Sometimes when so many things are going wrong, some things do go right:

Like retail holiday sales getting off to a robust start.

Like a strong holiday weekend at the boxoffice, well up from last year.

Like the best-reviewed two movies, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, doing great in limited release over the weekend. Like Slumdog and Hunger picking up three awards apiece at the British Independent Film Awards.

Like Australia playing well enough with adults so that studios like Fox won't regret taking risks like that on other crazy-bet movies. We want studio co-chairman Tom Rothman to keep hosting Fox Legacy, my current fave TV show, where he actually gives intelligent and often passionate background analysis of what made some of the studio's classics so great. It's hard to imagine the studio green-lighting movies like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing or Gentleman's Agreement these days. But by golly they did make Australia, which is in itself a many- splendored thing.

Before the American Cinematheque starts off its tribute evening to Samuel L. Jackson Monday night, board chair Rick Nicita will present the inaugural Sydney Pollack Award to Sundance Film Fest director Geoff Gilmore, who is currently prepping his 19th fest.

Cinematheque director Barbara Smith wanted to create a lasting memorial to the late producer-director, who as a long-term board member and one-time board chair had kept the wolf from the door many times over the years. The award will be presented each year to someone "who has been of critical importance and continuing influence in non-profit film exhibition, film preservation and/or independent film promotion and distribution – people whose work Sydney supported and found to be so valuable, who are not often recognized for their efforts," the Cinematheque said. It takes one to know one.

Several of the songs on the rockin' Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack are by M.I.A, including Paper Planes:

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the Angels and Demons trailer:

Writer-director Tony Gilroy, who worked on several Bourne installments before he made his directing debut with Michael Clayton, turned next to one of my fave genres, the romantic heist caper. Duplicity reunites Closer stars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts as two ex-spies who may or may not be in love. Is it more Trouble in Paradise or Prizzi's Honor? We'll find out when Universal opens it in March, 2009.

All those teens in love with Rob Pattinson as the dishy Edward Cullen in Twilight may be in for a surprise when they see his next: the arty Bohemian romp Little Ashes, in which he stars as the young painter Salvador Dali--in love with poet Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltran). MTV has a photo gallery on the film, due in 2009.

Here's an early clip:

Once upon a time, Nikki Finke and Sharon Waxman were pals. So there's a possibility that this latest rumble in the jungle over a supposed "secret SAG meeting" when stars were brought on board to support a possible strike is intended to build Waxman's traffic. UPDATE: Or, Patrick Goldstein suggests, Finke may be feeling some competition.

Finke says the meeting never happened; while she is likely to take the same guild-friendly approach that she did during the Writers' Strike, which worked well to spike her daily hits, she has excellent sources. While Waxman is playing a bit of catch-up and learning the blog ropes as she forges her post-NYT career, she is sticking to her story.

Since Hollywood and media folks like nothing better than a good catfight, this clash is picking up attention. (Here's Defamer.) Waxman's never gotten so many comments in her life.

On a more serious note, SAG plans to send out a strike authorization to guild members next month. It's hard to believe that anyone is contemplating another strike that could take place as early as January, timed yet again to threaten the awards season. UPDATE: This anti-strike petition is making the industry rounds.

I get a kick out of William Goldman. The author of several film book classics (Adventures in the Screen Trade is one) and excellent novels (The Temple of Gold, Boys and Girls Together, The Princess Bride) has always been a candid observer of the movie business, especially the screenwriting trade. At the recent Screenwriting Expo, he was interviewed by writer Aaron Sorkin (who mercilessly teased girlfriend Beth Swofford, a top agent at CAA, with being eager to read everyone's screenplays), who like everyone else, admires Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, partly because it helped to invent the buddy comedy.

"Westerns are dead now except for Mr. Eastwood," said Goldman. "You could make the argument that unemployable in movies today would be John Wayne, Fred Astaire and Cary Grant." (I'm not sure I agree with him about Grant, who could do anything.) His point was the death of the genres these men dominated: westerns, musicals and romantic comedies. (But aren't musicals coming back?)

