It's not new to post a gross-out red band trailer to sell a raunchy comedy. But still, this one for John Hamburg's I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd as a man who selects new pal Jason Segel as his best man, isn't exactly appealing. Is this any way to sell your movie? I Love You, Man opens March 20.

Writer/producer Judd Apatow (who salutes comedy on the Oscars Sunday) returns to the director's chair with Funny People, starring Adam Sandler as a stand-up comedian battling death, Seth Rogen as his weepy joke writer, and Leslie Mann as the woman Sandler loves. Trouble is, she's married to Eric Bana. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman (who is writing the music) also star. It's due July 31.

Fun reads: At Film.com, Tim Appelo begs Brad and Angelina to save the Oscars, while Mark Harris explains at The Observer that the Academy is not, contrary to popular belief, a monolith. Film Experience examines the fates of the 2004 Vanity Fair Hollywood cover girls.

When my family and I saw the trailer for Paul Blart Mall Cop over the holidays, we all knew it would be a hit. But this big? New York Mag defines a new genre: the Blart. And Stephen Schaefer commends both new comedy star Kevin James and employable Oscar contender Mickey Rourke for recent smart career moves.

Some friends of mine are so afraid of Google they refuse to use it. Slate defines yet another Google triumph: Google Gear.

Steal this: Online retail giant Amazon is selling DVDs of 900 new indie and foreign films, priced from $5.99.

Twentieth Century Fox badly needed a winner this Christmas season, and got one with Marley & Me, a shamelessly heart-tugging commercial dog movie. (Here's Variety's weekend boxoffice report.) But let's give credit where credit is due. While Fox co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapoulos will happily take credit for this win, it does not necessarily lift them out of the doghouse. The real winner is Fox 2000 chief Elizabeth Gabler, who year in, year out, consistently delivers strong modestly-scaled commercial features. She made director David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada, too. 27 Dresses grossed $160 million worldwide. Alvin and the Chipmunks was a huge hit at $360.5 million worldwide. So was Oscar-winner Walk the Line. There were some clinkers over the years, but at this point Fox 2000 is making more money than the big studio.

The good news for MGM/UA: Valkyrie opened pretty well, $30 million over four days. It's off to a good start. MGM/UA turned around the bad press that was launched about a year ago with ill-advised photos of Tom Cruise in a Nazi uniform wearing an eye patch. There are two versions of how that photo got sent out: One says UA marketers sent out the photo and said, "Don't worry, they'll get used to it;" the other says UA didn't want to release the photo and Cruise insisted it would be fine. In any case, under new prexy Mary Parent MGM/UA has made some smart moves. They brought in marketing consultant Terry Press and hired her old DreamWorks partner-in-crime Mike Vollman away from Paramount. The studio pushed up Valkyrie's release to December, not only to qualify for the expiring Showtime Pay-TV deal, but to capitalize on the prime-time adult-moviegoing holiday period.

It helped that Valkyrie is a commercial thriller and earned decent reviews (62% on Rotten Tomatoes) for Bryan Singer's direction and Tom Cruise's lead performance. They weren't the kind of money reviews that would have positioned the movie for awards consideration, though. But MGM/UA smartly didn't go for that, saving themselves both money and grief. (I hear Cruise went along with this, while Singer was disappointed.) Will the movie make it's money back? With a negative cost from $90 to 110 million, plus a hefty P & A spend of some $70 million domestic alone, the picture will have to keep building strong WOM---and do very well overseas.

Here are interviews with the Valkyrie principals by the LAT's Rachel Abramowitz and the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas.

[Photo of Chris McQuarrie, Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer courtesy the Los Angeles Times]

What's interesting about this weekend's match-up is that one star who is off his game is starring in a role that is inside the audience sweet spot. That's Jim Carrey in Yes Man (which grabbed 35% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes so far). The other, Will Smith, is starring in a movie, Seven Pounds (which earned 33%), that pushes the edge of what audiences want to see him do. (UPDATE: The NYT's A.O. Scott eviscerates it.) Here's Variety's b.o. forecast.

And, continuing another trend, the animated movie The Tale of Desperaux could do better than the films starring expensive movie stars (it scored 41% on the Tomatometer). But while Will Smith is getting his $20-million price these days, at this point, Jim Carrey is willing to take his money on the back end--and will likely earn a pretty penny. Moviegoers like Carrey best when he's funny. Duh. It's when he goes dark that he tends to get into trouble--Cable Guy, for example, The Number 23, The Majestic. Stars are usually rewarded for doing what their fans want them to do--until they get tired of the same old same old.

Just to make sure he keeps folks guessing, Carrey also has some artier movies on tap, such as I Love You, Phillip Morris, in which he conducts a prison affair with Ewan McGregor. (CAA is selling it at Sundance.) Here's Carrey's profile in The Atlantic.

Here's Fandango's latest poll:

64% of moviegoers on Fandango say they will see Seven Pounds’ Will Smith in any new movie, regardless of the subject matter;
72% say that The Dark Knight was the film “most overlooked” by today’s SAG Awards nominations for the Best Ensemble Cast category;
53% say they’re more likely to watch the 81st Annual Academy Awards with Hugh Jackman as this year’s host.

