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 mogul and anti-superhero and Gwenyth Paltrow as his updated Miss Moneypenny have real chemistry. And yes, Marvel and the Iron Man team have got themselves a franchise. Fantasy Moguls Steve Mason has upped his prediction of how the movie will open on May 2 from $60 million to $100 million, the kind of b.o. forecasting that is giving Paramount execs heartburn.

Here's the first of Variety.com's ongoing look at summer blockbusters. And here are Todd McCarthy's Iron Man reviews for Variety and Reelz:

Variety columnist/blogger Army Archerd is the kind of guy who can flip through his rolodex and call Shirley Temple on her 80th birthday. She'll even talk to him. And tell him how she broke her arm.

One of the surprises in the Cannes program line-up was a special presidential jury screening of Alison Thompson's The Third Wave. Of course the jury prexy this year is Sean Penn, who asked the Cannes fest to unspool the film.

I called up Penn's reps and got the following comment from him: "The Third Wave is truly a must-see for ourselves, our children and everyone we know, for anyone who has two good legs and a dollar in their pocket. It inspires the very best in us, just when we need that most. It comes as close to answering our purpose in life as any film in recent memory."

The film was shot after the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster by four indie volunteers who flew to Sri Lanka to see if they could help. They rented a van, filled it with supplies, and drove along the coast, stumbling onto Peraliya, a tribal village that was totally devastated by a 40-foot tsunami wave, leaving more than 2500 people dead.

The movie documents the strange year-long odyssey of these four volunteers as they set up a first aid station and took charge of a refugee camp of over three thousand people. The villagers slowly turned against them when the world's donated tsunami money never showed up. But they persevered, and helped to rebuild the village.

The Third Wave is being sold at the fest by Cinetic Media's John Sloss.

The director's statement is on the jump:

Well, the Hobbit shoe has finally dropped, and Guillermo del Toro has committed to direct the movie for New Line Cinema. There is rejoicing throughout the land, I suspect. If it wasn't going to be Peter Jackson (who is exec producing with Fran Walsh), Pan's Labyrinth helmer Del Toro is just about a perfect match for this J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy. It will be cool.

UPDATE: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir thinks Del Toro is a terrible idea. I would argue that it all depends on how willing Del Toro is to stay close to the world created by Jackson. It would be foolish to go too far astray, either from the original book (the success if the Jackson/Walsh trilogy derives from their faithfulness to Tolkien) or the blockbuster trilogy. O'Hehir makes some good points about the larger business picture here (Jackson is a tycoon now in the George Lucas mold, basically). But I would argue that Del Toro is grabbing an opportunity to do a movie that he can score with and that he and Jackson are a good aesthetic fit. This is not your standard cynical sequel. Del Toro's not going to do a hack job here, and Jackson won't let him. They'll have control over it, not some studio. They are both artists first, businessmen second. Does that sound naive? Well, ok, it won't do Del Toro any harm over the long haul to bank some b.o. hits so he can do the other stuff that may not be so overtly commercial.

The 2008 boxoffice has been dismal so far, and has dipped from last year. But May is looming and with it the promise of some light and nifty summer movie nourishment. Pam McClintock predicts a boffo May boxoffice, launched by what promises to be a mighty Iron Man.

Cannes has announced Critics' Week and the opening night film for the Director's Fortnight. Jerzy Skolimowski returned to Poland to direct Four Nights with Anna, his first film since 1991.

Posted by Peter Debruge:
At a time when most rep houses seem to be in hot water, Los Angeles’ New Beverly packed ’em in last night for the finale of “Dante’s Inferno,” two weeks of forgotten classics guest programmed by Joe Dante. While many of the director's picks were obscure, none could compete with “The Movie Orgy,” a marathon 4½-hour clip show Dante first assembled in 1968 with Jon Davison, then put on ice for nearly four decades.

