New York Times critic Manohla Dargis saw the Roman Polanski doc when it briefly appeared in a few theaters in New York and Los Angeles in order to qualify for the Oscars.  Dargis writes:

“Wanted and Desired,” which opened on Friday without advance press screenings, was bought by HBO at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Its one-week theatrical run will make it eligible for Academy Award consideration, though given that organization’s often pitiful record when it comes to nonfiction film, it seems unlikely that a movie this subtly intelligent would make its short list. That’s especially true because the director, Marina Zenovich, refuses to wag her finger at Mr. Polanski, even when presenting the sordid and grimly pathetic details of his crime, like the Champagne and partial Quaalude he furnished the 13-year-old girl and her repeated nos.

Dargis speaks like a real critic when she disses the AMPASS, but I I think she goes too far suggesting that the film would do better if it wagged its finger at Polanski.  The truth is, if AMPAS had anything against Polanski they wouldn’t have honored with a Best Director Oscar for The Pianist.  Look at how badly they’ve exiled Russell Crowe, not that Crowe’s behavior can compare to Polanski’s but just that when the Academy wants someone to pay, they pay.   Read Dargis’ full review here.

Via Salon.com’s Broadsheet, comes this essay in the NYTimes, It’s Not You, It’s Your Books, exploring the phenomenon of relationship-killing incompatibility standards based on personal reading habits: “when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.”

When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.”

…Let’s face it — this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

I’m guilty of the same hookup discrimination. How about you guys? Is there a DVD you’d see on a date’s shelf that would have you texting for a Rescue Ring? How about the reverse? Is there a movie title you typically pull out as your ace in the hole (so to speak). Name-dropping a movie title as the wily coyote of cuddle-lingus to help you get laid? Slumming in the action aisle to scope out the machosexual jocks, or flaunting a predilection for foreign films like fanning your metrosexual peacock tail?

What’s the deal-breaker movie that would wreck any hopes of living happily ever after?

April 5 will be the 100th birthday of Bette Davis. There will be tributes and retrospectives and dozens of memorial essays. Terrence Rafferty excels at elegantly distilling an actor’s persona to its essence, as he does in this New York Times remembrance.

…on the occasion of her centennial, it’s worth remembering Davis as she was in her prime, in the 1930s and ’40s, when she commanded the screen with something subtler and more mysterious than the fierce, simple will that carried her through the mostly grim jobs of work that followed. (Though the will was there from the start, and her formidable technique never wholly deserted her.) In her heyday, as the reigning female star at Warner Brothers, she was as electrifying as Marlon Brando in the ’50s: volatile, sexy, challenging, fearlessly inventive. She looked moviegoers straight in the eye and dared them to look away.

…Late in life Davis ruefully told an interviewer, “The more successful an actor, the less he or she gets to act.” She added, “People come to expect a personality, and that’s the kind of parts you get offered, ones to suit audience expectations of your star’s persona.”

Bette Davis, God knows, could supply some personality. Versatile though she was, she was never an empty-vessel sort of actor like Daniel Day-Lewis. Part of the strange thrill of watching her perform is the tension you feel between the demands of the role and the demands of her outsize self, constantly threatening to breach the boundaries of the character.

After the cut, Rafferty explains why he thinks that over-sized theatricality was never over-the-top without a reason:

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Ever feel like you keep making the same mistakes in relationshipwrecks, time after time, century after century, from one galaxy to another?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gERrH0wNZ0[/youtube]

The new Indy TV spot is here:

One of the most impressive and potentially world-changing aspects of the internet is the chance it offers for individuals to make their voices heard above the drone of the mainstream. It’s the underground press of our time. The print won’t rub off on your fingers, but with any luck maybe some of the best thoughts will rub off on our attitudes. Here’s a link to Frank J. Avella’s passionately felt review of Stop-Loss at newyorkcool.com.

