Bobby or World Trade Center. They’re not responding gushingly to The Pursuit of Happyness” — I observed yesterday that Gabriele Muccino‘s film seems to be sliding– “but they love Will Smith‘s performance and plan to nominate him.
“One voter said that, between the two sparring 9/11 movies, they prefer World Trade Center to United 93 “because it’s more about the human relationships involved.” Brilliant deduction!!
“On the comedy/musical side, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, Borat and The Devil Wears Prada look like locks for best pic bids. The fifth slot could go to Thank You for Smoking or another small indie. Some observers say Stranger Than Fiction, but not everyone agrees.”

The Smoking Gun has posted eight (8) MySpace shots of lardbucket Justin Seay, one of the fine young gentlemen trying to sue the Borat producers over claims he and his pals were coerced by the film’s producers into signing a release while they were bombed. And as Defamer‘s Mark Lisanti has already observed, the shots are persuasive evidence that Seay’s claim that he was pressured or led or goaded into a state of debilitating intoxication is bullshit.

John Travolta and Michael Madsen as the twin brothers of Vic and Vincent Vega descending upon Los Angeles to avenge the deaths of Vic (drilled by Tim Roth‘s Mr. Orange in Reservoir Dogs) and Vincent (grease-gunned by Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction) in a new Vega Brothers movie? That”s the dumbiest sequel set-up I’ve ever heard in my life. Tarantino must be losing his mind.

V=Buy = yoj know what? Fuck what happened in Dogs and Fiction…really. To hell with story logic. Just bring the brothers back and put them into some heavy-shit situations and just do it. Did anybody give a damn when Travolta and Samuel L., Jackson didn’t fall down bleeding when that dope-dealer kid ran out of the bathroom and started blasting? Of course not. Was it logical? No, and it doesn’t matter.

I’ve made no secret about being a fool for Taschen books, and damned if I haven’t gotten into another one — a making-of-Babel coffee-table book composed of 250 or more shots taken during the location shooting in Morocco, Mexico and Japan. Good viewing, good revisiting, good immersion. Better if you’ve seen the movie, but stirring either way.

Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu explains a gesture he wants from costar Cate Blanchett (l.) as Brad Pitt (playing her husband) listens

The 302-page book was edited by by Maria Eladia Hagerman, who’s had the honor, intrigue and adventure of being married to Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu for the last 14 years. An idea came to Hagerman, an avid photographer and book editor (she worked on a volume of poetry by Mexican poet Jaime Sabines), as her husband was doing Babel location-scouting and regaling her with the details.
“I saw an opportunity to create a portrait of the worlds that inspired Babel,” she says. “Not so much the stars as much as the people who are not always on the screen…the people who are part of these worlds.”
That’s an accurate description — this is only marginally a book about Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal and Rinko Kikuchi shooting a movie. It’s much more of a cultural atmosphere trip, which is naturally fitting given the film’s focus on absorbing the rituals and aromas of native cultures.
Hagerman chose four photographers to shoot in the three separate locations — Mary Ellen Mark and Patrick Bard covered the Morocco shoot, Graciela Iturbide captured the Mexico filming, and Miguel Rio Branco photographed the third and final location filming in Tokyo. (Additional Moroccan-shoot photographs came from unit photographer Murray Close.)

Babel crew shooting opening shot in Moroccan desert, as Innaritu (r.) calls for quiet (or whatever…I wasn’t there) during spring 2005 shoot

One of my favorite shots is of Innaritu describing how to play a scene to Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett during the Moroccan portion. I asked him about this last week, and he said he wanted Blanchett, whose character is limp and bleeding from having been shot near the base of her neck, to look like a Pieta figure with her head back and arms spread out.
And I was shaking my head over a wide-angle shot of Innaritu and his crew getting the film’s very first image — a middle-aged, weather-beaten man (i.e., the seller of the high-powered hunting rifle) walking along rugged desert terrain. The shot has a quiet, meditative alone-ness…and yet the Taschen book photography shows some 23 or 24 people were involved, including two large sun reflectors and a long section of parallel metal track. It hasn’t made the opening shot seem inorganic exactly, but I don’t think it will ever quite feel the same.
The Babel book went on sale last Thursday in Mexico and did rather well, says Hagerman. It goes on sale in the States this week. Hagerman and her husband are going to attend a two-hour book signing at the Beverly Hills Taschen store (354 No. Beverly Drive — tel: 310.274.4300) on Thursday, at 7pm.