Understand, The Movie Orgy isn’t a proper movie but an exercise in extreme film geekdom, as Dante and Davison spliced 16mm trailers, clips, newsreel footage, bloopers and old TV shows together to form a semi-linear commentary on/reaction against the time. Over the years, the project has earned a borderline apocryphal reputation, called by some the “Rosetta Stone” of Dante’s career — a glimpse deep into the filmmaker’s id — and it’s a testament to the city’s cult film scene that so many stayed for the entire show. (Full report after the jump.)

Roger Ebert was on the road to recovery from an unsuccessful operation to restore his speech when he tripped and fell at his rehab facility and fractured his hip. Poor man. He's unhappy that he can't attend his annual Ebertfest in Urbana, Illinois, which opened last night. Here's his entry on his new blog.

Karina Longworth reveals this frightening photo from the set of Woody Allen's latest picture, starring Larry David as the latest in a long line of Woody substitutes. (I have long wished that Allen would bring back my fave, Bullets Over Broadway's John Cusack.) I find David hard enough to take on the intimate home screen; I can't imagine what it will be like to be assaulted in large-scale mode.

The Cannes Film Fest announced its lineup Wednesday, and lo and behold, Steven Soderbergh's two Che films were included in the competition after all, as one four-hour entry. There had been some question if Soderbergh could finish the pics in time. Clint Eastwood's The Changeling and Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York are the three American films in the competition. Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda will show out of competition. Spielberg will return to the Croisette for the first time since The Color Purple in 1986. New films from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Walter Salles, Wim Wenders and Atom Egoyan will also be in competition. The opening and closing films have not been announced--Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, an Agnes Varda doc and Barry Levison's What Just Happened? were expected to be in the line-up.

Sean Penn will lead the main jury, comprised of Sergio Castellitto, Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuaron, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Alexandra Maria Lara, and Rachid Bouchareb. UPDATE: Penn has programmed a U.S. film by Alison Thompson, The Third Wave, as a special jury president presentation. Interestingly, Penn won an Oscar for Mystic River under the direction of competition director Eastwood, so that complicates the jury/competition dynamic just a tad.

Americans Abel Ferrara, Kelly Reichert and James Toback have films in the official Un Certain Regard selection, while David Lynch sprig Jennifer Lynch of Boxing Helena fame is in the midnight category.

The full line-up is on the jump:

Stateside, the Tribeca Film Fest kicked off Wednesday night in New York with Tina Fey's comedy Baby Mama. Still to unspool are David Mamet's jujitsu drama Redbelt, Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure and the Wachowski's family FX adventure Speed Racer.

Demand is so over-heated for Iron Man--which word is, may actually be good--that Paramount is planning to play the game of debuting the film the night before, on May 1. The Arclight in L.A. is selling tickets to a Thursday night midnight show. At the same time the studio is worried that the film may be overhyped, so it's trying to keep most media breaks closer to release and not overheat expectations that this will be one BEHEMOTH of an opening. If Paramount says $45 million, expect as much as $70 million. Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason reports that tracking is pointing toward a huge Iron Man opening of $60 million plus.

Here's one example of who's coming out of Iron Man way ahead: Robert Downey Jr., who talks to EW here.

Clint Eastwood will complete The Changeling in time for a Cannes launch, reports Todd McCarthy. Woody Allen's new film has also found a Cannes fest berth after all. And Thierry Fremaux is crossing his fingers and waiting for Soderbergh.

In need of cash to pay down his debts, Tribune Co's Sam Zell is selling Newsday to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which would now own three of New York's major metropolitan newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. Regulatory issues could scotch the sale. Here's Variety, and Vanity Fair's long takeout on Murdoch at the time of the WSJ sale.

In related media news, editor Marcus W. Brauchli is expected to leave the WSJ, only four months after Murdoch acquired the paper.

[Murdoch photo-illo courtesy Vanity Fair, by Michael Elins and Peter Morgan]

One of the upsides of a bomb like 88 Minutes is that it inspires critics to pan it with pleasure, zest, and outright glee. Six per cent on the Tomatometer is about as low as you can go. (UPDATE: Patrick Goldstein examines the plight of the older actor trying to meet his asking price in Hollywood.)

