The new GQ has a story about Bruno, of course, cause what other stuff is happening this month? So they did a photo shoot of the gay-like character with an LA high school football team, and even paid the school a cool $500 for the privilege of handling their young men. Now the principal's in trouble!

"Rules were broken. The principal is ultimately responsible, but I also hold accountable the athletic director, who is also the school's filming coordinator and was present when the pictures were taken," [the head of the school district] said.

"I also want parents to know that this district will allow no one to take advantage of our students."

You know those boys liked it, heh, [MACHO]. Pretty dumb controversy considering the kids got permission slips and everything. GQ declined to give us a comment, although they did make sure we had a copy of the picture, so they must be pretty upset about the whole thing! Thanks, GQ!

We don't know for sure what movie Sanford was talking about when he wrote this to María Belén Chapur in July 2008:

was just going to find the movie the Holiday as we had spoken of it last Thursday. Its music was pleasant and made me think of you - its mood and the notion of a holiday (wrapped up in our case over two days) certainly fit as well....

Dowd assumes it's The Holiday, which isn't really about a holiday so much as a house-swap between Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz, wherein they start fucking each others' boyfriends or somesuch. But Dowd finds parallels:

He wanted to get his girlfriend a DVD of the movie "The Holiday," presumably the Cameron Diaz-Kate Winslet chick flick about two women, one from L.A. and one from England, who trade homes and lives. He was fantasizing about catapulting himself into an exotic life where stimulus had nothing to do with budgets.

But there is another Holiday, a 1938 golden-era-of-Hollywood comedy starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, that is basically a filmed enactment of Mark Sanford's fantasy life. We'd like to think that it was this older Holiday—which we haven't seen, but which Gawker managing editor Gabriel Snyder calls "Cary and Kate at their finest"—to which Sanford was referring. And if Dowd wasn't losing her pop-culture edge—she probably didn't want anyone to think she's old enough to have seen it in theaters—she could have had a lot of fun doing her patented movie-mirrors-real-life schtick with this one. So we'll do it for her!

Holiday stars Grant as restless young man who has worked too hard for too long, and doesn't want to spend his life at a desk. He longs to travel the world to figure out his true purpose in life. He gets engaged to a stuffy heiress who wants to pin him down to a life of routine in her daddy's bank, but falls in love with her free-thinking sister; they run off together for a life of adventure, leaving the stuffy fiancee behind.

This sounds familiar, doesn't it? Here are the parallels:

• Grant meets his stuffy bank-heiress-fiancee at a resort.

  Sanford met his wife Jenny, whose great-grandfather founded the Skil Corporation, the manufacturer of the first portable electric saw, in the Hamptons.

• Grant becomes "despondent" after agreeing to work in his future father-in-law's bank in order to save his engagement.

  Sanford hates his job, running off to his farm to dig holes, one of his "favorite ways of escaping the norms, constant phone calls and formalities that go with the office."

• Grant doesn't know what he wants to do with his life: "Because he has worked hard ever since he was a child, he now feels that he should take a long-term holiday and discover the true meaning of life."

  Sanford clearly hates his life, and loves adventures: "I told her about my love of the Appalachian Trail.... And I told her of adventure trips both in college.... I'd fly different places around the world; get myself a job; carry a hundred dollars emergency money, and either find a job there with the locals...or come on home.... I have found in this job is that one desperately needs a break from the bubble wherein every word, every moment is recorded — just to completely break."

• Grant's fiancee is a traditionalist, and her sister—his true love—is a wise-cracking free-thinker.

  Jenny Sanford was a driven investment banker who was happy "serving as a first lady who would choose one of her son's class plays over a presidential dinner anytime, but who was also perfectly comfortable discussing intricacies of the state's finances"; the exotic Belén Chapur did things like sunbathe on "lhabela, a beautiful island near Sao Paulo."

In other words, Holiday is the movie of how Mark Sanford wished his life had gone. It's gobsmackingly obvious that his dalliance was about chafing at the confines of the success he'd worked so hard for—escaping the security detail, the phone calls, the wife for an unencumbered life of Latin American torpor.

The only other clue as to which film he was talking about is that Sanford though "Its music was pleasant" and made him think of Chapur. The soundtrack to the 2006 film is by Hans Zimmer, a composer famous "integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements," according to Wikipedia, which doesn't seem to fit with what we imagine Sanford's tastes to be. (It does also feature songs by a Brazilian musician, however, which would, we suppose, make him think of his Argentinian lover.) The soundtrack to the 1938 film includes songs by Stephen Foster and Johann Strauss.

Whichever movie Sanford was really talking about, the older version is clearly a roadmap to the man's middle-aged psyche, whether he knows it or not. We're disappointed in Dowd for missing a chance to riff on it.

Jesse James Hollywood—a criminal with a name that will get him everywhere—said on the witness stand yesterday that he did not order the murder of a 15 year-old kid in revenge for the kid's half-brother owing James a $1,200 drug debt. Let's hope not!

James admits snatching the kid, Nicholas Markowitz, off the street and putting him in his van and driving him to Santa Barbara. Markowitz was later found "shot nine times and buried in the Santa Barbara foothills." His older brother Ben "was described by prosecutors as a white supremacist who wore swastika tattoos, despite his Jewish background."

Hollywood spent several years on the run as a fugitive in Brazil, and eventually came back to the US after being featured (multiple times) on America's Most Wanted. He says his friends killed Markowitz without his knowledge, and that he was shocked to hear it had happened.

All we know for sure is that if his name was "Elbert Dean Merriweather," Justin Timberlake never would have gotten involved.
[LAT]

You see, we've picked up on a trend amongst "the intelligentsia" of an almost kid-on-Christmas-morning eagerness to run to the theater to see this film just so they can trash it on their blogs and Twitter accounts and in doing so feel superior to the doltish masses who actually derived some sense of pleasure from it. Of course, we have no actual data to back this up, there's just a palpable snobbishness wafting through the air right now that our finely-tuned cultural antennae has picked up on.

Some members of the aforementioned "intelligentsia" who we actually like and hold in high regard have written about the film without really making much mention of the film itself, choosing to focus instead on the "ugly and thoughtless" clothes worn by the other moviegoers at a screening in a notably unhip Manhattan neighborhood instead.

What's perhaps most perplexing about the gripes we've read and heard about The Hangover coming from members of "the intelligentsia" are their genuine professions of profound shock over how "fratty" and "juvenile" the film struck them. It's almost as if they truly expected that a film titled "The Hangover" might actually be some sort of Fellini-esque neorealist high art film.

Another common trait shared by members of "the intelligentsia" who hated The Hangover is that they invariably loved Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, a film we desperately wanted to like but truly thought was one of the biggest steaming piles of cinematic dung to emerge out of the 21st century.





One last thought about The Hangover—Yes, it's a silly movie, but it's not completely devoid of intelligence, and silly movies seasoned with just a sprinkle of intelligence can often do wonders for the soul. If, that is, you're willing to unclench your anus just over the course of the couple of hours it takes to watch them.

With that said, go see The Hangover and judge for yourself.

Bret Easton Ellis' Tweets via Bret Easton Ellis' Twitter

The writer, Cami Delavigne, explains:

HATCHET MAN is short film is about a guy who fires people and then has to fire himself because he shot a couple screwing in the office and sent it to a friend who blasted it on the Internet. I was inspired in particular by your funny comments on the lackluster sex. As a freelancer at BBDO, I know firsthand that the tape was shocking only until your Gawker article allowed everyone to admit that it looked like a pretty bad lay. I enjoyed writing that voice in the Boss and the lonely hero who thinks the sex is exciting and dirty.

Matt Boren (MOMMA'S MAN) stars with a cameo by Billy Warlock ("Baywatch"). Phil Manley of Trans Am did the score. And oh, we are the only people in the Netflix contest that chose to shoot a separate short film to represent our feature. All the others pieced together trailers. We also followed the rules and only submitted a one sentence description of the film, whereas others gave dissertations. Hence, we confuse people. But I still really love the film. So thanks.

