If you were about to sit down and watch a critically-admired documentary about Michelangelo, how would you feel upon discovering that it’s largely about a group of artist-admirers who’ve done tribute renderings — i.e., knockoffs — of his finest work? Think you might feel a tiny bit flim-flammed?

Leonard Cohen, Lian Lunson, Bono

That’s how I felt when I finally saw Lian Lunson‘s Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Take out the shards of Cohen interview footage that Lunson inserts at regular intervals, and Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man is basically footage of a Cohen tribute concert that happened at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005.
The performers include Rufus Wainwright , Kate and Anna McGarrigle , Nick Cave and Martha Wainwright , among others. To me it felt like a rip. It has a lot more soul and integrity than “Beatlemania”, that imitation live-Beatles-performance B’way show that ran from 1977 to ’79, but it’s not that far removed in terms of conception. First-rate art saluted by second-tier performers.
I knew something was wrong prior to I’m Your Man‘s showing at Hollywood’s John Ford Anson theatre last weekend when Ms. Wainwright came out and performed three Cohen songs, and I found myself glancing at my watch during the second number.
Cohen himself can’t sing all that well, but he’s a masterful interpreter. His singing — crooning — is breathy, raspy, intimate. Good as his poetry is, the way he sells his songs is at least half the game.
And as surely as Cohen knows what he’s doing and how to do it, I’m telling you that after watching Rufus Wainwright perform “Everybody Knows”, one of Cohen’s greatest tunes (and one of my personal favorites), I don’t know if I can ever really enjoy it again. Wainwright’s ghastly rendition has somehow killed the magic. I was in pain listening to him. It was almost like watching former House speaker Tom Delay sing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

More Dreamamount whackings. All the things we most dread in life — traumatic change, an economic weakening, the shock of the new and hurtful — contained in a single act of corporate brutality.

No shit, Sherlock? “Unlike the X-Men films [Bryan] Singer directed, which easily lent themselves to queer parallels, Superman is fairly straightforward and…straight.” — Out.com’s Jeffrey Epstein.

If you had to decide which script to read first — Joel and Ethan Coen‘s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country for Old Men or Charles Leavitt, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick‘s Blood Diamond…forget it, I’ve just decided. The Coen’s, of course.

Okay, okay….finally seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest tomorrow night. (I didn’t mean to put it that way. I meant to say “oh, wow!!”) And finally seeing Superman Returns in 3D IMAX this evening.

Gary Sanchez, a former NFL football player from Paraguay, is the financial backer and “spiritual leader” of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay‘s new production company…what? McKay has told Variety ‘s Chris Gardner that Sanchez “provides moral support and finances outside entertainment.” Meaning what..that Sanchez conducts spiritual counselling sessions with candles and incense burning? He sends expensive prostitutes to Ferrell and McKay’s homes on occasion? He makes them feel better about themselves by playing touch football with them on his back lawn? This is easily the strangest Variety production-shingle story (Sanchez Prods. is starting a first-look deal with Paramount Vantage) I’ve read all year.

“Is it possible to be a great star without appearing in very many great movies?,” asks N.Y. Times DVD guy David Kehr in a brief riff on Clark Gable before getting into the subject of Warner Home Video’s new Gable box set. Gable, says Kehr, “is one of the few major box office stars of the 1930’s who might produce a glimmer of recognition from a contemporary audience, but after Gone With the Wind and perhaps It Happened One Night, most people would be stuck naming many more of his films.” That’s because Gable generally made run-of-the-mill programmers. I have a better example of this never-so-few syndrome — Steve McQueen. He made 23 or 24 films between 1960 and 1980, and his mythical reputation arose out of only five films, one of which — 1962’s Hell Is for Heroes — the public is barely aware of. His rep really boils down to four quintessential performances — Vin in The Magnificent Seven , “Cooler King” Hilts The Great Escape, Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles and Frank, the taciturn San Francisco detective who drove a mean Mustang fastback and occasionally smiled at Jacqueline Bisset in Bullitt…and that’s all. Everything else he did was marginal, not bad, pretty good, so-so. There are several others whose esteem rests upon two or three or four films. Look at Willem Dafoe — Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ and “Clark” in Clear and Present Danger…that’s it. Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen have only Platoon. Most actors, I would venture to say, are lucky to star in only one incandescent classic film….just the way of the draw. Life is short, chances are few, count your blessings.

Several fashion industry veterans appraise and praise The Devil Wears Prada in this byline-free piece in last Sunday’s (6/25) Guardian‘s Sunday Observer. Includes a statement about the film from a spokesperson for Vogue editor Anna Wintour (the real-life Miranda Priestly) that I hadn’t seen before: “She thought it was very entertaining. It was satire. What’s not to like?’

Despite the understandably relieved announcement by Superman Returns naysayer David Poland that five big-name critics have joined him in panning Bryan Singer‘s film (the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Mick LaSalle makes six), the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a bit more than 75% positive — 72% cream-of-the-crop, 77% overall — so there’s no turning of the tide. You just have seven sourpusses standing off in the corner along with the seven dwarves, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the seven deadly sins…no biggie. Enthusiastic thumbs-uppers include N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Matthews, Newsweek‘s David Ansen (who says “from the start of this gorgeously crafted epic, you can feel that Singer has real love and respect for the most foursquare comics superhero of them all”), Time‘s Richard Corliss, Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman (enthusing that it “gets tighter and fiercer as it goes along…Singer does his grandest work to date”), the Atlanta Constitution‘s Eleanor Ringel Gillespie and so on.

So the word is out among the wicked-wordsmith film critics to rip into Superman Returns…right? Anthony Lane doesn’t exactly kill it, but he basically dismisses it the way Manohla did with his typical snide flavorings.

“Jesus of Nazareth spent 40 days in the desert. By comparison, Superman of Hollywood languished almost 20 years in development hell. Those years apparently raised the bar fearsomely high. Last seen larking about on the big screen in the 1987 dud Superman IV, the Man of Steel has been resurrected in a leaden new film not only to fight for truth, justice and the American way, but also to give Mel Gibson’s passion a run for his box-office money. Where once the superhero flew up, up and away, he now flies down, down, down, sent from above to save mankind from its sins and what looked like another bummer summer.” — N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis on Superman Returns. Websters.com defines “leaden” as (1) heavy and inert, (2) listless; sluggish, 3), lacking liveliness or sparkle; dull, (4) downcast; depressed: leaden spirits. Movies are all about the eye and soul of the beholder, but trust me, leaden this film is not.

“If a movie is good, consumers will go see it. Otherwise, they’ll choose to save gas and money and stay home and watch video-on-demand, cable or satellite, or a DVD. Or maybe they’ll just play a video game or listen to Ipods because most new movies suck big-time.” — a Nikki Finke summary in today’s Deadline Hollywood Daily of Nielsen Analytics’ and The Movie Advisory Board’s 100-page “Modern Movie Experience” study, described as “a report on moviegoer behavior today, possibilities for tomorrow, and the impact of digital technologies on the movie-value chain.”