On Ebert & Roeper, Michael Phillips and Richard Roeper actually agreed that this was not only the worst movie of the year so far and Al Pacino's worst movie ever but probably one of the worst movies of all time, period.

Todd McCarthy in Variety writes:

"88 Minutes" can't even live up to its title. With 19 -- count 'em, 19 -- producers, including director Jon Avnet, ensuring that every aspect of the film, from the script to the star's haircut, is ludicrous in the extreme, the picture easily snatches from "Revolution" the prize as Al Pacino's career worst. Available on DVD in some territories as early as February 2007 and rolled out theatrically in France and elsewhere beginning in May of last year, this gape-inducing fiasco is getting a token domestic release that at least saves its star the indignity of a dump straight to homevid.

In a similar vein, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane writes:

The best thing about “88 Minutes” is the title. Jon Avnet’s movie bumble along for twenty minutes, at which point Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) is informed by a gravelly phone call that he has eighty-eight minutes to live. We then switch into real time, and the countdown begins, allowing us to calibrate precisely how much more of the film we have to suffer through. Avnet is setting a noble example here: if all movies were named after their running times Hollywood would instantly become a brisker place. Would Peter Jackson have dared to put us through a Tolkien trilogy called “Nine and a Quarter Hours of Elves”? I don’t think so.

Gramm is a forensic psychiatrist, who majors in serial killers. A nutcase (Neal McDonough) is in jail, awaiting execution, yet crimes identical to his are being perpetrated on the outside, and Gramm, who testified against him, is being simultaneously framed and hunted down. What follows makes absolutely no sense—a buzzing, fidgety mess of bad cinema, with people barking inquiries over their cell phones instead of enjoying what used to be called conversation. There is no basis for the criminal motives, no excuse for the slavering closeups of sadism wielded against women, and no reason that Pacino should have paused before feeding the script into his shredder. I sense a weariness in his features—an insomnia of the soul, as it were—that has nothing to do with his character and everything, I suspect, to do with his feelings for an industry that can pay him good money to prop up junk. Compare “88 Minutes” with “Sea of Love,” another murder mystery that Pacino made, in 1989, and you find him sporting the same loud ties, but everything else has leached away: suspense, credibility, wit, and the lost art of flirtation. As a result, nothing would give me keener pleasure than to reveal the identity of the killer, but a day after seeing the film I have genuinely forgotten. It was either a man or a woman, but beyond that everything is a blur. “It’s my job to be convincing,” Dr. Gramm explains. Sorry, Doc. You’re fired.

La Vie En Rose producer Alain Goldman is launching Légende Films, Inc., a subsidiary of his Paris-based production house Légende. Former Hollywood journalist Nancy Griffin (Premiere, AARP Magazine, Hit and Run, co-authored with Kim Masters) will head development and production in Los Angeles.

“We have been growing the company with the intention of developing more films for the international market," says Goldman, "and the moment is right to establish ourselves in the U.S."

Goldman has secured a new financial partnership with the French investment company Serendipity, co-owned by industrialists Bouygues and Pinault and headed by Patrick Le Lay, which now holds 35% of Légende. The company has also extended its worldwide (except U.S.) distribution deal with StudioCanal.

Founded in 1992, Légende started out with Ridley Scott’s big-bucks Christopher Columbus epic 1492. The company co-produced Martin Scorsese’s Casino with Universal and TF1 and also produced Roland Joffé’s Vatel. In France, Légende produced The Crimson Rivers 1 & 2, L'Enquête Corse, La Vie en Rose and 99 Francs. Legende has completed production on the upcoming summer release Babylon AD for Fox and StudioCanal, starring Vin Diesel.

Goldman wants to work with English-speaking directors, writers and actors on a variety of genres.

It's no shock that Liberal activist filmmaker Michael Moore has finally come out for Barack Obama, in his always persuasive way. (The man can write!) Whether this will help or hurt the candidate is another matter. We all know George Clooney is an Obama supporter, but he has been laying low on this.

My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore

April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come -- but it won't be you. We'll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.

