Soderbergh provides more details about his planned stint directing a play at Cate Blanchett's theatre in Sydney.

And Focus posts a trailer for the Coens' Toronto-bound A Serious Man.

While the studios will continue to spend $250 million on sure bets like the Harry Potter franchise, they are cutting back everywhere else. The town is feeling the pinch, as production starts decline, budgets are slashed and risks are not being taken. Ask Steven Soderbergh, who sounds depressed indeed in this Guardian interview on Che. (That four-hour Spanish-language money-loser for French financier Wild Bunch is the main source of Soderbergh's Moneyball woes.) For the moment he may direct a play for Cate Blanchett's theatre company in Sydney. Luckily, his Matt Damon whistleblower comedy The Informant! could score at September's Toronto Film Fest.

Here's the line-up for the Toronto Fest, which opens September 10 with Jon Amiel's Charles Darwin biopic, Creation.

Speaking of embattled auteurs, David Poland asks more questions about Sony pulling the plug on Moneyball and what it means. So does Jeffrey Wells. I've also heard that Soderbergh wanted to make a responsibly budgeted commercial movie with MLB approval, and that Sony was backing James Brooks' baseball movie over his.

Point is, Soderbergh is being penalized for not always making commercial movies, for being an indie at heart. Execs feel that they can't count on him. They fear that he might go off the reservation. You get so many times at bat with big-budget movies and when you fan too much, the financiers lose confidence. For Soderbergh's sake, I hope The Informant! is a hit.

Prolific to a fault, Soderbergh inspires in me equal admiration for sticking to his guns and having cojones, and anger that he squanders opportunities for all filmmakers trying to make smart movies for adults when he indulges himself and ignores the audience. That's fine when you're making little movies, not so good at the studio level. Solaris, The Good German and the foreign-financed $60 million Che are wiping out the wriggle room earned by Traffic, Erin Brockovich and the Ocean series.

Finally, Michael Mann, who has never been willing to go indie, is far guiltier than Soderbergh of recklessly spending studio money.

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.

The reviews Kathryn Bigelow has nabbed for The Hurt Locker (91 on Metacritic) are noteworthy. That doesn't mean that the movie will score at the boxoffice for Summit, but it's off to the second-strongest start for an indie this year. The movie has a shot at one of ten slots in the wide open Oscar best picture race. Even the NYT's tough-minded Manohla Dargis, who has long shared with me a sense of dismay at the thin ranks of gifted women directors, was moved to step out of the reviewer's box to praise Bigelow here.

Aside from critics' raves, The Hurt Locker boasts other advantages in the Oscar race. Bigelow is respected in the industry for making movies that are irrelevant to her gender; this movie is as intellectually rigorous and stylishly crafted as any Michael Mann film. (If anything, it's more engaging and viscerally exciting than, say, Public Enemies.) Also, the film industry, well aware of the failure of every Iraq War film to date, has been waiting for the exception that would break through and reach audiences. With America on the verge of withdrawing from Iraq, the timing may be right for this one. Finally, Bigelow gets points not only for figuring out a way to approach the subject that works, but for a high degree of difficulty.

It's shaping up to be an unusually good year for women directors. New Zealand writer-director Jane Campion, the only woman to ever win the Cannes Palme d'Or, is one of three women to be nominated for the best director Oscar, along with Sofia Coppola and Lena Wertmuller. (She won best screenplay for The Piano.) Bright Star, her tragic period romance about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, played well at Cannes but didn't take home a prize. New indie distributor Bob Berney plans to promote Bright Star on the fall fest circuit before a September opening. The impeccably mounted costume drama is quite Academy friendly.

The third Oscar possibility is Mira Nair, whose hits The Namesake, Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala have earned her an Oscar shot with her latest film, Amelia, a biopic about flier Amelia Earhart starring Oscar-winner Hilary Swank in the title role. It doesn't hurt that Fox Searchlight (Slumdog Millionaire, Juno) is shepherding this period adventure, which will also open in October after hitting the fest circuit.

Here's the Amelia trailer:

Here's my Toronto chat with Bigelow:

One's Japanese, the other isn't. And there's the rub.

While John Lasseter's Disney animation division and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have supervised the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's latest anime film, Ponyo--already a hit overseas--the film is still magical and yes, very Japanese. (It closes the LAFF June 28; Miyazaki will appear at Comic-Con in July before the film opens in North America on August 14.) Lasseter is banking that with proper handling from Disney, the movie could break out to family audiences in a way none of Miyazaki's imports ever have, even with one Oscar nomination (Howl's Moving Castle) and one win (Spirited Away). Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and Betty White are among the stars providing voice talent on Ponyo.

Fast Company lists Miyazaki as one of the top ten most creative people in film and TV. Wired lists the best anime coming out this summer.

I've been a huge Miyazaki fan, from My Neighbor Totoro through Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and beyond. Ponyo is also sublime. Like all great movies it whisks you effortlessly into another world. And it's old-fashioned, hand-drawn 2-D (not an ounce of CG in it), stylized animation. Miyazaki has always been able to capture the forces of nature and the great outdoors, in this case, the ocean that menaces the Japanese coast in the form of a tsunami. The movie lacks violence or anything urban: nature provides the story's threat and drama. Don't miss this one.

The Seattle Film Fest debuted another movie from a Japanese source. Hachi: A Dog's Story is a remake of Hachiko, based on a famous true story from the 20s. Loyal Akita Hachiko met his beloved master every day at the train station, and after the gentleman died of a stroke and never returned, escaped each of his new homes to wait for his master, faithfully every day, through heat, rain and snow, until he died ten years later (sob).

Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) took on the American remake with Richard Gere in the role of the professor who bonds with his dog. (The two men are friends and neighbors and worked together on Hoax.) But the movie twists itself into a pretzel explaining how a Japanese dog named Hachiko came to America, met the professor, got into the habit of waiting for him at the train every day--and kept waiting. There's a wife (Joan Allen) and a very slim family narrative. The movie doesn't work. Yet the bones of the story are still so powerful (which is why Gere and Hallstrom wanted to do it), that the Seattle audience and I were all in tears.

The movie's financeer, international sales co.Inferno Distribution, has a pact with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group for North American and Australian ancillary rights to its movies. Inferno is negotiating with service distrib Consolidated Pictures Group (led by Bottle Shock filmmaker Randall Miller, who’s releasing I Love You Phillip Morris), which is looking to raise some P & A for a fall release.

But the movie really belongs at Disney, where the family label would mean something. Gere's agent Ed Limato showed the movie to Disney's Dick Cook, but the studio passed. Inferno's Bill Johnson changed the title from Hachiko to Hachi because he was afraid it would put off American audiences. "Hachi is more reminiscent of Benji," he said.

Check out the original Hachiko. Like Ponyo, it's the authentic real deal.

The rom-com seems doomed by studio formulas and misogynistic concepts like Bride Wars, which I refused to go see. Thank God for Judd Apatow and John Hamburg, but still, their bromances are aimed mostly at men. So when a fresh chick flick comes along that isn't a dumbed down vehicle for Kate Hudson, I cheer. Written on spec over several years by production exec-turned-scripter Peter Chiarelli and directed by choreographer-turned-helmer Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses), The Proposal stars Sandra Bullock, who pokes fun at her age and credibly falls for a younger man without turning shrill and brittle. Her chemistry with Reynolds, who she's known for years off-set, is palpable. Chiarelli and Fletcher explain how they made a smart studio rom-com, and how the Writers' Strike may have been a good thing for their movie, which opens June 19.

Here's the trailer:

UPDATE: And here's USA Today's excellent Bullock interview.

Should directors make short promo films for advertiser money? Norman Jewison confessed at a recent LACMA tribute that the idea of shooting a commercial seemed shameful, somehow. He never did it. But for later generations, shooting commercials is a great way to make "fuck you" money and experiment on someone else's dime. Not just professionals like Ridley Scott, but indie stalwarts such as Errol Morris and Spike Lee routinely shoot commercials.

The famous BMW "The Hire" commercials worked well, as directors from John Woo and John Frankenheimer to Guy Ritchie and Ang Lee put Clive Owen behind the wheel of a series of fabulously luxe Beemers. Freixnet hired Martin Scorsese to direct The Key to Reserva, a tongue-in-cheek homage to Hitchcock, in which he put himself, deliciously. It was not a bad move for the care and preening of a major movie director.

In this case, brainy 39-year-old Swiss director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) worked with Swiss International Air Lines on the LX Forty, which premiered Monday, June 8. Forster, who tends to be a serious fellow, cast himself in what he describes as a "highly personal" "journey of the mind." The director contacted Swiss, he says, partly because he's a frequent flier on the LX Forty, which is a Swiss flight from Zurich to L.A. "With ‘LX Forty’ I was able to create the story, identify with it and include myself in it," he says. "You reveal yourself when you stand in front of the camera."

Indeed. The short (which Forster narrates in German and English, with subtitles for the French and Italian versions) is gorgeous, and reflects the director's views on how to cope with a rapidly spinning universe. (It sounds like Forster and Buddhist David Lynch could get together.) Shot at Paramount Studios in collaboration with the Publicis advertising agency, Ping Pong Films, Kansas City's MK12 animation house and music producer Brian Reitzell, the short will not only be posted online but starting in August, will be shown on all long-haul flights. Talk about targeted marketing.