Thank you, filmmakers! You can go and register your support for this (and future) blog-sex-scandal-to-Hollywood films at NetflixFindYourVoice.com. We haven't watched the other contestants but as far as we know they're not based on surreptitiously recorded cell phone video of ad execs fucking, so screw em.

Do the Michael Haneke Panky! His film, The White Ribbon, won the king shit prize, the Palme d'Or.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.You may know the Austrian director from his sadism-happy foreign fare like the awesome Caché (American remake on the way) for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2005, and Funny Games (American remake already made). It's a (get this) sadistic movie that received mostly tepid applause about a German village that takes place around WWI, and opens with someone falling off a horse. It's a Michael Haneke movie, so nobody's going to really be able to explain it to you (or why you'd want to watch it) until you actually see it.

The best director prize went to an underdog, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza, for his graphic hitman drama Kinatay, a film that was hugely buzzy before the festival, not so much during. Variety more or less said it sucked, and it sounds too much like last year's Gomorra for American audiences to really care.

Finally, British director Andrea Arnold won a second jury prize for her film Fish Tank; she's sharing it with South Korean director Park Chan-Wook (director of the incredible Oldboy. American, Will Smith-helmed remake on the way. Seriously.) for a film called Thirst, about a vampire-priest. No word on what the Vatican or vampire blog Bloodcopy have to say about this, but chances are that it - like anything American film execs would care about at Cannes that isn't in English - will eventually be given the shitty American remake treatment itself. Foreign languages: fail.

In case you don't know, the story revolves around an overweight, illiterate teen from Harlem who is pregnant with her second child and invited to enroll in an alternative school.

Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe plays Precious and Mo'nique plays her mother; Paula Patton and Mariah Carey also make appearances. In addition to a spectacular-looking trailer, the design geek in me has to give Lionsgate props for this poster:
…which is powerful and very much like some of the old posters designed by the great Saul Bass.


Precious premiered at Sundance in January and will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival (which started yesterday) but won't make its theatrical release in the U.S. until November (Oscar season!).

Precious Trailer [Trailer Addict]
Precious/Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire [IMDb]
Related: Precious [Feministing]
Precious Trailer [Women & Hollywood]

The piece by Tom Junod isn't yet online, but it can be found on newsstands (do they still exist?) by looking for a picture of Megan Fox in an overcoat. Is she becoming a private detective? Unclear. Is she 35? Also unclear. She should hire herself for that case. Anyway, the two-page puff piece, which has the half-truth of a headline "McG Is Not a Douchebag and James Cameron Is Not Jesus Christ," sets out to show how this movie is a rebirth for McG, and for the franchise, and for the character of the Terminator, and maybe also for Jesus Christ, who oh my god shares His initials with both Jim Cameron and John Connor. I don't know, the article uses the word "rebirth" about twenty times, but that's about fifty times less than it uses the word "scream."

Which leads us to the fifth reason we know that it's a scene of rebirth - the clincher.
There's a scream.
It's a big scream. It is an important and expensive Hollywood scream, in an important and expensive Hollywood movie. Indeed, in the entire history of action movies, there might not be another scream called up to express so much. It's a literal scream, in that, as McG says, "This is Marcus" - the screaming character's name - "beginning his journey."

Oh, sure, let me just check my Action Movie History Book, under the entry for Most Expressive Scream. Ah yes, here it is. "Huh?" Exactly. But it seems unreasonable for the writer to talk so much about screaming without letting us know what said screaming sounds like. Unfortunately, print is not a medium that can communicate roaring. Or is it? I scanned the article so as to show you its raw power.

Journalism! The writer then goes on to say that this scream that he was just declaring so important is actually kind of poorly done and comes off as funny not rebirth-y and then McG, who is a grown man who calls himself McG, says don't worry they are going to fix that. Perfect.

Now, McG is not an asshole. He's not a tool...But people think McG is an asshole because he's named McG.

You brought it up, not us. Whoever denied it supplied it, am I right?

"My name is such bullshit," he says. "It's a burden, but my parents never called me anything but."

McG's parents called him McG? They sound super McChill. The sour apple-flavored Ring Pop doesn't fall far from the sour apple-flavored Ring Pop tree, you know?

The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Tuesday, will be released on May 22 in New York and Los Angeles and on demand on the TV network HDNet. It follows an escort named Chelsea who charges $2,000 an hour to act as a client's girlfriend for the night, providing more intimacy than just sex. (In the film's opening scene, Chelsea and her client are shown at a chic Manhattan restaurant discussing the film they just saw - Man on Wire - going back to his apartment and making out, and then having breakfast and reading The New York Times together the next morning.) The story takes place over five days in October 2008, and is partially improvised by the mostly unprofessional actors, who play versions of themselves, like New York magazine staff writer Mark Jacobson, who plays a journalist, and movie critic Glenn Kenny, who plays an escort reviewer. (Some readers may recall that Kenny served as writer David Foster Wallace's editor and sidekick when the duo attended the AVN Awards for a piece for Premiere magazine.) But the casting choice that has garnered the film so much attention is that the main character is played by real-life porn star Sasha Grey.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, Soderburgh explained that he chose Grey precisely because of her porn persona, The Guardian reports. "With Sasha, you can within seconds see her do anything you can imagine with her clothes off," he said. "What you can't see is what it's like to be her boyfriend, to hang out with her and be emotionally intimate with her. So my whole theory is that's the fantasy for those who've been double-clicking – that they want to spend 77 minutes being her boyfriend."

As Soderbergh put it, Sasha Grey is "not the normal adult film star." Grey is 21, but has appeared in 150 adult films and branded herself as a "new" kind of pornstar since beginning her career at the age of 18. According to the Associated Press, Grey is known for "pushing the boundaries of normal sexual acts," but, "she maintains she's always in control." Vanessa Grigoriadis, who profiled Sasha Grey for the new issue of Rolling Stone explains:

Sasha Grey is the adult industry's reigning princess of porn, a rock & roll 21-year-old with an actual mission statement - "Most of the XXX I see is boring, and does not arouse me physically or visually. I am determined and ready to be a commodity that fulfills everyone's fantasies" - and few taboos.

Grey, who is co-managed by former Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro (and appeared in the porn film he directed), has modeled for American Apparel, and sung with the reggae musician Lee "Scratch" Perry. She says she is striving to make porn more artistic; Grigoriadis asserts she is changing the relationship between feminism and porn:

"Porn has been one of feminism's most divisive issues because it hits on such a raw level to so many woman. Here are the fantasies of men, and it's of course better to live out those fantasies through pornography than to try to do them in the real world, but the fact is the real world is impacted by it. Grey says, ‘If you look at me and you think "Here's a woman who's intelligent, cognizant and making her own choices, and you still tell me that what I'm doing is wrong, screw you, because that should end the debate.' "

Grey's appearance in The Girlfriend Experience has been interpreted as the first step in her attempt to go mainstream like former adult actresses Traci Lords and Jenna Jameson, but according to our sister site, Fleshbot, (link NSFW):

If anything, we suspect that Sasha is attempting to remake the notion of what a mainstream star is, and does-much the way she's remade any notions of what an 18-year-old pornstar looks and sounds like .... it's also possible that Sasha could rise to fame in the mainstream cinema while continuing to work as an adult star-perhaps completely remaking our notions of what it means to have crossover appeal.

Though Grey doesn'tactually have sex on screen in The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh says that he felt comfortable casting her because "Porn is beyond everywhere now." He told Time Out New York that he thinks prostitution should be legal and does not consider the prostitute in his film a victim. When asked what he would say to someone who has been roped into a life of prostitution, he replied:

Well, there are people for whom that is true. That's not the case with Chelsea any more than it is with Sasha in the adult-film industry. But, yeah, I think whatever agreement two people want to come to about whatever is really none of my business. I don't know what the difference is between that and what I'm doing for Sony Pictures right now [directing Moneyball].