This a strange and significant story. It was inevitable that a studio would sever its pay-TV ties and start its own movie channel with a deep library and downloads, but I didn't think it would happen this soon and in this way. It's the wave of the future, and will accelerate the pace of change. So far the studios have been talking behind closed doors about how to take charge of their own delivery windows free from the impediments of their Pay-TV deals with HBO, Starz and Showtime. But not one had been willing to walk away from millions of dollars.

Now Viacom chief Sumner Redstone has done it--but at the expense of one of his own units, CBS, which owns Showtime. When Paramount and partners MGM and Lionsgate all withdraw from Showtime, it leaves open the question of what movies the channel will show. Variety's Dade Hayes explains. Here's Reuters. And the NYT. And PaidContent. And the LAT.

Apparently Redstone and Viacom prexy and CEO Philippe Dauman realized they had an opportunity, because Paramount and Paramount Vantage's Showtime deal ended at the end of 2007, and Lionsgate and MGM's were up at the end of 2008. In effect they had a chance to get a jump on the other studios which are tied up in other deals for years to come (including Paramount sibling DreamWorks, which has a separate deal with HBO).

UPDATE: Many questions remain about how long it will take--this thing won't launch until January 2009, apparently--to set up distrib agreements with major carriers and infrastructure.

In the Sunday NYT Mag, Isabella Rossellini reveals why she wanted to dress up like a bug on the Sundance Channel's Green Porno.

Also in the NYT, the editor of CollegeHumor.com, which gets 6 million hits a month, reveals the methods behind his madness.

And Frank Rich gives the ABC Debate, the debate moderators and the media in general a piece of his mind.

Since the Screen Actors Guild launched the online web tool iActor last month, they've already added 1,000 new members and over 200 casting directors.

iActor gives every SAG actor the chance, writes SAG in an email, "to gain exposure to all SAG-signatory productions and major industry players. An industry first, iActor is the only online casting directory that allows casting directors, producers and SAG-signatory production entities the ability to source and then directly verify an actor's union eligibility for work. By taking the Station 12 cast clearance process online, SAG has delivered a powerful digital solution to what has traditionally been a complicated and time-consuming process. Now any SAG member in good standing from anywhere in the country and at any time receives the same amount of exposure to industry pros by simply uploading their resume and headshots and the service is free to SAG members and industry members."

The latest new Aston Martin commissioned for the 22nd James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was en route through Italy to the Bond set when it veered off the twisty road and plunged into Lake Garda. The driver was able to free himself and swam to shore. The car was worth $250,000.

UPDATE: Robert Bernocchi of the Italian website badtaste is all over this and sent an English report before it happened:

Hi We just published a lot of pictures from the Garda Lake set of Quantum of Solace, currently filming in Italy (sadly it's bad weather!).

They just filmed some scenes in Siena (we linked a video where Daniel Craig climbs a gutter pipe!), and then they moved to Garda Lake where this week they filmed one of the most spectacular scenes of the
movie. It's a car chase along the Gardesana, a famous and beautiful road around the lake (which is the biggest lake in Italy), between Malcesine, Limone and Tremosine: they closed the road and mounted some cameras on some Aston Martins to do some camera car. The scenes involved 40 stuntmen (half Italian and half European stuntmen), six doubles of Daniel Craig, many Aston Martin DBS (we published a video
of the camera-car) and a Black Alfa Romeo 159 (a famous Italian Car), which was the Bad Guy's Car. The scene is described as the FIRST SEQUENCE of the movie - 15 minutes where we see a spectacular car
chase, a tremendous crash and then a gunfight. This scene is a Second Unit, directed by Dan Breadley.
They'll continue filming around Garda Lake until April 25, when production moves (with Daniel Craig) in Carrara until May 13. They'll film some important scenes in the very famous quarries of marble, with a flying camera (I think they'll use cables).

You can see many pictures from the filming (thanks to the newspaper Brescia Oggi) and some videos in this article:

We'll try to get more pictures soon!