Newsweek comes to the defense of slimmed-down writer-actress-director Nia Vardalos, who may not be picking the best movies in the world (rom-com My Life in Ruins scored a miserable 34 on Metacritic) but shouldn't be castigated for her looks while doing it.

Brainy documentarian and periodic NY Times blogger Errol Morris has completed his seven-part treatise Bamboozling Ourselves. Check out the section on the "uncanny valley," as an art forger reveals how he duped people into thinking he had discovered paintings from a lost Vermeer period. The uncanny valley also applies to visual effects--the closer you get to approximating real, the weirder it looks. Like those creepy kids in Polar Express.

The elusive Dave Eggers talks to the Guardian, not about why Away We Go doesn't work as a movie, but about books and publishing, a business he does know something about. I love browsing the McSweeney's section of a bookstore, looking at the books and Wolphin DVDs.

Denzel Washington let the cat out of the bag at the MTV Movie Awards: Star Trek breakout Chris Pine will next star in Tony Scott and Washington's reteaming on Unstoppable--as a conductor on a toxic runaway train:

Nobody likes Michael Bay. Give the media a big fat target like a Forbes "who is richer" entry, and they will not resist piling on. New York's Vulture even calls him "the mogul of mindlessness." Lest we feel sorry for him, the guy owns Digital Domain and gets 10% of the gross on the Transformers movies (and 8% on the toys). And don't get your hopes up. By all accounts, this summer's installment, as over-pixellated as it looks, will not be a boxoffice disappointment when it opens June 24.

Here's the trailer:

L.A.'s v. cool comics store Meltdown on Sunset is hosting an after midnight book signing with director Guillermo del Toro on Tuesday, June 2. He's flying in from the New Zealand set of The Hobbit to sign 500 exclusive copies of the first book, written with Chuck Hogan, of The Strain Trilogy, which is about a virus-infected plague of monsters invading New York City. (You can preorder Book One). Here's my earlier story.

UPDATE: Wired talks to del Toro and posts a trailer:

UPDATE: Del Toro talks to Craig Ferguson:

Who came out ahead and behind on their Cannes jaunt this year?

Disney

The studio won big by using Cannes as the European launch for Pixar’s Up. John Lasseter and Pete Docter had the time of their lives being treated seriously by the most prestigious festival in the world, which gave them some auteur cred they wouldn’t get any other way. At Disney’s after-party on the Carlton pier, Lasseter got misty-eyed. “It’s one of the greatest things to happen in our careers,” he said. The often stuffy festival stepped up to the times, passing out 3-D glasses to the opening night black-tie glitterati at the Palais.

Disney also took advantage of the global media to introduce the motion capture pic Christmas Carol, bringing director Bob Zemeckis and Jim Carrey to the Croisette for a snowy photo opportunity. (I remember meeting Carrey for the first time when he came to Cannes to promo The Mask.)

Miramax

On the other hand, it’s utterly depressing that Disney may be putting its specialty subsidiary Miramax on the block. Studio boss Robert Iger wants to stick to his family-movie brand/theme park mandate, and Miramax doesn’t fit with its other businesses. While the studio denies the unit is for sale, their asking price is said to be $1.2 billion; buyers are interested, especially in the Tiffany library built by the Weinsteins, but are waiting for the price to come down.

Miramax topper Daniel Battsek has done a solid if not spectacular job, including Oscar winners Tsotsi and No Country for Old Men. But many projects were too pricey to turn a profit in the tough specialty market. Battsek kept a low profile on the Croisette this year, with no buys announced. As Harvey and Bob Weinstein struggle in a sour economy to keep their company afloat, the irony is that if they had not only raised but made some money, they might have been able to afford to buy their company back.

Harvey and Bob Weinstein

15 years after Pulp Fiction, the brothers brought Quentin Tarantino to the Cannes main competition with the raucous World War II drama Inglourious Basterds. Loaded with expectations (always a dicey position) the movie played fine for the global press, especially with its top-notch European cast, but will face a tougher time at home in a challenging environment for specialty pictures. To Tarantino’s credit, he shot it in four languages, French, Italian, German and English. The movie breaks out French actors Denis Menochet (who stars in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood) and Melanie Laurent as well as German actors Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger and language whiz Christoph Waltz (who won best actor). Here's Hollywood Wiretap.

Less interesting in some ways are the titular Basterds, led by a one-note Brad Pitt as a Nazi hunter, supported by Eli Roth and Til Schweiger. It feels like this part of the movie was given short shrift. Tarantino, who was in a rush to Cannes, now has some time to fine-tune his film. Irish actor Michael Fassbender (who also scored in Fish Tank) may get a new scene when Tarantino returns to the editing room. At two hours and 27 minutes, Tarantino has final cut.

The Weinsteins also debuted for buyers and press a featurette made by Rob Marshall of his musical Nine, which was adapted by the late Anthony Minghella from the Broadway musical inspired by Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. In the role of the womanizing director having a midlife crisis (played on-stage by Raul Julia and Antonio Banderas) is Daniel Day Lewis, who looks handsome and charismatic in the movie. (Yes, he sports an Italian accent. And sings. And dances.) Much of the story, like Marshall’s Oscar-winning Chicago, unfolds in the director’s mind as he muses over the women in his life: his mother (Sophia Loren), the village prostitute (Fergie), lover (Nicole Kidman), wife (Marion Cotillard), mistress (Penelope Cruz), interviewer (Kate Hudson) and costume designer (Judi Dench). The movie looks sumptuous, elaborate, visually dazzling. It also looks expensive, and was shot in London and Cinecitta (estimates range from $80 to 90 million). The risk for the Weinsteins: is there a market big enough to pay back the cost of a studio-scale all-stops-out musical? The movie opens during awards season, November 25.

There’s good advance word on John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, but it looks like a narrow niche up-market film. While the Weinsteins may get what they want: renewed cred from a series of well-reviewed movies that might make it into the Oscar race, these days, that can be as much a curse as a blessing, as Oscar campaigns can turn a profitable movie into a money loser.

Bob Berney, Bill Pohlad, Jane Campion

Ex-Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and his new partner Bill Pohlad made official their new distribution combine, which will enter the middle ground between art-house distributors Sony Pictures Classics, IFC and Magnolia and remaining studio subsidiaries Fox Searchlight, Miramax and Focus Features. Berney and Pohlad (who are waiting for their company name to clear) boldly acquired all U.S. rights to Jane Campion’s Bright Star sight unseen ahead of the fest (for about $2.5 million). They saw the film two weeks ahead of Cannes, where it played well, but won no prizes. While Berney plans to target young women (it will also score with Anglophiles, Jane Austen fans, and the Academy), the movie is an austere and tragic love story that lacks mainstream appeal. But the two stars, Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, are potential breakouts. After a six-year-gap, Campion reestablishes herself as a major director. But she has never been a particularly commercial one.

Sony Pictures Classics and Pedro Almodovar

Steady as they go, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard came out of Cannes having landed the top two prize winners, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet. They came into the fest with Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz, which is not the best of the Spanish auteur’s films, but is more fun to watch than most flicks. It was not a factor with the jury, either. But it wasn’t hurt by being in the festival, which sorely needed the combined star power of the director and Cruz.

While American art-house audiences don’t pay much attention to Cannes prizes, they do push the films' countries of origin to submit them for the foreign language Oscar. Thus SPC now has two more potential Oscar submissions for next year, from Germany and France. The Envelope looks at how Cannes impacts the Oscar race.

Word from the Cannes jury is that the votes were often split along director vs. actor lines. (UPDATE: Actress-director Asia Argento said it was more male vs.female; well, except for her, the directors were male.) This makes sense, as actors, writers and directors think very differently. As the reportedly fractious group, led by French actress Isabelle Huppert, talked over the selections (in English) three times during the fest--they saw 20 films-- they eliminated certain films that didn't raise enough votes, like Bright Star and Broken Embraces. Inglourious Basterds and Antichrist were more admired by the actors than the directors, while Fish Tank and Thirst were directors' pictures--and split the jury prize. The votes on the top two films, The White Ribbon and A Prophet were very close. But no award was unanimous. The most contentious debate was over best director Brilliante Mendoza, for Kinatay, which critics despised. The jurors weren't allowed to talk to anyone, and during deliberations, they even gave up their cell phones.

Focus Features and Ang Lee

The decision to bring a filmmaker to the fest is a calculation that, in the case of Focus and Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, backfired. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and with some marketing fixes it could play well in the United States. It is an utterly American movie, culturally sophisticated, sweet and tender, mood-shifting, and fun. Screenwriter James Schamus (and Focus topper) and Lee nail the period. “It was a time when people had t-shirts that didn’t have logos on them,” Lee says.

