I wrote a couple of days ago that I’m nursing doubts about Emilio Estevez‘s Bobby (Weinstein Co., 11.17), but in fairness I should acknowledge that a bigwig from the electronic side of entertainment journalism has flipped over it, or at least is telling people that. This person is also saying that the two standouts are Sharon Stone and — hold onto your hats — Lindsay Lohan. The Weinsteiners are showing it to a select few before the big Bobby unveilings at the Venice and Toronto film festivals as a “work in progress” (i.e., a euphemism for “Harvey doesn’t think it’s quite there yet”).

In the third graph of this profile of Rufus Sewell by N.Y. Times writer Sarah Lyall, the 38 year-old actor is described by Neil Burger, the director-writer of The Illusionist, as “more of a leading man” than a character actor who could villains or oddballs. Only in softball profiles like this do you find such delusion. Sewell isn’t a leading man type in the slightest. He never has been. He’s vaguely villainous, obsessive, creepy, churned-up- inside, glaring. There’s a reason — hello? — he’s played almost nothing but villains these last few years. Sewell is an intense and accomplished actor, yes, and I’d love to see him in “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, the Tom Stoppard play that’s currently performing in London, but…

If you haven’t read my early-bird piece about Mike Binder‘s Reign O’er Me, please do so now. It’ll prepare you more fully for the disappointing but not altogether surprising news that Reign won’t be opening on 12.1 after all. Columbia is going for a March or April ’07 opening, and here’s why:

(1) Columbia has a heavy fall/Xmas slate anyway (four films) and they didn’t want to add another film to that list in the first place, although jazzed reactions to early screenings of Reign told them they have something that works in a big way, and not just with journos like myself;
(2) There’s no question that Adam Sandler‘s performance (he plays a Manhattan dentist caught in an emotional shut-down mode over his wife and daughters having been killed on 9.11) would have stirred talk about this or that acting honor, but Columbia already has two funny guys giving dramatic performances in a pair of high-profile Oscar bait movies — Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction and Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness — so do the math;
(3) This weekend’s low-key response to World Trade Center suggests that resistance to 9/11-themed movies is persisting wthin certain demos, and it may be the better part of wisdom to ease up on any more films in this vein and try again in the spring (even though Reign O’er Me uses the World Trade Center backdrop very sparingly);
(4) Reign‘s test screening numbers have been very good, but Columbia has picked up indications that some critics might not be inclined to give a drama with Sandler (who’s despised in elite critical circles) a fair shake; and…
(5) Columbia would release it on 12.1 anyway if Sandler, a very big Sony gorilla, had stood up, planted his feet and said he really wanted it released this year — but he didn’t quite do that. But he did say no print interviews when it does come out, which will make selling the film a bit of an uphill effort;
(6) Columbia feels it can give Reign O’er Me a more enthusiastic, great-guns launch in March/April than early December. It’s a less crazy time and there’s not as much stuff pulling everyone’s attention every which way.

Box Office Mojo is reporting that Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men has been pushed back to 12.25.06 from the previous 9.29 date. It’ll still show at the Venice Film festival, though, and will be released internationally in the fall, starting with the U.K. on 9.22.
The delay is about “giving things more time to accumulate and gather momentum [in the States],” a Universal rep says. “Critical and popular acclaim, word-of-mouth, understanding, exposure, etc. Alfonso has rendered this film with real virtuosity and passion, and we just [decided to wait] to give it some more time for a meaningful campaign.”
A lot of people I know were hoping to see Children of Men soon. Hearing that it has Kubrick-like chops with long sustained shots had me revved. “You should remain revved,” the Uni guy says. “It’s an incredible, startling film.”

This 8.11 posting from Britain’s Film Ick says Terry Gilliam told a London crowd last Thursday night that a deal for him to direct Paul Giamatti in The Owl in Daylight, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick‘s final unfinished work, is “going ahead.” (My mind is melting & the plaster walls are cracking — I know I wrote a four or five-graph story about the Giamatti-Dick project three or four days ago, and now I can’t find it on the site.) If Gilliam directs Owl it will definitely have a mood and a sense of visual drive and togetherness, but it’s also be off to the races in a non-linear, weird-for-weird’s-sake, impressionistic sense, if you follow my drift. For a lot of people, that’ll be a fine and cherishable thing, but I’ve nearly had it with Gilliam. His movies are always about his brushstrokes first, acting second, story third and intelligibility fourth.

Another noteworthy Film Ick/Terry Gilliam item: Tideland, the Gilliam film that people were calling “unwatchable” at last year’s Toronto Film Festival & which inspired seven or eight critics to walk out of during a screening I happened to attend, “is now playing with a filmed introduction in which Gilliam helps the audience get into ‘the right mindset’. Gently amusing though possibly rather redundant, the film is a single shot of Gilliam addressing the camera, and offers nothing as elaborate, funny or pointed as ‘The Dress Pattern’ — Gilliam’s introduction to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which you can see on the Criterion [DVD].”

