As I head off for an unplugged holiday weekend--to a pal's Idyllwild hideaway with no wifi (thanks Lili)--here are some weekend links.

We will see how Michael Mann's Public Enemies fares: usually, if the highbrow critics on Metacritic grant a movie a 71 ranking and the masses at Rotten Tomatoes vote with 58 %, that's a bad sign for playability, even if Johnny Depp gets folks on the first weekend. Time Out asserts that Mann is running on empty. And Michael Phillips shares my concerns with the film's HD approach. Patrick McGavin begs to differ.

Mann's movie is based on the well-known Bryan Burrough book, which covers bank robber John Dillinger and his various cohorts at length. The Daily Rumpus offers a must-read "Dead Sea Scrolls" for Dillinger aficionados. Patrick Goldstein fills in details on how the ever-finicky Mann spent some of his $80 million Public Enemies budget.

The Independent asks, What ever happened to the great American film director?" I explained the problem in one of my late lamented Variety columns, entitled Studios wary of big-budget auteurs. Meanwhile The Guardian bemoans the low quality Hollywood schlockbusters.

For your viewing pleasure, The Guardian has the trailer for Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Cinematical posts an amusing spoof of the New Moon trailer.

On its surface, a movie about a dowdy middle-aged woman chef--even French cooking icon Julia Child--may not seem commercial. But several elements in this mix could make Julie & Julia, which Sony opens August 7, commercial indeed.

1. Women

One factor that people often ignore when they look at the string of recent hit chick flix such as The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me, Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! is one huge demo in the marketplace--which television is smartly tapping into--Boomer women. Older females adore 50ish movie star Meryl Streep, who's on a roll these days, and they also dig 60ish writer-director Nora Ephron, who boasts rom-com cred from her two biggest hits, 1993's Sleepless in Seattle and 1998's You've Got Mail. (It's been a while, though.)

2. Food

Movies about food are also audience faves, from Taiwan's Eat Drink Man Woman, Japan's Tampopo, Denmark's Babette's Feast and Germany's Mostly Martha to American cook-fests Big Night, Fried Green Tomatoes and Mystic Pizza. Ephron talks about cooking Julia Child recipes on the on the set of Julie & Julia. It's a smart way to get audiences salivating.

What are your favorite food movies?

Writer-director Peter Morgan's follow-up to The Deal and The Queen, The Special Relationship, will star Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton, Julianne Moore as Hillary (too thin!) and Michael Sheen as UK prime minister Tony Blair--for the third time. It will be an HBO movie, oddly enough, and the relationship describes the one between Clinton and Blair, although naturally the plot will delve into the Monica Lewinsky scandal. So who will play the zaftig White House intern who drove Clinton to risk his presidency? Well, most Hollywood actresses are too thin. Anne Hathaway could do it, if she gained a few pounds. So could HBO's own Gennifer Goodwin (Big Love). Who would you cast? Martine McCutcheon, who fell for her prime minister boss Hugh Grant in Love Actually, would be perfect, if she could do an American accent.

Sorry to say, missing an incredible opportunity to add some sizzle to his steak, Morgan insists he will use archive footage.

New Weinstein Co. honcho Tom Ortenberg has scored his first big buy, Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy, a UK feature about the early days of Beatle John Lennon. The picture has been filming for about two weeks; Ortenberg and Harvey Weinstein targeted the pic for a pre-buy in Berlin. They see the film as a possible year-end awards contender. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Lennon's Aunt Mimi, who helped raise him along with his mother Julia. The movie also details young Lennon's close relationship with Quarrymen bandmate Paul McCartney and ends when the early Beatles leave Liverpool for Hamburg, Germany to conquer the world. (I love Malcolm Gladwell's story in The Outliers about how the Beatles put in their 10,000 hours playing long sets in Hamburg.)

"It starts with the script," says Ortenberg, who describes the pic as a "relatable Beatles coming-of-age story about a young boy finding his place in the world, finding his passion, as his mother Julia introduces him to music and guitar when he's 15. There's something in it for everyone."

