In Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), a 59 year-old Gregory Peck played Robert Thorn, the U.S. ambassador to England, and Lee Remick, who was 40 or 41 when the film was shot, played his wife Katherine. Remick may have seemed a bit too old to be getting pregnant and raising a young son, but her age wasn’t a stopper. Peck certainly seemed too old to be embarking upon fatherhood for the first time, but this was balanced by the fact that he was completely believable as a high-level diplomat at the summit of his career . In John Moore‘s Omen remake (20th Century Fox, 6.6.06), these characters (i.e., they have the same names) are played by 38 year-old Liev Schreiber and 25 year-old Julia Stiles, which makes them seem too young. Except Schrieber’s Thorn is apparently not the London-based U.S. ambassador but an assistant to the ambassador who suddenly elevated into power when a vacancy opens up, so to speak. This is how I understand it, at least. If anyone knows better, please advise.

• Tweet

This is a video clip shot during the shooting of Mission: Impossible III that shows Tom Cruise lying prone on a street and waiting for a big truck to start hitting the brakes and then jacknife and then roll right over him…and then it actually happens and it’s quite cool. Damn thrilling, in fact. In fact, it’s more exciting than when the sequence happens in the film. The difference is that I totally believe the video — it’s obviously “real world” and un-tricked — and I don’t really believe anything I see in a super-expensive action film of this sort. I don’t trust my eyes, I mean, to the extent that I’m presuming that a good portion of what I’m seeing during any big stunt sequence is digitally composed or has in some way originated on someone’s hard drive.

• Tweet

I first saw this teaser for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on Friday night at the AMC Dunvale 30 in Houston. It was at this precise moment that a less-than- profound Casey Affleck thought came to mind. Here he goes again, I muttered, playing another creep — the doleful deadhead Robert Ford, infamous for putting a cowardly bullet into the back of Jesse James (Brad Pitt). On top of his last creepy-head — that glum-ass, do-nothing piece of wood in Steve Buscemi‘s Lonesome Jim, and what was perhaps his seminal blank-stare creep role in Gus Van Sant‘s Gerry (’02). I don’t know anything about Affleck’s “Chris” character in The Last Kiss or his “Patrick” character...

• Tweet

This The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford site appears to be dead, but these song lyrics have a certain poignancy: “Robert Ford, a gunman / Did exchange for his parole / Took the life of James the outlaw / Which he snuck up on and stole / No one knows just where they came to be misunder- stood / But the poor Missouri farmers knew / Frank and Jesse do the best they could.”

• Tweet

United 93 is “the feel-bad American movie of the year”? Catchy pull-quote from N.Y. Times Manohla Dargis, the only problem being that it’s a highly debatable claim. I know what Manohla means, but this is simplistic emotional coding . My idea of a serious feel-bad movie in Barry Sonnenfeld‘s RV. (I would imagine it’s Manohla’s also.) For the life of me I can’t get my head around the idea of a movie as assured and expert and heavily throttled as United 93 making anyone feel “bad.”

• Tweet

Brian Burrough and John Connolly‘s Vanity Fair piece about the Anthony Pellicano wiretap magilla is being called inaccurate by Paramount chairman Brad Grey plus reps for Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, who were all named in the piece as having engaged Pellicano’s services. Gabriel Snyder‘s Variety piece says that “Pitt, Sandler and the Farley rep deny ever hiring the P.I. In addition, HBO has denied that Grey once pushed a TV show based on Pellicano as a replacement for The Sopranos, as the mag also reported.” This story must have been fact-checked over and over to the breaking point, and yet Connolly and Borrough are accused of being flat-out...

• Tweet

Truly, this Jamie Stuart riff on the American Express “my life, my card” ads is fucking-ass brilliant . Give this guy a Wes Anderson or M. Night Shyamalan life…enough mad money to patronize cool restaurants, big-loft-size digs in Philly or Paris, $15 million to make his next film, a Mensa-class blonde girlfriend, etc. The delay in the beginning with nothing happening, and then that slamming-into-the-brick-wall image approaches the realm of near-genius. Seriously.