At one point Peirce uses a song by country superstar and resident war-monger, Toby Keith to highlight just how misguided so many of our young men were post-September 11th. The ditty, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” was written to inspire our boys to want to seek revenge for that tragedy. The problem was it also asked us to blindly trust a President with his own agenda. And while Keith never had to take responsibility for the blood on his hands, true Americans like the Dixie Chicks were vilified and demonized for speaking out against an unjust war and a horrific President.

Stop-Loss has the guts to say certain things that desperately need to be said. It is not only the best film of 2008 to date, it happens to be the first relevant film to deal with the Iraq War.

That’s the kind of writing you’re not likely to see in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Post.

Photoshopping fems is fun, but not every actor needs the help.  The Sundance Channel aired Breakfast on Pluto Saturday night, a thoroughly  charming movie that features Cillian Murphy as one of the prettiest transvestites in film history.   Brief clip after the cut.

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News flash: Audiences flock to see worst-rated movies.  Mediocrity vindicated.

Following up on Sasha’s post yesterday, re-imagineering Hollywood hotties as females, the New England Genealogical Society did some digging last week and discovered that not only are Clinton and Obama related, but Hillary is a cousin of Madonna, Alanis Morrisette, and Celine Dion. No wonder it took Hillary so long to find her voice. (cue “My Heart Will Go On” …and on …and on.)

Obama, meanwhile, is related to six U.S. Presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and James Madison — as well as Robert E. Lee and Winston Churchill.

But I know people complain whenever there’s the slightest political slant on the site, so let’s focus on the really important revelation: Hillary is Angelina Jolie’s cousin! and Barack is Brad Pitt’s cousin! TMZ links to the photoshopped blended family portraits. As Barack conceded on The View a couple of days ago, Brad’s the hot one in the family. (I’ll have to say, Don’t sell yourself short, Barack.)

These are exactly the evil evolutionary DNA experiments that repulse Republicans, but if you think I’ll let that stop me from inviting the Neo-cons to this mash-up mixer then you don’t know me very well.

Discover who’s lurking in the GOP’s ancestral closet after the cut.
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Julia Sweeney is the bomb. The doc of her stage show is making its premiere at the Seattle Film Fest upcoming, as her blog, juliasweeney.blogspot.com, announces. Here is an excerpt from the show:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtIyx687ytk[/youtube]

It remains to be seen whether or not audiences (and critics) will accept Tom Cruise back into the fold after the recent public stoning he’s been taking on all things — Scientology, his marriage, etc. Either way, the publicists are doing their job with Valkyrie, perhaps to test the waters as to whether folks are excited about the film or sharpening their knives. Either way, Slash Film has posted some photos from the film from Empire Magazine, where they first appeared. Have a look.

Oh No They Didn’t has posted some results of a Photoshop contest on Worth 1000 to turn male stars female.  All Leo needs is an eyebrow wax and he could pass.  Johnny Depp is the one who seemed to need the least amount of alteration.

The Tracey Fragments is set for limited release on May 9th.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0jEN2_REy4[/youtube]

Smart People opens nationwide April 11.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy4TPVSpo2E[/youtube]

Michael London produced Smart People and Sideways — two films that share Sundance premieres, Thomas Hayden Church, and an Indie-friendly philosophy of free-hand graphic design elements for their very similar teaser posters. (London’s Groundswell Productions is behind Gus Van Sant’s Milk with Sean Penn.) Fresh Spring one-sheets for the two new Ellen Page films after the cut.

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Lindsay Lohan has signed on to star in Manson Girls.  She will play  the one who stayed home and didn’t go creepy crawling all the way to the pokey.  E! got the news exclusively:

A source familiar with the deal says that despite the fact that Lohan has had some recent brushes with the law and just completed rehab, “the production company is insuring her for the film.”

Yeah, gee I wonder why.  Anything to get anyone to see the movie.   This is a juicier role than Ms. Lohan is used to, as Nancy (aka “Brenda”) goes from being a bored teenager to one of Manson’s most passionate and devoted followers.  She was there when Charlie X’d himself out of our world, after all.  Pittman ended up joining the Aryan brotherhood after Charlie, which isn’t that surprising knowing Charlie’s lame-brained scheme to start a race war.