TWC acquired all rights, U.S., Germany, Latin America. They are planning a year end awards season release with an expansion January. Maple Pictures will release in Canada.

Press release on the jump:

Once in a rare moon you see a film made by a master auteur at the top of his game. At the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day, Mike Leigh and I took the gondola up the mountain to see Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments. We both came out of the theater enthralled, agreeing that it was one of the best films we'd seen in years. It's a crowning achievement. Troell earned four Oscar nominations for his third film, 1971's The Emigrants, starring the young Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, including Best Picture, followed by its sequel, The New Land. The director is revered in Sweden, where he has worked deliberately in films and television over the decades.

IFC picked up this tough period drama--based on a true story--about a poor, uneducated woman (Maria Heiskanen) with a lunky husband and a large family who learns how to take photographs. Operating his own camera, Troell creates visual poetry. This heartachingly beautiful film opened in limited release Friday.

Here's the review from the LAT's Kenneth Turan, the NYT feature on Troell, and the trailer.

On the media recession front, I learned from Greg Hernandez in the press bleachers at the Oscars that he was losing his job at the Daily News. Well, he wasted no time launching his own blog with a gay celebrity focus, Greg in Hollywood. Here's how he did it--in one week.

Diablo Cody is not only the mother of Juno and the many faces of Tara but she has also spawned Jennifer's Body, starring hottie Megan Fox as a possessed mean-girl cheerleader gone very wrong. Think Carrie meets the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Karyn Kusama directs, Jason Reitman produces. (EW has a preview in their current issue which I can't find online.) It's due in the fall. UPDATE: And Cody is producing a script with Mason Novick called Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, written by ex-reader Geoff LaTulippe.

Never to waste a moment licking his Oscar wounds, Clint Eastwood talks to The Guardian about Gran Torino and his upcoming Mandela, based on the book by John Carlin. Morgan Freeman will star in the title role.

Trekmovie.com tours the new USS Enterprise. I know the J.J. Abrams movie looks commercial. It may charge up another next generation of fans. But this ship doesn't ring "Trek" to me. Isn't that important here?

An Education's Carey Mulligan is the toast not only of Sundance, but Berlin.

Variety owner Reed Elsevier negotiates to extend its loans.

Milk scripter Dustin Lance Black, 34, tearfully accepted the Writers Guild Award for best original screenplay for Milk Saturday night by calling up the ghost of slain San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, the man who inspired Black when he moved to the Bay Area from San Antonio, Texas as a closeted gay 13-year-old. "I want to thank God for making my dreams come true," said Black, who was raised a Mormon, "and for giving us Harvey Milk."

Here are all the WGA winners, including non-attendee Simon Beaufoy, who won for Slumdog Millionaire's adapted screenplay, and Ari Folman, for the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, which is on track to win the best foreign film Oscar.

Black had earlier accepted the WGA's Paul Selvin Civil Rights award. "This is a spec script," he told the writers. "It wasn't the easiest subject matter to pursue; it's pretty gay. Why would I spend five years with this Harvey Milk guy? It's the longest relationship I've ever had. His message of hope allowed me to dream, and to heal."

Black exhorted the gay community to learn from Milk's message: "Be proud, represent yourself, reach out," he said. He criticized the anti-prop 8 organizers for not pursuing outreach and education, of not following Milk's model of grassroots activism. When he told Cleve Jones, the character played by Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant's Milk, that he was getting the Selvin award, Jones told him, "Civil rights? We don't have them, and we want them." Black quoted Milk, who said, "If they demand the real thing, I find, they can get it."

Now is the time to think big, said Black, who asked the federal government to follow the model of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ensure equal rights to GLBT people. "It's bigger than 8," he said. "Harvey Milk and the movies inspire people to dream big. That's how change really happens."