It's hard to believe that the eventual Oscar-winning popular hit Butch Cassidy was badly reviewed: partly, Goldman thinks, because he got paid so much for the script, a whopping $400,000 at the time. He was attracted to the story of Butch and Sundance and the Hole-in- the-Wall gang partly because they had a second chapter--they became legends again. "That moved the shit out of me," Goldman said. He worked on the script for eight years. When he was teaching at Princeton he wrote the script over his Christmas vacation in two weeks. It was initially rejected by every studio. After he rewrote it, they all wanted to buy it except one, who told him, "John Wayne doesn't run away."

He was lucky with the casting and with director George Roy Hill, Goldman said. He compares Paul Newman to Clint Eastwood. Both men were (and Eastwood still is) "terrific, not arrogant and nasty." He thinks that's because neither made it when they were young. Eastwood was digging swimming pools into his early 30s [actually, late 20s]; Newman was working off-Broadway.

Nobody wanted Robert Redford for the Sundance Kid. Steve McQueen didn't do it because his agent and Newman's agent got into a pissing contest and wouldn't give up first billing. Marlon Brando "disappeared and went to play with the Indians." Redford was considered a light comedian. The movie made him a star, and Newman became the biggest star in the world. The duo followed up with an even bigger Oscar-winning smash hit, The Sting. "Why they never worked together again I don't know," said Goldman. "I don't know if any studio would make Butch Cassidy today. They die at the end."

Here's the bicycle scene with Katharine Ross (accompanied by the hit single Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head):

For once, women are dominating movie theaters. That's because there's more than enough for them to see. (OK, they're not going to see Transporter 3.) Usually, though, they're starved and I hope Hollywood takes the lessons of 2008 to heart, from Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! to Twilight and Australia, all movies designed to appeal to women. Lots of women.

The studios always act surprised when movies for women score big. Truth is, they like to make movies for men because they're more predictable and reliable and less finicky and demanding than women. Also, the femme audience can be relied on to go see movies about men, who are less likely to cross the line for a chick flick. Girls like to scream at horror picks. Men would rather die than go to a romantic comedy--unless it stars Seth Rogen, Vince Vaughn or Adam Sandler. Judd Apatow figured out that making rom-coms for both sexes was the way to go.

At the Thanksgiving weekend boxoffice, Four Christmases will do fine, I suspect (despite dismal reviews, although the NYT's A.O. Scott liked it) because it's the kind of rom-com that plays to both sexes. (Here's Pamela McClintock's weekend boxoffice preview.)

Australia will feed the hunger for romance and melodrama and sheer entertainment--while mixed reviews indicate that Oscars are not in its future. Twilight will pull repeat business and curiosity seekers checking out the phenom.

And for the art-house gang, Danny Boyle's must-see Slumdog Millionaire (92% on Rotten Tomatoes) is expanding (and gaining ground in the Oscar derby), and Gus Van Sant's Milk is a critics' fave, also earning 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sean Penn is already the one to beat in the best actor Oscar race.

Hugh Jackman knows how to work a room.

I'd seen him in action at Comic-Con, when he plunged into the crowd to shake hands with the creator of Wolverine. And he handed out Australian cookies called Tim Tams to the already hyped-up audience at the Oprah show.

After the Screen Actors Guild Australia screening at Fox's Zanuck Theatre last Saturday, Jackman charmed the crowd. Before seeing Australia for the first time at the premiere in Sydney, Jackman said everyone was tense and anxious, because so much was at stake. Two weeks ago they had to pry the print out of Baz's hands at 6 AM, like an intervention, he joked. At the after-party Jackman sang for the room. "I was drinking," he confessed.

Jackman hadn't worked on his home continent in ten years. Initially Kidman was jealous because she was playing a Brit and still needed a dialogue coach. But Luhrmann also made Jackman work on a broad Northern Australian dialect for The Drover.

