Sung by the adolescent Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, Somewhere Over the Rainbow never ceases to move me.

Hugh Laurie is going to host participate in a Writers Give Back fundraiser for struggling writers, reports EW.com.

Although this is a formalization of an already existing practice, Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes' move to eliminate the window between DVD and VOD is actually a big deal. The dominoes are starting to fall on the old ancillary market windows.

MTV Movies managing editor Josh Horowitz has launched the bizarre Pudding Show:

It's devoted to "pudding," he writes in an email, "and my first guests were swimsuit model Marisa Miller, hated director Uwe Boll, and a certain "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" star (don't miss the end). It's horribly awkward, bizarre, and…well it's REALLY awkward."

Check out this clip:

While I laughed out loud several times, I doubt many publicists will book their clients on an ongoing basis: this gag will likely be short-lived.

ThinkFilm has nabbed Marina Zenovich's doc, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a hit at Sundance, for theatrical release after its June 9 HBO launch. The doc-friendly distrib acquired theatrical and homevideo rights. The movie will play at Cannes.

The movie that is likeliest to exceed expectations at the boxoffice this summer--and pass the $300-million mark domestically-- is the second Narnia pic, Prince Caspian, partly because the filmmakers have added more grown-up action and a more adult hero in Caspian himself. It's not only a sequel, but a family-oriented four quadrant Disney/Walden pic that has been embraced by the Christian community--and is tracking really well in advance of its May 16 opening.

Here's a new photo and excerpt on the cast from the film's gushy behind-the-scenes book, which is not surprising as it is written by the unit publicist on both Narnia pics, Ernie Malik:

Making a full-scale motion picture like Prince Caspian is a journey unto itself -- not only a physical one that took hundreds of filmmakers thousands of miles across two hemispheres, but also a spiritual and emotional voyage for the film's family members.

With mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and husbands and wives away from home for close to a full year, the film company's 600-plus members bonded closely, sharing in both work and play, to create not only a friendly on-set environment over the lengthy seven-month shoot, but hopefully something greater than the sum of its parts -- something all can hail proudly when the lights go down, the projector flickers, the film unspools, and their collective movie magic enchants audiences the world over.

As production began over a year ago on that mid-February morning in Auckland, there stood Andrew, the lanky director, alongside his Pevensie clan like a proud father with his children, home for the holidays. Even though it had been barely two years since the completion of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his film family had, indeed, matured, both physically and emotionally. Their patriarch grinned with pride at the progress.

At the Huffington Post, Jeffrey Wells blogs about the two Soderbergh Che films going to Cannes.

I heard this arresting Tom Waits cover by Scarlet Johansson on KCRW this morning; here's the video, and a story at NYMag.com. Can she sing? I have no idea; the Falling Down single is well-produced and catchy, and I'd need to hear the rest of the album.

Jamie Lee Curtis, who knows what she's talking about, responds to the Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair scandal on The Huffington Post:

None of this is new. None of this should be news. But it is news because it is a business. It is all Business. It is called Show Business. Show Abyss-ness! I call it Show-OFF Business. You throw a child into the jaws of a business and they will get eaten.

I know how Miley feels. I too was a little embarrassed by my recent topless "scandal" and the subsequent parodies, but I am an adult woman. I protected myself during the shoot and I can take the heat. I only wish that her guardians had protected her.

Ben Fritz reviews the new Grand Theft Auto game. He likes it---a lot. My vidgame experience is strictly throwing things in the cave of the Mountain King, trying to survive the Oregon Trail, noodling around on the island in Myst and Riven, and playing with various iterations of The Sims. In other words, I am a girl.

Boys however are trading in their old games, throwing yard sales and hectoring their parents to get their hands on this bloody game, which actually threatens to deflate this weekend's b.o. talleys.

Here's some of the review:

"Grand Theft Auto IV” marks a huge leap forward for videogames as an immersive experience while making little more than a few tweaks to the ultra-successful franchise's formula. The technological prowess and artistic detail are so phenomenal and the sheer amount of content is so staggeringly deep that players will find themselves drawn into Liberty City like no other fictional place. Such deep immersion sometimes highlights the flaws in “Grand Theft Auto’s” well-worn formula, but that will be little more than an asterisk for the millions of gamers sure to be carjacking their way through “GTA IV” for a long, long time to come.

UPDATE: The NYT put its Grand Theft Auto IV review on the front page of its arts section. So did the LAT. And while LAT op ed columnist Tim Rutten admits the game is a "work of genius," he is dismayed by this media acceptance of "an art form in search of an artist."

SXSW is calling for entries for its 5th annual summertime SXSWclick Festival of digital shorts. Winners in each of five categories will be invited to screen at the next SXSW Film Festival, scheduled for March 13-21, 2009 in Austin, TX.

The final submission deadline is June 13, 2008. Enter submissions here. Projects cannot exceed 10 minutes in length. Fifteen finalists will be announced in five categories on June 24, with the winners announced on July 15. Both audiences and a jury will vote. Confirmed jurors include: Jeffrey Tambor, Eugene Mirman and Doug Benson, Ron Mann, Anish Savjani, and Mary Sweeney.