Schamus and Lee explore the cultural moment that Woodstock crystallized—the ways that old and new were clashing and changing. This behind-the-scenes drama focuses on a family dynamic: two uptight Jewish parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) and their vibrant, closeted gay son (Demetri Martin) who, when shoved up against the counterculture, breaks out of their world. Comedy Central star Martin never dreamed of a movie career, but the real discovery is radiant theater actor Jonathan Groff as Michael Lang. Most of the time, Lee and Schamus found that lingo from the period didn’t play, and cut much of it out. But when Groff said words like “groovy” and “far out,” he did so with such conviction that they left them in.

Taking Woodstock is not the sort of movie that goes over well at Cannes. It isn’t even what you’d call a critics’ picture. Lee must have wanted to come to the festival that had always treated him well. He probably wishes now that he hadn’t.

UPDATE: Focus came out ahead with its other Cannes entry, Park Chan-Wook's jury-prize-co-winner Thirst, which is already a hit in South Korea and will likely be a strong genre contender when Focus releases it stateside later this year. Focus Features International continues to be one of the strongest foreign sales companies, because it boasts the A-list projects (like Almodovar's Broken Embraces and the latest pics from Sam Mendes, Roberto Begnini, Zhang Yimou, Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach) everyone still wants to buy. "We're flying on all cylinders," says Schamus. "We've got our fingers in so many little pies all over the world."

Alejandro Amenabar's Agora

This Egyptian period drama cost $50 million Euros--and needed Cannes support. It didn't get it. The reviews were mixed, although Rachel Weisz managed to survive. The buyers waited on the sidelines for the price to decline. Clearly, even name stars and a big budget do not guarantee an American sale. Producers can't count on North American money any more. The Wrap looks at the Cannes economy.

IFC: Lars von Trier and Ken Loach

IFC came into the fest having bought the three-part Red Riding Trilogy, and then picked up Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, which built up a swell of want-to-see from Cannes controversy. IFC will show the movie uncut in a few U.S. cinemas and then trim it—working with the director—to show it on VOD. Honestly? It’s a movie-as-therapy that helped to pull Danish director von Trier out of a bout of depression that threatened to keep him from making movies. He indulged himself completely; the movie is a well-made, manipulative mess. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg give their all; she totally deserved the best actress prize. Any student of von Trier will want to see the movie. The distrib also picked up the feel-good movie of Cannes, Ken Loach's Waiting for Eric, starring soccer player Eric Cantona.

Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

The reviews were kind (here's Variety), suggesting that Gilliam returned to form with his latest film--despite losing Heath Ledger in mid-shoot, replaced by Johnn Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. American buyers, who saw the film in L.A. and NY before the festival, or attended an early screening in the market, were playing a waiting game. Nobody is taking risks any more.

Oscilloscope

Adam Yauch's neophyte distrib Oscilloscope Labs bought North American rights to a Cannes film in the official selection, a doc, natch, Michel Gondry’s look at his own family, The Thorn in the Heart.

Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro

Finally, Francis Ford Coppola is rebuilding his career and used a little Cannes pixie dust to help him do it. No, he didn't pull Tetro into the competition. But he opened the Director's Fortnight and was welcomed there. The movie, which he wrote himself with an autobiographical flair, was deemed an improvement over his last, Youth Without Youth, and more accessible and personal than anything he has done in some time. You can sense a filmmaker testing his chops, feeling his way. The next one could be even better. Hopefully he'll stay away from Vincent Gallo. He's toxic.

My Cannes Ten Best Films:

1. Up (check out Rotten Tomatoes reviews)

2. Mr. Hulot's Holiday

3. Fish Tank

4. Drag Me to Hell

5. Bright Star

6. The White Ribbon

7. Taking Woodstock

8. Humpday

9. Samson and Delilah

10. Inglourious Basterds

Disappointments:

11. Broken Embraces

12. Antichrist

13. Tetro

14. I Love You Philip Morris

UPDATE: Here are the results of IndieWire's poll of 16 English-language film writers. And IFC rounds up the Cannes wrap-ups.

At last year's Cannes, Paramount Vantage and Overture Films made the announcement that they were backing Michael Moore's follow-up to 2007's Sicko. (Here's my video interview.) Overture execs Chris McGurk and Danny Rosett had worked with Moore when they released Bowling for Columbine at MGM/United Artists. (They're sharing a nice slice of the gross with Moore.) While the doc's still untitled, it now has a release date, October 2, and comes out twenty years after Roger and Me, another doc recounting the perils of capitalism run amuck. The opening will be a year and a day after the Wall Street $700 billion bailout. According to a press release, Moore's film:

...will explore the root causes of the global economic meltdown and take a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans that culminated in what Moore has described as “the biggest robbery in the history of this country” – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.

Here's Moore's statement:

"The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn't have enough wealth. They wanted more -- a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie."

Martin Scorsese rode into Cannes on Friday. He turned up at the American Pavilion to dedicate the Roger Ebert Conference Center. "Welcome back," fest delegate general Thierry Fremaux said to Ebert, who had been unable to attend for several years as he battled throat cancer. While he used a mechanical voice box at the ceremony, at the reception Ebert communicated with Scorsese, Fremaux, director Paul Cox, Sony Pictures Classics' Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, and critics Pierre Rissient and Kenneth Turan via writing pad. Ebert's blogging the fest and had seen just one film at Cannes so far, Bright Star.

In the evening, Scorsese introduced the ravishing new Technicolor print of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes, one of his favorite films of all time. And he also announced several new initiatives for the World Cinema Foundation, including deals with festival marketing site B-Side and the cinematheque website The Auteurs (which is hooked up with affiliate site Criterion). Here's Scorsese's statement:

“The World Cinema Foundation was created out of need. There are so many pictures in need of restoration and preservation, which, for many reasons, are not getting the attention they deserve. And restoring and preserving is only half the battle, because in order to be appreciated, they have to be seen. Now, they should be seen as they were intended to be seen, but audience awareness can build in surprising ways. Our new relationships with B-Side and The Auteurs are intended to build awareness on many different levels. These relationships will be crucial in drawing attention to the films and the people who made them, which are at the center of the Foundation's work. I'm very excited that Kent Jones, who I've known and worked with for years, has come aboard to lead the organization into the future.”

Earlier this week in Cannes, Mandalay added a movie about Frank Sinatra to Scorsese's list of upcoming projects. I find it hard to imagine any actor, whether or not it's Leonardo DiCaprio (who stars in Scorsese's fall release Shutter Island, based on Dennis Lehane's novel), being able to convincingly portray Sinatra and deliver songs with his voice. The guy's too big, too well-known, and his voice is too identified with his persona. As tough as it was for Will Smith to do Mohammed Ali, he wasn't a singer. Judy Davis did pull off Judy Garland, and Jamie Foxx and Joaquin Phoenix did Ray Charles and Johnny Cash. I don't know. It's Frank! UPDATE: Shawn Levy digs into the Sinatra casting issue.

Cannes master promoter Thierry Fremaux knows what he is doing: the photo taken from the Debussy stage of the Cannes press corps wearing 3-D glasses will be seen everywhere. (They had to be returned.) I started out the morning in tears during Up , which as Disney chairman Dick Cook puts it, is Pixar's "most emotional film." Co-writers Bob Peterson and Pete Docter took the idea of an old guy who travels in a house carried aloft by balloons to find a lost South American paradise, and worked it over for a good two years before it passed enough muster to go into voice casting and animation.

Whenever I listen to John Lasseter talk, I wish that everyone in Hollywood would take some of his wisdom to heart. The Pixar approach is to never produce anything unless it will stand the test of time as a good movie. And they haven't delivered one dud yet. They're ten for ten. This one challenges conventional wisdom about subjects (an old man and a chubby boyscout), killing off beloved characters, and lingering over slow moments. Lasseter paid homage to Japanese anime auteur Miyazaki for inspiring him to occasionally take it slow.

Lasseter and Docter admitted that on every Pixar film there are scenes that get worked over and over until they finally cohere--and others that are smooth as butter from the start--at Pixar they call them tentpoles on which to hang the rest of the movie. In Up they include the magical opener covering the history of the marriage of old man Carl (Ed Asner), and the sequence when the balloons pick up the house and sail over the city.

When the Pixar team finally licked their most troublesome scene in South America, which was crucial, they went back and planted details and plot points to lead up to it. Doing a shot over 30 or 40 times is not unusual.

After the press conference, the Up group appeared on the Carlton Pier for a photo op that went awry when the special effects guys who had rigged a 40-foot house attached to a giant air balloon (covered by colored balloons) decided that it was too windy to risk having the flimsy house crash and break apart on landing. So the house and the balloons stayed put. The movie itself will not be so grounded and should take off nicely all over the world on May 29. Cook says Disney is aggressively chasing after all audience quadrants. (The segment that might resist is teenage girls.) It wasn't the most glamorous opening nighter, but Up was the best movie the fest has programmed in that slot for a long while. And Cannes can also count on the film being an Oscar contender.

Here's Variety's Up-themed opener. And here's The Wrap.

On opening night, young ballerinas in pink tutus lined the Palais red carpet steps as Cannes president Gilles Jacob and fest director Thierry Fremaux stood at the top of the stairs to greet their guests (see Life Magazine's red carpet photos), including Ashwarya Rai and Elizabeth Banks, Isabelle Huppert (who has had an amazing 17 Cannes entries) and her jury (among them Asia Argento, Hanef Kureishi, Robin Wright Penn, Shu Qi) plus Pixar's Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and famed singer Charles Aznavour, who voices Carl in the French version of Up, and officially declared the 62nd Festival de Cannes "open."