As far as the Academy Award voting goes, while Beaufoy will likely repeat his win, Black is competing with a rival, Wall-E writer-director Andrew Stanton (animated films are not eligible for WGA awards). Ballots are due on February 17; the Oscarcast is on February 22.

The Producers Guild vote is revealing. Its top five:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

The list will be the same for the Oscar on January 22, methinks. I went over the categories for each of the top contenders. These five films have more deep support from the Academy branches than any of their competitors, including Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Gran Torino, The Wrestler and Wall-E.

Peter Morgan is parlaying his current status as the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood into his first directing gig, the third installment of his Tony Blair trilogy, starring Frost/Nixon's Michael Sheen as the British prime minister. Kathy Kennedy, who set up Morgan's script Hereafter at DreamWorks for director Clint Eastwood, will produce.

The question is, who should play Bill Clinton? John Travolta played him in Mike Nichols' Primary Colors. Got any suggestions?

It's an honorable profession, charactor actor. No shame in it.

Brit theater star Michael Sheen is one of those actors still pushing to break out to leading man status. He thought he might get there with Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, the ultimate two-hander. The 1977 television face-off between cheery TV host David Frost (desperately seeking massive ratings) and shamed and embittered ex-president Richard M. Nixon (desperately seeking redemption) was first dramatized by writer Peter Morgan (The Queen) for theater, then screen.

Director Ron Howard decided to keep the London and Broadway stars for the movie. Somehow, what played as an equal match between two fierce adversaries on stage winds up dominated by the external Langella on-screen--partly because Sheen felt he needed to keep things subtle and internal for the cameras.

Somehow Sheen got lost in the Oscar shuffle last time around as Prime Minister Tony Blair in Morgan and Stephen Frears' The Queen, which wound up grabbing six Oscar noms and one win (for best actress Helen Mirren). This time, both Langella and Sheen will be in the hunt for best actor Gold.

But Oscar-blogger Tom O'Neil at The LAT's The Envelope is pushing Sheen to accept supporting actor status. It may not seem fair--without him, Langella couldn't do what he does as Nixon-- but it's likely the strongest shot Sheen has to score an Oscar nom. "These are pundits, not voters," says Sheen's PR rep. "He's a lead, always has been and always will be."

When I saw Sheen over the summer, the Welsh-born actor was wearing long hair extensions for his starring role as a powerful werewolf leader in Patrick Tatopoulous's Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans, which Screen Gems will release in January. Bizarrely, the franchise was launched by the director Len Weisman, now married to Underworld's star vampire Kate Beckinsale, Sheen's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his nine-year-old daughter.

Underworld underscores Sheen's willingness to embrace "versatility," he says. "I enjoy the challenge of playing lots of different characters and having people accept me as that character." But there's a downside to that approach, he admits: you never create a brand identity.

The trick with Frost/Nixon was taking the role Sheen played to such acclaim on the London stage and recalibrating for Broadway audiences the jetset playboy TV host who was far more famous in Britain. Nixon was familiar to both audiences, but "in America, I couldn't take anything for granted," Sheen says. "We did a lot of rewriting, taking out British references that wouldn't track. It became broader as we tried to get audiences to care about this man."

When Working Title and Imagine's film adaptation was announced, Sheen was the first man in, the day after Frost/Nixon opened on Broadway, followed by Langella (after a brief flirtation with Warren Beatty). The Queen's Oscar push helped Sheen to land the role, he thinks, after a year of doing Frost on stage.

As challenging as the transition from London to Broadway was the one from stage to screen. "It's a mistake to try to make things that work on stage work on film," Sheen says. "There's a huge difference in presentation. In the theater, you're going to the audience, you're subtly dominating their attention. Film is about listening, being in the moment, trusting that they will find you. It's counterintuitive. In film, presentation is death. You have to be there, trust that you know the character with so much richness and detail, and let the camera find it. I had to let go of everything and do nothing. It's tempting to play to the audience of 60 people around you on set. But you're finished if you do."