Jackman also spent over a year learning to ride four different horses: a rearing horse, a jumper, a placid horse unrattled by anything, and his favorite horse. He started out training him, riding bareback clutching his mane, so that he would gain the horse's complete trust. Luhrmann built a little horse arena so Jackman and Kidman could ride every day. They did a lot of their own stunts; she was competitive with Jackman, but one day toward the end of the shoot when she didn't leap on her horse, everyone on the set already knew why. She was pregnant.

Luhrmann had been dreaming about making this movie since he was a wee lad working the theatre projector in a small town, Jackman said. (Here's the LAT feature on Luhrmann.) The writer-director read everything about Australian history he could get his hands on, until he knew his story would include both the Stolen Generation and the Japanese bombing of Darwin. Non-pro Brandon Walters, who plays the half-Aborigine child who narrates the film, never knew the camera was there. He was magical, Jackman said.

Starring in a movie inspired by epic romantic adventures like Gone with the Wind and The African Queen, Jackman knew he was working in the tradition of such classic leading men as Clark Gable and Gregory Peck. The role moves from low-comedy to high-tragedy to western to romance to adventure, all in one film. Hollywood doesn't make pictures like that anymore because they aren't "cool," Jackman said.

In one scene, Luhrmann had him pour water over his head with his shirt off, lit to make every muscle gleam. "Come on!" he protested when he realized the director was shooting in slow-motion. Luhrmann told him he had to go for it 100 % or he wouldn't pull it off. Many crew members showed up with their shirts off that day.

Luhrmann gives his actors full support, Jackman said. As opposed to Bryan Singer (X-Men), who requires his cast to be ready to go, no hand-holding required. Jackman said that Luhrmann and Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain) were much alike: in there with you, and totally prepared.

60 takes was not unusual for the perfectionist Luhrmann. How was it to do so many? It's like Tiger Woods, Jackman said. He never gets tired of hitting golf balls all day, and keeps trying to do it better. He and Kidman nailed their first kiss on the first take.

They did shoot and test two endings, Jackman said. Luhrmann wanted the audience to tell him which one they preferred, but the scores weren't definitive. So Luhrmann, seeing that the world had changed to a darker place since he made the movie, came up with a third more hopeful ending. He'll put the sad one on the DVD. A sequel is not in the cards. "It's hard to imagine he'd do another one," Jackman said.

The musical theater star has long wanted to do a movie musical and kicked himself for turning down Chicago, feeling he was too young, at 33, to carry Billy Flynn. "I could have worn makeup," he groaned afterward as the movie racked up Oscar wins. While Jackman's in town, he's meeting with Steven Soderbergh to see if they will go forward on Cleo, a musical of Cleopatra, starring Catherine Zeta Jones in the starring role. (Update: the married Jackman fends off rumors that he is gay.)

The producer-star has already checked out work-in-progress, the X-Men spin-off Wolverine, due in theaters in six months. Director Gavin Hood has it in good shape, he said.

See the Australia trailer on the jump:

As the Oscar buzz for Milk continues to grow, there is continued fallout over California's passing of the gay marriage ban known as Prop 8.

After a long and fractious debate within the Film Independent board, they finally voted Monday to accept the second resignation of LA Film Fest director Rich Raddon, a Mormon who gave $1500 to support Prop 8. They had initially refused to police his religious beliefs. Here's Michael Jones' story.

Raddon's statement:

"I feel honored to have worked with such a wonderful group of people at the Los Angeles Film Festival over the last nine years. I am proud of our accomplishments. And I am proud to have worked at Film Independent, an organization whose principles and values of diversity and artistic integrity I cherish. I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion, or sexual orientation are entitled to equal rights."

"As many know, I consider myself a devout and faithful Mormon. I prefer to keep the details around my contribution through my church a private matter. But I am profoundly sorry for the negative attention that my actions have drawn to Film Independent and for the hurt and pain that is being experienced in the GLBT community."