Universal, Miramax and Paramount/Warners are heaving huge sighs of relief that the Golden Globes rewarded Frost/Nixon, Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with five nominations apiece. The three films had been virtually overlooked by influential critics' groups in L.A. and N.Y. this week. Only Frost/Nixon and Benjamin Button were nominated in the Globes' best feature drama category, though, which tends to carry more weight than the comedy category. Doubt scored four acting noms, plus screenplay for John Patrick Shanley.

The Globes are voted on by a relatively small and insular group, the 80-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who are often wined and dined by studios eager to get the extra boost of attention from Globe noms at the height of the pre-Oscar nomination season when Academy voters are deciding which DVDs to watch. The noms are not predictive, but do help build momentum.

Thus although the Globes saw fit to only recognize Sean Penn's performance in Gus Van Sant's very American and very political Milk (which won best film from the NYFCC), that should not hurt its overall awards chances. Nor would this group be particularly drawn to a fable beloved by both American moviegoers and critics, The Dark Knight. And Gran Torino's masterful, reflexive performance by actor/director Clint Eastwood is more likely to play to the Academy than the HFPA. (Oddly, they rewarded Eastwood for score for the Changeling and best song for Gran Torino.)

For example, Harvey Weinstein has always done well with The Globes and won their support for Stephen Daldry's The Reader, set in post-World War II Germany and starring Kate Winslet, who also stars in her husband Sam Mendes' nominated drama Revolutionary Road, for which she grabbed a best actress nom. Both films grabbed four noms. And Winslet was given a supporting actress nom for The Reader, to prevent her from competing with herself. Both films needed a boost, as they were also neglected by the critics groups.

Well on their way to awards season glory are Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Weinstein Co.). which nabbed four noms apiece. And Searchlight's The Wrestler is solidifying more acting noms for Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei.

Ben Stiller's Paramount comedy Tropic Thunder scored two noms for Tom Cruise and Robert Downey, Jr., which isn't so surprising when you consider that the HFPA is often voting for who will attend the Golden Globes Awards party. Thus both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie gained noms for Button and Changeling, a feat that won't necessarily be repeated come Oscar nominations morning January 22.

The noms in the comedy categories are unlikely to have much impact on the Academy voters, who tend to reward gravitas, although Sally Hawkins, who was won best actress from the NYFCC, could score a best actress slot on January 22. Meryl Streep is more likely to land an Oscar nom for Doubt than for the raucous musical Mamma Mia!

Kristin Scott Thomas finally got some recognition for her role in the French film I've Loved You So Long, which was also nommed in the foreign film category, along with Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments, the Swedish Oscar entry, which is picking up support.

Greg Mottola (Superbad) jumps back into the teen comedy circuit, only with big hair and shorter shorts. Set in the summer of 1987, Adventureland tells the tale of a college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who's forced to work at the local amusement park. Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Ryan Reynolds star.

Kevin Smith invented the raunchy rom-com with movies like Chasing Amy. And he wrote the leading role for Seth Rogen in Zack and Miri Make a Porno before Judd Apatow hit Knocked Up out of the park. Now Rogen is a bonafide movie star and the Weinstein Co. is banking heavily on the comedy to boost their dwindling fortunes. Unfortunately, the words "Make a Porno" aren't going over too well. And the MPAA did not approve this poster. (My full story is on the jump.)

The Weinstein Co. needs all the hits it can get, but is, like Paramount, choosing not to rack up too many costs in 2008 that will not be returned right away. It's about book-keeping. Patrick Goldstein lets Harvey Weinstein explain away his laundry list of releases pushed from 2008 to 2009.

In case you missed it, here's my interview with Kevin Smith from Toronto:

"We're in the money," sang Ginger Rogers in the escapist musical Gold Diggers of 1933. Luxurious Busby Berkeley musical comedies were big hits during the Depression.

It will be interesting to see how Hollywood calibrates the current economic crisis in terms of the movies they will make. Warners' $100-million CIA thriller Body of Lies proved to be too downbeat and Iraq-centric to lure mass audiences. The opening was decidedly weaker than it should have been. (Here's Variety's weekend boxoffice wrap.) As a counter-example, this summer's escapist musical Mamma Mia! scored big all over the world: it's global gross is $520 million. If I were a studio head I'd start greenlighting a bunch of light escapist movies--fantasies, musicals, comedies, romances. The NYT's David Carr checks in with some studio execs.

It's no longer a given that people will flock to the movies during an economic downturn. (Boxoffice has been steady, BTW, and was up 18% this weekend.) Back in the Depression there was no entertainment competition and movies were cheap. Will people still buy $20 DVDs when they're worrying about their frivolous spending? Or rent instead? I argue that given the chance to laugh their heads off and escape into another magical world, they will go out to a movie theater and join in that communal experience. But they won't go there to be depressed further.