According to the Village Voice review:

Like Godard, Soderbergh views prostitution as the ultimate paradigm for capitalism. But where Godard saw the hooker as a tragic or exploited victim, Soderbergh suggests there are no victims, only failed traders, in the post-Reagan era of DIY capitalism.

And, says Variety's review, the film de-emphasizes the sex involved in Chelsea's work and portrays her as a woman in control of her own get-rich-quick scheme, much like her clients who strive to make a fortune in the world of finance.

From reviews and interviews, it appears Soderbergh was striving for some sort of meta commentary on how capitalism makes prostitutes and porn stars of us all. The johns in the movie delude themselves into thinking they're experiencing a higher level of intimacy with "the girlfriend experience" than they would by just having sex with a prostitute. Similarly, Soderbergh suggests that audience members, who have presumably seen Grey's porn films, will delude themselves into thinking they are experiencing her on a more intimate level by watching her act in a mainstream film rather than a porn film. But by focusing on a high priced escort who chose to get into prostitution, and having her portrayed by an actress described as an atypical pornstar who feels in control of her career, he conveniently ignores the fact that many women in both industries are exploited. Soderbergh is certainly allowed to use the old fantasy of a sex worker who simply loves her work. However, by ignoring the uglier side of the sex trade, he undermines his argument that his film reflects any underlying truths about sex, pornography, or society.

Trailer for The Girlfriend Experience:



Steven Soderbergh On The Girlfriend Experience: 'I Hired Real People And Turned Them Loose' [The Guardian]
Porn Star Sasha Grey Stars In New Soderbergh Film [The Associated Press]
Sasha Grey, The Dirtiest Girl In The World: The Story Behind The Story [Rolling Stone]
Sasha Grey, Crossover Star (NSFW) [Fleshbot]
Steven Soderbergh Interview [Time Out New York]
Soderbergh's Girlfriend Experience Porn-Star Is A True Character [The Village Voice]
The Girlfriend Experience Review [Variety]

Earlier: Dave Navarro Makes Porno Debut
American Apparel Now Sponsoring Bloggers & Porn Stars (NSFW)
Oprah Learns About The Ins-N-Outs Of Legal Prostitution

According to Nikki Finke, Spacey and George Hickenlooper are visiting Abramoff right now. "The story is described to me as a modern day GoodFellas set in Washington DC." Ugh.

I'm told that Kevin Spacey is set to star as Jack Abramoff, Hayden Christensen will play Abramoff's closest associate Mike Scanlon, Spencer Garrett (Public Enemies) will play Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Arrested Development star David Cross will play Abramoff crony Adam Kidan. The production is also in talks with Tea Leoni as Abramoff's wife.

Ok, sure! Kevin Spacey and Tea Leoni as Jack and Pam, can't you just see it?

If there's one part Kevin Spacey was born to play, it's an incredibly self-pitying, whiny sociopath. It's no surprise that Abramoff agreed to meet with the actor: he has a pathological obsession with portraying himself as a tragic figure to anyone who'll listen. And he loves the movie business!

Spacey has always conducted extensive research for his roles. In preparation for his role in Beyond the Sea, he went insane. (Watch that clip. It is child Bobby Darin singing to old Bobby Darin, who just died, on stage.)

The movie retells the wonderful Larry Craig story and apparently really nails Florida governor Charlie Crist, who had to marry a woman because he was dumb enough to think he'd be McCain's VP. It is called OUTRAGE because a descriptive non-'generic political documentary' title doesn't look as good on a poster, or something. (Oh, wait, we get it now. Clever!) It screened at Tribeca and everything! It is directed by Kirby Dick, who did the pretty awesome This Film Is Not Yet Rated and lots of other movies we have not seen, like the Derrida one, the priest abuse one, and Showgirls: Glitz & Angst.

The film is executive-produced by Clinton friend Chad Griffin, which made Politico all excited. If they really wanted to win the morning they'd at least mention some of the film's targets beyond the well-known Larry Craig. They include:

Virginia Rep. Ed Schrock, former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey, Mark Foley, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign manager Ed Mehlman, former GOP National Field Director Dan Gurley, former Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe, former Louisiana congressman Jim McCrery, and current congressman David Dreier

And Shep Smith! So, no surprises here to anyone who reads the blogs, or who's ever traveled in DC media circles, and lots of semi-closeted journalists (besides poor Shep) are left out, along with closet cases who don't vote against the gays (following the Frank Rule) and ones for whom there just isn't actually evidence, but still: this will be a pretty awesome movie, probably. We endorse it.

#2 is clearly the most Madoff-esque, but for the purposes of this flick, why not just go with #1, "Extremely Angry Guy?"

According to the Hollywood Reporter, representatives of Sin City creator Frank Miller are shopping the sequel rights around to various producers in Hollywood. The Weinstein Company produced the original film, which grossed $159 million worldwide. A Weinstein rep insisted to THR that the company still owns the rights to a follow-up, but if that's true why would Miller be offering them to someone else?

THR speculates that the Weinsteins either couldn't afford to pay a contractually obligated re-up fee, or simply doesn't have the resources to get the movie off the ground. Traditionally, contracts for sequel rights include a requirement that the option holder—in this case, the Weinsteins—keep the film in active development. If it sits on a shelf because, say, the company can't pony up the cash to hire an A-list screenwriter, then the rights can revert to the original owner.

Asked for comment, a Weinstein Company rep forwarded Gawker the same statement from lawyer Bert Fields that the company issued to THR:

TWC's rights to produce sequels to Sin City remain intact as they always have been. Any suggestion to the contrary is complete hogwash.

A close reading of that statement would allow for it to be narrowly true even if the Weinsteins have lost exclusivity over the film. They may have the right to produce the sequel contingent upon meeting certain development goals, like hiring a writer within a certain timeframe. If they haven't met those goals yet, the rights could still be said to be "intact."

If true, the loss of the Sin City rights would be just the latest sign that the Weinsteins are barely keeping their heads above water. Earlier this month, they settled a lawsuit by paying an "undisclosed sum" to NBC Universal over their attempt to move Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime. Who knows what that sum was, but NBC had the Weinsteins over a barrel after having successfully won an injunction to stop Runway from airing, so it was likely more than a token fee.

In December, Fidelity Investments marked down its shares in the Weinstein Co. by 25%; a month before that, the company laid of 24 people, or 11% of its staff. The company has quietly laid off other staff since then.

While the Weinsteins have shown some signs of business life recently, such as buying John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, they're said to be out of the market for new material such as scripts and book rights. And despite the Weinstein reputation for letting movies sit on the shelf for years, there's even been stories circulating of them offering producers their movies back if they can find someone to pay them whatever TWC has spent so far.

Still, Harvey has his glittery future projects to hold out as argument that turnaround is just up ahead. There's this summer's Inglorious Basterds, whose Cannes premiere was just announced today, and of course, Rob Marshall's musical Nine which Harvey is already positioning for next year's Oscars.

But this is an old trick. The Weinstein Company's CFO crowed in a letter to the New York Times two years ago that the company's 70 percent investment in the home video firm Genius Products was worth $400 million. Last quarter, Genius Products recorded an operating loss of $29 million, and the company that owns the other 30 percent wrote down the value of its share by $35 million, citing an "other than temporary decline" in its worth. In January, the British company Entertainment Rights, which had a contract with Genius Products as a home-video distributor of its films, announced that it wasn't confident that Genius could pay its debts.