• Tweet

A smart, hilarious, comprehensive piece about Hollywood quote whores by e-Film Critic’s Eric Childress. One word for this obviously well-researched article — “unmissable!” (That’s a reference joke…read the piece and you’ll see what I mean.)

• Tweet

Holy shit…this is awful, tragic news. Jennifer Dawson, the 35 year-old wife of New York Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz (and mother of their two kids), died suddenly late yesterday afternoon. Alan Sepinwall has delivered the news in a “House Next Door” posting that went up today. Jennifer was in good health, didn’t drink, smoke or take drugs, “so there will be a medical examin- ation to find out what happened,” Sepinwall writes. If anyone wants to send cards, the address is 343 State Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Matt’s also on e-mail a lot, either his work address (mseitz@starledger.com) or his home one (reeling@aol.com).

• Tweet

The two most passionate, best-written reviews of United 93 I’ve read this morning — one extremely postive, one more of a mixed response — are by the L.A. Weekly‘s Scott Foundas and N.Y. Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz. Foundas calls United 93 “nothing short of a direct refutation of all the conventional Hollywood wisdom concerning how such a movie should be made…it is the highest compliment I can pay Greengrass to say that he is a master of the mundane, the routine and the everyday…when he makes a movie about a historical event, he...

• Tweet

George Clooney tried to do the right thing today with a somber gray suit and a press conference in Washington, D.C. about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, or how responsible people need to try and do something to stop the slaughter. Darfur? Where’s that? Hey, should we go out tonight or…?

• Tweet

I didn’t know that Bryan Burrough and John Connolly‘s piece about the adventures of indicted wiretapper Anthony Pellicano in the forthcoming June issue of Vanity Fair was available online, but it is — on the mag’s website. It’s 10,615 words long. The intro reads, “It looks as if the wiretapping investigation consuming L.A. may bring down some of the town’s top names. From the details of Anthony Pellicano’s electronic ‘War Room’ to the P.I.’ most damaging cases, to the impact of his divorce and his delusions of Godfather grandeur, the authors have a road map to the biggest scandal in Hollywood history.”

• Tweet

It’s interesting that the N.Y. Times has ran a story about Alec Baldwin‘s backstage temper problems. I’m not saying that Baldwin appears to have issues along these lines and I certaily don’t wish to minimize the difficulty of working with anyone who punches walls, but the upshot is that actress Jan Maxwell so didn’t want to be around Baldwin that she resigned from a Roundabout theatre production of “Entertaining Mr. Sloane”, in which she and Baldwin have been costarring. I wonder how many producers of stage plays or films or TV movies made a mental note after reading this story, to wit: “Hammer is a top-notch talent but think it over before hiring her…perhaps a tad too sensitive, can’t handle the rough and tumble.”

• Tweet

Leonardo DaVinci has an IMDB credit (“painter — Mona Lisa”) for The DaVinci Code.

• Tweet

Tom Hanks has written a tribute to his longtime makeup guy, Dan Striepeke in the New York Times. Dan did Hanks’ makeup on The DaVinci Code, but I’m not quite sure why this piece ran when you get right down to it. Striepeke sounds like a gifted, amiable, very hard-working guy but so was my father in his prime and so are a lot of other people out there right now. (Not a huge deal, but Striepeke isn’t listed on the IMDB credits for the film.) Of course, it isn’t Hanks’ makeup in the forthcoming Ron Howard thriller that has gotten all the attention so far, but his longish haircut. And the guy to talk to about that, according to the IMDB, would be hair designer Frances Hannon.

• Tweet

Mission: Impossible III is not a snoozer. It may not be an ideal repeat-viewing thing (I probably shouldn’t have seen it twice in one day), but it’s faster-paced and easier to follow than the DePalma opener and more engrossing than the Woo.