In Sullivan's Travels, Preston Sturges took a sincere Hollywood filmmaker (Joel McCrae) and put him on the road with hobos where he learned how much laughing at cartoons means to people. Who's going to be this decade's Marx Brothers or Berkeley? (Check out the Busby Berkeley Disc.) NPR's Bob Mondello looks at the Marx Bros. classic, Duck Soup.

Here are some more examples of what played during the Depression:

We're in the Money:

Jimmy Cagney sings and dances Shanghai Lil in another Berkeley pre-Code classic, Footlight Parade:

And Groucho Marx is Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup:

On AMC's Shootout this week, Peter Guber and Peter Bart address the issue of whether audiences will support the crop of political movies coming up, including W. They talk to Oliver Stone and James Cromwell:

Tina Fey isn't the only comedian who can nail a public figure. Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg captures Mark Wahlberg in this talking to animals sketch.

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 Coen brothers have always been nothing if not idiosyncratic, and their trademark humor is not shared by everyone. It's always possible that their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men was lightning in a bottle, a movie that caught the zeitgeist just the right way at just the right time.

Variety's Todd McCarthy is underwhelmed by their latest, the CIA caper comedy Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand, which opened Venice Wednesday night, while Peter Bart clearly enjoyed the movie.

I will catch it in Toronto. Here's the latest trailer.

Meanwhile the Coens are casting their next, the low-budget 60s period A Serious Man, starring stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Spin City) as a college professor and his brother, which is set to shoot in the Coens' home state, Minnesota. Unlike their last Scandinavian-inflected pic, Fargo, this one is seriously Jewish. So's their next script assignment: adapting Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

[Venice photos courtesy Awards Daily]

[Posted by Steven Gaydos]
This week's boxoffice reporting in Variety, Hollywood Reporter and L.A. Times talked about nearly every film in the top 10, EXCEPT the one that had hung in the top five for weeks, after opening to $31 million. It's on track to bust through $100 million and will outperform Don't Mess with the Zohan at a lower cost of any hit comedy this summer outside of Pineapple Express. So it had a bigger opening weekend gross than Pineapple and Thunder (if projections hold) at half the cost of Thunder and still, it's like the crazy uncle in the attic - no one wants to acknowledge its presence in the marketplace, let alone its success.

All this hate and just because of a little brother skin on the ol' drum skins!??!

There's been a lot of talk about insensitivity and discrimination. Thunder has gotten heat for maligning minorities and the developmentally disabled. But far more insidious is the root cause of this news blackout on Step Brothers.

I blame this on anti-brother descrimination.

As the youngest of four brothers, and someone who has experienced the heartbreak and pain of stupidity, selfishness, immaturity, greed and infantile acting-out behavior on the part of grown men, I am looking for others to join my cause and meet me on the picket line.

I will be out there as soon as I finish watching this John Stamos STV pic I've been looking forward to.

The trailer for the "mock doc" Rain of Madness, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of an "apocalyptic meltdown," the movie-within-the-movie in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, is almost as funny as the movie itself. Expect more of this footage on the eventual DVD.

Check out the poster art for its inspiration, Hearts of Darkness, the behind-the-scenes doc about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Here's the Rain of Madness trailer:

Greencine Daily rounds up a Pineapple Express collection.

The stoner comedy Pineapple Express, an inspired Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg/James Franco/David Gordon Green/Judd Apatow collaboration, will score big time. "I always thought Superbad would get made," said Rogen at the Pineapple Express panel. "But this I never expected to get made. When I watch this stuff I am amazed."

See photos from "Pineapple Express" panel at Comic-Con.

Besides the fact that both Rogen and Franco are growing into leading man status, the revelation in the film is the third leg of the stoner trio, Danny McBride.

I ran into him at the Pineapple Express party Friday night, the best of the Con (three agency parties thrown by CAA, UTA and WMA were packed with agents, mostly, while the PE party was poolside, civilized, not too crowded). It turns out that McBride really wants to direct. He studied film at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he and Jody Hill and Ben Best concocted the raucus martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way, which played at Sundance and was eventually picked up by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. He also has a juicy role as a special effects wrangler in Tropic Thunder and is coming up in Land of the Lost and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles as well.

McBride now has a rising comedy career as a member of the McKay/Ferrell and Apatow comedy troupes. The ungodly stoner trio of Rogen, Franco and McBride did a lot of improvising, he said, including the last scene in the movie. (Apatow says that Rogen is unusually gifted at improvising entirely in character.) "I let the cameras roll," said Green at the Pineapple Express panel. "We do a lot of improvising. I let the actors have as much fun as possible which hopefully will translate to audiences. We started with a sober take, then went higher and higher until they were dancing on the ceiling."

"You don't have to know how to read," added Rogen.

"You don't have to memorize lines, which is nice," said McBride, who was told his character had shaved armpits, but not the reason why. "That's what you have to figure out," Rogen told him.

And nobody smoked dope. There were dangerous stunts, McBride pointed out. "I smoked a lot of weed in high school," said Rogen, who admits he once smoked pot with a fishbowl on his head. "You can't smoke weed when you're making a movie. It's too hard. There's too much heavy equipment around."

