I”ve heard it before, of course, but I was moved again this morning after listening to this brief but very eloquent Robert F. Kennedy speech in which he announced the death of Martin Luther King, invoked the words of Aeschylus, and reminded his listeners how we all need to seek wisdom and restraint. Just as I was moved during the final minutes of Emilio Estevez‘s Bobby when Kennedy’s speech about the lamentable violent traditions of this country is heard on the soundtrack.
I feel more or less the same things that Estevez has expressed in recent interviews about RFK, about what a terrible loss his death was and how it seemed to deflate the national spirit and send the country down the wrong path with the election of Nixon. But the RFK current isn’t all that vivid in Bobby and vice versa. Not to me, it isn’t….except during those final minutes. The film is a tribute to him, of course, and like I said in Toronto it’s half tolerable, but….
Ethel Kennedy, the Senator’s widow, issued a statement through the Weinstein Co., saying that “our family is grateful to Emilio Estevez and the extraordinary cast of Bobby for remembering Robert Kennedy’s life and his commitment to social justice, peace and equality.” Yeah, well…naturally.
The Aeschylus quote that Kennedy spoke that night, in the above-linked speech: “And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

With about $8,400,000 earned yesterday (3017 theatres, $2785 per print), it’s been estimated that The Departed will have about $25,207,000 by Sunday night. The demographic is primarily older males. It’s not performing all that well with teenaged boys (yet) and is undoubtedly doing poorly with women of all ages, and is almost certainly playing stronger in urban blue state areas than in middle-red America.
Miramax has its first real hit with The Queen. Playing in only 11 situations, it did almost 10,000 a print for a total of about $105,000. I was at the Arclight last night (i.e., my second look at Flags of Our Fathers) and the 7:10 pm show of The Queen was sold out.
The widespread critical view that Little Children is an insightful, well acted, finely crafted drama didn’t seem to mean much with first-day audiences. It opened in five theatres and made about $6000 a print, for a total of $30 grand.
Weekend estimates: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning — $18,890,000; Open Season — $17,437,000, off 26%; Employee of the Month — $12,341,000; The Guardian, $9,869,000, off about 45%; Jackass Number Two — $7,021,000, off about 52%; School for Scoundrels — $3,819,000, off 56%; Gridiron Gang, $2,562,000; The Illusionist — $1,890,000.

“The Departed is Scorsese doing Tarantino doing Scorcese, right down to the Asian remake influence.” — reader/artist Jerry Lee Kirk, a.k.a. “jackkerouac”.

Okay, we finally have a roster of serious Departed dissers — the Toronto Globe & Mail‘s Rick Groen and the Charlotte Observer‘s Laurence Toppman. Because of these two trashings plus a Jim Hoberman half-pan, the Metacritic rating for Martin Scorsese‘s crime film has dropped to 88%. Rotten Tomatoes is still above 90 — 92%, to be exact,

Hollywood Wiretap’s Nancy Vialatte has a story up about Michael Bay‘s Platinum Dunes signing with Rogue, the Focus equivalent of Dimension, to provide relatively inexpensive horror flicks (under $25 million) on a three-year, first-look basis. Her piece isn’t exactly a grabber, but it reminded me that Platinum is also at work on a remake of Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds for Universal.

I gather that Bay (still at work on Transformers) won’t be directing The Birds, but he should. Because if he does it right — and I believe Bay has it in him to be much better and more respected than the “Michael Bay” of legend — he could redeem himself. And if it’s done wrong (by Bay or whomever, and obviously that potential is there, given the cheap-trick tendencies of today’s horror filmmakers), it’ll be wretched and godawful. All the director has to do is pull back and think austere.
TMZ’s “City of Industry” column (Claude Brodesser-Akner, right?) has reported, she says, that Naomi Watts “could” be offered the Tippi Hedren “Melanie Daniels” role. Wait…didn’t I read that the Platium Birds is going to be based on the Daphne du Maurier novella rather than the Hitchcock film? That’s what everyone always says when they’re doing a remake of a classic film — we’re basing on the book, not aping a famous film, etc.

Okay, now it’s official: Clint Eastwood‘s Letters from Iwo Jima will open on February 9, 2007 in limited release.

Factory Girl star Sienna Miller has had to backpedal after calling the city of Pittsburgh “shitsburg” after her comment appeared in a just-published interview in Rolling Stone…but we know how this went down. She said what she really meant to Rolling Stone interviewer Jenny Eliscu, and then she was pressured to apologize by her manager or her agent (or both) so she did.
A story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette got some payback by referring to Miller as a “semi-famous actress” in a headline.
“Can you believe this is my life?” Miller said to Eliscu. “Will you pity me when you’re back in your funky New York apartment and I’m still in Pittsburgh? I need to get more glamorous films.”
Miller had been staying in the City of Gloom during the filming of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, an indie-level pic based on the Michael Chabon novel with Michael London (Sideways) producing.
Yes…City of Gloom. I’ve been to Pittsburgh and some of the architecture is nice and the nightlife isn’t too bad, but something about that town has always made me want to leave and go somewhere else. There’s a certain vibe of grimness there…a pall. Parts of it look rundown. A lot of the blue-collar types look really shagged and fagged and despondent.
Let’s not forget Preston Sturges‘ comment about Pitsburgh in Sullivan’s Travels. A producer tells Joel Mccrea‘s Sullivan that a Pittsurgh audience didn’t like a particular film and McCrea goes, “Aaah, what do they know?” The producer says, “They know that they like.” And McCrea, “If they knew what they liked, they wouldn’t live in Pittsburgh!”

YouTube is very cool, but is it worth $1.6 billion? To Google it is, apparently. The N.Y. Times is reporting that the Google guys are in “serious talks” to acquire YouTube, which “is not yet profitable [although] it has exploded into a cultural phenomenon less than a year after its debut, broadcasting more than 100 million video clips a day.”

Variety‘s John Hopewell and Emilio Mayorga persuaded Sitges Film Festival co-director Angel Sala to offer an explanation why StudioCanal has decided not to show David Lynch‘s Inland Empire there as part of a proposed Blue Velvet 20th anniversary tribute.
StudioCanal was concerned, Sala said, that “the three-hour cut of Empire, which unspooled to so-so reactions in Venice, would play so well among Lynch die-hards at Sitges that the helmer would never be persuaded to slim it down for commercial release.”
Inland Empire runs three friggin’ hours? How come Manohla Dargis didn’t mention this in her NYFF review? That’s a very significant element.

Okay, all right…I was low on my Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning prediction. It’s looking like it’ll earn closer to the high teens this weekend than “between $10 and $12 million.” Fine. Hooray for R. Lee Ermey and all the sophisticated simians who plan on seeing this instead of The Departed.

Helen Mirren‘s performance as Queen Elizabeth II “has turned The Queen into something you never imagined it could be: a crackling dramatic story that’s intelligent, thoughtful and moving.” — from Kenneth Turan‘s review in the L.A. Times. Stephen Frears‘ just-opened film is intelligent, thoughtful and…well, somewhat moving. But “crackling” it absolutely is not. We all know what crackling is — something like fire, a plot with close-to-breathtaking dips and turns, next door to crackerjack. Due respect to Turan –he’s a gifted and careful writer — but he should have chosen more carefully.