I don’t like the trailer for The DaVinci Code at all. Does anyone? Ron Howard’s thriller (due 5.16.06 from Columbia) might be a clas- sic, but the trailer makes it seem like shameless formulaic dreck. That shot of an alarmed Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou running together and holding hands…is there a more detestable action- thriller cliche in the book? I still say Hanks looks too old and too big for Tatou — she’s this little French Tinkerbell and he’s this tall, hulking guy with crow’s feet. And that naked bald guy lying dead on the floor of the Louvre, a victim of a sacrifical killing… c’mon! They’re obviously aiming at devout Christians who are still invested in the legend of Yeshua’s divine avoidance of female companionship, blah, blah. I don’t live on that planet. I don’t live in that solar system…proudly.

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I’m now using Dada Mail to send out the column, and some who’ve asked to be unsubscribed are going to have to tell me again… sorry. I couldn’t figure how to cherry-pick their names and remove them.

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November and early-December tracking figures indicated The Family Stone wouldn’t do terribly well, but that hasn’t been the case. The campaign was clumsy but the word-of-mouth saved it. The Thomas Bezucha-Michael London film will be up to $45 million (it did $2.747 yesterday, up 16%) by weekend’s end and will probably end up with $60 million at the end of the run. The only unfortunate factor is that Stone distrib 20th Century Fox is opening Grandma’s Boy on Friday, 1.6, which will likely result in Stone losing 500 or so theatres. Fox should have opened it in November, as originally planned. They could have made $15 or $20 million more if they had.

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Yesterday’s figures (Friday, 12.30) show that most films are enjoying holiday increases this weekend. The Chronicles of Narnia was up 22% from last Friday for a $9.6 million haul and a projected
4-day weekend tally of $36 million. King Kong, up 12%, did around $8.7 or or 8.8 million and a projected $30 million for the weekend, which will put it up to $173 million and a likely $225 to $250 million when all is said and done. Fun With Dick and Jane‘s $6 million (up 17%) indicates $22 million for the 4-day weekend. (“It’ll do okay but they won’t hit $100 million,” says my source.) Cheaper by the Dozen was up 44% (“That’s a very healthy jump”) and did $5.6 million last night for a projected $21 million for the weekend. Rumor Has It did $2.1 million last night, $1100 per print…dead. Geisha is dead also — $2.7...

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No question about it: Orlando Bloom was looking like a very hot package a year ago with his leading-man performances in the upcoming Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown yet to be seen but everyone thinking nonetheless, “Yeah, he’s really the guy… teenage girls love him, and how can he miss in major films by Ridley Scott and Cameron Crowe?” But both films tanked and Bloom didn’t do well by the critics in either one, and now he’s really in Shit City because New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman has written an obituary (in Sunday’s 1.1.06 edition) about Bloom’s career...

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It’s snowing in New York City now…faintly. I tried taking a picture of what I was seeing out my kitchen window, but the snowflakes wouldn’t reigster.

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I can’t tell if the 190-minute “Extended Cut” version of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven opened at the Laemmle Fairfax on Friday 12.23 or three days ago (Wednesday, 12.28), but it’s playing there now…and I wish New Yorkers could see it also. Why didn’t they book this version into a smallish Manhattan theatre, or, better yet, why didn’t Fox Home Video release it as a year-end DVD attraction? (The 145 minute theatrical version came out on 10.11.) David Poland, who lives two and a half blocks from the Laemmle Fairfax, says the extended cut “is night and day from the original.” It makes it clear that as far as the theatrical version that came out last May 6th was concerned, “Fox literally cut out the story of the movie,” he says. “I was so shocked by what was back in that I had to rent the [theatrical version] DVD that is now out to make sure I wasn’t...