I wonder who will be cast as the other psycho killers?

Source 

This one is a couple of weeks late, but it’s too annoying to let slide. You may have seen the TV ads for Horton Hears a Who, proclaiming this jaw-dropping review excerpt: “One of the best animated features of all time!” It’s one of those BILLBOARD-SIZE BLURBS with the teensy-weensy miniscule ultramicroscopic attributions at the bottom. I had the ad on Tivo but no matter how many times I replayed it, I couldn’t make out which critic was making this claim.

So I reached out to consult an official source:

Politely inquiring with the utmost of tact,
I contacted Horton and asked, “Is this fact?”
“I’ve searched and I’ve Googled, I await your reply,
I need to discover who’s spreading this lie.”
When Horton found out his review was in doubt
he immediately messaged me back with a pout.
“I’m telling you Ryan, I haven’t a clue.
If you’re so fucking suspicious, go ask a damn Who.”
(Clearly the question was making him squirm
and the last thing we need is a pissed pachyderm.)
Perusing the Seuss shelf with my “girlfriend,” um… Tiffany,
Fox in Socks caught my eye and I had an epiphany!
Eureka!
That’s it!
Fox News is not blameless!
A shill is a shill, no matter how shameless!

Sure enough, Google maps out two crooked trails that match this questionable quote:

“This is one of the best animated pictures ever,” Fox distribution president Bruce Snyder said.

But that’s not quite the quote the TV ad uses. And how crass would that be? to quote the Fox distribution president! Nope, it had to be something more subtle (but not by much):

“One of the best animated features of all time!”
- WWOR-TV, NYC (Marian Etoile Watson)

I guess I don’t have to point out that WWOR is a Fox affiliate. Whew, mystery solved. I know, I know, “Nice work, Sherlock,” and all that. I fully understand this kind of thing is commonplace, and I usually shrug it off. But seriously, I wouldn’t bother if they didn’t try to be so shifty about Who’s praising Who, so to speak. Anyway, I’m not the only one to notice the really gauche force-feeding of this movie to kids and families. It’s no reflection on the quality of the film (which I haven’t seen) but it’s just something that got under my skin — and coming from the Fox hole doesn’t exactly help assuage my aggravation.

The March 14th release date for Horton should’ve been our first clue: Beware the Frauds of March.

Scott Foundas apparently thinks the MTV demographic is too dumb to notice Stop-Loss is about Iraq:

Paramount, the studio that produced Stop-Loss …has gone out of its way to keep the words “Iraq” and “war” out of the movie’s ad campaign—even trying to put the breaks on potentially beans-spilling reviews like this one.

Whoa! spoiler alert there, Scotty! Stop-Loss is about Iraq, you say? Never woulda guessed from the saturation advertising of, um, soldiers in desert camo and stuff. Way to “spill the beans” there, friendo. And yet Foundas believes the same target audience he belittles are so informed that they’ve seen all the Vietnam movies like The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, as “the film so effectively reconstitutes those Vietnam-homecoming touchstones that we can anticipate its every move,” and therefore we’ll be oh-so-bored with the following tiresome drudgery:

Peirce’s soldiers come back to the good old U.S. of A.—some upright, some on wheels. On cue, they begin to go a little bit crazy, picking bar fights, convulsing with night terrors. Not long after, one GI decides to blow his own head off, another voluntarily re-enlists, and a third goes AWOL.

And “on cue,” critics like Scott Foundas dismiss the movie as (*yawn*) been-there-done-that. How awful that Foundas must endure the hardship of seeing history repeat itself, as he sits on his ass through Vietnam and then is required to sit on his now-even-wider ass through the Iraq War. Or — correction — sits on his wide ass through a movie about the Iraq War, because it’s obvious Foundas learned all he needed to know about solidiers and war from sitting through movies about Vietnam.

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