News of the World set up the sting on Rubina's father, and its story said he was ready and willing to sell his daughter to what he thought was a wealthy Middle Eastern family. But the dad, Rafiq Qureshi, says he wasn't being serious:

Qureshi tells PEOPLE that there had been an offer but insisted that he had feigned interest out of politeness and a reluctance to appear cold and unfriendly. He said, "In India, you never say 'no' directly, least of all to guests. You try not to offend people by refusing to help. They said they were childless and desperately fond of Rubina after seeing her in the film. I felt sorry for them, but I was never going to give her up."

He also told the Times of India "The voice (asking for money) in the video is not mine. It is a conspiracy to take my girl from me. My former wife Khurshid is involved." Some family members back him up, and Rubina herself does too—she told People "I will never give any foreign journalist an interview again."

Smart girl! But there doesn't seem to be any rock solid proof either way yet. News of the World has excerpts of a video of the meeting, but without sound. The Indian police are reportedly "anxious" to obtain the full video, though, and if they do then presumably this whole thing can be settled.

In any case we can all agree that you shouldn't sell your kid.

The father of Rubina (age 9) reportedly tried to sell her for $300,000 to an undercover reporter, because his family didn't make any cash from the film:

[The father] reportedly raised an asking price of £50,000 for Rubina to £200,000 at a later meeting.

Justifying the increase, his brother Mohiuddin was quoted as saying: "The child is special now. This is not an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child."

Jesus, that is truly horrible. Add in the tidal wave of poverty porn the movie started, and Slumdog is actually a net loss for the human race! Unless you're a News Corp. shareholder: Rubina Ali has now served Fox Searchlight in the film, and also Murdoch-owned News of the World for the original child sale story, and Murdoch's Times UK and New York Post for follow-ups. Good work!

Perhaps the only thing worse than a terribly impoverished dad trying to sell his own daughter is this:

[The British filmmakers behind Slumdog] said that they decided not to shower the child actors from Mumbai's shantytowns with cash for fear of having "a transformative impact on their lives".

Again: absolutely nothing good came out of this feel-good movie, unless you're Rupert Murdoch.
[Times UK]

I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics. So, that didn't turn out that way. But, by the time he started pulling his pants down, I ... What in (inaudible) is going on here? I ran out of the room. This interview has ended.

Now the libertarian hero to whackjobs everywhere is very sad that people make money with this raunchy lying-to-famous-people stuff, but he is even sadder that if this movie makes Sacha Baron Cohen any money he will have to pay taxes on it. :(

A flamboyant gay fashion reporter is probably the least embarrassing person Ron Paul's been associated with over the last year or so but try telling that to the 73-year-old Texas Representative. Sorry he didn't get you a blimp, Ron!

And guess who is crazy: action film director John McTiernan. He's just directed The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, an inaction film of sorts about how his indictment in the Pellicano case was politically motivated.

See, McTiernan had Pellicano wiretap a producer he was fighting over money with and then the FBI called him about it, and McTiernan was all "nope I didn't do that," and, well, that is not legal, to make false statements to the FBI. McTiernan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in proson. But then McTiernan got mad that he was the only rich Hollywood prick facing actual jail time over this mess, so he fired his lawyers and withdrew his plea and made this documentary, apparently. He's due to be reindicted.

Anyway. McTiernan has never really thought he should get any jail time for his crime, and he's made it clear from day one that because he is a rich and successful director who is also, at heart, a Good Person, he should not be punished for lying about having everyone wiretapped. How dare they prosecute a man who's always portrayed the FBI in a positive light?

She also scolded Mr. McTiernan for saying in an e-mail message to his previous lawyer that he was "offended" at the idea he could be prosecuted because he had "refused to make movies in which F.B.I. agents are the bad guys," and for complaining that his legal woes could get in the way of his making a "patriotic movie."

McTiernan apparently doesn't remember how when the FBI shows up in Die Hard they are all working from the old terrorist playbook, and Gruber is playing them for saps, and only McClane and lowly LAPD desk jockey Reginald ValJohnson are interested in actually stopping those sons of bitches. Remember? Agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation? God, that movie rules. Anyway. The FBI are not "bad guys" in that movie but they are getting in the way of McClane doing his job, dammit, which is why, 20 years later, director John McTiernan had to lie to them.

Sadly this new movie does not look as awesome as Die Hard, or Die Hard With a Vengeance, which is just as awesome. This new movie looks as bad as Rollerball, frankly.

According to The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, the entire Pellicano case was all about digging up dirt for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign video, because that makes sense. Why else but to derail Hillary would anyone go after noted Great American Ron Burkle?

The film notes that the prosecution allowed federal officials to compel two of Mrs. Clinton's biggest contributors - the entrepreneurs Ron Burkle and Stephen Bing - to testify before a grand jury. Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Now it is actually certainly true that politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of prominent Democrats were one of the many dirty deeds of the Bush administration, but they were more likely to go after people like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman than to target a scummy Hollywood private eye and the assholes who hired him.

We think McTiernan should cut a deal with the prosecutors: they will not re-indict him if he stops making weird conspiracy documentaries and signs on instead to Die Hard 5.

Here's the spoiler: Mr. Petit says he will perform a high-wire walk in the fall in Midtown Manhattan. It will be high, it will be long, and it will be outdoors in a very recognizable location that he does not want revealed quite yet - arrangements are not final.

The 1974 stunt chronicled in the documentary was one of the most god damn heart-pounding, jaw-dropping, and other movie superlative-like activities that this city's ever seen, so let's hope this one lives up to that high standard for symbolism. From AIG headquarters to Fresh Kills Landfill! [NYT]

No idea why they went to all this trouble—they spoofed Die Hard and 24 as well—but let's be glad they did, because not much real news is happening on this religion-tainted Friday. [Smooth Originals via Adfreak]

You wouldn't know it from watching the commercials playing constantly on TV, but in Observe & Report Ronnie (Seth Rogen) date rapes Brandi (Anna Faris) after taking her out to dinner, and today, bloggers are talking about it. This is how The New York Times review describes the scene, which you can watch in the final 20 seconds of the trailer above:

In another scene [Rogen] forces himself on a makeup-counter saleswoman after a date of heavy drinking and drug use. (Before the scene is over she indicates that she had given her consent.)

In the scene, Brandi has thrown up on herself and appears to be totally unconscious as Ronnie is pumping away on top of her. He stops for a second, and then she murmurs the line that The New York Times says indicates her consent, "Did I tell you to stop, motherfucker?" before passing out again.

Dan Kois writes on New York Magazine's Vulture blog:

The movie doesn't mitigate that sex scene at all. In fact, it makes it even more clear than the trailer does that when Brandi and Ronnie get home from dinner, she's unbelievably trashed on antidepressants and tequila. Not only does she throw up all over the place, she can barely walk - and she certainly can't give any kind of informed consent. She's way too wasted for her yelling at Ronnie to mean anything.

But Kois doesn't get is that it's a dark comedy. People are so disturbed by rape that the fact that Brandi is too out of it to give any kind of consent what makes the scene so hilarious. Anna Faris told New York Magazine, "It's like date rape - that's funny, right?" Seth Rogen agrees in this interview posted by the Washington City Paper. He says:

SETH ROGEN: When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay:
BRANDI: "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?"

Rogen explains that everyone in the theater then lets out a good long chuckle. See, even though she's probably blacked out and has no idea what she's saying, it isn't rape. (And Brandi's kind of a dumb slut anyway.) In the beginning of the trailer, a flasher is exposing himself to women in the mall parking lot and it looks like he's masturbating in front of Brandi. In this interview Anna Faris says:

It is the most traumatic event that's ever happened to her, which is funny because I always imagined that she's seen a bit of male anatomy and it wouldn't normally scare her.

Women who have many sex partners obviously love penis, so they'd welcome a stranger jerking off in front of them on their way to work.