The Board of Film Independent's statement:

"With great reluctance, Film Independent has accepted Richard Raddon's resignation as Director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. Rich's service to the independent film community and to Film Independent has been nothing less than extraordinary. He has always shown complete commitment to our core principles of equality and diversity during his long tenure. It was through his leadership that the Los Angeles Film Festival has grown into a formidable and exciting showcase for talented artists and diverse voices. We are sorry to see him go."

The Sunday LAT covered this story and other Prop 8 fallout. Milk actor Howard Rosenman expressed his support for Prop 8 boycotts.

Here's my earlier post expressing concern that freedom of speech be protected in this contentious environment, when religion and politics make a volatile mix, indeed.

Check out this Flickr collection of The End titles.

[Hat Tip: Slashfilm]

The New Yorker goes behind the scenes of Hollywood's premiere luxury rehab facility, Wonderland. This is one of those cases where the subject may regret opening up to magazine.

[New Yorker illo by Tom Bachtell]

Greg Mottola (Superbad) jumps back into the teen comedy circuit, only with big hair and shorter shorts. Set in the summer of 1987, Adventureland tells the tale of a college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who's forced to work at the local amusement park. Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Ryan Reynolds star.

To know that David Carr is in touch with the online zeitgeist, just read this week's New York Times media column about Google. Carr gets it. And once a year, when he morphs into The Carpetbagger, he gets to shows his stuff to a media world that is struggling to make the transition from print to pixels.

On December 1, Carr's award-season alter-ego The Bagger will embark on his fourth season of daily Oscar-blogging. As befits the constantly evolving nature of hybrid journalism, there will be changes. For one thing, The Bagger aims to file daily video on the blog from his New Jersey basement. "There's huge demand from people for someone who looks homeless in his messy basement talking about the most glamorous event in the world," he says. "I will certainly use props and there may or may not be puppets."

Carr--who writes fast--plans to churn out six or seven posts a day (crikey!) which he will not have to do alone. Other NYT staffers, such as Brooks Barnes, will assist him. Such are the demands of rebuilding traffic for this seasonal blog. Other more elaborate video features will be produced in a more conventional manner, using Carr as "talent." Carr has already set up nine or ten stories he wants to cover. "There's more planning ahead," he admits, "and more willingness to go to L.A."

Going into his fourth season, it's hard for Carr to continue the conceit of the franchise that he is a bumbling outsider sent to cover the ultimate insider event. In the past, Carr admits, he has "gotten rolled by people" pursuing Oscar coverage in the all-powerful NYT. "I can't pretend not to know what's going on," he says. "I've picked up on some things."

With four Oscar-related features coming up in the newspaper of record, Carr is careful to make sure that the two worlds don't collide. "Whatever unwritten rules there are about doing what we do are baked into me," he says. "Some chip is installed. In three years I have never gotten edited."

While Carr installed his Google Reader last week so he can check out other Oscar blogs, he wants to avoid falling into group-think because, he finds, "often it's wrong. It's like an echo chamber. I'll be doing less reading and more phone calling."

The Bagger is also playing catch-up on viewing kudo-friendly films. "I've seen almost nothing," says Carr. "It's like showing up at school when everyone's four chapters ahead." He does foresee several strong story threads to pursue through the award season: the comeback of The Wrestler star Mickey Rourke, Harvey Weinstein, who is "always in the middle of things," and Anne Hathaway's bid to gain traction for Rachel Getting Married. One thing Carr is counting on: "The Oscar race is always full of surprises," he says.

Interesting that this Andy Samberg sketch on Barack Obama's new chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not air on Saturday Night Live this week. Was it too inside and wonky? Or were they too scared? (It's certainly funnier than some of the stuff that made air.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Batman goes Lego; check out these figures.

Just in case you missed this take-off on Variety Slanguage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disney's animated Bolt nabbed good reviews (85% Tomatometer), while the vampire romance Twilight did not (48% Tomatometer ). It won't matter. There are plenty of excited teenage girls and their moms to keep the theaters noisy the opening weekend. (If you don't want to be distracted by screaming hordes, wait a week.) The movie works for what it is, and Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson are strong leads. Ken Turan's review gets it. So does Kim Voynar.

