Stop what you’re doing (again) and watch “Wife Force One,” an absolutely brilliant short about the jeopardy that the wives of Harrison Ford have been subjected to over the years…and the overal climate of “rage, pure rage” that has permeated his numerous action films.

The feds looking into the past deeds of indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano “have found no convincing evidence that actor Steven Seagal was involved in depositing a dead fish on a reporter’s windshield in June 2002,” etc. Great… and nobody cares. This story is mainly about whether or not Paramount chief Brad Grey is going to emerge so compromised by allegations of involvement in illegal wiretapping via his associations with Pellicano by way of attorney Bert Fields that he’ll be forced to resign…that’s it. With maybe a sideplot” exploring to what extent Tom Cruise may have had Nicole Kidman‘s phone tapped after their marriage ended.

Director Richard Fleisher left us a few days ago, and I’m only just paying homage now…sorry. If you’re a film buff-type, you might feel like saluting Fleisher for having directing Narrow Margin, the classic 1952 noir-on-a-train with Charles McGraw. But for me, Fleischer’s peak was The Vikings — the 1958 historical action epic that was mostly dominated by producer-star Kirk Douglas, but was (and still is) notable for two dramatic elements that still work today. One is what seems to happen inside the male Viking characters (particularly Douglas and dad Ernest Borgnine) whenever Odin, the Nordic God, is mentioned. We hear a haunting, siren-like “Odin theme” on the soundtrack, and these rough blustery types suddenly stop their loutish behavior and seem to almost retreat into a childlike emotional place…a place that’s all about awe and fear (of death, God, judgment). This happens maybe three or four times in this big, unsophisticated popcorn movie (which nonetheless feels far sturdier and more classically composed than a typical big-budget popcorn actioner made today), and each time it does The Vikings suddenly has a spirit. The other thing that still works is the film’s refusal to make much of the fact that Douglas and costar Tony Curtis, mortal enemies throughout the film, are in fact brothers, having both been half-sired by Borgnine. Costar Janet Leigh begs Douglas to consider this ten minutes from the finale, and Douglas angrily brushes her off. But when his sword is raised above a defenseless Curtis at the very end and he’s about to strike, Douglas suddenly hesitates…and we know why. And then Curtis stabs Douglas in the stomach with a shard of a broken sword, and Douglas is finished. The way he leans back, screams “Odin!” and then rolls over dead is pretty hammy, but that earlier moment of hesitation is spellbinding — one of the most touching pieces of acting Douglas has ever delivered. Douglas wasn’t very respectful of Fleischer’s authority during the making of The Vikings, and for all I know Fleischer didn’t have that much to do with this final scene…but he probably did, and he deserves our respect for it.

“I think there’s a big difference between James Bond and Jason Bourne. I think James Bond is the secret agent who likes being a secret agent and likes killing people. He’s a misogynist, an old-fashioned imperialist, and Jason Bourne is an outsider on the run and he’s one of us and he’s fighting against them, I think. That’s the profound difference, and that’s why I like Bourne.” — director Paul Greengrass riffing two weeks ago with Empire magazine online about the The Bourne Ultimatum, which will (naturally) topline Matt Damon, the script having been co-written by Tony Gilroy and Tom Stoppard. I agree with this — Bourne is right now, and Bond is prehistoric. People don’t always go “aaah, look at that!” or “listen to that!” when tectonic plates shift and major movie-culture changes kick new alignments into place, but the Bourne-over-Bond thing is one of the more significant ones to happen over the last, say, two or three years. I’m not aware that it’s been proclaimed in so many words by a film essayist or critic or op-ed sage out there, but… well, I guess that’s what I’m doing here and now….saying it in so many words.

The New York Post‘s “Page Six” column says “the race is on” to see who’ll be the first to make a biopic of LSD guru Timothy Leary — Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way production company, which has been half-heartedly stirring this pot for at least a couple of years, or Fountain director Darren Aronofsky , who didn’t mention any Leary project to me when we last spoke (at the Golden Globes awards) but whatever. Aronofsky may or may not be in a “race” mode but the DiCaprio team is mostly slumbering, I’ve been told. Two years on the case and there’s not even a screenplay written…what does that tell you? And here’s a list of current Appian Way projects with no mention of Tim. A source with a significant perspective on the action said this morning that the DiCaprio/Appian Way/Leary project has been “on hold” for some time, in part due to an effort to slap together a decent screenplay of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which has taken the better part of two years. There’s “not a lot of focus” at Appian Way, he said. “Leo is all over the map…he wants to work with Marty on this and that…[Appian Way] doesn’t exactly have a center-of-gravity thing going on.” I had a 90-second chat with DiCaprio about the Leary project at the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival, and about 25 or 30 seconds into it I mentioned a great penetrating book about ’60s psychaedelia called “Storming Heaven,” written by Jay Stevens, my point being that anyone writing a screenplay about Leary should definitely read it as part of their research. (I don’t remember if Leo acknowledged having read it…he may have.) I also asked Milos Forman about his reported interest in directing a Leary biopic during the April ’04 San Francisco Film Festival, and he said “nobody knows what [this movie] would be, or how to come at it…you can’t just make a movie about [Leary’s] life…you have to figure a way in.”