Sheen remains in demand for a wide range of roles. Already in the can is yet another movie written by Morgan, the Brit soccer flick The Damned United, directed by Tom Hooper (John Adams). In it Sheen plays an outrageous, controversial, alcoholic, anti-heroic, arrogant, charismatic soccer coach. "Peter has a knack for making subjects accessible," he says. "Initially, Frost/Nixon and The Queen were both a hard sell."

Back when they shot the TV movie The Deal, the first time Sheen played Tony Blair, Frears talked about finding the right tone, Sheen says. "One foot out of place and it would all fall apart." With The Queen, "we had the confidence that we knew what we were doing."

Next he shoots Gregor Jordan's Unthinkable, opposite Samuel L. Jackson, and is set to play a role in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

I ran into Steven Soderbergh this weekend at the AFI Fest Che party. He's going to start filming Cleopatra in April. "What's your favorite musical?" I asked him. Pause. He said his inspiration for the 3D musical was Rita Hayworth as Gilda. That's the stylized, ripe tone he's going for, he said. The movie will be shot with with hi-def Red cameras and star as the Egyptian queen Chicago's Catherine Zeta Jones (who worked with Soderbergh on Traffic).

Mark Olsen writes up Che, which Jeff Wells remains ga-ga over. I still think Soderbergh could have wrestled Che into submission at a more audience-friendly length. But all power to him. He's never, ever dull: he just wrapped filming his latest no-budget 2929 movie, The Girlfriend Experience, with porn star Sasha Grey.

Here's a clip from the Che press conference at Toronto.

[Photo of Steven Soderbergh by Jeff Wells]

Milk is far better than I was expecting it to be, even after reading Todd McCarthy's positive review. It had been described to me as small, political, an acting vehicle for Sean Penn. It's far more than that.

First of all, Dustin Lance Black's script is as lean and disciplined as Gus Van Sant's direction. (And that is not always true of Van Sant, although his recent indie films have been spare, even austere.) There is nothing indulgent about this film. Every actor is well cast, and Penn's performance is towering, detailed, specific, poignant. As easy as it can be to dislike Penn the man (pick your poison), you can't dismiss this performance, because he makes you care deeply about this guy. Penn will be nominated, in a competitive year.

Milk is the perfect Academy movie--moving, and political, especially in an Election year with Proposition 8 on the California ballot--and could get to Best Picture. It reminds us of how far we've come, in a short time, and how far we still have to go.

Yes, there are other political movies in contention this awards season. But Ron Howard and Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon is somehow stuck in the past, contained, small, and less fun than the play. It's somber, lacks that edge of humor, the equal force of two strong personalities going head to head in real time. On-screen, with close-ups and editing, Frank Langella dominates as Nixon, and Michael Sheen diminishes as Frost, through no fault of his acting. It's about screen charisma. Oliver Stone's Nixon, finally, had more depth and Shakespearean grandeur.

Stone's W. is fine, but slightly misses the mark, through bad timing, mostly. Josh Brolin is brilliant as W., but Milk's Dan White is an ill-defined part--we don't get under the skin of this guy to understand his neurosis. The rest of Milk's supporting ensemble, James Franco, Diego Luna and Emile Hirsch, are all strong in small roles that aren't showy enough to take them to supporting actor noms. Because of W., Brolin could get a nom on Milk's coattails. I was most impressed with Franco (who made comedy look easy in Pineapple Express). My one wee complaint: Danny Elfman's music was a tad treakly.

I could see picture, director, screenplay, actor, editor.

Here's the trailer:

Ah, the hazards of foreign language filmmaking in a digital age. At a recent morning press screening of Steven Soderbergh's Che at the Landmark Cinema in Westwood, a gaggle of media waited as the movie they were watching unfolded in Spanish. But something was missing. "Was it so authentic that there weren't any subtitles?" one editor wondered. "The English parts were few and far between." After ten to fifteen minutes, someone finally complained.

The publicist told the group: "There are supposed to be subtitles." It turns out the projectionist was working with a digital print and didn't know how to turn them on. Eventually, everyone took off.