See you
Robert

Keep a Child Alive, a charity organization that sends food and medicine to AIDS patients in Africa, is debuting South African filmmaker Earle Sabastian's documentary Alicia in Africa:Journey to the Motherland, chronicling a month-long trip by Alicia Keys to South Africa, Kenya and Uganda to visit communities affected by HIV and AIDs. The film is available online for free, streaming at the official site and myspace and downloading at SpiralFrog.

Keys will also screen the Alicia in Africa trailer before each concert on her American tour, which kicked off April 19 in Virginia. Here is Keys' mission statement:

“Everyone who visits Africa is changed by the experience, but not everyone can afford to go to Africa. Come with me on my journey and learn as I learn. Let’s start a virus to stop a virus– send the film to everyone you know. Let’s change this nightmare into our generation’s greatest success story.”

Here's the trailer:

Director Jon Favreau conducts a tour of the Iron Man house.

Whenever I washed the dishes in my old Manhattan apartment, I looked at Clint Eastwood in a giant French movie poster: Le Bon, le Brut et Le Truand. Later I discovered the great spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone with classic scores by Ennio Morricone.

This June, the Austin Drafthouse's 2008 Rolling Roadshow Tour is taking its tribute to Eastwood and Leone's Dollars Trilogy to Southern Spain, where the films were shot in the 60s. The showings of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, starring Eastwood as the iconic western anti-hero The Man with No Name, will unspool on June 6-8 in Almeria, Spain. It's the first Rolling Roadshow Tour to be held outside the U.S.

Check out these clips:

Here's more on Leone's Dollars trilogy:

The Leone "Dollars" Trilogy In 1964, Sergio Leone, an assistant director of Italian "sword and sandal" movies traveled to the Almeria region of Spain to shoot a small film based on Akira Kurosawa's samurai adventure Yojimbo. The leading man was an unknown American bit-part television actor who at 34 years old was well past his matinee-idol potential. The film, was A Fistful of Dollars; the actor, Clint Eastwood. No one could have imagined the explosive force of this seemingly modest film. Sergio Leone is now considered by many film historians to be one of the most influential directors of all time. Few films have reshaped the visual style of cinema more than Sergio Leone's quintessential "Spaghetti Western" trilogy, and even fewer films elevate the filming location to the status on par with lead actor. Like John Ford's American southwest, Leone's Almeria region plays a vital role in shaping the emotion and spirit of his films. Leone's stylistic and graphic depictions of the Old West elevated a marginalized genre to an art form and influenced today's filmmakers.

Tuco Tours offer tours of all of the Sergio Leone locations in Spain.

Young Now is a cool project that asks folks to submit photos of themselves as Young me and Now Me. I found some of them very moving. It made me want to see my brother Michael.

[Hat Tip: Franklin Leonard]

The MPAA is going to the dogs, as the piracy-fighting industry org promotes its DVD sniffing black Labs Lucky and Flo with L.A. school kids. They'll make a special appearance on Monday April 21 for Clover Avenue Elementary School’s 4th and 5th grade classes. Last year a Malaysian pirate syndicate put a bounty on the dogs’ heads of $30,000. The goal: get the kids while they're young and "raise awareness about the importance of copyright protection," according to the tip sheet:

WHAT: Lucky and Flo will demonstrate how they sniff out DVDs hidden in storage containers and luggage, highlighting how they assist law enforcement authorities at raids, border crossings, and customs environments around the world. The assembly will be facilitated by Dr. Parry Aftab, founder of WiredSafety, and her award-winning Teenangels and Tweenangels who will share information with the students about responsible technology use.

*GREAT PHOTO OPPORTUNITY* - Lucky and Flo will demonstrate their amazing abilities. Children will help hide DVDs for the dogs to find.

Kevin Roderick of LA Observed will be discussing the Script Project Right of Way, the collaborative, serialized, noir drama being written by a group of writers online at La Observed, at 4:44 PM Friday on KCRW FM. It will be podcast online at KCRW.com. Right of Way has already moved into the second act with a head of steam. I joined up with the group on Facebook but haven't had the time--or the nerve--to contribute.