Jim Jarmusch's Limits of Control opened well in limited release last weekend. Many filmgoers were lured by the white-haired New York indie icon, who is the epitome of cool. But this movie is maddeningly indulgent.

On the one hand, the film is a marvel of sights and sounds. Jarmusch devotes himself to the sensual pleasures of filming on location in Spain with cinematographer Chris Doyle, reveling in the textures and patterns of the exotic spaces they travel to on their extended travelogue with monosyllabic Isaach De Bankole. The camera work is idiosyncratic, improvisational, stunning. Jarmusch tries to get away with this minimalist, almost silent art film by giving The Limits of Control the patina of a spy thriller--without supplying any plot, character or payoff. He knows that by luring a few stars (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal) to play effortless cameos, he can finance the movie. While I respect Jarmusch for indulging his own pleasure, it wouldn't take much to make his films just a tad more nourishing. Clearly, satisfying himself means more to him than satisfying filmgoers.

Reviews (44% on Metacritic) range from appreciation of the film's cinematic virtues to questions of The Emperor's New Clothes. Glenn Kenny, for one, is a fan: "incantatory," he writes.

UPDATE: Jamie Stuart covers the premiere.

It seems fitting that IFC Films should acquire U.S. distribution rights to I Hate Valentine's Day, Nia Vardalos' directing debut, which reunites her for the first time with her co-star on her 2002 sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, John Corbett. In a sign of the times, the new IFC isn't going for a strictly theatrical release on July 1, 2009. The distrib will also make the New York romantic comedy available nationally on-demand for three months.

Vardalos stars as a florist who refuses to go on more than five dates with anyone. But at the end of her whirlwind romance with a charming restaurateur (Corbett), she wants more.

Up next: Vardalos stars with Richard Dreyfuss in Fox's spring romance My Life in Ruins which closes the Tribeca Fest.

Much like Michael Moore, Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith, This Film is Not Yet Rated) has a talent for putting himself front and center in his documentaries, as well as making them controversial and entertaining. Clearly his latest, Outrage, which is debuting at the Tribeca Film Fest, is no exception. Magnolia will release the agitprop doc on May 8.

Here's early reaction from Wilshire and Washington, Movieline and IndieWire.

Let's be honest. It was not good news for filmmaker Rian Johnson (Brick) and backer Endgame when Summit pushed back the opening of the European caper comedy Brothers Bloom from October to May 15 (broadening on May 22 and 29). While they were initially elated when Summit took the movie off the market in December 2007, before Sundance, and gave them time to finish the picture for Toronto the next fall, this push-back brought further loss of momentum and a slight taint of failure.

Admittedly, the movie is a slight, old-fashioned funny valentine to classic caper movies, shot on a shoestring in several European and American cities. It has earned decent reviews to date: last fall my (grown-up) Sneak Previews group enjoyed the picture, which showcases the comedic talents of Rachel Weisz with able support from mssrs. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as the titular con-men. Next up for Johnson: the time-travel flick Looper, which sends a group of present-day hit men into the past.

On The Brothers Bloom official website, Johnson posted his favorite version of the Brothers Bloom poster and list of favorite con man films. What are yours?

Here's the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom, on Hulu:

I grew up on this director's warm, accessible movies in a range of genres, from 40 Pounds of Trouble, his first feature (thanks to Tony Curtis), to Doris Day in Send Me No Flowers, Fiddler on the Roof, In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Thomas Crown Affair, which Jewison thought was wrong for Steve McQueen, who just happened to want to mold his tough peyote-smoking biker anti-hero persona into a classy urbane hero, for once. "Steve was an actor who you could dress differently," said Jewison. "But he really played himself. When he walked across a room you believed it. He wasn't acting. He could drive you crazy. If he found a weak spot he would bore in."

McQueen was just one movie star Jewison had to handle. Another was Cher, who did not want to star in John Patrick Shanley's Moonstruck, but turned up at the LACMA tribute on Friday night to honor the man who insisted that she do the part that wound up winning her an Oscar. "Snap out of it!" she cries to Nic Cage, slapping him silly. She talked Jewison into insisting on casting Cage because he was the only actor she could think of who would believably pick up a cleaver and mean the threat. "I'm his bad girl," said Cher of Jewison. "He seemed to really want me and I wasn't sure why." Responded Jewison, "There was no one else in the world who could play the part like you."

Moderator Leonard Maltin indulged a roster of guests, from D.P. Haskell Wexler and songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman ("The Windmills of Your Mind") and The Russians Are Coming stars Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint, who remembered a horrifying story of Jewison prone on the floor of a prop plane trying to close an open hatch, to Thomas Crown's Faye Dunaway, who coordinated her black-and-white outfit with Saint and Cher. She remembered her infamous chess scene with McQueen. "She looks at him, he looks at her, they look at the chess set," recalled Jewison. "What follows is chess with sex."

Jewison's first drama, after doing musical television and comedies, arrived when he replaced Sam Peckinpah at the last minute on The Cincinnati Kid. Vet Edward G. Robinson challenged Jewison's decision to trim much of his role, but the young director told him: "You're the king, the best poker player in the world. You enter the picture like Mestophiles in a cloud of steam with a long close-up."

"That's good, kid," the actor said, appeased. Adds Jewison, "It was youth against age, old star vs. young star, trying to get each other with a card. All actors are frightened."

The best actor he ever worked with? Michael Caine, who could turn on a dime, Jewison said: "He'd sit in his trailer watching CNN every day, he was incredible."

One thing revealed that night: Jewison's generation didn't always believe in selling things. He never shot a commercial. "I always felt there was something tacky about it."

In the movie business, the mix of art and commerce is always tricky. Some people have taste and talent smarts, but no business acumen. Developing a good script is one thing, but getting it produced is another. The ability to smell a hit is a weapon that only some producers have in their arsenal. Others easily churn out "product" but wouldn't know a good movie if it hit them on the head. When one person combines taste, quality control, and business moxy, then you get the rarest thing of all in Hollywood: a consistent track record.

Jim Stern of Endgame Entertainment is on a roll. While he varies his level of investment and responsibility in three to four projects a year, he had the sense to nail down significant pieces of several upcoming quality movies. At the recent Toronto Film Festival, during a time when self-distribution is the best option available to many indies, Stern went in with one film already sold: The Brothers Bloom, a caper comedy starring Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, which was pre-bought by Summit Entertainment (now set for release May 29). Two Endgame films also sold to Sony Pictures Classics: BBC Film's Noel Coward period comedy Easy Virtue, starring Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes and Colin Firth, and Every Little Step , a doc about the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line, featuring Broadway's first-ever filmed auditions, which Stern financed and co-directed with frequent collaborator Adam Del Deo. And at Sundance in January, Sony Pictures Classics also acquired Lone Scherfig and Nick Hornby's BBC film An Education, which Stern partly funded.

Not bad, having your own production funding. But the question is, how do you use it? In the case of Every Little Step, which opened April 17 to strong reviews, Stern was in a position to know what to do. The Chicago-born theater major from the University of Michigan had produced sixteen Broadway shows, including Stomp, The Producers, and Hairspray. He had produced such films as Proof and Stage Beauty. Stern had directed three films with Del Deo, on basketball, politics and theater. And he had financed a number of films, plays and TV shows since he founded Endgame in 2003. "It really helps being a director," Stern says, "even when I'm producing. It makes things easier and smoother when it's easy to understand what people are trying to do. All you ask is that the director makes the film they say they're going to make."

All Stern's experience came together with the doc Every Little Step when an old theater acquaintance, attorney John Breglio, gave him the Michael Bennett tapes from the snowy night in 1974 when he first conceived of A Chorus Line at a 12-hour marathon session with 19 dancers. When Stern heard the tapes, he felt chills and thought, "This is a movie."

Stern and Del Deo shot some 500 hours of video, and waded through tons of archived footage. With first-time ever permission from Actors' Equity to shoot auditions for the new show, the filmmakers began following 50 to 60 singer/dancers, often using four cameras to capture key moments. "Fortunately in this world, people were used to cameras," says Stern, who knew he had "doc gold" when director Bob Avian wept as Jason Tam nailed his audition as Paul. "We were like flies on the wall. You shoot first and ask questions later."

Cannes is a no-go for Francis Ford Coppola's Argentinian film Tetro, which he is taking to San Francisco and Seattle fests instead. Coppola released a statement to The Circuit:

“While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film. More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the U.S. release this June 11th.”

Sony Pictures Classics paid handsomely to acquire Coppola's last indie film, the $10-million Youth Without Youth, which Coppola refused to take on the fest circuit. The film earned $239,495 at the domestic boxoffice. This time Coppola will self-distribute through his own American Zoetrope.