Bill Block has grown up … and grown into a new role.

Once known as an attention-seeking, gun-collecting, hotshot InterTalent and ICM agent and onetime head of Artisan Entertainment, Block is now co-chief of QED Intl., the 2-year-old financing, sales and production company backed by $10 million in private equity and whose riskiest play to date is the complete financing of Oliver Stone’s $30 million W.

The George W. Bush biopic and pseudo-satire launches on 2,100 screens Oct. 17 — two weeks ahead of the presidential election. It’s going out via Lionsgate, backed by another $25 million from print-and-ad fund Omnilab.

The politically charged pic was unable to land a studio or a specialty distrib, not even Paramount, which released Stone’s last picture, World Trade Center.
But Block believed W was too big an opportunity to pass up. “It was relevant and the right moment to get this movie out before the election,” he says.

While he still has a lean and hungry look and can talk the talk as glibly as any Hollywood player, Block has morphed into a fiftyish family man in charge of his own destiny. Now that Summit and Mandate have moved into bigger arenas, QED occupies the same space as Myriad, Essential, Voltage and Lakeshore. (QED shares Beverly Hills offices with Block’s former ICM colleague Ken Kamins’ Key Creatives.)
Block approached producer Moritz Borman and Stone as they were shopping for backing. QED financed W with its own equity plus key presales in France, Germany, the U.K. and Australia, all lined up before the start of production.

Lionsgate came in last as production was under way in Louisiana. The distrib (which has taken on other divisive pics such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11) was confident enough in the film’s commerciality that it did not showcase the pic at any fall film fests. “It’s not arthouse,” Block says. “The festivals wanted it. We tested it and it came back with high awareness.”

As Block suspected it might, the media has helped to boost the hot-button movie, from full-court treatment in the Los Angeles Times to the cover of Entertainment Weekly months in advance of the pic’s release. The arrest of W stars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright after they resisted leaving a Shreveport bar at the request of local police unexpectedly turned out to be a boon, attracting an avalanche of global coverage.

Block very much needs W to succeed, as QED’s first few releases have been strictly low-profile.

The Hunting Party, starring Richard Gere, was a casualty of the Weinsteins’ transition from Miramax to their new company. And Neil Burger’s The Lucky Ones,”starring Tim Robbins and Rachel McAdams and released by Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions, was dead on arrival in its Sept. 28 bow, another example of audience disinterest in Iraq War movies.

Next up for QED: the Peter Jackson-produced alien thriller District 9, which is in the can and will be released next August by Sony.

The lessons learned so far at Artisan and QED, Block says: “Don’t make anything under $10 million, and go for commercial movies with a wide release.”

Anxiously scanning W’s tracking numbers, Block says: “The big spend starts now.”

[Illustration courtesy of GQ]

The NYT's Michael Cieply takes the measure of the Toronto Fest lineup, from fall releases that need all the media help they can get--such as Iraq-themed The Lucky Ones and former WIP police pic Pride & Glory--to new pics for sale, like Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as a broken fighter.

One film that is negotiating a final distribution deal is Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus, two-part Che, which debuted to mixed response at Cannes. While I still think Che's ideal home would be HBO, where smart audiences who would best appreciate the movie could settle down with its full running time on their own terms, I'm betting that the film will wind up in the hands of 2929 Entertainment moguls Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who backed Soderbergh's 2005 day-and-date experiment, Bubble. Why not take Che and give it the old Magnolia Ultra VOD treatment?

One way or the other, expect a Che distrib announcement soon.

Here are some of the high points of the Che press conference Thursday:

"The process of editing was intense," said director Steven Soderbergh. "The further you get into it, you need context. That's why you need two movies."

Soderbergh visited Cuba five times but never met Che Guevara cohort Fidel Castro: "I was told, 'Pedro may call you.' He has a reputation for calling at 2 am and saying 'Come over. Let's talk.' I also heard that he likes to stop the film and talk about it when it moves him to. This film he may not survive."