Stop what you’re doing right now (seriously) and watch this — actor Dave Coyne (a.k.a. “DCLugi” of Subatomic Warp), has put together a comic video, called “Early Auditions”, about four actors — Chris Walken, Jack Nicholson, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro — doing their best to land a part in Snakes on a Plane. [Note: The first link goes to Snakes on a Blog, which had the Coyne video on the top of its page at 7:50 am Monday, but they’ll eventually move it down, of course.]

“Be disloyal. It’s your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it’s the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent — and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don’t own, and they’ll go on raising the price they are willing to offer. Didn’t Christ say that very thing? Was the prodigal son loyal, or the lost shilling or the strayed sheep? — Graham Greene

Kris Tapley informs me that Univeral publicist Jen Chamberlain sent out a press release on 3.7.06 announcing the title change from Flight 93 to United 93. Okay, fine…but I didn’t get it, and it was still being called Flight 93 on the IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and JoBlo earlier today, and Variety ran that story on 3.19 in which they called it Flight 93 and that Google search I mentioned shows that several other sites are still in the old mode, so is everyone suffering from ADD or what?

Here’s a pretty good (i.e., well-written, moderately diverting ) piece about Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener by critic Carina Chocano. I’ve seen the film, which portrays four Westside L.A. women in terms of their jobs, income and relationships with their men (i.e., mostly husbands), and I certainly recognize some of the characters, character traits and situations. Holofcener is a smart writer, an honest artist and a straight dealer…but there are two things in this film that no one, anywhere, is going to buy. One is Jennifer Aniston playing a poor house cleaner who winds up with a slovenly, poorly-dressed overweight rich guy who tries to chisel her down on her house-cleaning fee…a guy who’s about 75 to 100 pounds heavier than she is, and about 15 inches taller. The other is a scene in which Catherine Keener, playing an unhappily married screenwriter, visits a next-door neighbor who is angry at Keener and husband Jason Isaacs for starting construction on a second-story addition to their home which blocks the neighbor’s view of the city. Earlier in the film Keener and Isaacs agree they’re willing to accept neighbor hostility over this matter, but when Keener visits the neighbor and sees for herself how the second-story addition is a gross visual eyesore from this perspective, she runs out and tries to stop the building and tells all the workers to go home. Uh-huh…an expensive undertaking she’s had months to consider and involves the borrowing of a serious amount of money (probably from a bank) to pay for, and she’s going to shut it down over a matter of neighborly relations. We’re also asked to believe the neighbor wouldn’t have invited Keener over to her home in the early stages (i.e., while the framework was being put up) to make her case. You want to like this film, and you want to go with it…but these obstacles are not the doing of the viewer.

“I, too, just came back from seeing Inside Man and while my audience wasn’t vocal against the United 93 trailer like they were in Arlington Heights, my companion turned to me when it ended, saying, ‘Do you want to see that? I have no desire to see that…eccch!” — Joseph Jones, Tampa.

One of the zombie letters (in response to my observation that there are no Pacific Rim zombies…the phenomenon is strictly East Coast, Caribbean and other Old World areas) came from reader Charlie Hill, who reminded me about that highly regarded Joe Dante/Sam Hamm Showtime film, Homecoming, which aired on the “Masters of Horror” series last 12.2.05. Based on the short story “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey , it runs with the premise of “what if the hundreds of soldiers killed in Iraq were to rise from the dead for the purpose of voting Bush out of office for lying as to why we went over there in the first place.” I never saw this (don’t get Showtime) and it’s not on DVD. How good was it? Does anyone know when it might be available on disc?

“I live in Arlington Heights, Illnois — a fairly affluent, moderately left-leaning suburb — and the audience I saw Inside Man with on Saturday reacted none too well to the United 93 trailer. When the Brokeback Mountain trailers first started playing there was some discomfort but nothing too reactive. But reaction to United 93‘s trailer was downright hostile, with a few people actually yelling, ‘too soon!’ and ‘there’s no reason to see that’ in addition to a lot of perturbed coughing. From listening to people on the way out, there seemed to be a sentiment that this movie is looking to exploit still-fresh 9/11 anger and nobody seemed to want anything to do with it. I don’t know how representative this are of the population as a whole (maybe the righties will buy into it), but I’m not sure audiences are ready for the 9/11 movies coming out this year.” — Kyle Dickinson