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Wells postscript: Big studios have knowingly and deliberately gutted great (or very good) films in the editing room and turned them into merely good or passable theatrical cuts before…Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (far better as the “Untitled” version on DVD) are the two best-known examples. If Poland’s take on Kingdom of Heaven‘s “Extended Cut” becomes generally accepted, this will be another big example of this syndrome. What are some other films that went through this? (And don’t mention Robert Wise’s longer Star Trek: The Motion Picture…that’s not allowed).

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A certain critic says that 2005 “was a fairly crappy year at the movies” and “while every year I seem to come up with more than 30 movies that I really cherish…this year 20 seemed like a bit of a reach.” That seems gruff and unduly dismissive to me. I came up with 41 films — 15 creme de la creme and 26 that were pretty damn okay. In any event, 2005 ends at midnight Paris time (6 pm in Manhattan, 3 pm in Los Angeles) and here they are again: Creme de la Creme: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Hustle & Flow, In Her Shoes, Match Point, The Family Stone, Walk the Line, Crash, Cinderella Man, The Beautiful Country, Last Days, Grizzly Man, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (15). And Pretty Damn Good: Good Night and Good Luck, The Wedding Crashers, Syriana, The Aristocrats, Batman Begins, Broken Flowers, Bob Dylan: No...

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Newsday‘s John Anderson has decided Munich star Eric Bana deserves an A…for effort, talent and general coolness of character. Being a selective Bana fan myself (having really liked him in Chopper, Black Hawk Down), I have no beef with this. Here’s hoping Bana’s performance in Curtis Hanson’s Lucky You will be the charm.

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“I thought you’d enjoy what I consider to be the ultimate proof that Brokeback Mountain is a crossover hit,” Toronto Star critic Peter Howell wrote today. “This afternoon, my 16 year-old son Jake and his same-age pal Connell went off to see BBM at the local bijou. They were curious about all the hoopla. Jake saw it as No. 2 on my Top Ten list, right after A History of Violence, and he wanted to check it out. (Although he didn’t show a similar interest in the Cronenberg.) These two guys normally won’t see anything that doesn’t involve an explosion, a laser beam or someone slipping on a banana peel. If BBM can grab their attention, it’s definitely exerting some weird pull on the masses.”

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Richard Eyre, the director of the London’s West End musical of Mary Poppins that’s based on the 1964 Julie Andrews-Dick Van Dyke Disney flick, has told the Independent‘s Louise Jury that he’s been in talks with Steven Spielberg over a new film version. The story doesn’t say Spielberg wants to direct this, so let’s hold off for now. But if Spielberg does intend to direct a Mary Poppins musical, that’s it…his getting-older, wants-to-make-more-meaningful- movies cred is out the window.

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“If this was a political campaign and this happened to a Presidential candidate, they be out…they’d be down in the polls and gone,” Pete Hammond told Kim Masters on her 12.30 NPR show. He was speaking of Munich, of course. I feel differently. If Munich was a middle-aged Presidential contender, he would still be in the race…but his aides would be telling him to think seriously about preparing a press conference in order to announce his withdrawal.

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Here’s an unsurprising but very concise National Public Radio discussion led by Hollywood analyst and chronicler Kim Masters about which films are the leaders for Best Picture, with commen- tary by Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein and Maxim critic Pete Hammond. The piece was recorded about two weeks ago, which is a long time in terms of the twists and surges that can manifest in an Oscar race… but it’s worth a listen. Will Good Night, and Good Luck do as well as Hammond claims? I wonder.