Soderbergh admired Water Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the young Ernesto Guevara: "Walter's movie is really an Act One. With these, now it's a trilogy."

He defended his film's friendly approach to the iconic and polarizing revolutionary: "I've read the anti-Che literature out there. I get the arguments. I feel there's no amount of barbarity I could put on the screen that would satisfy them."

The shoot was rough and tumble:

"On the set I told the actors that I'm not going to be able to take care of you. I'm just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it.

It sounds like he wants to use Smello-vision: "I wish we could transit the smell to the screen. There was a smell on the set."

[Photo of press conference by Jeffrey Wells]

In retrospect, the MGM-UA idea is starting to look suspect.

When movie star Tom Cruise and partner Paula Wagner had a producing pact at Paramount, a studio controlled the purse strings, with the power to say no.

But put Cruise and Wagner in charge of a studio, and you have Wagner assembling a slate on the one hand, but who does she answer to? Cruise! And CAA (and husband Rick Nicita) are helping to package projects like Lions for Lambs, which was doomed to be a noble failure from the start. From Cruise/Wagner's perspective, coming from big-studio projects, at $35 million Lambs probably seemed like a modest effort. But it was still too expensive for what it was. Its $15 million domestic gross (of which less than half is returned to the studio) didn't cover its marketing costs. It also earned $42 million overseas. The just-launched DVD release will have to bring the movie into the black.

And Valkyrie is a perfect storm. I hear that director Bryan Singer, who has runaway director tendencies anyway, has run up a $90-million negative tab, which probably seemed reasonable to him, since he was coming off the $200-million Superman Returns. Because Cruise had to promote the opening of Lions for Lambs, Singer postponed three key scenes of the Valkyrie shoot, including one big battle sequence in North Africa. (That's when Cruise's Nazi officer loses his right hand, plus two fingers from his left hand, and an eye.)

But pushing the movie's release date back twice has made it look like tainted goods. Cruise and Wagner took a calculated risk pushing it back to February, knowing that an October date was facing off against the looming Presidential election. As soon as Wolfman and the Pink Panther sequel moved off of Presidents Day, UA jumped on the date. Their October weekend usually yields a b.o. of about $55 million, the thinking went, as opposed to Prexy Day, which usually generates about three times that. Singer and Cruise signed off on the promise of a possible Superbowl spot, Berlin Film Fest launch, and a bigger boxoffice bonanza.

They must have known how the town would react. When you say: "No, we don't have a summer movie, it's a fall movie," it really means: "we don't have a commercial movie that will stand up to the competition in wide release, but a quality smart film with possible Oscar potential that needs critics, so we'll go for fall." But push that same movie again into February, and it conjures up All the Kings Men, which was too weak to earn rave reviews and had no identifiable core audience.

The trouble with the whole MGM construct is that a decision about making or picking up a movie for release has to be based on a slew of market equations. Targeting your audience is crucial. Just because Hot Director Bryan Singer and Major Star Tom Cruise want to make a period movie about a Nazi hero doesn't make it worth $90-million (not to mention marketing costs). (Much as I loved it, Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men shouldn't have cost that much either. Who was the audience?)

MGM CEO Harry Sloan was smart to hire Mary Parent to run MGM. She will run studio production, marketing and distribution. (That's why Rick Sands is out.) She will be damn sure to pick movies she can market. That's half the battle. And Hollywood sat up and took notice of this move, because they know that Parent gets it.

Tackling a biopic about a well-known figure is always tricky--Ray, Hurricane, 8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, and Schindler's List come to mind. Thus Notorious, George Tillman's movie about gangsta rapper Christopher G. Wallace (or Notorious B.I.G.), gunned down in his prime at age 24 in 1997, is rife with issues, reports the NYT's Michael Cieply. Journalist Cheo Hodari Coker worked on a screenplay for years, followed by Reggie Rock Bythewood. Now the film starts shooting for Fox Searchlight in Brooklyn next week. How close to all the details of B.I.G.'s life the movie will be, remains unclear.