After more than 30 years of not making it as Anvil, aging heavy metal rockers Robb Reiner and Steve Kudlow finally scored the career boost they needed from an unlikely source: a Brit who was once their roadie in 1983. In 2005, Hollywood screenwriter Sacha Gervasi (The Terminal) checked out the band online and realized they were still plugging away, trying to break through. He contacted lead singer and guitarist Lips and “within five minutes it was like I was 15 again,” he recalled during a Q & A after Anvil! The Story of Anvil at the Nuart Tuesday night. “He was exactly the same, so fully crazy, I started to believe him again. He believed so hard. They weren’t bitter. They truly believe that if they just hold on long enough that some kind of miracle is going to happen. In the end I realized it was an incredible story.”

So Gervasi pitched the doc to producer Rebecca Yeldham (The Kite Runner), who didn't care for heavy metal but loved the story. At Tuesday night’s Q & A after Anvil!, which finally opened Easter weekend after debuting at Sundance a year ago, Gervasi apologized for the absence of his stars. "They're playing in Seattle tonight," he said. "They'd love to see every screening of this film."

The band is on a seven-city tour backed by VH1, which will air the movie this summer, after a long struggle to find a distributor. Abramorama is handling the theatrical release of Anvil! which opened this past weekend at number one among specialty films, and performed best at LA’s Nuart Theatre with a per screen of $16,472. Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff believes so strongly in Anvil! that’s he’s moving it to the Westside Pavilion and adding screens around the country. Additionally, the Landmark chain is promoting the film via a sneaks program and plan to expand the tour dates for “The Anvil Experience,” which adds a performance by the band to the movie. They aim to peak in June.

Anvil! was all over my Facebook feed Easter weekend, fueled by good reviews (here are the NYT and New Yorker reviews), a Facebook page and Twitter-- John Mayer posted a twitpic of himself with Anvil. The domestic trailer went up on YouTube March 12 and hovered at about 300 views until two weeks ago when it shot up: it’s now at 21,658, while the U.K. trailer is at 86,470 views.

The movie has been good for the band. Their self-released 13th album has been selling well, and EMI Canada even approached Gervasi to help them sign the band—after turning them down in the movie. “They’re funny and human,” says Gervasi, who clearly loves these guys. “It’s about perseverance, friendship and family. It never stops. Last week Anvil recorded songs for Rock Band. They recorded ‘Thumb Hang.’ For guys like Lars Ullrich, who we interviewed for an hour, ‘it could have been me.’ These guys did get overlooked and they shouldn’t have. I had an opportunity to give them the support they needed.”

As for the inevitable comparisons to This is Spinal Tap, Gervasi responds: “Spinal Tap is the fake Anvil.”

Boston Phoenix critic Gerald Peary's long-gestating doc For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism is finally done. Appropriately, for a film hatched nine years ago at the Toronto Film Festival, Peary is taking his self-financed labor of love, produced with wife Amy Geller with foundation grants and funds from friends, on the film fest circuit, first to SXSW, and next, this month's San Francisco International Film Fest.

Peary conducted the first interviews in 2001, strangely enough, at the World Trade Center at a meeting of the New York Film Critics Association, a few months before 9/11. "Now the movie is filled with people without jobs," says Peary, whose primary income comes from running the film department at Boston's Suffolk University. He keeps having to go back into the film and change titles to "ex-critic." His subjects, including a plumper, talking Roger Ebert, will also see themselves captured at a younger age.

Thus the film, which offers an excellent history of American film criticism, also serves as a valentine to a vanishing profession, something Peary could never have foreseen. He interviewed the critics he could catch, at Toronto right after 9/11, in Cannes, and in New York. He asked them to answer the personal question: "Why am I a film critic?" And he got them to talk about their earliest film memories. "The stupidest view is that film critics don't like anything," says Peary. "Most critics are smitten at an early age, you can see the shine in their eyes."

As Peary fashioned his 100-year-narrative of criticism, he leaned on the likes of Richard Schickel to share his fave critics such as obscure early writers Frank Woods and Robert Sherwood, and filmmaker John Waters, who reveres Parker Tyler. Peary goes back to the days when Andrew Sarris first espoused the auteur theory and the merits of Budd Boetticher and Douglas Sirk in the pages of Film Culture, which led to the wars between the auteurists led by Sarris and Pauline Kael and her Paulettes. "A good doc teaches you something," says Peary.

Even the late Kael and Manny Farber made it into the movie, via talk-show appearances and filmed interviews. Ex-critic Jami Bernard offered up her home movie of being unemployed. Peary wanted to find the tape of Farber interviewing James Stewart at the Telluride Film festival, "but nobody knows where that is." Next up: finding a distributor and clearing his film clips, which if they are not deemed fair use, could cost a fortune.

It's hard not to feel sad at the end of this movie, about a world that no longer exists, a profession that seems to be dying in front of our eyes. Spoutblog's Karina Longworth speaks for the younger generation plying the craft online, but the old culture of literate lengthy debates when movies seemed to really mean something are long gone. "It's a stop the bleeding movie," says Peary. "I hope that those who watch the movie value criticism and will read it and demand it in their newspapers. It's tough though. There are so many factors. What's the effect on people who Twitter all day? That's not good for film criticism."

Here's a transcript of Peary's SXSW critics panel, a Q & A with Peary in Filmmaker, and the trailer:

After a video montage in which directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Oliver Stone paid tribute to Roger Ebert, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker presented ShoWest's Career Achievement in Film Journalism Award to the Pulitzer-Prize winning critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. "Roger Ebert is the most popular, most respected, most honored, and most eclectic film critic in American history," Barker said, citing Ebert as "one of the few saviors of independent film--films of all shapes and sizes--American independent features, foreign films, documentaries, and animated films. Ask any independent filmmakers who Roger has championed. Errol Morris will tell you Roger gave him his career. Louis Malle used to tell everyone Roger Ebert saved My Dinner With Andre and Atlantic City from disaster, Robert Altman the same with several of his films. Pan's Labyrinth, Memento, Monster, Hoop Dreams, Roger and Me--we would not know these movies in the way we know them if it were not for Roger Ebert. This is fact."

Most journalists are in awe of Ebert's prolific output. But since he lost the ability to speak due to surgery for throat cancer, he has increased his writing, as if to compensate. And it has never been better. At ShoWest, Ebert's wife Chaz read his acceptance speech as he stood next to her. He mentioned his early and recent discoveries of directors Martin Scorsese, Mike Leigh and Ramin Bahrani. And he begged the exhibitors to please not only pay attention to number one b.o. performers but dedicate a screen or two to the independents as well. "Let's ask ourselves," he said, "how many of us would choose Fast & Furious for a night out at the movies over other indie films? They motivate adults to attend movies." He wound up: "At times like these, we all need to see a good movie."

[Photo: Ethan Miller, Getty Images North America]

Careful what you wish for. Snarky blogger Nikki Finke has won a huge following. Now her targets are fighting back. Rod Lurie has his say at The Wrap, which is reporting healthy initial traffic after two months.

Freelance critic Elvis Mitchell talks about the state of film criticism.

Life Magazine is reincarnated online as a photo archive.

Pristine Wolverine is leaked to film pirates.

Knowing is an intense, smart sci-fi thriller that stops just short of being great. Australian director Alex Proyas, the mind behind The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot , makes several questionable choices--among them ominous Jim Jarmusch lookalike lurkers and and a derivative ending-- but they don't derail the movie. If anything they might enhance its mainstream playability.

Producer Jason Blumenthal developed the project for ten years, and Proyas was on board for six; distrib Summit should make a mint on this smart sci-fi doomsday thriller with elements of Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, Steven Spielberg's The War of the Worlds and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Shot with the new Red digital camera, the movie looks swell, changing its pallette as it moves from the saturated 1959 Boston-area prologue, when a Boston-area school places pictures and one little girl's series of numbers in a time capsule to be opened 50 years later, through the aftermath of what happens when the son of an MIT professor (Nic Cage) brings the same piece of paper home in 2009. The astrophysicist discerns an alarming pattern in the numbers sequences.

The numbers predict disasters that occurred over the 50 years and two more that Cage witnesses with horror, as a jet crashes right next to a local freeway, killing 81--as predicted-- and in New York, a subway derails with horrific consequences. Both sequences are masterfully executed (VFX were mainly handled by Weta Digital and Animal Logic). Cage wanders through the wreckage of the plane in a single take--there wasn't time to do another.

At Wednesday night's Australians in Film screening, Rose Byrne confessed that it was a challenge to return home to Melbourne, where much of the film was shot, and still have to muster an American accent. "I was surrounded by Aussies," said the actress, who during her Damages hiatus squeezed in the role of a woman whose mother and daughter hear whispers telling them what to do. Cage was also happy to be back in Australia, where Ghost Rider was filmed, Byrne said. Proyas and his d.p. Simon Duggan took a trip to Wellywood to get advice from Peter Jackson on how to get the most out of the digital cameras. The results should encourage other filmmakers to follow Jackson, Proyas and Steven Soderbergh's lead.

Here's my interview with Proyas at Comic-Con, Todd McCarthy's review, and the trailer:

Universal debuted Sam Raimi's fantastic horror-fest Drag Me to Hell on Sunday night at a packed midnight show at the Paramount Theatre; I caught up with the director earlier in the day. "I feel the need to deliver no matter what the budget," confessed Raimi, who showed up in scruffy Austin wearing a suit and tie. "The audience has to laugh or it's a failure, jump or it's a failure, cheer or it's a failure. It's like a circus act, as opposed to showing fine art. It's the high art of entertaining an audience."