As expected, Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness will open the Cannes Film Festival, screening in the competition, while Hunger, from Brit director Steve McQueen, will kick off Un Certain Regard. The Cannes Fest has also added Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs to the competition entries, along with James Gray's Two Lovers, an additional American title. Robert DeNiro will accompany Barry Levinson's Sundance entry What Just Happened? to the fest for closing night May 25, and will present the Palme d'Or at the award ceremony. DeNiro stars as a Hollywood producer modeled on writer Art Linson, who penned the screenplay; Cannes jury president Sean Penn co-stars with Robin Wright Penn and John Turturro.

Scrubs star Zach Braff is not only a vet blogger (here's his latest info on the currently filming show), but a writer-director (Garden State) with a novel approach to his latest music video:

I came up with this idea to make a music video by cutting together clips of people from all over the world singing the song and shooting the video themselves as though it were their own song. I've been talking about doing something collaborative with all of you since I first started writing on here. Well I finally figured out how.

I am a giant fan of the artist, Jay Clifford. (Formally of the band "Jump Little Children".) Jay has a new album coming out and you and I are gonna make the video together. I set up a website that explains everything: you can download the song and lyrics there, upload your own video and then I'm gonna edit the best submissions together into one preposterously cool video made by hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of people. I made a video that explains everything and it's posted on the site. So here it is:

Please go check it out; I think it could be really unique and cool and I'd like everyone who reads this to be a part of it.

There's lots more to come; I promise not to stay away so long again. And I'll keep you posted on how the submissions are coming in.

Today was the most beautiful day ever in Los Angeles, I hope wherever you are on Earth this finds you smiling.
Peace and love,

zb
--

This April 2, 1959 clip from The Robert Herridge Theater Show at Studio 61 in New York City takes my breath away. The one time I saw Miles Davis play, at The Bottom Line in the Village, he was already so disgusted by performing that he turned his back on the audience and played for maybe 20 minutes max. But just look at him here! And the Gil Evans Orchestra: John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. Wow.

[Posted by Pat Saperstein]
Reinventing Hollywood, but how to start? Whether at film festivals or book fairs, lately every film panel seems to turn into a whinefest about the good old days of musty arthouses. This weekend's L.A. Times Fest of Books panel "Reinventing Hollywood: The 1960s and Beyond" was no exception.

Moderator Leonard Maltin’s intro quickly pointed up a gulf between those who feel Hollywood has forsaken them and those who embrace comicbook fare. “I mean, am I supposed to really be excited about ‘Iron Man’?” he asked sarcastically. Half the audience and most of the panel immediately countered “We are!”

Discussion mostly focused on why, as LAT film critic Kenneth Turan put it, “even the loyal core audience for smaller films is staying home rather than seeing the films in theaters,” and whether there is “any glimmer of hope” to get fans of films targeted towards adults back to theaters.

Author Mark Harris (“Pictures at a Revolution”) pointed out that it’s nearly impossible anyway to find good films in theaters for the first eight months of the year — “After New Year’s Day, it’s goodbye to you and your snooty friends until Labor Day.”

And while panelists were wowed by several of last year’s pics including “No Country for Old Men,” “The Savages” and “Michael Clayton,” Peter Biskind (“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”) was chagrined that “The Assassination of Jesse James” was ignored at kudos time. Biskind also worried that this year’s crop of quality fare will be sparse due to the effects of the writers’ strike.

Harris said that the shift to home viewing means films can’t have the kind of wide cultural influence they had in the 1960s, when viewers knew they would likely never be able to see “The Graduate” uncut on their TVs.

“It puts movies at the center of the conversation when you can only see them in theaters,” Harris contends.

What will panelists find to discuss when day-and-date distribution of independent and foreign films directly onto large-screen TVs finally becomes commonplace?

As expected, the Coens' next film, the CIA comedy Burn After Reading (starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney), which was not going to be ready in time for Cannes, will open the Venice Fest this year.

What were they thinking? Vanity Fair can shoot 15-year-old Disney pop star Miley Cyrus in a silk bedsheet if they want to. Clearly, mighty star photographer Annie Leibovitz was persuasive; Cyrus thought she was participating in something "artistic," she told People.com, adding that from now on she would "trust my support team."

But the reps behind the Hannah Montana family brand should be ashamed of themselves, not only for showcasing their teen star as a sex object, but misreading her fanbase. It's obvious and stupid. According to Vanity Fair's statement to E.T., Cyrus's parents were at the shoot. Here's the NYT and Reuters:

"For Vanity Fair, I was so honored and thrilled to work with Annie. I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed," Cyrus said in a statement published on People magazine's Web site.

The Disney Channel backed up the rising star saying in a statement that "a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines."

No one from Vanity Fair was immediately available to comment.

But in a statement to the TV show "Entertainment Tonight," Vanity Fair defended itself.

"Miley's parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley," said the magazine's statement.

Regarding the photos on the Internet, Cyrus said these were "silly, inappropriate shots" and she was sorry if she had disappointed anyone.

"I appreciate all the support of my fans, and hope they understand that along the way I am going to make mistakes and I am not perfect," she said.