[Photo of Jamal Woolard as Notorious B.I.G.]

UPDATE: P. Diddy is fighting mad at the LAT over its assertion he was linked to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.

Here's the most recent LAT story and the original.

Here is Sean "Diddy" Combs' Monday statement:

"This story is a lie. It is beyond ridiculous and is completely false. Neither Biggie (Wallace) nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during or after it happened."

This recently discovered 1888 photo is racing around the Internet, revealing the allure that blind-deaf girl Helen Keller still holds. No other known photo shows her holding a doll--which was the first word Sullivan taught her.

Arthur Penn's 1962 movie The Miracle Worker, based on William Gibson's Broadway play, won Oscars for both Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.

Over the weekend, David Poland at Movie City News reported that Harvey Weinstein was planning to push Cate Blanchett as best actress for I'm Not There, rather than supporting. Which didn't necessarily mean that the Golden Globes, SAG and the Academy would go along with it. UPDATE: And it doesn't mean Weinstein will take this route, either, it turns out. "Nothing is changing," said one Weinstein Co. spokeswoman. These games are often played. In this case, some of the
I'm Not There folks are pushing for TWC to make this change. Blanchett is off Down Under doing a play, but apparently has no intention of backing off her support for Elizabeth, which Universal has been backing handsomely via "for your consideration" ads. If Blanchett were to withdraw her support for an Elizabeth push, she might land best actress, but she's weaker in that category. She was a surefire winner in supporting.

Poland didn't check with TWC to verify the assertion of his good source, he admits. And his weekly memo to his Gurus of Gold voters told them to place Blanchett in the best actress category.

So why take the chance? Economics. Even a nomination in the lead categories means more in global boxoffice and DVD sales than supporting does. Think Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. That movie did far better than it would have done otherwise. And I'm Not There is strictly an art-house play without some Oscar attention.

Here's a Blanchett clip that's been on YouTube for a while:

And the real-life limo video of John Lennon and Bob Dylan that may have inspired it:

[Posted by Daniel Frankel]
Judd Apatow suffers no deficiency of buzz these days. Still, establishing early media momentum for his next film — the music biopic send-up Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, starring John C. Reilly and co-helmed by longtime collaborator Jake Kasdan — probably couldn’t hurt.

With that in mind, Apatow, Kasdan and Reilly hosted a noontime Sony-lot lunch reception for handful of press and studio staff Thursday, followed by a short screening featuring 20 minutes of footage from the unfinished film, which is set to bow Dec. 21. The aptly titled Walk Hard throws hard, too, with the subtle, layered curveballs of Apatow’s recent Knocked Up and Superbad giving way straight-ahead spoofery.

Noting a lifelong affinity for popular music that was partly nurtured by his grandfather, a former record exec who once managed the career of Janis Joplin, Apatow says the film broadly targets the entire music-biopic genre. However, from minute one it’s apparent that those who haven’t seen 2005’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line will have a tough time fully grasping all the gags.

Pic even features The Office’s Jenna Fischer duetting with Reilly, a la Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter and Joaquin Phoenix’s Cash, only with far more suggestive lyrics. Whether or not Apatow’s Airplane! shtick actually flies was indiscernible based on a small home-field screening featuring mostly studio personnel. But within the footage there were clearly some can’t-miss moments, such as a scene featuring Jack Black, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Rudd and Justin Long sending up the The Beatles on their legendary Indian sojourn. “We were having trouble casting that, then Justin Long shows up and just happens to have a George Harrison impression in his back pocket,” Apatow recalls.

In fact, the strong comedic supporting cast — which also includes The Daily Show’s Ed Helms and SNL’s Tim Meadows and Chris Parnell — brings to mind another robustly ensembled laugher that was successfully counter-programmed into the same frame last year, Night at the Museum, which went on to gross more than $573 million worldwide.