UPDATE: Twilight is outperforming even the most exuberant projections at the boxoffice, proving yet again that yes, women can open a movie. And Summit is greenlighting a film version of the second novel in Stephenie Meyer's vampire series, New Moon, they confirmed Saturday.

After everybody had checked their cameras and phones, J.J. Abrams stood in front of the packed Paramount Studio Theatre Wednesday to unspool four scenes from Star Trek, about twenty minutes. With the movie not opening until May and the first trailer out this week, it felt a tad early for a show-and-tell. Underwire posted their reaction.

Right at the top, Abrams admitted he's not a Trekkie. But when he read Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's script, he said, "it was adventure and funny and romantic and sexy and epic yet intimate -- everything you'd want." He had to do it.

Casting the role of Captain Kirk that was originated by William Shatner back in 1966 was tough. "He had massive shoes to fill," he said. Unlike Spock, "you couldn't fall back on pointed ears. It had to be him."

The first clip introduced Chris Pine as Kirk, trying to pick up language expert Uhura (Zoe Saldana) in a bar. She's initially dismissive, then sees how smart he is. He's drunk and gets into a bar brawl with some Star Fleet Academy cadets. Bruce Greenwood's Captain Pike breaks it up and tries to recruit Kirk, because he knew and respected his late father, who died the day he was born. "We want you if you are half the man your father was," he tells him. Kirk is hooked and turns up at the Star Fleet recruiting call the next day (on a very cool motorcycle). "I wanted the movie to feel fresh and earthbound, as well," said Abrams.

Kirk is a troublemaker at the Academy, natch, and has to sneak onto the U.S.S. Kelvin as it takes off to deal with an emergency on Planet Vulcan. Physician Bones (Karl Urban, who feels the right age, while Pine and Heroes star Zachary Quinto seem a tad young) infects him with a virus to get him on the ship; Kirk figures out that the mission is a Romulan trap (their leader is played by Eric Bana) and warns Pike and Spock on the bridge. "Bana is oddly relatable even though he is mostly evil," said Abrams.

Arch-rivals Kirk and Spock don't get along. In the third clip, acting Captain Spock dumps Kirk on a snowy planet, where he meets a much older Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, as well as the irrepressible engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg). "Coming back from the future to change history is cheating," Kirk tells Spock. "It's a trick I learned from an old friend," Spock says. "Live long and prosper." Abrams admitted that he was abashed at giving notes to Nimoy.

The big action footage in the fourth clip was stunning, involving Kirk and a sword-wielding Sulu (John Cho) parachuting down from a shuttle to shut down signals that are being sent from a bore platform far above Vulcan. It's very scary. So is the Russian accent used by Anton Yelchin as Chekhov. All in all, I was more impressed by the footage than the trailer below:

Well before the opening of Twilight, Rob Pattinson's fame lured long lines of girls for the recent Austin Film Fest screening of his upcoming Brit indie flick How to Be, which still lacks a distributor. The producers sent me this rather strange behind-the-scenes footage of Pattinson taken during his Austin promo tour which will be of interest only to Pattinson obsessives: you know who you are. Here's the updated How to Be website.

Behind the Scenes with How To Be at the Austin Film Festival from How To Be on Vimeo.

First there was the story of the Landmark Cinema digital screening of the Spanish-language Che without any subtitles at all. Critics prepared to screen the movie were sent home when the projectionist couldn't solve the problem. Then there was a Aidikoff Wilshire Screening Room digital screening of English-language Doubt, which started off with Che's Spanish subtitles. (There had been a Che screening prior.) The projectionist stopped the film and after about three minutes started over again without the offending subtitles.