McBride answers a few questions on the Comic-Con press balcony:

I saw three summer comedies in a row this week, two from the Judd Apatow factory, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, plus Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, which screened at Comic-Con last night (Pineapple Express screens here too). UPDATE: Here's Todd McCarthy's Tropic Thunder review.

Step Brothers is a great premise that has been sketchily executed; Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are often hilarious acting like ten-year-old boys, but the concept quickly wears thin. Pineapple Express is the best of the three movies, and the smartest; Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride are inspired throughout as pot heads on the run from some killer drug dealers. An intelligent director, David Gordon Green, an indie dramatist-turned-studio-comedy guy, makes all the difference. These guys cared about the details. It's not sloppy.

While Tropic Thunder is also funny, it's also really expensive, so it gets top-heavy as a star-studded big- budget action film shot on location in the jungle. The Comic-Con crowd ate it up--especially the opening intro with Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. competing for Comic-Con geek cred--although I had a sense that it was probably too inside for many of them. It's a rather reflexive and sophisticated treatise on filmmaking in Hollywood today as well as the art of acting. Robert Downey Jr. (as an Australian actor staying in character as a black dude) and Stiller (as an action hero who can't discern reality) dissecting their identities as actors is hilarious. Tom Cruise and Matthew McConnaughey also offer support with risible results as producer and agent, respectively. Actor/screenwriter Justin Theroux did so well with this he's writing probably the hottest project in town right now, Marvel's Iron Man 2.

On the City of Ember promo train from L.A. to San Diego on Wednesday, I found myself in close quarters with folks from the likes of Time, LA Times, aint-it-cool-news, sci-fi channel, and CHUD. I've always prided myself on being able to hold my own with the fanboys, but was stopped cold when one guy asked me point blank, as a large group listened intently, what was my favorite Adam McKay/Will Ferrell movie? My heart stopped cold. "Um, I've never seen Talladega Nights," I stumbled. "I didn't like Step Brothers that much either. So I guess it would have to be Anchorman."

So lame. BTW, the train ride was a brilliant promo idea on the part of Fox Walden's Jeffrey Godsick, who commandeered two cars and attached them to a train, showed 23 journalists some footage of Monster House director Gil Kenan's City of Ember, which was adapted by Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) from the 2003 novel. It took Playtone's Gary Goetzman four years to get the movie made, for a price, $35 million.

The footage was promising: Saorise Ronin runs around an amazing set that was built by production designer Martin Laing in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a gigantic ship factory eight stories high. (The Titanic was built there.) He emptied it out and built what may be one of the last gigantic practical sets.

I got Kenan to admit that having come from the freedom of the CG animation world, he was a tad frustrated by the limitations of live action filming, and may return to animation. The movie looked like one of those fun escape into a future fantasies that still relate to the real world: deep underground, City of Ember is running out of resources, and mayor Bill Murray is hoarding. "It's a relevant and potent morality tale," said Thompson, "about society running out of food and power, corrupt at the top and so startlingly to the point, as the grown-ups are asleep at the wheel, in denial."

It's the younger generation that figures out how to save the human race from extinction. Shades of Wall-E.

Hold your horses everybody. Patrick Goldstein and Stu Van Airsdale pile on Murphy after the disastrous $5 million opening of Meet Dave, which was stupidly marketed; Fox should have kept the title Starship Dave. But the studio's problem with this $75-million comedy was insurmountable: They were selling a movie starring Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy.

All the guy has to do to have a hit comedy is play someone else. Eddie Murphy works best in movies like Shrek and Norbit when you can't see his face.

It's that simple, and that's the reason why the star has enjoyed a much longer career (26 years) than most comedians in Hollywood. He's a chameleon shape-shifter. You love him as the fat guy in Nutty Professor, not the thin one. Even in Dreamgirls, Murphy was playing someone utterly different from himself. And grabbed an Oscar nom for it. And he will surely do well playing all the characters (under makeup) in the upcoming Fantasy Island. But any studio that has an Eddie Murphy project that involves no disguising makeup (like Beverly Hills Cop IV) or isn't animated had better think twice.

Or you could meet another Dave or Pluto Nash.

My father raised me on the Marx brothers; thanks to Jeff Wells for tantalizing me with with this too-short clip of the infamous State Room sequence from A Night at the Opera, probably their best film.

Here's another sample of their greatness: Thank Yaw! Thank Yaw!

Mike Myers has a problem. It's been five years since his last picture, the over-the-top bomb Cat in the Hat, which sent me fleeing from the theater (something I rarely do). Myers has scored in the Shrek movies, but that's not going to keep him in the $20-million zone to which he has become accustomed. This weekend The Love Guru, which is projected to open behind Get Smart, will prove whether or not Myers still has a love connection with moviegoers. As of Friday, Rotten Tomatoes is ranking Get Smart at 54% fresh with film critics, while The Love Guru is at 14 % rotten.