When all is said and done Talladega Nights (Columbia) is expected to be the #1 film on Sunday night with $22,871,000. It was down 52% from last weekend(indicated by that B CinemaScore), but the cume will be roughly at $90,800,000so it’s going good . Step Up was #1 Friday but will come in second with $21,241,000, or so the experts are saying. World Trade Center will end up with about $25,700,000. Barnyard will be #4 with $9,509,000, Pulse (#5) with $8,818,000…nobody cares about the lesser numbers. Miami Vice, whipped, will come in ninth with $4,427,000…a real shame. Little Miss Sunshine added 90 theatres and looking at a $2.5 million weekend haul, for an average of $16,7000.

The surprise-heat movie of the weekend is Disney’s Step Up, a teen dance-romancer that got a failing grade on Metacritic (50%) and a much worse number on Rotten Tomatoes (19%). But it was the #1 movie yesterday, doing $8,499,000 and beating out the #2 Talladega Nights and #3 World Trade Center . The final weekend tally for Will Ferrell’s NASCAR flick is expected to nudge it into first place, although Step Up is expected to finish with a higher-than-projected $21,240,000.

Step Up‘s Channing Tatum

The Step Up surprise was mainly about ace-in-the-hole Channing Tatum, the 26 year-old hunky male lead from Alabama who’s very hot now with teenage girls. (His previous punch-throughs happened in Coach Carter and She’s The Man — he had an uncredited bit part in War of the Worlds.) My son Jett, 18, said “the girls in the audience were gasping” whenever Tatum was on-screen during a She’s The Man show he went to last March in Boston.
I can smell piece-of-shit teen flicks like this a mile off, which is why I didn’t catch the press screening. But magnetism that works is always worth checking out, which is why I’ll probably pay $11 bucks plus parking , popcorn and a coke to sit through this thing (well, part of it) sometime later today or tonight. $20 bucks to watch Channing Tatum! Maybe I’ll learn something.
My favorite review blurb is from Chicago Reader‘s J.R. Jones, who wrote that “this teen chick flick is so perfectly calculated I wouldn’t be surprised if every i in the screenplay were dotted with a little heart. Any guy who sits through this date movie deserves to get to third base at least.”
If you go by MCN’s predictions chart, everybody was way, way off on this one. Coming Soon foresaw Step Up earning $11.1 million this weekend, Box-Office Guru said $8 million, Hollywood Reporter $13, Poland predicted $9, EW $11 and Box Office Mojo said $10.5. Thursday’s tracking indicated a late surge and a figure between $12 and $15 million, but that was still a short call. Nobody saw this one coming. Those tracking-survey guys had better figure some way to get to younger types on their cell phones and not just depend on land-line surveys.

“My girlfriend went crazy during this movie and was actually the one who wanted me to send in a review because she wants everybody to see it. I would rate this 10 out of 10 and is probably the best movie I’ve seen in a couple of years. We couldn’t believe how much we got into this movie and the music. Everybody was tapping their feet and laughing and cheering.

“At the end of the movie the whole crowd was applauding for a long time and they had this part when the credits were on where they had clips from all the different actors, and everybody clapped like crazy for each actor and then screamed nonstop when Jennifer Hudson came on.” — A guy named “Nightmare” who caught Bill Condon‘s Dreamgirls at a theatre in San Diego’s Gaslamp district a couple of days ago and wrote a review for AICN. I’m into the idea of this film as much as the next guy, but “Nightmare” sounds like an easy lay.

Disney’s Touchstone division will definitely distribute Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto on 12.8, according to Disney spokesperson Heidi Trotta. Her statement came in response to Roger Freidman‘s Fox 411 report that Disney was trying to shop it around because of concerns that the controversy over Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks would diminish the box-office. I don’t believe Disney didn’t at least explore the possibility of dumping it, or delaying the release date. Any responsible company would have.

So it was Frank Whaley‘s paramedic character in World Trade Center — a real-life guy named Chuck Sereika — who was the first to crawl “into a burning black hole in the unstable pile of debris that was once the World Trade Center, and was the first man to reach trapped Port Authority officer Will Jimeno” — the guy played by Michael Pena. But in Oliver Stone’s film, the guy who goes in first is NYPD officer Scott Strauss (played by Stephen Dorff).

Frank Whaley as Chuck Sereika, the real rescue guy in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center

So reports Rebecca Liss in a Salon piece that went up two days ago. (Old news! The nostalgia file!) “Perhaps it seemed more dramatic or believable to the filmmakers for the NYPD to make this daring rescue basically on their own,” she writes. “Whatever the filmmakers’ reasons, they missed one of the more remarkable aspects of this rescue story.
“Sereika, a man with no training in collapsed-building rescue and extrication, risked his life that day for men he had never met. Sereika said he was sure he would die when he crawled in. Unlike the police and firefighters who without hesitation sacrificed everything — and I in no way discount their selfless acts — Sereika was not called to duty by his unit. He arrived on his own accord.
“Serieka was a paramedic, but his license had expired and he had left that life behind as he sought treatment for addiction problems. But he grabbed his medic sweatshirt and his cell phone and headed down to Ground Zero to see if he could apply a few splints or perform minor triage. He never imagined that he would be involved in one of the few and most memorable rescues of Sept. 11.”

Hey, how come Toronto Star critic Peter Howell didn’t include The History Boys among his top 12 fall films? Does he know something? Or has Fox Searchlight’s low-profile campaign been too successful?