And if you aren't already laughing at the idea of a pervert exposing himself to women and someone getting date raped, Sady points out on her blog Tiger Beatdown (via Shakesville) that the film will be even more entertaining for women with history of sexual assault. Sady writes:

"The incredible frequency of rape and sexual assault in our society means that many, many victims of rape will see [the movie], and the PTSD that often accompanies rape will mean that, for a joke, for some dipshit filmmaker's attempt at being edgy, they are going to experience all of the pain and psychological trauma associated with that experience, they are going to feel that rape all over again, there, in their seats, in the theater, and they are going to pay for the experience, and if they try to talk about what that filmmaker did to them it's probably going to get sidetracked into some conversation about the Sanctity of Art which is invariably given more consideration than their actual lives."

An Auteur of Awkward Strikes Again [The New York Times]
Does Seth Rogen Rape Anna Faris in Observe & Report? [New York Magazine]
Observe and Report's Date Rape Apologism [Washington City Paper]
Um. [Tiger Beatdown]
Quote of the Day [Shakesville]

"It's the shit." I'm sorry. [via Adrants]

The company hasn't officially confirmed this yet, but it seems to be true:

American crew members aboard a U.S.-flagged ship have regained control of the vessel hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia Wednesday, FOX News confirms.

One pirate is reportedly in custody. A U.S. official said the status of the other pirates is unknown but they were reported to "be in the water."

"All the crew members are trained in security detail in how to deal with piracy," Maersk CEO John Reinhart told reporters. "As merchant vessels we do not carry arms. We have ways to push back, but we do not carry arms."

Clearly, Steven Seagal was the ship's cook. [Fox News]

Behold: the after-party for the film My Suicide, Saturday night at Home. Gabriel Sunday (right) is the lead in My Suicide and winner of the Gen Art Stargazer award for ass-whoopin' performance by an emerging thespian. Next to Gabriel is Laura Breckenridge of Gossip Girl fame. Nanoseconds after this photo was taken the two people on the left were renditioned to dank cells in Gstaad, but it was apparently a clerical error, and they are now safe at home with their families.

Interior: Williamsburg, Saturday night, post-My Suicide after-party. A dive-bar called Daddy's. So what, right? Turns out the caballero on the left is Michael Izquierdo, and he's in Ang Lee's soon-to-be released Taking Woodstock, which also stars Paul Dano and the aforementioned Gabriel Sunday, both of whom were also in films in the Gen Art fest. Stoney.

Monday's after-party for the documentary Picture Me spilled over from the Greenhouse to the Room. Those legs belong to Jess, a musician, who, like many Indonesians only goes by one name. And partaking in the visual allure of Jess's legs is the gentleman jewelry-designer Rick Toscano.

The after-party for Finding Bliss and the award ceremony at BLVD Tuesday night. Va va voom, et cetera.

At the awards ceremony, you could see and actually taste the suspense.

Moby shortly before presenting the award for best use of music Tuesday night. The award went to Punching the Clown, which he said was also his favorite film of the festival.

The money shot. My Suicide took the honor for best film this year. Jordan Miller in flannel wrote the puppy, his dad David (center) directed, and did we mention Gabriel Sunday was the lead? These guys kind of cleaned up, dominating the festival physically and metaphorically. Heh. Metaphors. Best short film went to Adelaide, directed by Liliana Greenfield-Sanders.

Jennifer Love-Hewitt beating a hasty retreat from the closing night festivities with Jamie Kennedy, who was in the closing night flick Finding Bliss. Kennedy had a sausage shot in the movie. The dude is hung like Graydon Carter.

Meet Claude Laniado. Claude was dancing last night at the final shin-dig at BLVD and he was given an extremely wide berth on the dance floor. He needed the space, actually. I asked him what his story was. "My name is Claude. I am an actor and a psychologist and a film-producer."

You can find more of Stephen's work here.

Bart was a power broker as much as an editor, which helped keep him in charge even though he doesn't use those newfangled "computers" and whatnot. He was replaced with Tim Gray—which Bart says was his decision:

"There was a stipulation that I could step down at my 20-year mark if I wanted, and I did," he said on Monday in a telephone interview. Citing his age, Mr. Bart added, "The speculation on these blogs that there are intrigues behind this move is surreal."

The assumption is that Gray will focus on strengthening Variety's online product, as its print edition continues to crumble ("several issues ran a scant eight pages and contained a lone quarter-page ad"). But Gray says he's a believer in print:

Gray said the paper is turning a profit, so there are no immediate plans to shutter the daily or weekly editions in favor of the online version. "Our goal is to give them different identities because they have different audiences," he said.

He echoes this "distinct identity" bit to The Wrap. And let's face it, it makes sense! Gray's main challenge is finding a business model that pays, in US currency; Bart's main challenge now is not to become a caricature of himself, without a huge amount of influence to wield. But any trade mag that can survive the next few years without folding is a winner, to us.

Wii is the new booze. Nick (left) and Trevor got all up into virtual tennis at the after-party for Lymelife at The Park Wednesday night. They were a little shy after I told them I was covering the party for Black Inches, but I was able to glean that Trevor is an event manager at NYU, and Nick works for Sixty USA, makers of casual European sportswear for over 50 species.


Derick Martini directed Lymelife, and through the miracle of digital representation, he is herein reproduced while imbibing at The Park. And this just in: the Japanese word for arm-pit is "wakinoshita" (wah-kee-NO-shta).


Behold: the producer of Lymelife, Jonathan Cornick at the after-party, with his friend Laurie. Jonathan may be the force behind Frau Alec Baldwin's star turn in "Lymelife." They had a production company together at one point, you see.


Michael Brown, the creative director of Lot 71, consults with a well-haired woman at the Lymelife after-party Wednesday. I didn't exactly ask, but, to my knowledge neither of them had any blow, and if they did, they might not have shared with Gawker. Sad : (


Gigantic director Matt Aselton hob-nobs before ducking into his screening Thursday night. Unfortunately his star John Goodman was a no-show, waaaaaaaaah.


Ole Schell, left, who co-directed the documentary Picture Me, fraternizes with two lasses at the after-party for Gigantic. Picture Me is a documentary about models, including but not limited to his co-director Sara Ziff, his girlfriend at the time. It will be screened on April 6, but that puppy is sold out.


"Her name was Kaki, she was a show girl, with yellow" ... Oh you know that tune. Kaki Stergiou is Gen Art's event coordinator, and she coordinated the shit out of this film festival. She was gracious enough to pose next to a pole made for stripping at the after-party for Gigantic at 1OAK Thursday night.


At the after-party for Gigantic, we begin with David Bates (aka Davidjunior.com), the Gen Art video wizard. On the right is Kimberly Freeman who is a video apprentice, and in the middle is Aryn Cole, who had an interesting role as an extra in one (1) scene in Gigantic. The scene is certainly one of the weirdest hand-job scenes you will ever see on the big screen. She said it was an awkward scene to shoot. There were a few men and a few women involved. Compounding the awkwardness was that it was so awkward that the actors could not discuss how awkward it was. "The men were sweating," she said. MOURN NOT FOR HER INJURED CHASTITY! Aryn did not actually touch a dorkus, of course, but instead manipulated a styrofoam man-unit.


Paul Dano stars in Gigantic, and for the sadists among you, yes, he does get the crap beaten out of him yet again on-screen. No milk-shake action in this one though.

You can find more of Stephen's work here.

The example today was the Wall Street Journal's report, "Hollywood Squeezes Stars' Pay in Slump," which is being cited everywhere to suggest that there's no money left in the movies. This is wrong. If your movie just opened huge last weekend, a studio will still back up a Brinks truck to your Hollywood Hills abode.

Lauren A.E. Schuker starts out with a way-past-his-prime Eddie Murphy. But even there, she makes a muddled mess of things:

For years, top movie stars often landed deals paying them a percentage — sometimes as much as 20% — of a studio's take of box-office revenues from the first dollar the movie makes, even if it turned out to be a flop that cost the studio millions. As a result, the biggest celebrities broke the $20 million mark. Eddie Murphy got that kind of payday for the flop "Meet Dave," which cost Twentieth Century Fox about $70 million and took in only $11.8 million at the domestic box office.