There's a theory in Hollywood that karma really does follow you around, no matter who you are. While it's true that the studios tend to reward bad behavior like indulgent parents, especially with talent---he who shouts loudest tends to get his way--things do have a way of coming around. When the world turned against former CAA czar Mike Ovitz, there weren't a lot of people coming to his defense. His Disney nemesis Michael Eisner has never inspired warm and fuzzy feelings either. Meanwhile the schadenfreude is thick around Warners producer Joel Silver, who is having a run of bad luck at the boxoffice.

EW goes after Myers' reputation for being difficult in this cover profile:

Still, the fact is, within Hollywood, not everyone is cheering for Myers to succeed. Since early in his career the actor has been tagged with a reputation for being difficult to work with: moody, controlling, and arrogant. That description could, of course, fit many actors and filmmakers, but the degree of enmity directed toward Myers by some who've worked with him — even years after the fact — is rare. Says one executive who has had a rocky relationship with Myers: ''I honestly root against him.'' Penelope Spheeris, who directed Myers in his first film, the 1992 smash Wayne's World, says she has shared war stories with others who've worked with the actor. ''Maybe he could open, like, a children's hospital to clean up his rep,'' she jokes darkly. ''He's got to do something pretty quick.''

Here's Variety's review, which basically recommends the movie as dumb comedy for 13-year-old boys. UPDATE: My column this week explores how hard it is for stars like Myers to stay in The Fluke Zone. Biting reviews like this one by John Anderson won't help:

Mike Myers isn't the Antichrist, exactly. But he is anti-comedy -- if one believes comedy ought to be smart, new, surprising, or, yes, funny. This isn't an accusation. It's been Myers's shtick for a long, long time: Jokes that don't work, bad jokes, lame jokes, jokes that are 40 years old and jokes told by characters we should be feeling sorry for -- the chronically adolescent hero of "Wayne's World," for instance, or the deluded hipster of "Austin Powers." Losers lacking Chaplinesque pathos. Misshapen social cogs without the virtue of an interesting angle.

In short, Mike Myers's oeuvre is about sympathy laughs, although it's not his on-screen persona we're feeling sorry for in "The Love Guru." It is, at long last, Myers himself.

Myers has been doing the PR rounds, with often delightful results. Here's his Barbra Streisand story on Shootout:

The Love Guru, he says, was inspired by Deepak Chopra: "It's a comedy. The best delivery system for ideas is silliness."

UPDATE: He was more uncomfortable on Jon Stewart Thursday night:

Ricky Gervais cast Brit chum Karl Pilkington in his new caveman "high concept" comedy This Side of the Truth. Pilkington suspects Gervais wants him around to keep him amused. Judging from this hilarious on-set podcast, he may be right.

[Hat Tip: Underwire].

Diane English's long-awaited remake of The Women looks quite close to the 1939 original, with Eva Mendes in the Joan Crawford role. And there are absolutely no men in it. And Candice Bergen is in it too, natch.

Colin Firth not only leads my My Fair Lady poll on who should play Henry Higgins opposite Keira Knightley--by a huge margin--but he is also Jane Austen fans' fave Mr. Darcy. (Is he a model for Mr. Big?) Lead by Firth's sexy performance, the BCC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice continues to dominate all other entrants in the Austen field. I watched it again recently, and Firth does even better than Sir Laurence Olivier (in the 1940 film) at capturing Fitzwilliam Darcy's darkness and light. And Firth scored again in a Darcy-inspired role in Bridget Jones' Diary and its sequel.

I told an interviewer writing yet another story about women's pics in the wake of Sex and the City (here's Rachel Abramowitz's latest) that Jane Austen invented the romantic comedy formula that Hollywood has long relied on. Women are hardwired to believe that a good marriage leads to happily ever after, no matter what their brain tells them. No one has played on the wedding fantasy better than Austen. And Hollywood can steal her stories forever, as far as I'm concerned.

There's a reason romantic movies keep coming back to Firth, from Richard Curtis's Love Actually and Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me to the upcoming movie musical Mamma Mia! (Here's the trailer.) I'm there.

John Anderson does not love Get Smart. I like the line about not picking up a shoe any time soon.

Get Smart is going head to head with Love Guru next weekend, which makes no sense. Steve Mason has some early tracking info, which judging from the evidence so far this summer, probably means nothing. But I will bet that Get Smart, starring comedy star on-the-rise Steve Carrell, will do better than Love Guru, because Get Smart looks funny. Love Guru, on the other hand, starring comedy star on-the-decline Mike Myers, does not look funny at all. Get Smart has some femme appeal, while my resistance to Love Guru is high.

Finally, 2929 Entertainment has made the call to release its scathing Tinseltown satire What Just Happened? through its own Magnolia Pictures on October 3. Here's my interview with director Barry Levinson and producer-writer Art Linson in Cannes, where What Just Happened? closed the fest out of competition.

2929 owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner had hoped to land a domestic distributor for the $20-million Hollywood comedy starring Robert DeNiro at the Sundance Film Festival in January. What Just Happened? scored favorable reviews but the financeers were not able to close a distrib deal that they could live with.