The director, who wrote Drag Me to Hell with his brother Ivan, has nothing to worry about. The audience was roaring with pleasurable disgust as various incarnations of a wicked-witch gyspy crone with evil eyes disgorged all sorts of mean nasty ugly things all over sweet ambitious loan agent Alison Lohman. While the movie is silly and over the top, the audience is in on the joke. (An invitation to a cabin the in the woods yields knowing groans.) It's great fun. It will make a mint.

A student of classic horror, Raimi pays homage to Robert Wise's The Haunting, not to mention Roman Polanski's Repulsion, as houses bulge and rumble, wind ominously ruffles leaves, and freaked out young Lohman (constantly left alone when she is in dire need of psychiatric care) whips out a butcher knife to sacrifice her "little kitty" in order to stave off a nasty bitch of a curse. I was slightly puzzled as to why Justin Long wasted his time playing Lohman's remarkably dull boyfriend; the answer eventually became clear.

What Raimi did, while he fussed over this movie in the editing room, was play with the sound. The music and sound effects manipulate us expertly; time and again the audience screeched with delight as bodies rose up from the road--accompanied by swells of wrenching violins--or popped up in the back seat.

"Sound is 50% of a movie," Raimi says. "The audience is not aware of how much they're affected by sound. A rough cut is so much worse than a finished film, after fine-tuning the editing and sound effects: dimensionality, continuation of characters, how dialogue is communicated through space. You step into a big close-up, start in the center speaker quietly with some echo in it, move left and right with a little sound, you're then filling the theater with a statement as the music swells. You have a moment!"

Raimi isn't done tinkering; he was mixing until late Saturday night and he's back on a plane at 7 AM Monday morning to return to the editing room, he says: "I'm hoping I'm in good shape for that mix."

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While Watchmen delivered a robust opening of about $55.7 million in North America, it came in lower than expectations--and much lower than Snyder's last film, the blockbuster 300--both domestically and overseas. Finally, Watchmen works best as the narratively complex, visually dazzling comics series from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Originally published in 1986, the graphic novel is flying off the shelves. I hope people do read the book, which instantly draws you in with its compelling, never confusing storytelling, deepening and peeling new layers as it goes. The movie, on the other hand, is hard to fathom, boasts too many characters, and doesn't add up to much. Set in the 80s, Zack Snyder's film deals with the Vietnam and Cold War, and the end of the world via nuclear attack, but supplies a new ending with strange shades of 9/11. Moore always did insist that his comics were unfilmable.

The Brits are unhappy with Barack Obama for the way he treated Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who may be the ultimate workaholic policy wonk but lacks a few volts in the charisma department. His countrymen are even complaining about Obama's gift to Brown of the AFI set of 25 DVDs.

Gold Derby reports that the Academy is delivering Heath Ledger's Oscar to Michelle Williams.

Ray Pride and Jamie Stuart celebrate the 10th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's death. Here's a wonderful 2001 Kubrick special on Charlie Rose featuring Kubrick's wife and producer and Martin Scorsese:

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.

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.

EW loves lists like this one, the top 25 active directors, designed to inspire healthy debate. Did they get it right? And what do they mean by active, exactly? "Most talented, in-demand directors behind the camera today?" They're trying to have it both ways--it's a power list measuring fame, heat, influence and at the same time, a qualitative measure of talent.

Sorry, while I get why these guys are listed, their order does not compute. Where's Oliver Stone? David Cronenberg? Oscar-nominated Gus Van Sant isn't even in the also-ran Top 50 list, where filmmakers who are female (Mira Nair and Mary Harron but no Jane Campion), past their prime (Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet), documentarians (Michael Moore) black (Spike Lee), or directors of animation (Miyazaki, Stanton, Bird) are relegated. Also not included are Werner Herzog, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weir or Terrence Malick. Oy. For those who would ask for a woman to be on the Top 25 list, there simply aren't any in this league. I'd like to see Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) get there some day.

Here's the EW List with annotations from me:

1. Steven Spielberg

The greatest. Of course.

2. Peter Jackson

Nipping at Spielberg's heels. For the moment, they're collaborating, on TinTin. I've seen some footage of The Lovely Bones, due next fall, and it looks impressive indeed. DreamWorks produced.

3. Martin Scorsese

Absolutely.

4. Christopher Nolan

He's a bit high in this context--ahead of Clint Eastwood, who is way too far down.

5. Steven Soderbergh

Also too high. Much as I admire much of Soderbergh's output, he rushes through too many movies in too little time, and could shape many of them better before he shoots. Che was a potentially great movie buried inside a sprawling, shapeless mess. The Good German was entirely misconceived.

6. Ridley Scott

Solid studio craftsman with a wide skill set--VFX, action, comedy, drama--who could be even greater if he compromised less. Yet I respect his ability to churn out strong movies with cranky movie stars within the system--despite the occasional misstep like A Good Year.

7. Quentin Tarantino

Of course.

8. Michael Mann

He's still managing to make his own brilliant, crazy movies with studio millions, whether they're commercial or not. Usually not. (Which is fine, as long as he can get away with it.)

9. James Cameron

As good as it gets, even if he hasn't made a studio feature since Titanic. Avatar awaits.

10. Joel and Ethan Coen

Nonpareils.

11. Guillermo del Toro

Ditto.

12. David Fincher

Another director stuck inside a studio matrix, dependent on big budgets. Love to see him break free somehow.

13. Tim Burton

Amazing what he does, even within the studio system.

14. Judd Apatow

Effective, hugely influential, successful and prolific, but he's still listed too high.

15. Sam Raimi

This list is very EW, geared at younger males. Raimi is a great director and deserves all credit for his movies including the Spiderman films. But again, he's ahead of some great Hollywood filmmakers here.

16. Zack Snyder

300 was great and I can't wait to see Watchmen. Again, ahead of Boyle, Eastwood, Alomodovar and Howard? Please.

17. Darren Aronofsky

18. Danny Boyle

He's super gifted, but Slumdog is this year's news. He's ahead of many great directors with longer resumes and less heat.

19. Clint Eastwood

Why so shockingly low? He's the model for how to be a director, for chrissakes. Is he, maybe, too old for these juvenile-oriented EW fanboys?

20. Ron Howard

I like some of his least successful movies best. Like The Missing.

21. Ang Lee

An astonishingly versatile, sensitive filmmaker who can handle an American western, a British Jane Austen movie, or Asian epics. He can do anything.

22. Paul Thomas Anderson

Much as I laud his ambition, I feel that he hasn't made his best film yet. He's trying to navigate the studio/budget/indie waters. He's not a commercial director, so it's tough.

23. Paul Greengrass

He can make art and commerce at the same time, drives his studio crazy, but delivers.

24. Pedro Almodovar

Easily one of the greatest directors in the world.

25. Jon Favreau

One of the most promising helmers on the rise today. He can handle FX, comedy, actors, the whole ball of wax.

Sally Potter's new film Rage stars Jude Law as a transvestite. It screens at the Berlin fest on Sunday. Law is often best when playing down his good looks (I love him in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Road to Perdition) but in this case, Potter writes in her online press notes, the director (Orlando, Yes) took advantage of the actor's beauty:

"Part of the subject matter of Rage is the ugly use of beauty in the pursuit of profit," Potter writes. "Drugged by marketing, sapped by fear of aging, conned by the cult of celebrity -- image becomes all."

"Law, whose beauty has sometimes been held against him as an actor, made the courageous decision to accept the role of Minx -- a 'celebrity super-model' -- and took on a kind of hyper-beauty for this persona...a 'female' beauty which gradually unravels as the story unfolds. Strangely, the more he became a 'she', coiffed and made-up, the more naked was his performance. There was great strength in his willingness to make himself vulnerable. It was an extraordinarily intense part of the shoot."

I took this photograph of Danny Boyle at the start of the whole long process: The Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day Weekend. The movie was the hit of the fest. Everyone knew it was a winner. Slumdog went on to score at the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, best director at the LA Film Critics, and Saturday night, the Directors Guild. Multiple Oscars are in Slumdog's sights.

Who would have thought that this movie developed by the originators of Who Wants to be A Millionaire, Celador, and funded by Film Four, would end up getting this far? By the way, Warners isn't crying in its beer about losing bragging rights to this Oscar contender. First, the studio did acquire Slumdog through Warner Independent, but shuttered the label before Slumdog's scheduled Telluride launch. Warners tried to figure out a way for outgoing Picturehouse exec Bob Berney to distribute it, but it was financially impossible to hang onto his staff for the release. And WIP's Polly Cohen persuaded her bosses to do what was best for the filmmaker, and let him take the film to his frequent home, Fox Searchlight.

"I should start by curiously thanking Warner Bros. for actually having the grace to do the right thing, when I think it would have been a lot easier to do the wrong thing, and pass the film on to Fox Searchlight, who are an extraordinary bunch of people," said Boyle, according to the A.P.

It's still a close race for picture with Slumdog vying with Milk and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But most of the time the DGA winner is the Oscar winner. So best director is Boyle's to lose.

