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Priced at only $20 bills, Ridley Scott‘s four-disc “director’s cut” DVD of Kingdom of Heaven, which streeted last Tuesday, seems like one the greatest values and bargains out there right now…an absolute must-own for folks like me, certainly. The truckloads of material seem staggering…not just Scott’s preferred 194-minute cut, which I reviewed out of a commercial showing at Laemmle’s Fairfax last January, but a motherload of extras including a three-hour, six-part documentary called “The Path to Redemption”. If the doc is anything like the one that accompanied the DVD of Scott’s Matchstick Men, it’ll be well worth it. Last January I wrote that Kingdom‘s theatrical cut “was a painterly, politically nutritious meal that felt more than a touch truncated and a bit shy of playing like a true epic-type thing. The longer cut makes it into a fuller, tastier, more banquet-y type deal…sweepier and more sumptuous and better told….certainly a finer and more substantial film. And this fact makes 20th Century Fox’s decision to release its shorter, runtier kid brother seem more than a little distasteful. Only an idiot could have watched both versions last spring or late winter…whenever it was that Fox and Scott sorted things through…and not realized that the longer version was the distinctly better film.”

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Le hype de Superman Returns seems pretty well cranked in Paris this week…bus ads, metro ads…a fairly persistent presence — snapped on Isle de la Cite (facing south) on Saturday, 5.27.06, 6:55 pm.

And with not much else to do or say today (i.e., having decided to mostly take the day off and just wander around), a passel of non-movie-related pics: (a) lean over the catch of the day on a bed of ice, and the aroma fills you up and does more than intoxicate, at a fish market on rue Lepic — Saturday, 5.27.06, 3:25 pm; (b) sanitation engineers on rue Lepic…the sound of clinking-clattering glass is shattering –Saturday, 5.27.06, 3:30; (c) Snapped in front of the Pantheon, looking west — Saturday, 5.27.06, 7:36 pm; (d) Snapped at a small cafe on rue Mouffetard — Saturday, 5.27.06, 8:55 pm; (e) Brad Pitt wristwatch ad in Friday’s print edition of the London Times; (f) a postively captivating floral delight on rue Lepic — Saturday, 5.27, 3:40 pm; (g) Ben Sliney, the FAA chief who played himself in United 93, looking about 20 pounds lighter with a cool haircut and a great tan (like he wants to be in more movies perhaps?…he was real and likable and solid as a rock in the film) at Friday’s Cannes press conference for the Paul Greengrass film; (h) Brass plaque on sloping hill street approaching the Pantheon; (i) Pantheon glimpse on way back from dinner — Saturday, 5.27.06; 9:40 pm; (k) Notre Dame — Saturday, 5.27.06, 7:55 pm; (l) The Louvre has a soul all its own, but for the time being it half-feels like a Ron Howard-Tom Hanks tourist attraction — Saturday, 5.27.06, 5:35 pm; (m) Montmartre windowsill — Saturday, 5.27.06, 3:55 pm; and (n) with the AC cord suddenly failing to power up the laptop and no wi-fi in the closet-sized studio I’m crashing in, here’s Hollywood Elsewhere’s publishing headquarters for the next few days; naptime under a tree in small park adjacent to St.-Julien-le-Pauvre — Saturday, 5.27.06, 6:40 pm.

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This is definitely burying the lead, but the $65,000-per-screen opening of An Inconvenient Truth on 4 screens, which MCN’s Len Klady is calling “the strongest exclusive opening of the year,” lifts my heart more than the $44.6 million Friday that X-Men 3 achieved…although you really have to say “wowza!” ’bout that. And yet (and I know what this is going to sound like, but I have to say it) there’s something a wee bit disspiriting…just a wee bit…about an okay-but-far-from-thermonuclear Brett Ratner downgrade performing this well. I don’t mean the champagne shouldn’t be passed around (a projected $120 million weekend is a hell of a number), and I really do understand how sourpussy this sounds, but…screw it….congrats to Ratner and Fox and the rest of the team . I just wonder sometimes (more than sometimes) where people’s heads and souls are at. The ticket-buying public, bless ’em, has just given a hearty frat-house slap on the back and a Times Square-sized flashing green light to Hollywood’s fuck-it, cheese-it-up, downgrade-it, the-fans-won’t-know-the-difference mentality as far as tentpolers are concerned. The X-Men 3 triumph isn’t a negative thing at all — it’s fine, it’s good, it’s money-money-money…but I’m feeling a somewhat muted response about it. I can say “okay, good take,” etc., but I can’t in all good conscience go wheee!