UPDATE: Thursday night Paramount screened The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at two venues. The SAG screening at the Arclight went smoothly. The "print" at the DGA, which the studio had spent eight hours testing on Thursday afternoon, was missing a color. Magenta. The film was green. And eventually, after about 20 minutes, because the cinematographer and sound mixer called producer Frank Marshall, the projection was shut down. Paramount technicians tried to reboot the hard drive, but couldn't fix the problem. Those of us who sat in the room saw them come close to a full-color projection, but something was wrong with the projector, a Paramount publicist said server, according to Marshall. "On the right setting it was wrong, and on the wrong setting it was right," he wrote in an email. "Welcome to digital."

David Fincher, the original perfectionist, must not have been happy. Marshall and partner Kathleen Kennedy, who had been working on this movie for some 18 years, were distressed; the screening was packed with key critics, press and industry Academy members. Other screenings are scheduled for Saturday. "This would not have happened to Stanley Kubrick," said one wag.

Fox Searchlight will send out its first trailer for The Wrestler today. Their mission: to make filmgoers want to see a movie that looks very male--Mickey Rourke plays a down-on-his-luck, aging wrestler facing the end of his career who suddenly needs to reach out to his daughter, poignantly played by Evan Rachel Wood, and a stripper pal, Marisa Tomei. Communicating with women is not his strong suit.

Indie-financed for $6 million by French company Wild Bunch (the same outfit that backed Che), The Wrestler debuted at the Toronto Film Fest, where Fox Searchlight scooped it up. It went on to play well at the New York and AFI Film fests and opens in theaters at the end of December to qualify for the Oscars.

Director Darren Aronofsky, recovering from The Fountain, initially wanted to cast Rourke but was convinced to raise foreign coin with Nic Cage; to his credit he realized that he just had to have Rourke. He told the actor, who has been dealing with anger management issues for years, to act professionally, cut out the night life and do what he was told. Rourke listened to him and gives a sensitive, nuanced performance. Expect to see some great Rourke stories in the press as he does the rounds. The Academy actors often respond to a comeback like this, but Rourke is not your typical actor.

About 12 years ago, Rourke found himself lying alone in a big giant house with "no career," he recalls, "my entourage had left with everything they could take, including my best leather pants. My ex-wife said to me, 'you need help.' Something happened that night. It was thunderstorming. The doctor came over and I had a gun. They took every gun I had out of the house. I was howling. There was blood everywhere. The dogs were covered with blood. It was mine, I had cut my finger off. I left the house in the thuunder and lightning and took my six dogs to sleep on the beach. I couldn't stay in the house anymore."

Twelve years of intense psychotherapy followed. "I'm down to a phone call every Saturday," he says. "I didn't want to change. I was ashamed, I was proud of the armor I had built up. It was a street macho thing, from where I came from. But it's a weakness. If you take it too far, it scares people. It's a strength if you're living on the street, where I spent too many years. Even after I made it as an actor, I was surrounding myself with a group of people from that world. I didn't want to live in a state of shame and anger. I still have nightmares to this day. I'm thankful to get this second chance. When you were as bad as I was, out-of-control and unprofessional and scary--I didn't realize the degree to which I frightened people in the business."

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert keeps in touch with his fans via his well-read blog. Here's a recent memoirish entry.

Here's the latest trailer for Henry Selick's stop-motion Coraline, from the novel by Neil Gaiman.

Baz Luhrmann loves drama, spectacle, scenery, westerns, war movies, romance, adventure, and over-the-top emotion. That's what you get in Australia, which is well done for what it is, assuming that you like old-fashioned Hollywood movies of the sort they do not make anymore. Luhrmann's camera careens around the rugged dusty outback, its desert crags recalling Monument Valley. The director artfully blends landscape and pounding horses and cattle with VFX. The end of the movie, when the Japanese bomb Darwin, calls up Pearl Harbor, and not necessarily in a good way. The movie's cattle baron villains might as well be called Snidely Whiplash.