In any event, Apatow’s roll will likely continue uninterrupted regardless of the outcome. Notable was a Sony publicist trying to excuse Reilly from the Q&A early, since he had to get back across the lot to another ongoing comedy project, Step Brothers. “Wait a second, he can stay a few more minutes,” Apatow interrupted. “I’m the producer of Step Brothers. Who’s going to get mad? Me at me?”

The NYT's David Carr writes up the current vogue for rock-inspired movies.

Moliere uses the same tactic: take a famous writer and use their writing as the source for a movie about them. Shakespeare in Love did it more successfully. Becoming Jane, starring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen, doesn't ring true at all. For once I completely agree with Richard Schickel. But this femme blogger, on the other hand, adores the movie, which earned a 55 ranking on Metacritic.

I'm of the school that thou shalt not Americanize and make contemporary period Brit subjects. Let the Brits do their own thing. Yes, Gwenyth Paltrow can do a British accent. So can Renee Zellweger. But Anne Hathaway seems athletically feminist, and not at all period. On the other hand, it opened well in limited release...Miramax, at least, seems to know how to market it. As usual, women are starving for summer pictures geared to them.

While it's true that Tom Cruise is playing a Nazi who was out to assassinate Adolf Hitler, it's still a tad discomforting to see Cruise in full Nazi regalia.

Effusive movie director Brett Ratner texts just like he talks: with exclamation points. I emailed him today asking him if he is indeed, as internet rumors suggest, considering casting Paris Hilton in his upcoming (still in development) biopic of Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner. Here's his response:

That's one of the funniest questions I have ever heard!!! Of course not!!!! That's the rumors on the internet. Please don't believe what you read!!! I also heard she was running for president!!!

I have a weakness for French costume epics, especially the light-hearted bodice-ripping variety. So I couldn't resist checking out the new The Landmark in Westwood where Laurent Tirard's Moliere was showing, starring the divine Romain Duris (The Beat My Heart Skipped) in the title role as a womanizing comedy actor/playwright and the equally luscious Laura Morante as the object of his affections. As always, Fabrice Lucchini is hilarious and never dull.

Although it took me a while to find the poorly marked theaters, which are west of Westwood Boulevard, I settled into my seat to enjoy the well-mounted escapist romp which Sony Pictures Classics will release here on July 27. I had read that the theaters were designed so badly that when people come and go, the doors flood the screen with light. It's true, and far worse than I expected. That's something you learn in Theater-Building 101!

Otherwise, the new Landmark complex seems pleasant enough, with a Barnes & Noble bookstore and an inviting (empty) cafe. It's The Arclight Light.

Luke Y. Thompson's review

Jodie Foster has been threatening to play legendary Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (The Triumph of the Will) for some seven years. Before her death in 2003, Riefenstahl wasn't thrilled; Foster didn't proceed at the time because the German filmmaker was demanding too much control over her own story. Now it looks like the project is gaining steam, as Foster has found a script she likes and is seeking a director. Riefenstahl is a fascinating woman, at once a brilliant filmmaker and propagandist as well as a Nazi collaborator. How much did she really sympathize? That is the question.

Foster picks her roles carefully. This summer she stars in the thriller The Brave One; she's going off to Australia to film the family film Nim's Island with Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin for Fox-Walden. That will be finished by early fall. Another long-in-the-works project based on a Marie Brenner article, Sugarland, is still in development.

I know, I've already watched the Helen Mirren version, not to mention Bette Davis and Erroll Flynn's Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. But I can't get enough of Queen Elizabeth, obviously. Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen? I am so there. We'll have to wait til the fall season.

OK, I'm an Anglophile with a jones for the Royals, in this case The Tudors. Check out this trailer, which is actually a tad risible in the way it edits the multiple beddings of Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers):

If you don't want to wait until April to watch it on Showtime (or you don't subscribe, and don't want to wait for Netflix), you can see Henry VIII "as Hot, Sexy Monarch -- For Free!" on Amazon Unbox. Right now!