Simple math will tell you that 20% of $11.8 million does not equal $20 million. Murphy may have indeed made more than $20 million for Meet Dave (because life is not fair), but it's not because of what (as Schuker litters her piece with) a "first dollar gross" deal. So before she or another reporter tries to tackle the issue of movie star pay, here is a quick run-down of the kind of movie deals that studios make with talent.

For most studio films, there's an upfront payment — for instance, the $15 million Angelina Jolie gets — but the backend is always more important. And those deals come in two flavors, "net points" and "gross points."

Net points: These are about as valuable, and confer as much status, as collecting beads for taking your top off at mardi gras. Everyone gets them and they're never worth anything. Along with whatever fee an actor — or a director, producer, writer — gets for a film, they may get some net points thrown in. What it means is a percentage of the profits of a movie after it has recouped all its costs. Since even the mafia envies the ability of studios to cook their books, movies never go into profit. Ever. There are all sorts of charges — production costs, marketing costs, distribution fees, fuck-you-because-we-say-so write-offs — that can make the biggest hit look like a dog.

Gross points: This is where the real money is. Also known as "first-dollar" because it refers to a percentage of the gross revenue, i.e. the first dollar, a studio receives. Of course, this is trickier than it sounds because a studio's gross is not the same as the box office gross since theaters normally get about half of the ticket sales. Take Meet Dave as an example: the global box office on the film is about $50 million, leaving the studio with $25 million after it splits with theaters. So if Murphy had 20% "first dollar gross," he would be looking at a pay-day of $5 million. Other revenue will still come in for the film — pay TV, DVD, broadcast rights — but there are further wrinkles there. DVD, for instance, gets calculated differently, with studios usually keeping most of the receipts (typically 75%) out of the gross pot because of a practice started back in the 1980s where they argued their home video divisions needed to be subsidized. They want to do the same thing with online revenues, which is why the WGA went out on strike last year and why SAG still hasn't signed its new contract.

Once you get into gross point deals, however, you're in the stratosphere of Hollywood dealmaking and all sorts of different arrangements can be made. But if you want to boil them down, there are two basic types.

"20 Against 20": That's shorthand for saying $20 million in advance against 20% of the gross profits. These are the gold-plated deals that top stars expect. It's mostly a boys club: Denzel Washington, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey. In order for a movie to earn out the advance, it would need to make $200 million at the box office. After that the gross points kick in. This is the kind of deal Schuker is describing when she says Murphy could have made $20 million on Meet Dave despite it flopping. Studios hate them mostly because, while they always resent seeing stars get rich while they lose money, they are looking for ways to minimize the amount of money they lay out upfront when they greenlight a film.

"Cash Break": So, a sort of hybrid deal has arisen that combines aspects of a net points deal and a gross points deal. In these, the star gets a hefty portion of a movie's revenues after a studio has recouped most of its costs. To avoid tricky studio accounting, those costs are typically defined in the contract rather than based on the studio's own profit and loss statement. The most famous of these was Jim Carrey's deal last summer on Yes Man (and most of the WSJ story is driven by his manager defending it). In these deals, stars might waive their normal fee up front, but it's still accounted for in the budget, making them in theory equity investors in the production. And they are still very lucrative (otherwise stars wouldn't agree to the terms): Carrey's manager says he made $35 million on Yes Man.

So what is the story that the WSJ tried to write? Basically, that Hollywood studios are looking to clamp down on up front costs because the hedge fund money that had bloated their production budgets during the boom has disappeared. Until they find a new source of dumb money, they're looking for ways to structure deals so that they commit less of their dwindling production funds. Also, as Kim Masters reports, actors without proven box office pull (i.e. Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson and, as of late, Julia Roberts) are being told to take less pay. It's always easy to write a piece claiming the money's gone out of being a movie star by citing stars on the decline.

Arthur's an extra (Just like JFP!) in Salt, so he's been spending a lot of time hanging out with Angelina—but sadly, she "didn't live up to the hype":

She was probably only 5'6", and fragile thin. I thought she was wearing a ton of make-up, and felt like she may look a bit older than what she is. She is definitely unique looking, but I feel like I have dated much hotter women than her, and outside of some special features that she has (eyes, cheekbones, and lips), I couldn't really say that she would stick out for me if I saw her at a hot club like 1Oak or Rosebar. She almost appears "mother hot", rather than "stripper hot", and I would probably rate her an 8.5-9 on my looks scale. I am not that sure that I would even feel the need to come up and initiate a conversation with her if I met her out somewhere. Ironically, the older woman next to me felt that Jolie made eye contact with me several times, and joked "I think she likes you", and "that's why she keeps bumping into you". I guess no more dreams of her being the next Mrs. Kade.

Sucks for her. When not hanging with Angelina or mackin on some some total 9's in the VIP section in AC, Arthur is giving interviews about his crazy lifestyle, punishing the heavy bag for upwards of 30 seconds, and filming video auditions for the QVC network in which he sells you his jeans that sport the "indigo wash—the hottest, trendiest wash." Watch and learn, normals.

Basically 50 tracked down one of Rick Ross' baby moms and got this sex tape featuring her, narrated by a cross-dressed 50. For more background see here. Honestly we didn't watch the whole tape, but we hear there's one part in there where the girl is fucking the guy while a Neutrogena ad plays on the TV in the background, so it's worth watching for the romance factor if nothing else. [Watch it at Fleshbot]

The short promo reel, which featured segments introduced by the film's star, Sacha Baron Cohen, via video, showed Cohen's gay fashion wannabe icon Bruno interviewing the hapless, bewildered, and fame hungry. He entices people into agreeing to subject their babies to horrible things, just so they can be in a photo shoot. He enrages fight-goers by making out with another dude. And he adopts a black baby and trots it out onto a talk show. So funny "scandalous" stuff meant to shock and horrify the easily shocked and horrified.

There's been the requisite reaction from Twitterheads:

Vulture has a roundup of "critics"' reactions, including Quint from Ain't It Cools News, who called the film "a commentary on how people really act." Which is good for, you know, a documentary of sorts.

Some dude from Austin 360 offers up a comprehensive summation of why this movie exists: "The movie is bound to stir up just as much controversy as Borat. And that's the point."

Which is true. But does anyone get as annoyed as me at all of these people who think they're so fuckin' with it, man, so they crow about how "controversial" and "scandalous" but "brilliant" Borat was, while thinking they sound really hip and sardonic and enlightened? I kinda think those people suck. It was a funny movie, yes, and yes he pushed buttons that were sitting there all shiny and red, just begging to be pushed. And I'm sure Bruno will be much the same. But gratuitously patting yourself on the back for "getting" Sacha Baron Cohen's humor is as charming and original as saying that Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was "warped." If you thought that, then you're just another part of the machine, man.

1) Watchmen — $55.7 million
It was supposed to be the biggest movie ever—or at least beat director Zack Snyder's $70 million 300 bow—because it's dark and cool and edgy and is about nihilistic politics and tits and stuff. Instead it's just one of the biggest R-rated, March weekend openings ever. Surely Watchmen's lower-than-hoped first dance is a big disappointment for Warner Brothers, which spent a hell of a lot of money and squawking time on the grim, turgid superhero alternate history. Word of mouth seemed to deal it a hearty blow, as it slipped from $25 million on Friday, to $19 on Saturday, to a sad little $11 on Sunday. Doesn't bode well for the coming weekends.

2) Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail — $8.8 million
The old girl just keeps rampaging on, waving her pistol at Rudy Huxtable. With a cool $76.5 million banked so far, Tyler Perry might be one step closer to buying those business cards that have his name on them and everything that he's been saving up for. It also spells good things for upcoming projects like Madea Takes Manhattan, Follow That Madea!, and the stirring Madea at Aulis.