So 2929 will just do it for themselves.

Magnolia has hired marketing-exec-turned-consultant Russell Schwartz, the former marketing prexy of New Line Cinema, to supervise the film’s release campaign. (He also works with National Geographic on such films as U23D.) At Cannes, Schwartz supplied marketing materials for What Just Happened? featuring the tag line, “In Hollywood, everyone can hear you scream.”

What Just Happened? was adapted by Linson from his own vitriolic Hollywood memoir. Studding the movie’s cast are Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and Kristen Stewart. 2929 Productions and Linson produced with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions.

Religulous has always seemed potentially hilarious to me: Bill Maher takes a doc crew around the world to talk about religion. He starts out promisingly by entering a church and saying, "Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been 40 years since my last confession."

Here's the trailer:

Kung Fu Panda will hit solidly with families. (It's pretty damned good.) Panda scored great reviews Friday, with an 85% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, while Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan nabbed a piddly 37 % rotten. It should reach a few of the poor neglected males out there.

Sex and the City should hold well based on good word-of-mouth and may even pull in a few men. (Is it a one-shot anomaly? Or can Hollywood continue to harness the femmes?) Others have weighed in: The Women's Media Center, The Philly Inquirer, Newsweek, EW Popwatch and Cinematical. [Hat Tip: Women and Hollywood.]

Here are Variety's Zohan and Panda reviews, and our weekend boxoffice report.

Fandango's ticket sales (as of 6/6/08 10:00 a.m. PT) are:

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Sex and the City “Must Go” 52%

Kung Fu Panda “Go” 23%

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull “Go” 8%

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan “Go” 8%

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian “Go” 2%

One of the high points of the recent Cannes Film Fest was talking to Brad Pitt at the afterparty for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, where we enjoyed some friendly cocktail banter over the appropriate length for The Assassination of Jesse James. Let's just say that we each held our own.

Pitt's antics in the trailer for the Coens' next, the CIA spoof Burn After Reading, made me laugh out loud. (The movie opens the Venice Film Festival this August.) Pitt's a movie star--and can be very funny--look at the Oceans films and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Clooney has mined a rich comedy vein in his films for the Coens, and clearly does so here, along with Tilda Swinton and Fran McDormand:

Won't it be amusing if after Warners cuts back New Line Cinema, the label scores a raft of hits? Sex and the City, which appeals largely to women, is expected to score off the charts this weekend for a movie with virtually no allure for men. UPDATE: It may gross $20 million on its opening day, reports Pamela McClintock.

Nora and I will be going to an early Saturday screening, as most prime-time evening slots are pre-sold-out, according to online ticket sites MovieTickets.com (which reports that Sex and the City is now ranked number 19 10 on its list of top pre-sale films of all time) and Fandango, which states that as of Thursday morning, "the movie represents 92% of Fandango’s daily ticket sales, the highest daily percentage for any film so far this summer."

In anticipation of a big-titted hit, DreamWorks has clinched a first-look deal for Sex and the City's writer-director-producer, Michael Patrick King, writes Variety.

Metacritic ranks the film at a mid-range 54%. The NYT's Manohla Dargis does not like the film at all:

A little Botox goes a long way in “Sex and the City,” but a little decent writing would have gone even further. A dumpy big-screen makeover of that much-adored small-screen delight, the movie was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, one of the guiding lights and bright wits of the original series, based on Candace Bushnell’s newspaper columns and subsequent book. Once again, Sarah Jessica Parker has stepped into the dizzyingly high heels of Carrie Bradshaw, that postmodern Lorelei Lee — a hardly working New York writer with a passion for men and Manolos — but this time she’s taken a terrible tumble.

While in New York Magazine, David Edelstein gives Sex and the City thumbs up:

Has there ever been a TV series more polarizing than Sex and the City? It polarized me: First it drove me crazy (like itching powder), now I’m madly in love with it. It’s hard to feel halfway about these women and their unabashed materialism, overprivilege, and self-indulgence, their overdependence on and objectification of men. But what a hoot it is to see babes, for once, doing the objectifying—and talking dirty and sleeping around and measuring their fantasies against the sobering truth of male emotional insufficiency. If the core friendship of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte is the biggest fantasy of all—they complement one another perfectly; they’re never too competitive—it’s a moving design for living: existential haute couture.

And at The Huffington Post, Us Magazine critic Thelma Adams blogs that the movie is no longer in tune with the times: "Sex and the City jumps the shark."

1. Paolo Sorrentino's Il divo (Italy): concise, focused, accessible, fascinating and entertaining despite arcane Italian political setting, this portrait of Giulio Andreotti won the jury prize. I can't wait to see Sorrentino's next. (Il divo has no stateside distributor.)

2. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (USA): utterly disciplined, Kaufman did what he set out to do, brilliantly, with humor. (Still for sale in North America; Sidney Kimmel may not make back his $20 million.)

3. Steve McQueen's Hunger (UK): this masterful directorial debut deservedly won the Camera d'Or and pushes Michael Fassbender toward stardom. (IFC will distribute.)

4. Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (Israel): authentic and emotional, this hybrid docu-drama shows that there's a future beyond Persepolis for stylized animation in service of powerful story-telling. (SPC will release.)

5. James Gray's Two Lovers (USA): this director-on-the-rise is back on track and elicits one of Joaquin Phoenix's best perfs. (If 2929 Entertainment doesn't get the deal it's seeking, its own distrib Magnolia will release.)

6. Clint Eastwood's Changeling (USA): the only potential best picture Oscar contender at Cannes this year (among many likely foreign film candidates); Angelina Jolie should land a nom. (Universal will likely take it on the fall fest circuit.)

7. Kim Jee-Woon's The Good, The Bad and the Weird (Korea): this stunning Oriental Western homage to Eastwood and Leone boasts high-speed action like you've never seen before: think Stagecoach meets Jackie Chan meets The Road Warrior. This broad action comedy could be hugely commercial.

8. Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (USA): thanks to Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz's entertaining hijinks, this is Allen's best film since 1997's Deconstructing Harry. With Harvey at her back, Cruz is on her way to a supporting Oscar nod.

9. James Toback's Tyson (USA): this psychologically intimate interview with an iconic figure who is not all that he seems is not just for fight fans. (SPC will release.)

10. Atom Egoyan's Adoration (Canada): yet again, brainy auteur Egoyan explores the faulty fiction of family, history and memory. (SPC picked it up before Cannes.)

11. Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? (USA): as expected, this edgy Hollywood comedy showcasing Robert DeNiro's best role in ages (channeling writer-producer Art Linson) played better in Cannes, where it should have debuted all along. (2929's own Magnolia will most likely distribute.)

Mainstream commercial triumphs:
Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (USA): Spielberg and Co. took the gamble that the movie would score at Cannes and sure enough, it did.
John Stevenson and Mark Osborne's Kung Fu Panda (USA): DreamWorks and Paramount launched yet another global animation juggernaut out of the Cannes fest, which loves Jolie and Jack Black.

Noble Failure?
Steven Soderbergh's Che (Spain): there's a potential masterpiece buried within this sprawling, unfinished bio-epic (in which Benicio del Toro delivers a subtle, non-showy performance which was rightly rewarded with the best actor Prix). Whether Soderbergh will try to find it is another question. At this point HBO would be best suited to handle the film at its current four-hour, 18-minute length.

Let the summer games begin. The LAT's Ken Turan takes on summer blockbuster syndrome, while The Huffington Post addresses summer superheroes.

The summer starts off with Thursday night's opening of Iron Man, which earned 95% fresh reviews on Rotten Tomatoes so far. The NYT's A.O. Scott calls it "an unusually good superhero picture." The New Yorker's David Denby calls it a "whooshing junk pile." Everybody likes Robert Downey. (Variety reviews the Iron Man viedeogame.)

The movie is expected to open well, between $65 and $100 million, depending on how seriously you take the tracking that shows young women are not interested in seeing the picture--only 19% first choice-- which makes it a "three quadrant" movie for starters. The biggest blockbusters, like Narnia, wind up pulling everybody. Young men under 25 have 95% awareness of Iron Man, 65% definite interest and 35% first choice. Women over 25 are more interested in Downey and Gwenyth Paltrow; they will spread the word that Downey is fun and Paltrow actually has a decent role. So the picture could hold well.

Luckily for Paramount, next weekend's Speed Racer (well-reviewed by Variety) is not pulling strong advance tracking numbers, so that might give Iron Man some room to breathe before they open Indiana Jones on May 22. Here's the weekend forecast from Fantasy Moguls and Variety.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Speed Racer from the advance marketing, so I was pleasantly surprised. First, it's really a little kids' movie, more like Pixar's Cars than anything else. Second, the Wachowskis have a solid story with a strong moral theme to hang their gorgeous stylized pyrotechnics on. I don't particularly care about car racing, but I cared about the characters and the family led by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon at the film's center. Speed Racer Emile Hirsch and gal pal Christina Ricci are fine (utterly sexless couples are a theme of the summer so far). And I was dazzled by the Wachowski's eye candy. You can read the movie as a parable of the filmmakers' experience in Hollywood--they're rooting for creative innocence and pure instinct over the corrupt vagaries of the marketplace.

The other movie opening this weekend that roots for innocent indie filmmaking over the compromises of the star system is Son of Rambow, a hit at Sundance 2007 that was fought over; Paramount Vantage grabbed it for $8 million. But the film was delayed by various rights legalities (having to do with Carolco's Rambo) and finally arrives late on the scene with its momentum lost. (It is a hit in the U.K.) And it follows in the wake of the similar Be Kind Rewind, which died at the boxoffice.

In this delightful and expertly executed 80s-set British comedy from Hammer and Tongs (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), two unlikely schoolmate-collaborators pool their resources to shoot a short and suddenly find themselves hugely popular at school. One soaks up the attention, the other doesn't. Here's Variety's Speed Racer Blockbuster Page, with review, clips, trailers and a cool feature on VFX whiz John Gaeta.