Defamer's Stu Van Airsdale argues that given the current odds and despite its awesome Oscar nominations lead (13) and Paramount ad support, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could whiff on Oscar night. The January 31 DGA awards will tell the tale: if Danny Boyle wins, David Fincher will likely lose the directing Oscar. My sense is that the DGA and Oscar voters could go either way. The Academy respects Fincher: it could be a career prize.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired two movies in advance of the Sundance fest--James Toback's well-received Cannes doc Tyson, and the Mexican director troica Cha Cha Cha's first outing,Rudo y Cursi,a soccer flick reuniting Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, directed by Carlos Cuaron. This practice of selling movies before film fests is something SPC co-prexys Tom Bernard and Michael Barker wish more filmmakers would emulate, but suspect they won't. "We prefer to set up a film with press there," says Barker. "It's an advantage to have a company attached, to be able to answer questions, knowing what you're going to do with it."

SPC and Toback started talking about the Tyson acquisition at Cannes, but rights issues blocked the sale of North American rights until recently. They told Toback they would be happy to wait and make the deal when rights were cleared, and so they did. NBA star Carmelo Anthony, who recently founded Krossover Prods, is also joining the movie as exec producer.

I saw Tyson at Cannes; it is a strong, moving document of a riveting character, former world heavyweight Mike Tyson, as he reexamines his life and choices with moving honesty. Here's my Cannes interview with Toback and Todd McCarthy's review.

SPC was already planning a Sundance press launch for the guitar doc It Might Get Loud, directed by Davis Guggenheim, which debuted at Toronto. Guggenheim's last entry at Sundance went pretty well: An Inconvenient Truth.

There were no surprises Thursday morning at the DGA nominations. The top five movies--the same as the Producers Guild--are likely to be the films announced January 22 for the Oscars: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire.

Yesterday I realized that the movie picking up Oscar steam--besides comic-book movie The Dark Knight--is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It has scale and scope and ambition and emotion and yes, it's a hit.

The impeccably crafted Milk had the earmarks of a winner for a while --it has period, history and political timeliness on its side--but the film's big win may be Sean Penn. Also well-made, Frost/Nixon is a smaller actors' vehicle. Slumdog Millionaire is hugely popular, a crowd pleaser. (I love it.) But I suspect it doesn't look and feel like the kind of best picture the entire Academy goes for. I wonder if it's a tad rough around the edges, violent, and melodramatic for the older set. The Dark Knight will win many Oscars, but I doubt that best picture will be one of them. Which leaves Benjamin Button in the lead right now.

Billy Wilder is one of those tough unsentimental directors whose films get better with time. Years later, they still feel contemporary. And the Oscar-winning The Apartment, reviewed here on video by the NYT's A.O. Scott, is on my All-Time Top Ten List.

Scott picked up some video performance skills while guest-reviewing on Ebert & Roeper; he also recognizes that video reviews are where online criticism is heading. He should do more of these; it works.

One thing to keep in mind with Stephen Daldry and David Hare's adaptation of The Reader is that Bernhard Schlink's novel was written for German audiences. These British filmmakers faced a gauntlet of challenges in translating the movie for global viewers, not to mention American ones. Here's my column.

Greencine collects reaction to the movie; Thelma Adams questions the relationship between the 35-year-old woman and a 15-year-old boy. This never bothered me. Writer David Hare thinks Americans are a tad Puritanical in this regard.

The Bagger reports on one Reader party in NYC; Karina Longworth and Patrick Goldstein react to Manohla Dargis's NYT pan. Here's the NYT's feature. UPDATE: The Guardian publishes Hare's take.

My take on the movie: maybe it should have been done with German actors. Even in English. But even better in German. Odd that The Reader comes out at the same time as Valkyrie, which is actually pretty good. It too has a mix of actors with a wide range of authentic and inauthentic accents. What if cool Brits Kate Winslet (who is very good) and Ralph Fiennes had been replaced by Germans like David Kross and Bruno Ganz?

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.

I'm not a big fan of live-blogging, but it does work occasionally, as NY Post critic-blogger Lou Lumenick demonstrates with his play-by-play reporting of the New York Film Critics's divisive voting this morning.

Thus, Rachel Getting Married led the first two ballots and Milk pulled ahead on the third, followed by Happy-Go-Lucky and Slumdog Millionaire; Milk star Sean Penn handily beat The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke; Milk's Josh Brolin beat out The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger; and documentary Oscar front-runner Man on Wire beat out Waltz with Bashir and Trouble the Water. Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Penelope Cruz easily defeated Viola Davis of Doubt; third place was a tie between Rachel Getting Married's Rosemary DeWitt and Debra Winger. Happy-Go-Lucky writer-director Mike Leigh narrowly edged out Slumdog Millionaire's Danny Boyle. Wall-E took best animated feature over Waltz with Bashir.

Here's Lumenick on how the best actress vote went down, which helps explain the ballot process:

Sally Hawkins of "Happy-Go-Lucky'' won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actress as voting got under way this morning at the Time-Life Building. Hawkins won on the second weighted ballot, receiving 39 points to 32 points for Melissa Leo of "Frozen River,'' with Kate Winslet ("Revolutionary Road'') and Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married'') with 22 apiece. In the NYFCC's convoluted voting system, the critics make one choice apiece n the first round. If nothing captures a majority, there follows one or more weighted ballots, each critic ranks choices with 3, 2, and 1 points; the winner also has to appear on the majority of ballots until the fouth ballot (if there is one) -- in Hawkins' case, 18 ballots.

OSCAR ANALYSIS
Finally, the critics voting solidifies my thinking re: the Oscar race. The Golden Globes may add some fuel tomorrow, but for now I see Milk as the front-runner for best picture, followed by Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Doubt and Revolutionary Road fighting it out for last two slots. Penn may be the front-runner now, but the man he has to beat is Clint Eastwood, who gives a devastating performance in Gran Torino. The Academy will be moved to tears by him. Mickey Rourke looks solid for a nom. The Visitor's Richard Jenkins could have used more help here.

Thanks to critics, Sally Hawkins and Melissa Leo are moving into best actress contention, while I've Loved You So Long's Kristin Scott Thomas may not. Changeling's Angelina Jolie is fading fast. Milk's Josh Brolin and James Franco could both win supporting slots.

Revolutionary Road will be in the hunt for picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, actor and supporting actor. But the grim, serious drama needs some love at this point, especially from critics. And may get it.

The Reader, which may have a shot for Kate Winslet in supporting and David Hare for adapted screenplay, has a long way to go. It got slammed by critics today, earning an initial 54 % on Metacritic. That is not good enough. It needs all the help it can get.

Doubt has the support of the dominant actors branch and likely the writers (if not directors); it will be vying for actress, supporting actress, supporting actor and adapted screenplay.

Much as I admire Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, it strikes me as oddly perverse for the NYFCC to throw their foreign vote away on a movie that is only available on DVD at this point, rather than trying to boost the theatrical and Oscar fortunes of a new upcoming release. But it's a free country.

The full list of winners is on the jump:

The guy could write. The story of Revolutionary Road author Richard Yates, told in excruciating detail in Blake Bailey's 2003 A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, moves me, partly because he got so little encouragement, yet went back to writing every morning, hung over or not. And he insisted on drinking and smoking himself to death. But he knew he was a good writer, and that sustained him. Here's my column.

Yates strikes a chord with me because my father sat at the dining room table every night at his Royal typewriter, a glass of cheap sherry at his elbow and a Kool wasting away in the ashtray. Yates was what he aspired to be. How many writers, inspired by the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Salinger, pecked away at the great American novel? And never succeeded? (My father's debut novel, Halfway Down the Stairs, was launched to good reviews in 1957. He never got another one published.)

Karina Longworth gets me slightly wrong on the movie adaptation of Revolutionary Road. I don't think any producer from Hollywood or elsewhere could adapt this book for the movies without warming it up. You have to give the audience some reason to hang in there. Much as I admire the book, Yates is tough and brutal. Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe, Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio kept the story grim and honest while figuring out a way to cut through the darkness.

Here's James Wood's appreciation of Yates and Revolutionary Road in The New Yorker.

And Tim Dumas in Westport Magazine.

[Illustration courtesy The New Yorker]

The winners of this year's International Documentary Awards were announced Friday night at a ceremony at the DGA. (Waltz with Bashir and Man on Wire tied for best feature doc.) But the highlight of the night was director Werner Herzog's tribute. After showing stellar clips from Little Dieter Learns to Fly, Grizzly Man and his most recent doc, Encounters at the End of the World (which is short-listed for Oscar consideration), Herzog got a standing ovation and gave a speech.

"There are deeper strata of truth in cinema and there's such a thing as poetic ecstatic truth," said the director, who thanked his editor on his last fourteen docs and features, Joe Bini. "In being a filmmaker I really tried to find an answer about what constitutes reality...we have to individually find our own ways. I have tried to find something much deeper, something that constitutes truth, which is hard to grasp. In my filmmaking I have tried to find some sort of ecstasy where you are deeply moved and illuminated. If you leave pure facts behind...truth can create illumination."