3) Taken — $7.5 million
The old guy just keeps rampaging on, waving his pistol at Rudy Huxtable's Albanian cousin. Liam Neeson, proportionately, is a bigger badass than Patrick Wilson in an owl costume and Valerie Cherish's annoying Room & Bored costar. So, that's something.

5) Paul Blart: Mall Cop — $4.2 million
As the fat guy atop a Segway putters past the $133 million mark, I guess it should give us pause. What is it about the overweight rolling around on their bellies on shopping mall floors that inspires so much glee? I suppose it could be the site of a well-fed person basking in the glow of hallowed consumerism that gets us excited, nostalgic even, for some long lost era. Either that or we like bears doing tricks at the circus, so why wouldn't we like their shaved counterparts doing the same at the movies?

9) Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience — $2.8
Awww. After only two weeks out, the film sinks down to number 9. It's made a sad little $16 so far, not even half of what Miley Cyrus' concertina made in its first weekend. Does this spell the beginning of the end for our little Twizzler-limbed trio? Unfortunately, I don't think they'll go squealing chastely into that good night any time soon. Maybe they'll try to reinvent themselves for their ever-aging core audience as gritty, fuckfest aficionado rock and rollers. With new tracks like "Stop Ur Texting and Letz Get Sexing", "Sit On My Facebook", and "R U 4 86 4 EVA."

A.O. Scott at the New York Times think it's about time devotees of the dystopian tale grew the F up:

And the dramatic conflict revealed, at long last, in the film's climactic arguments is between a wholesale, idealistic approach to mass death and one that is more cynical and individualistic. This idea is sickening but also, finally, unpersuasive, because it is rooted in a view of human behavior that is fundamentally immature, self-pitying and sentimental. Perhaps there is some pleasure to be found in regressing into this belligerent, adolescent state of mind. But maybe it's better to grow up.

Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly, in a B- review, found the material a bit dated:

A no-future nihilism bled from the very grain of Moore and Gibbons' pop vision of the 20th century. But that's a real problem for the movie, since the Cold War nuclear fears of the '80s never did come to pass. Watchmen isn't boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist.

A bored Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, wonders if anyone should have bothered in the first place:

And yet as this continues, for 162 minutes, the usual question arises: Has the film added anything? Which forces one to confront the book, after more than two decades, with a little more critical distance. For years, people have wondered if it is filmable. But the real issue is whether the novel is worth filming at all.

Ol' Kenny Turan at the Los Angeles Times finds value in the book, but not in the film:

To be fair, on the other hand, "Watchmen's" plot is in no way chopped liver, and reverentially sticking to the source material, as the first "Harry Potter" films did, is the only thing that gives this film what watchability it has. Even if you haven't read the book, even if your first exposure to the story is in this denatured form, you can at least sense the power of the original, and that's what will stay in your mind, not what's on the screen.

Richard Corliss at Time lurves the opening sequence, which provides backstory to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'". He doesn't like all that much else:

Maybe there's no way the rest of the film could match this opening, and for sure it doesn't. Snyder spends much of the movie's 2 hours and 40 minutes on the splatter of crushed limbs, the chatter of Strangelovean science fiction and the nattering of the obligatory romance. He also encourages a little festival of tone-deaf acting. Yet Watchmen has moments of greatness. It proves again that the action movie is where the best young Hollywood brains have gone to bring flesh to their fantasies.

Devin Gordon at Newsweek finds moments of the supposedly-heavy-duty film quite silly:

Snyder's attention wanders when it comes to meat-and-potatoes storytelling, perhaps because he's never really had to tell one before. He draws performances that range from sublime (Jackie Earle Haley as a bitter antihero named Rorschach) to ridiculous (Malin Akerman, who has a sweet onscreen disposition but is nonetheless the Jar Jar Binks of "Watchmen"). ... Snyder also makes gross errors in tone, giving his flimsy villain a rinky-dink costume with nipples on its chest plate. He has said in interviews that he did it on purpose to preserve Moore's sendup of superhero self-seriousness, but that kind of subtlety isn't Snyder's strong suit, which is obvious the first time we see Dr. Manhattan wander across the screen in the nude, with his giant blue junk flapping in the apocalyptic breeze-another misguided sop to the novel and its R-rated sensibility.

Peter Travers at Rolling Stone, as always, boils it down to its silver-lining essence:

At its best, Snyder's movie gets at the symbolism of that smile button splashed with blood on the first Watchmen cover.

So not so good from some of the bigger critics in the land. But does it matter? Probably not initially. The film opened big in midnight screenings early this morning, and it ought to outpace Snyder's previous blockbuster effort, 300. But on the plane of pride and prestige and long-term, Titanic style longevity? Yes it does matter. In the new superhero world of a critically-adored smash like the The Dark Knight—which had a raft of strong reviews behind it (plus far more recognizable characters and a famous death) that helped it juggernaut all through the summer—people are beginning to expect a little awardsy grit with their blood and explosions. Too bad Watchmen didn't quite get there. Many non-believers will probably be reluctant to fork over increasingly-harder-earned doughlars for a long, turgid movie that's just OK.

Once again, Batman foils another plot.

It's a funny bit of luck that Michael Mann's Public Enemies (already getting some decent very early reviews) is set to bow at a time when everyone hates financial institutions and longs for a Depression-era Robin Hood to rob from the rich and give to the... well, give to himself. But still. The new trailer for the film makes us think three things: 1) Mann's stylishness looks a little weird in period. 2) Marion Cotillard has a funny voice (insightful!) and 3) How nice it is to see Johnny Depp in sorta-regular clothes, with no makeup, acting like a real person.

So as the repo men begin to circle your farm and you tell your boy to run on inside and get the shotgun because no English sonofabitch is gonna come and take yer granddaddy's land out from under you, unpaid debts be damned, you can at least remember that soon this anti-bank revenge fantasy will be upon us. Let's hope it does better than the last one.

JFP is apparently now an extra-wrangler. For the movies! He was trolling for extras on Craigslist in Atlanta—the posting is now deleted, but luckily it's reproduced right there on his priceless personal website!

DO YOU WANT TO BE IN A MOVIE WITH BILL MURRAY, SISSY SPACEK AND ROBERT DUVALL - THEN COME OUT ON WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY (note dates have been moved back AGAIN due to inclement weather)!
NOTE: to be in this movie, you must use my name - JOHN FITZGERALD PAGE - when you check-in. NO EXCEPTIONS. Leave me your name and the days you can show up at johnfpage@yahoo.com if you plan to come out either or both days.
What: Feature Film - "Get Low" - starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Robert Duvall http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194263/
Setting: 1930's
Date: Wednesday 3/4 and Thursday 3/5 (EARLY IN THE MORNING)
When: Call time 3:30 a.m. WOMEN (pre-fit) & MEN (pre-fit) 4 a.m. Pre-fit means you have already been seen by wardrobe.
When: Call time 5 a.m. WOMEN & MEN (not pre-fit). Early birds get closer to the cast!
Scene: outside - a recluse stages his own funeral before he dies and it becomes a huge event with thousands attending.
Temp: (at call time) 35-43 degrees (high) 55-61 degrees- dress appropriately - some heated areas provided. Wear thermals or plain jackets you can take on and off easily.
Food: Complimentary coffee and soup, lunch
Extras: OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! Bring yourself and as many other people as possible (pre-fit or not). We can use you Wednesday (more important day) or Thursday or both days. Email johnfpage@yahoo.com with first & last names and days you plan to attend, then just show up with period clothes, hair & makeup and use JOHN FITZGERALD PAGE at check-in! Find me on set!...