The movie has played 27 fests since its Sundance debut, and Vantage hopes that means it has built up some good WOM. It opens in NY and LA this weekend, moves to 30-35 screens in the top 12 markets May 9, and expands to 70-80 screens in the top 25 markets on May 16. By the 23rd of May it should be on 200 screens in the top 60-65 markets. UPDATE: Rotten Tomatoes reviews so far are at 77%; I'm surprised they aren't even better. The genre seems to confuse people. That is, it's a smart movie set in the 80s about kids that's for adults.

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.

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%

Just look at the movie. One of my pet peeves is box-office prognosticating based solely on tracking the opening weekend numbers. I don't care how Forgetting Sarah Marshall opens April 18. I know, based on my own experience, that it's funny enough to do well at the boxoffice. If they laugh, they will come.

They did not laugh at Judd Apatow factory duds Walk Hard or Drillbit Taylor. And this relationship comedy, while told from the male POV--writer-actor Jason Segal loses the love of his life (Kristen Bell) and can't stop crying, both in and out of the nude--plays for both men and women.

At the Hollywood and Highland premiere last week, it was fun to see producer Apatow presiding over his merry band of miscreants--Segal, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin) and Brit newcomer Russell Brand, who steals the movie and was the after-party cock of the walk in his rock star finery and teased bouffant. Sure enough, Apatow admits, Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller and Hill are cooking up a movie for Brand to star in.

The LAT has a rogue's gallery of boys in the buff. My all-time full-frontal fave? Ewan McGregor. No contest.

At the weekend boxoffice, George Clooney's period screwball comedy Leatherleads (54% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes) dukes it out with family film Nim's Island, starring Jodie Foster (46 %). Here's Variety's boxoffice forecast.

The one to see, especially if you appreciate Martin Scorsese's mise-en-scene and the Rolling Stones in performance, is Shine a Light, which earned 86% fresh on the Tomatometer. (Here's Stephen Schaefer's report of the Stones' NYC press conference.) I will be catching up with Stop-Loss (62%) while it is still in theaters.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Nim’s Island “Go” 15%

Leatherheads “Go” 12%

Shine a Light “Go” 12%

21 “Go” 7%

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! “Go” 7%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

George Clooney's Leatherheads opens this week. Of the movies below, which one is your favorite Clooney flick?

Ocean's Eleven 43%

O Brother, Where Art Thou? 31%

Michael Clayton 10%

Three Kings 7%

Out of Sight 6%

Syriana 3%

(Posted by Peter Debruge)

In today's NYTimes, Michael Cieply recounts a Tuesday night industry screening of "Tropic Thunder" in which Tom Cruise "brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools."

Sure sounds funny. Can we assume Cieply caught this screening? Or was the whole "rapturous reaction" fed to him by the person described in this line?

Mr. Stiller, who played Mr. Cruise's obsessive stunt double in a popular Web video (and who is expected to co-star with him in "Hardy Men"), first talked with Mr. Cruise, his friend, about taking a role more than a year ago, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the film's promotion."

The whole story reads like the kind of "news" you'd expect to encounter on the Web (which got there first back in November), not in the pages of the Gray Lady. And that popular Web video? Cieply's referring to a televised sketch Stiller and Cruise made for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Here's a refresher:

Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! landed atop the boxoffice charts again, while Tyler Perry's latest opened well and Judd Apatow's badly-reviewed Owen Wilson comedy Drillbit Taylor did not. That's two Apatow-produced disappointments now, after Walk Hard. But the next three---Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express and Step Brothers-- look strong.

Time's Richard Corliss profiles Perry while Richard Schickel divebombs Drillbit Taylor.

[Photo courtesy Time Magazine]

There's plenty to see in theaters this weekend.

While it's ingeniously improvised by likable actors at a real poker tournament, The Grand is not as funny as the last mock doc by writer-director Zak Penn, The Incident at Loch Ness. The wily Werner Herzog is the funniest thing in both movies.

My recent Judd Apatow poll shows Pineapple Express leading in want-to-see over his three other comedies, including this weekend's well-advertised opener, Drillbit Taylor. Pineapple Express's director, the usually darkly dramatic David Gordon Green, has in release Snow Angels, which played at Sundance 2007. It's well worth seeing before it disappears. So is Gus Van Sant's brilliant, stark Cannes entry Paranoid Park.

The moody period noir thriller Married Life is marred by miscasting: the estimable Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan are both in love with the 20-something femme fatale Rachel McAdams. Excellent actors all. But yucky. I preferred AMC's similar but more stylish Mad Men.

Among the Oscar-season holdovers, Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters and animation nominee Persepolis are hanging in with great WOM. I caught The Band's Visit last weekend, a small gem which was ineligible as Israel's Oscar entry because its Egyptians and Israelis communicate in English.

And of course, the delightful The Bank Job is showing legs.

[Photos: Snow Angels, Paranoid Park, The Counterfeiters, Persepolis]