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“Who’s afraid of a couple of gay cowboys? Not moviegoers, who helped Brokeback Mountain post the highest per-screen average over the film-flush holiday weekend, reports Newsday‘s Sandy Cohen. “The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 per theater, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner King Kong and $8,225 for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” If only Cohen didn’t quote box-office interpreter Paul Dergarabedian so much. What’s wrong with that? To explain I have to move on to another item…

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I wrote a column piece nearly three years ago that lamented the persistent presence of the soul-stifling industry stooge Paul Der- garabedian, the Exhibitor Relations spokesperson who’s always quoted in box-office stories. My January ’03 piece, called “The Man Who Would Be Dull”, described Dergarabedian as “a nice, depend- able guy who always has the numbers at hand and is always ready to discuss them on Sunday afternoons, when box-office stories are usually written. And yet I feel he’s giving the art of Hollywood box-office analysis an unfortunate taint of roteness and tedium. His pronouncements are almost oppressively mundane. I can’t think of any statistic or judgment he’s ever put forward that was wrong, but to me he always sounds so damn- ably measured, safe, underwhelming and status-quo affirming, which has a kind of Orwellian effect after a while.”

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In his well-written distributor-by-distributor summation of the great DVD year that was 2005, New York Times columnist Dave Kehr includes a very curious judgment. He calls Daryl F. Zanuck and Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the 1956 Gregory Peck-Jennifer Jones drama that Fox Home Video recently released as a “Studio Classics” DVD, “nearly unwatchable” and then double-slams it by equating it with Song of Bernadette. Please…this film is entirely watchable for various reasons (an intriguing 1950s time-machine aura, sturdy performances, handsome photography, solid dialogue) and more than respectable if you accept it for what it is: a somber and somewhat stodgy big-studio movie about An Important 1956 Subject, or the struggle of middle-class breadwinners to get...

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Here’s a comprehensive, perceptive and well researched piece about the Chinese film market (“Crouching U.S. Studios, Hidden Chinese Market”) by L.A. Times staffer Bruce Wallace. It’s especially concise in explaining the downsides. “The skeptics have a long list of reasons why you can’t do movie business in China,” Wallace writes. “The deplorable condition of Chinese movie theatres, a quota that limits foreign films to 20 a year and one of the worst revenue-sharing deals (just 13% of the ticket take) that Hollywood has negotiated anywhere. Then there are strict guidelines on content. No sex. No religion. Nothing to do with the occult. Nothing that jeopardizes public morality or portrays criminal behavior. But perhaps the most crippling obstacle remains China’s rampant piracy...

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A Canadian exhibition guy named Robert Wales says the reason Match Point sounded so shitty at the Leows Lincoln Square on Wednesday night is because Woody Allen is an old fart when it comes to state-of-the-art sound recording. “Are you aware that Allen has never made a film in stereo?,” Wales begins. “There are going to be differences comparing a big film with a full 5-channel mix to one of Allen’s dialogue-driven pieces. I work for a major theatre chain, and every Allen film inevitably brings us customer complaints about presentation that are almost always related to the fact that they feel they are being cheated because the sound is coming from only one speaker, and therefore something must be wrong. The situation is even murkier when people see the film being presented in digital sound, which to the average person means multi-channel. The truth is that digital sound is able to convey as many (or...

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I love the term “Fandango paranoia” because I know what it is…I’ve been there myself. It’s defined by New York Times reporter Ben Sisario in a 12.30 story as “[Fandango ticket] purchases made far ahead in the expectation of others chasing after the same limited pool of tickets.” There’s also “Fandango depression,” which results when a given show doesn’t sell out and thus the Fandango purchaser has paid an unnecessary surcharge. “I always feel ripped off when I pay the surcharge and then there are empty seats,” Sisario is told by a gay (i.e., has a “partner”) legal research guy.

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Here are two bona fide Terrence Malick quotes — reported only today and uttered only last Monday — about his direction of The New World and thoughts about his future filmmaking plans. Quote #1: √¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√ɬ∫I knew [The New World] would have a slow, rolling pace. Just get into it; let it roll over you. It’s more of an experience film. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself.√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√ɬπ Quote #2: “There’s a good many pictures I’d like to make…we’ll see how many I’ll be allowed to make.” The quotes are significant because Malick never talks to the press. They come from reporter Susan Albert in a story in the Bartlesville, Oklahoma Examiner Enterprise,...