The heart of Australia is less the stylized big movie romance between Lady Ashley and the Drover (well played by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman) than their love affair with a magical aborigine boy (non-pro Brandon Walters). Like Dances with Wolves, this epic western seeks to heal old wounds between a continent's dominant white culture and its older, indigenous one. Whether the film will prove to be as commercial as the Kevin Costner Oscar-winner is another question. Critics are likely to be mixed on Australia, which could hurt its Oscar chances. Green Cine collects the first round of Australia reviews, from Down Under. Here's Todd McCarthy.

Gurus 'O Gold and Buzzmeter are tracking various Oscar watchers. Slumdog Millionaire is rising up the charts, partly because it has been well-publicized and reviewed and is doing well in theaters. How can anyone say that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the front runner if they haven't seen it yet? I will see it Thursday. Remember, most of these movies haven't yet opened or been widely reviewed, much less put in front of paying audiences. UPDATE: Fox News' Roger Friedman, who tends to be friendly toward Weinstein Co. releases, advance reviews The Reader.

This shot of Johnnie Depp as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is making the rounds. Everyone likes to repeat that Will Smith is Hollywood's only bonafide movie star capable of opening movies no matter what he does, but Depp is in there too (unless he's in an outright art film).

Also coming up are Michael Mann's Public Enemies and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, in which Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law share the role started by the late Heath Ledger.

[Hat Tip: Awards Daily]

IFC exec Ryan Werner is a tireless marketing machine. He's the guy who is shepherding an amazing number of films into release this fall and winter, from Steve Soderbergh's Che to Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments, one of five movies IFC is releasing that have been submitted for the foreign Oscar.

IFC Films is able to release so many films because the distrib doesn't spend much to market them in just a few cities, via IFC in Theaters, their day-and-date distribution platform, or their Festival Direct video-on-demand service.

Any lover of sophisticated foreign cinema is well-advised to check it out. IFC President Jonathan Sehring is committed, he says, "to bringing original, exciting and prestigious product from around the world to U.S. audiences. The exceptional reach of our distribution platforms means these acclaimed foreign films will soon have the opportunity to be seen by millions of people."

The company boasts 12 pics nominated for European Film Awards, led by Italy's Oscar entry Gomorrah, with five noms, which IFC just added to its December line-up. The gangster pic has grossed over $14 million in Italy since its release, and won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Other nominated European Film Award titles from IFC were Steve McQueen's Irish drama Hunger, starring Michael Fassbender as Irish Republican hunger striker Bobby Sands (three European Film Award noms); Israel's Lemon Tree, starring The Visitor's Hiam Abbas (two noms); Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale, starring Mathieu Amalric and Catherine Deneuve (a nom for editor Laurence Briaud); Denmark's highest-grossing film of the last decade, Flame & Citron (a joint nom for stars Thure Lindhardt & Mads Mikkelsen); and Germany's The Wave (best actor nom for Juergen Vogel). Last year, IFC's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won Best Film.

While Charlie Kaufman's films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation were art-house hits in Israel, his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York is being unceremoniously dumped by its Israeli distributor.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]To date, other than James Cameron's Avatar, there have been no announcements of a major franchise installment in live-action 3-D. No 3-D Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Die Hard or Pirates of the Caribbean. We hear from people who've worked on live-action 3-D that there's a learning curve involved, and that a company or studio should make a 3-D movie before diving into the format.

With that in mind, though, we can't help but notice that 1) Disney is heavily invested in 3-D, including live-action. 2) Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp are making an animated 3-D movie together, Rango. and 3) Jerry Bruckheimer is making G Force in 3-D.

Disney, Bruckheimer, Verbinski, Depp... Nobody at Disney is talking, but we wouldn't be surprised to hear a P4 3-D announcement one of these days.

We've been teased. But here's the first full trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was originally supposed to be opening this weekend, but was pushed back to July 17, 2009. (Twilight took its slot.)

The Mutiny Company posts cool photos of movie directors taken in hotel rooms with natural light. These recently added ones of George A. Romero reminded me of how much I like him.