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“So did those who boo perhaps have a Yankee accent? Or British, Italian, or Austrian? Who can say? The important point is that Marie-Antoinette was not hated. The daily ‘critics’ jury’ of Screen International, a cross-section of nine international critics, gave it 2.44 points out of a possible 4; it’s tied for fifth out of 14 films. In another poll, Michel Ciment rated it worthy of the Palme d’Or. I’ve also noticed that opinions on the film seem to be growing more favorable as time passes .” — Roger Ebert in his 5.25 column. All due respect to Roger, Michel Ciment and the others who admired Coppola’s pic, but this is not the truth as I knew, gauged and assimilated it in Cannes. My reaction and those of several journalists I spoke to after the film ended was one of aesthetic and moral revulsion. I stand absolutely by my original observation that this is “arguably one of the shallowest and dullest historical biopics of all time.” As I said earlier, Coppola does a pretty good job craft-wise, and she obviously has rendered a view of the French queen’s life of her own devising. The problem is that this view is atrociously lame. If Coppola were to apply the same aesthetic to a life-of-Christ movie, it would be just as bland and value-less, and it would end as Judas and the Roman soldiers enter the Garden of Gethsamene. Let’s call a spade a spade — Coppola identified with Marie-Antoinette and wanted to cut her a break.

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I’m figuring more like $90-something million for the 4-day X-Men 3 gross…just a hunch.

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Got into Paris five hours ago — it’s 1:07 ayem on Saturday — and the wi-fi in the apartment doesn’t work. (Merde.) It can’t work unless you provide a user name and passsword, and of course the guy who’s renting the place to to me didn’t think to provide this info. (And when I called him at his place in Brooklyn to get this vital data he went, “Uhhm…I don’t know it offhand…ask the woman who gave you the key,” etc.) But now that I’ve settled down, I love the dueling impressions on the ’06 Cannes Film Festival by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Anne Thompson and the very sage and industry-savvy David Poland on his “Hot Blog” commentary that ran in response. I’ll jump in myself sometime tomorrow when I stop fuming about the apparently dial-up-speed wi-fi in my grunge-level, pit-of-hell armpit Paris apartment not being accessible.

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Uh-oh…wait a minute…Variety‘s Brian Lowry has panned The Breakup…sorry, The Break-Up: “Misleadingly marketed as a boisterous comedy, The Break-Up may be the first ‘last-date movie’ — the one you see with someone that you’re about to dump. Sporadic rays of sunshine emanate from the broad and gifted supporting cast, but the core story is almost relentlessly unpleasant, like sitting through a dinner party where the host couple does nothing but bicker.”

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Leaving Cannes late this afternoon on an Easy Jet flight to Paris. I’ll be missing the past-midnight screening of Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2, which happens about nine hours from now, and the Pan’s Labyrinth party being thrown tomorrow evening by Picturehouse. Plus whatver opportunites that may exist for makeup screenings. I’m very, very sorry I never caught Joon-ho Bong’s The Host , a South Korean monster movie that N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis went for in a big way. But there’s plenty of stuff to get into in Paris.

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Cinematical’s James Rocchi on the Cannes films he’s walked out on. I don’t know if walkouts are worth it over here. If the film is a stinker and you haven’t got anything pressing to get to for an hour or so, just nod out. It’s easy with the 19-hour days and the pounding pace of it all.

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The opening-weekend predictions on X-Men 3, dead certain to be the #1 film over the coming Memorial Day weekend, are being modified. I was hearing a week and a half ago that the four-day total could be way way up there. Now Variety is saying that The DaVinci Code “will suck away a chunk of the adult audience and will likely keep X-Men from reaching the boffo $85.6 million bow of X2 three years ago. Fox will be very pleased if it reaches that figure over four days, instead of the three it took X2.”

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“To be honest, Paris Hilton is my perfect model. She has charm and is classy. She has everything. We have nothing, really.” — 15 year-old Claudia Sorrentino in Cannes, quoted by Reuters reporter Kerstin Gehmlich in a piece about young girls who stroll the Croisette in hopes of getting noticed by rich or half-connected Eurotrash guys, and perhaps becoming a faux-VIP for an hour or two if she wangles an invite into the right party and chats with a celeb, or at least gets her picture taken.