"Most of all, I have let myself down. I will learn from my mistakes and trust my support team. My family and my faith will guide me through my life's journey."

UPDATE: MCN's David Poland sees nothing to make a fuss about. The LAT's Mary McNamara. And Kim Masters on NPR.

This old chestnut about the 12th Cannes Film Festival reveals that as the decades pass, the heart of the Riviera fest remains the same: a heady mix of great films from all over the world, glam movie stars, studio marketing, clamoring crowds and always, les jeune filles. Check out les vedettes Simone Signoret and Yves Montand, Edward G. Robinson, and the Hotel Carlton when they still handed out keys and exchanged French francs.

[Hat Tip: AFI Fest's Christian Gaines]

Frank Sinatra was a far better singer than he was an actor, but that doesn't mean he didn't leave a few great Hollywood performances behind--out of a slew of bad film choices. Here's a portrait of Sinatra as movie star.

My faves are the musicals: On the Town, Guys and Dolls, Young at Heart and The Tender Trap. But Sinatra did turn his sagging career around--and won the supporting actor Oscar-- with the drama From Here to Eternity. I have fond memories (misted in 60s nostalgia) of Von Ryan's Express and The Manchurian Candidate. But that's about it. Jean-Luc Godard was fond of Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, which I need to look at again.

I was fingering Michael Chabon's new book Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands in a bookstore today, and instantly knew, as I looked in vain for a bio or blurbs on the gorgeous, attention-luring cut-out book jacket, that it was a McSweeney's publication. (The other book I was weighing in my hand was Dave Eggers' Lost Boys of Sudan novel What is the What, which I've heard is a must-read.) Here's a couple graphs from an essay from the Chabon. He's one of the most entertaining writers there is, along with Larry McMurtry and Tom Wolfe, which doesn't mean they shouldn't be taken seriously.

Entertainment has a bad name. Serious people learn to mistrust and even to revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights. It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of a movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jägermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a "Street Fighter" machine grunting solipsistically in a corner of an ice-rink arcade. Entertainment trades in cliché and product placement. It engages regions of the brain far from the centers of discernment, critical thinking, ontological speculation. It skirts the black heart of life and drowns life's lambency in a halogen glare. Intelligent people must keep a certain distance from its productions. They must handle the things that entertain them with gloves of irony and postmodern tongs. Entertainment, in short, means junk, and too much junk is bad for you -- bad for your heart, your arteries, your mind, your soul.

But maybe these intelligent and serious people, my faithful straw men, are wrong. Maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted -- indeed, we have helped to articulate -- such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment. The brain is an organ of entertainment, sensitive at any depth and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense we get the entertainment we deserve.

Oprah Winfrey interviewed Tom Cruise again and revisited the scene of the couch-jumping incident, among other things, reports Marc Malkin:

The Telluride segment is set to air on Friday. Then on May 5, Cruise will return to Winfrey’s Chicago studio nearly three years after his couch jumping fiasco. So why so much Cruise? It’s the 25th anniversary of his breakout movie, Risky Business.

New York indie vets Ted Hope and Christine Vachon, long-time collaborators and friends, have launched a new Plum TV show, Very Independent Producers, reports Filmmaker Magazine.

One of the most anticipated films at Cannes is screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener. That's because Cannes is all about auteurs, and Kaufman is one of the few writers whose films are instantly identifiable as his, no matter who directs them, from Michel Gondry to Spike Jonze. (The one director who didn't allow him to collaborate during production, interestingly, was George Clooney on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.) And Kaufman's the only director making his debut in the Cannes competition. We will find out, finally, if his director chops measure up to his writer skills.

Here's a rare photo of Kaufman, who hates having his picture taken. He plays the game of being very shy and press-averse, but he's actually just as canny about getting attention paid to him as most successful people on Hollywood.

Amazingly, the dumb-male stoner comedy sequel Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Tina Fey's smart female comedy Baby Mama are earning equivalently middling reviews. Harold and Kumar is 53% Rotten on the Tomatometer, and so is Baby Mama. Here are Variety's reviews of Baby Mama and Harold and Kumar. At a Variety conference table meeting last week, one guy asked, "who wants to see Baby Mama?", clearly expecting universal agreement that it was a must-to-avoid. Several women, including me, instantly chimed up, "we do!"

The potboiler Deception, on the other hand, is in the Rotten Tomato doghouse, with a 9 % rotten critics rating.

Here's Variety's weekend forecast. UPDATE: Baby Mama is soundly beating Harold and Kumar.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/25/08 7:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay “Go” 18%

Iron Man “Go” 12%

Forgetting Sarah Marshall “Go” 11%

Baby Mama “Go” 8%

The Forbidden Kingdom “Go” 6%

I managed to convince Paramount to show me Iron Man earlier this week, and grabbed director Jon Favreau for a phone interview from the European leg of his round-the-world press tour, from Paris to Rome to the London Premiere. Here's my Iron Man column, which even explains why Samuel Jackson and Hilary Swank aren't in the movie.

The movie rocks, in case you were wondering. It's light-on-its-feet, nimbly blending comedy, action, and VFX. Robert Downey, Jr. as a 60s-style playboy weapons