Compensation - No pay, but you get lunch/snacks, a chance for prizes (flat-screen TVs, signed scripts, meet the stars, etc.), to be in a movie and see Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall up close!
Perfomance by: STEEL DRIVERS (GRAMMY NOMINATED BAND) WILL BE PERFORMING THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Any Gawker readers in Atlanta had better be there, taking notes. And just FYI, ladies, JFP includes these photos as guidance as to how you might want your hair to look:

Send us full reports! [Read all about JFP here and also here]

In January Notorious, the biopic about the life of deceased hip hop legend Biggie Smalls, was released. One of the centerpieces of the movie's soundtrack was "Letter to B.I.G.," an in memoriam-type song by Jadakiss—a rapper that Biggie helped put on, with his group The Lox. Jadakiss told MTV: "it's nothing fabricated on there. It's gotta be all real on there. Everything was personal."

In his first verse, Jadakiss (who's wearing Coogi in the video) says, "In your memory I keep Coogi in my closet." Why? Well, Biggie did love those crazy ass Coogi sweaters. But a more important reason: because, a good source tells us, Coogi paid Jadakiss tens of thousands of dollars to drop their name in the song.

Maybe save the product placement for normal, non-memorial-to-my-deceased-friend songs?

1) Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail — $16.5 million
Down a hearty 60% from last weekend, the film still held on against the 3D onslaught of crotchlight rays being shot out by the fertile, holly-scented loins of the brothers Jonas. This latest Madea iteration has stuffed a total $64.9 million into its hilariously oversized bra, becoming Perry's highest-grossing movie to date. Next week a bunch of spandex-clad superheroes with drinking problems ought to handily blue wang their way past the old lady.

2) Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience — $12.7 million
Though their marble-mouthed lady counterpart, Miley Cyrus, earned a cool $33 million outta the gate with her own 3D concert picture show, the floppy-topped young lads just couldn't deliver on the goods the same way. Perhaps dads were less willing to escort their daughters to this one? Perhaps little gay boys couldn't couch their desire to go in a "she's so hot" charade, so they decided to hole themselves up in their rooms for the weekend, furtively? The pic had the best per-screen average of any top 10 pic this weekend, but still there must be some explanation for this vague disappointment.

3) Slumdog Millionaire — $12.2 million
Buoyed by all its Oscars, the two-little-Indians-that-could movie chugs like an extremely crowded train toward the global $200 million mark. When that auspicious goal is reached, all the children will be given the opportunity to trade their new houses in for back-end deals on Boyle's next picture, Kalkotta Hope Dreamer.

4) Taken — $10 million
Liam Neeson continues to thunder-fist his way through Albanians' faces, and American cineplexes, as his actioner speeds past the $100-million mark. This is good news for similarly-brooding actor Gabriel Byrne, who can't wait for you to see his 2010 down-and-dirty thrill-ride, Aggressed Upon—about a former NSA agent who must rescue his teenage son, played by a whimpering Drake Bell, who's been kidnapped by evil Azerbaijani producers and forced to perform in a middling 3D concert.

8) Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li — $4.7 million
I really didn't think that anyone remembered Street Fighter, that glorious old videogame about brawny international dudes—Ryu! Guile! M. Bison! Blanca!—and one lady battling out in, well, the streets. But I guess they sorta do, as this film about that one lady pocketed a not-so-bad little sack of dollars over the too-short weekend. I hope this means a new trend. 'Cause I would totally go see a ToeJam & Earl or Streets of Rage movie.

Is it a big fat spoiler to point out that a trailer is a big fat spoiler? Because that's what this one is. I read the script a while back and except for the very end, everything's in here. The movie stars Adam Sandler as comedy superstar "George Simmons" who befriends up-and-comer Seth Rogen. They play pretty much the same Apatow man-boys that populate all of his movies, except here they're dealing with issues weightier than whether it's worth it to give up their bongs to get a hot girl.

You see, Sandler gets cancer and thinks he's dying. In fact, most of the movie is actually about him coming to terms with his imminent death (a laugh riot). The revelation that he's beaten the deadly disease doesn't come until close to the end. In most movies, you would call this the "twist." Here it's a title card — GEORGE SIMMONS WAS PREPARED TO DIE BUT THEN A FUNNY THING HAPPENED — in a trailer out nearly six months before the movie's due in theaters.

It's tough to blame Universal and Sony, the studios behind Funny People, for selling out the plot in the trailer. Marketing a movie, especially one that's ostensibly supposed to be a comedy, must be tough when the main character thinks he's dying for most of the film. Cluing people into the fact that Sandler lives was probably the best way they could say this isn't Terms of Endearment. But you have to ask, what's left? Ah, yes the familiar get-the-girl plot line in which Sandler tries to woo his old flame (played by the obligatory Leslie Mann, Apatow's wife) away from Aussie Eric Bana.

There wasn't a lot of comedy in the version of Apatow's Funny People script that I saw. Lots of sections, such as the stand-up routines, were marked simply with notes like "COMEDY GOES HERE." Apatow likes to film hours and hours of quasi-improvisation to get gags into his films. And no doubt, he was relying on Sandler and Rogen to come up with their own stand-up material. But all in all, it left you with the sense that, after Apatow's prolific two-year producing streak (which includes hits like Superbad and Pineapple Express and bombs like Drillbit Taylor and Walk Hard) he may have succumbed to an all-too-common comedy writer disesase: the need to be taken seriously.

In FAQ, three buddies are drinking at the pub when they meet Anna Faris (The House Bunny) who's traveled back in time from the future. At first they think she's joking, until one of them stumbles through a crack in time into the pub's future, in which they're all dead. Then they're stuck trying to unravel all of the mysteries of time travel, including "Whose round is it?" [Filmstalker]

The Tony Kushner-penned biopic, with Liam Neeson on board to play the former President, has long been one of his most precious properties. But, according to Kim Masters in The Big Money, when his DreamWorks studio ditched Paramount last year, it had to leave it and an entire raft of projects behind. Well, DreamWorks had planned to buy the project back from Paramount with the money it was going to get from an Indian billionaire and Wall Street investors. But that money hasn't materialized and DreamWorks is out of cash.

That leaves Lincoln in Paramount's hands and the guy who gets to now decide if the studio goes ahead with the picture, Brad Grey, is not exactly a friend of DreamWorks'. Plus Paramount already passed on it once, claiming too high a budget.

Spielberg has slashed that number down to a sad little $50 million, but the future is still murky. It'd be a shame for him if he lost out on the opportunity. He's the master of chest-thumping, Kaminski-shot American gravitas. And now it could fall into the hands of a Joe Wright or Marc Forster. Or just get lost forever in turnaround. Anti-Republican Hollywood strikes again.

Downside: the Washington Post says Pelosi doesn't even try to make this a fair documentary; it's just a string of the dumbest people she could find at Republican rallies, saying the dumbest possible things:

All the conventions of the smirking, winking, belittling political documentary are abided by in this film. An inordinate number of the yahoos wear T-shirts and weird caps...There is a young guy whose T-shirt, meant to deride Obama, declares "Say No to Socilism," and when Alexandra Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, we know he's not going to be able to, that he's going to say something way wrong and stupid — which he does, offering that socialism is "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and — I don't know what the other word is."

Upside: Yes obviously Alexandra Pelosi is totally in the tank, she is from San Francisco and her mom is a Democratic politician and she is a confirmed member of the liberal media. But can you ever get too many clips of Neanderthal Republican racists? I don't think so! Enjoy a few clips starting about 2:00 in this Pelosi interview with Rachel Maddow, liberal lesbian Democrat in-the-tanker:

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER NATE SILVER SPOILER OF THE OSCARS ALERT.

Slumdog Millionaire wins everything! Well, just Best Director and Best Picture. 99% confident, Nate Silver is! He's also pretty damn sure Heath Ledger is winning best supporting actor, and he has some strong ideas about other awards too, all gleaned through fancy statistical analyses, as is Nate Silver's wont. Read them all in New York magazine and then skip the damn Oscars.