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Screenwriter Josh Friedman (David Koepp nemesis and co- scripter of War of the Worlds, The Black Dahlia) almost worked on Snakes on a Plane and might have…well, who knows what he might have added to the damn thing?…but he really wanted to polish the sucker, but he didn’t see eye-to-eye with some Machiavellian ass-head New Line production executive who is almost certain to shoot himself in the mouth before the year 2010 and the idea went south. Friedman has a blog and here’s his story about what happened…..Snakes on a Plane!…Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane!

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You can always tell how a film is doing (or how much confidence it has among exhibitors) by the size of the theatres it’s playing in. I was in Loew’s Lincoln Square last night, located in Manhattan’s heavily Jewish Upper West Side, and Munich was playing in one of biggest auditoriums and to a heavily packed house . I went inside and watched for a bit — large, crisply projected widescreen image, and the sound was strong and sharply defined. But Woody Allen’s Match Point, which was having its opening day, was showing in one of the two smallest, turdiest little theatres in the plex. And the sound was murky, muffled…like it was coming out of a tag sale boom box. A DreamWorks rep should have have been there to see the most enthusiastically reviewed Woody Allen film of the last 10 years being crapped on. The house was packed, but exhibs don’t trust Allen’s drawing power — his...

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“Some of my critics are asking how [Steven] Spielberg, this Hollywood liberal who makes dinosaur movies, can say anything serious about this subject that baffles so many smart people,” the 59 year-old filmmaker said to Roger Ebert during a phone interview on 12.22. “What they’re basically saying is, ‘You disagree with us in a big public way, and we want you to shut up, and we want this movie to go back in the can.’ That’s a nefarious attempt to make people plug up their ears. That’s not Jewish, it’s not democratic, and it’s bad for everyone — especially in a democratic society.”

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That “uppity nigger” line from a draft of Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana script was revealed on Boing-Boing earlier today (12.28), and then a link appeared on Defamer. Tim Blake Nelson doesn’t blurt this term out to Jeffrey Wright in the film (certain people probably would’ve freaked) but I’m sorry Gaghan didn’t just let it rip anyway. The rumpus would have been fun.

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Two or three times Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares is listed as one of the 2005′s best in the Village Voice‘s 7th Annual Film Critics Poll. I knelt down to pray in front of this film when I first saw it a year ago and spewed my praise in a column piece that ran on 12.17.04…which is why I didn’t think to include The Power of Nightmares in my Best of 2005 column, even though it was shown at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year and then at the ’05 Cannes Film Festival. (It later enjoyed a well-attended theatrical run at Manhattan’s Cinema Village, among other arthouse venues in other cities.) I’m just laying this out to explain why I didn’t mention it among this year’s best, etc. It is that by boilerplate theatrical standards, and it sure would be nice to have a first-rate digital transfer version out on DVD someday soon….but for me it was a late ’04 film.

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I was so taken with Norman Lloyd‘s short penetrating cameo performance in In Her Shoes — he nails it like a champ in one five- or six-minute scene — that the least I could do was write a tribute piece about him last September. Now there’s another actor who’s delivered another one of those rock-solid, feet-planted, holy-shit performances. I’m speaking of Roberta Maxwell, whose acting as Jake Gyllenhaal’s mom in Brokeback Mountain‘s second-to-last scene (i.e., when Heath Ledger pays a visit) totally slays. It’s obvious that Maxwell and her scowling homophobic husband (the great Peter McRobbie) know what kind of relationship Ledger had with their son, but her eyes are a river of feeling…grief, acceptance, compassion…you could take a bath in...

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As long as we’re on a Maxwell jag, here’s a 12.21 profile of this New York-based actress by the Toronto Star‘s admiring Martin Knelman. He starts it off by saying, “If there were an Oscar for best performance by an actor with only one scene, surely the winner would be Roberta Maxwell as the repressed mother in Brokeback Mountain.”

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