At dinner afterwards, the classically educated Herzog cited Virgil's joyful The Georgiad as a source of inspiration for Encounters at the End of the World, yet another of his celebrations of the wonders to be found on this earth. The filmmaker arrived in Antarctica without knowing what his movie would be; he looked for interesting people and chose his subjects as he went. He was not permitted to dive under the ice, much as the fearless documentarian would have liked to. He denies that he is in any way a "journalist" or "reporter." He's seeking truth, which is something else entirely.

A complete list of winners is on the jump:

While Summit has wasted no time moving ahead with the next installment in the Twilight series, New Moon, Catherine Hardwicke will not direct the picture. This is unusual when a director has successfully launched a franchise of this magnitude. The problem that stalled negotiations was that Hardwicke had strong opinions about what to do with the next installment, and so did Summit. The debate was how to focus the adaptation of the second book, which deals more with werewolves than vampires, as well as Bella's long depression after her vampire lover leaves her. One issue will be how to get more of teen heartthrob Rob Pattinson into the film. UPDATE: There's more in my Variety story.

Last week reports surfaced that Summit was checking out other directors for the Twilight franchise while they insisted they were still negotiating with the director, who delivered them the highest-grossing movie opening ever for a woman. The movie is still going strong as the director and cast promote it overseas; it came in second this weekend with $13.2 million, grossing a total $138.6 million. Was Hardwicke fired or did she fail to get her way? There will be spinning now to protect her reputation. But the damage is done.

As Chris Nolan worked the room at Warner Bros.' Oscar-season party at Il Cielo for The Dark Knight, he looked as relaxed as I've ever seen him. That's because for the first time in six years, he's not working on a movie. He's been going over old files, reading, rewriting a seven-year-old original script that he wrote at a time when he hadn't done a big-budget studio movie. Now he has, so he's scaling it back. And he's enjoying the luxury, he says, "of just noodling around."

The LAT's Rachel Abramowitz was at the same party, collecting string for this Heath Ledger piece.

[Joker Oscar courtesy InContention.com]

It's worth noting that several of the films getting singled out for kudos consideration this season are from directors who have played hard ball with the studios but have figured out that in many ways, indie is better.

They include Jonathan Demme, who went from the mediocre The Manchurian Candidate and The Truth About Charlie to the more vital and nourishing Rachel Getting Married; Milk's Gus Van Sant, who has clearly sided with the indies since the days of Finding Forrester and Psycho; and Darren Aronofsky, who went from the $30-million The Fountain at Warners (arguably, as close to an indie film as any studio would ever make) to the $6 million The Wrestler.

Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) has long sworn off studio big-budgets, ever since The Beach. And it's heartening to hear Waltz with Bashir director Ari Folman admit that while he has been ardently wooed by Hollywood ever since Cannes (including some people who haven't even seen his movie), he recognizes that he has more freedom and control raising his own money abroad. (His movie was a hit in Israel and France.)His next animated feature is shaping up: it's based on a cool story by Stanislaw Lem about a movie star who as she starts to lose her looks, sells her digital image rights; the movie tracks her 20 years into the future.

As Frost/Nixon played well to the Academy crowd last week, producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard have started their award season rounds.

Here's their chat with Peter Bart both in print and on Shootout:

As Patrick Goldstein rightly points out, Frost/Nixon is first and foremost the creation of writer Peter Morgan, who adapted his own play. Morgan tells Goldstein why he's attracted to these power duels between younger and older, more powerful figures--as in The Queen and The Last King of Scotland. Morgan is well on his way to his second Oscar nomination.

At the Frost/Nixon premiere, we asked Morgan if he plans to complete the trilogy begun by The Deal (Tony Blair vs. Gordon Brown) and continued by The Queen (Blair vs. Queen Elizabeth). Next he was supposed to write The Special Relationship (Blair vs. George W. Bush). But he's writing about Blair and Bill Clinton, Morgan says. Michael Sheen, who plays David Frost to Frank Langella's Nixon both on stage and screen, is set to return as Blair. In the meantime Sheen stars in Morgan's very British story about a famed soccer coach in The Damned United, directed by Tom Hooper (John Adams). UPDATE: Morgan is also writing the thriller Hereafter for DreamWorks, with Clint Eastwood in talks to direct.

At the Frost/Nixon premiere after-party, Howard was in good spirits. Not only is he in the Oscar hunt for this movie (along with Morgan and Langella), but he's pleased with how the sequel turned out to The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, which he recently screened for Sony. He admits that he had more freedom on Angels and Demons, and was less constrained by the religious material that had to be handled so somberly on the first one. Hanks could have more attitude. This one is more of a rollicking fun adventure, Howard says.

Here's the Angels and Demons trailer:

I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Saturday (following the aborted Thursday screening), and have been trying to sort it out ever since.

David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) have delivered an historic achievement, a masterful piece of cinema, and a moving treatise on death, loss, loneliness and love. As the movie proceeds, and Brad Pitt as Button ages backwards, we know where he is headed: it's where we are all going. But he feels he has to go there by himself, without his loved ones. And nobody wants to die alone. (Here is Todd McCarthy's review.)

So when the movie reaches its climax, it is extraordinarily moving (although some find the movie cold and dispassionate). It may pack a more powerful punch the older you are and the more people you have lost. In that case it will score with the Academy, who will also recognize the skillful filmmaking on display.

The movie marks a seismic shift in terms of what is possible in moviemaking. What Fincher and his team have done is no small technological feat. Button starts off as a CG-aged baby, moves through CG-altered older Pitt faces superimposed on small bodies, and then proceeds to the "real" Pitt wearing makeup and then getting younger and younger. Thus the film's central performance is in great part a visual effect. (Blanchett is also made younger digitally, but aged with makeup.) That accounts in part for the movie's high cost (well above $150 million) but is also its primary limitation.

Thus, while I admire the film's amazing accomplishment--it's hard to imagine that anyone but the digitally sophisticated Fincher, who has become adept at "painting" his digital canvases, could have pulled this off--the movie is not entirely satisfying. But given what it is, it's hard to imagine it being done done any better. The actors are superb, especially Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who should earn Oscar noms. What's missing has partly to do with the limitations of the technology. Button reminds me of Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardner in Being There. He's oddly passive and restrained, zen-like as he floats through all the decades, watching, listening, learning. He narrates the tale via his diary, along with his dying love Blanchett. We see him engaging with people, but he never says much. We see him from the outside; we never get under his skin, and we never learn the fruits of his wisdom. He stays much the same.

Still, the movie is sadly beautiful, of a piece, as impeccably wrought as its ornate clock that runs counterclockwise. Do Paramount and Warner Bros. have a prayer of making their money back? This movie needs all the help it can get, from anyone who loves movies and wants the studios to take more risky bets like this one.

[Posted by Steve Chagollan]
Having covered a few City of Lights, City of Angels French showcases, I’ve been invited to the occasional lunch at the French Consul General's home in Beverly Hills. One such event last year, for La Vie en Rose Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard, was mobbed by media and industryites. But last Wednesday was more typical of such affairs. Laurent Cantet — director of Cannes Palm d’Or winner The Class, France’s official entry for Academy’s foreign-language competition — was the guest of honor, sitting at the head of an outdoor table lined with few more than a dozen attendees, including the host, David Martinon.

The 46-year-old filmmaker, handsome in an austere way with a head of silvery hair and a no-nonsense air, spoke good English but occasionally relied on an interpreter. We talked about Cantet’s cinema verite methodology on The Class; he workshopped his on actors for a year before shooting began.

Because Cantet has been promoting the film — which covers a year in the life of an inner city junior high school teacher and the relationship with his combative, racially mixed students — practically nonstop since its triumph in Cannes, he shook his head in bewilderment when asked what he was now working on now. He hasn’t had a moment to think about it, much less spend time with his family in Paris.

The film was three years in the making. And despite the fact that he’s used largely non-actor casts in past films — most notably in Human Resources (1999) and slightly less so for his devastating Time Out (2001) and the equally penetrating Heading South (2005), which starred Charlotte Rampling — he says his experience on The Class convinced him that this was the way he wanted to work from now on: unadulterated naturalism from non-pros who are re-enacting everyday situations. The most obvious parallels are the films of Mike Leigh, but Cantet takes it even further, to the point where the camera seems like a fly on the wall.

[Posted by Steve Gaydos]
This week's UCLA Sneak Preview screening of Rod Lurie's Nothing But The Truth provided a showcase for the writer-director to practice his other craft - acting - while animatedly talking up his new topical thriller/lady in distress platform for star Kate Beckinsale.

Lurie laughed about playing a cameo as a D.C. newspaper chief in his own film, but faster than you can say "What's my motivation?" he was on his feet acting out the parts of a real life Memphis prison warden who thought the film's costar Matt Dillon was that Dillon fellow who stars in Entourage as well as the nonplussed Matt himself.

"You're not on 'Entourage?' asked Lurie/Warden to Lurie/Matt. "Nope, that's my brother Kevin," replied a dead-on impression of Matt, noting the Warden might have seen him in There's Something About Mary, or The Outsiders or any of a number of his other films.

"Not on 'Entourage',? replied the Warden. "Then I don't know you."