• Tweet

This is fascinating: Time magazine has discovered and passed along (as of 4.25.06) a comprehensive rundown of websites and various other online p.r. initiatives regarding this film called …wait a minute…written here somewere….Snakes on a Plane!

• Tweet

Michelle Rodriguez is expressing regrets about the factors that led to her Hawaii drunk-driving bust and…I feel funny going on about this but given the temperament and tendencies of most actresses I’ve known or heard stuff about, I’m deeply impressed with MR’s decision to take the slammer over community service. “This has more to do with her street cred than anything,” says Manhattan-based journalist Lewis Beale . “She’s a tough babe from Jersey City, and I’ll bet if she hadn’t turned up in Girl Fight she’d be gang banging or in jail for armed robbery. She’s always struck me as someone who was thisclose to returning to the ghetto from which she came. I remember when James Cagney won an AFI Lifetime Achievement award, he referred to the ‘little touch of the gutter’ that made his performances so real. With Rodriguez, it’s a whole...

• Tweet

“…undeniably the most gut-wrenching and captivating film released this year.” — USA Today‘s Claudia Puig on United 93.

• Tweet

N.Y. Times reporters David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner are reporting that Hollywood divorce lawyer Dennis Wasser is now entangled in the Anthony Pellicano investigation. On a scale of 1 – 10, how sexy is Wasser as a prosecution target and subject of a Times story? Is it just me or is this story starting to deflate somewhat?

• Tweet

Faced with either 240 hours of community service or five days in the slammer in Honolulu over a drunk driving conviction, Lost costar Michelle Rodriguez (“How ya livin’?”) has chosen jail. This is obviously the less spiritual and less nourishing option, but any gainfully employed actress who says “okay, I’ll do time” deserves (and I know this may sound strange to some) a slight tip of the hat. There are intimations of obstinacy in this choice, yes, but also intestinal fortitude.

• Tweet

Hollywood Elsewhere is jetting to Houston today and four or five days at Worldfest, a longstanding local-flavored film festival with interesting shadings. A slight interruption in WIRED postings, yes…but only for a few hours.

• Tweet

An amusing N.Y. Times story by Bill Carter about the creation of Rob Burnett‘s Let’s Rob Mick Jagger series.

• Tweet

Tom Cruise was “at his best, and most unlikable, as the misogynistic self-help guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Magnolia,” writes MSNBC’s Eric Lundegaard. “Here’s the fascinating part. As he was being interviewed by the female reporter, and glared at her warily through a big tight grin, the character seemed only a step or two removed from the Cruise character we see promoting his latest film on entertainment shows. That is: spooky.” I alluded to the same thing when I wrote on 4.19 about Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III, to wit: “He’s made Hunt into a kind of mirror image of hard-core tabloid Tom. Hunt is a ‘character,’ yes, but based more than...

• Tweet

Horror films have reinvigorated the movie business. Great. Break out the champagne. Only people who have next to no interest in the transcendent power of great movies, who see them only as dollars-and-cents delivery devices , would take any comfort from this. I’ve always liked good horror films, but c’mon…

• Tweet

A just-launched site for Richard Linklater‘s A Scanner Darkly , which will play at the Cannes Film Festival.

• Tweet

“I just saw Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette,” says a French film critic whose name I should probably keep under wraps. “Empty shell, boring as hell. Don’t know if the Cannes jury is gonna buy it, but the average moviegoer will suffer deeply watching gilded 18th-Century types people get bored, eat, drink, and get bored again. Movies about boredom and filling spaces are tricky to film. Coppola did it right with Lost in Translation, but this time she fails completely, in my opinion. You were right about the parallel between Marie Antoinette and the Paris Hilton crowd . It’s here. The rock soundtrack works in the beginning, but quickly turns into a gimmick that doesn’t hold for two hours.”

• Tweet