Spike Jonze talks to Moriarty about his retooling of Where the Wild Things Are. Playtone had told me that Jonze was back in production on the movie with a new set of visual effects for the wild things.

Here's Jonze on AICN:

I wanted it to feel “real,” or not-real because it’s not “real,” I wanted it to feel like... like when I was a kid, and I would play with my Star Wars action figures, or read Maurice’s books and imagine me being Mickey in IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN, or whatever it was... it felt like it was everything, you know? It’s like your imagination is so convincing to yourself that... you’re there, you’re in it. And I wanted this movie to take it as seriously as kids take their imagination and not, like, fantasy it up. So I think it just started from that feeling, that it could feel like you were there with them, like Max was there with them, and not just in some fantasy movie.

Here's my column on Avatar, The Curious Case of Banjamin Button and Where the Wild Things Are.

I saw Revolutionary Road over the weekend, and moderated a panel Saturday with director Sam Mendes, Leonardo DiCaprio (nominated three times), Kate Winslet (nominated five times), Oscar-winner Kathy Bates, theater actor Michael Shannon (W.), cinematographer Roger Deakins (nominated seven times) and composer Thomas Newman (nominated eight times).

First, do read Richard Yates' 1961 debut novel. The adaptation by Justin Haythe is very close; some scenes are staged exactly the way they were originally written. Is the movie as great as Yates' novel? No. But Yates never caught the popular imagination, never sold more than 12,000 copies of any of his seven novels, because he was too searing, too critical of his characters. He held no hope for couples like the Wheelers. He dissected them as though they were pinned insects.

Mendes definitely warms up the book. The movie offers some possibility of hope for the rest of us. It lives and breathes. As do DiCaprio and Winslet, reunited more than a decade after Titanic. She always gives strong performances, but runs with the layered role of deeply unhappy housewife April Wheeler. She's smart and trapped and angry and resigned and still in love with the person she once thought her husband could be. How many women are in that position? What happens when you face up to the idea that your mate will not or cannot become his best self?

DiCaprio, who has never before played a husband and father, is well-cast as the 29-year-old Frank Wheeler, who wants to be more special than he is, but settles for less. (The Bohemian intellectual side of this couple is downplayed here.) How many men lead what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation" as they try to live up to their wives' expectations, and often wind up disappointing them? It doesn't have to be the 50s for this to ring true.

Revolutionary Road, produced by Scott Rudin after years of arrested development, is strictly an art-house play--and should score with the Academy. Mendes takes a more realistic and less stylized approach to this dysfunctional suburban family than he did on the Oscar-winning American Beauty. The entire ensemble is first-rate: Shannon got a rousing round of applause at my screening for his role as the insane truth-teller who cuts through all the crap. The movie hits hard: some folks relate to it, others don't.

Here's Todd McCarthy and Glenn Kenny. Green Cine wraps up early reaction.

Esquire Magazine defined great journalism for decades. To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the magazine is posting their 7 Greatest Stories in the history of the mag, including Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Tom Junod and Tom Wolfe. Read it and weep.

Back in 2005, Illinois Senator Barack Obama roasted his favorite Illinois Congressman, Rahm Emanuel, who is now the president-elect's chief-of-staff. I had seen Obama's sense of humor displayed in a video clip at a tribute to George Clooney in which he made fun of the star's unmarried status. Here Obama's wicked streak--and writing skills---are on full display:

At the recent Screenwriting Expo, William Goldman recalled meeting Obama at a NY fundraiser and was astonished that when he was introduced to the candidate as the screenwriter of All the President's Men, Obama said,"Yes, you also wrote Marathon Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Goldman was tickled pink.

[Hat Tip: Gawker]

The Academy has announced the 15-film documentary short list. Now the doc branch will select the final five nominations. UPDATE: Here's Justin Chang's story. And Andrew O'Hehir's reaction.

Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure is on the list, even though Abu Ghraib was also covered in Alex Gibney's Oscar winning doc Taxi to the Dark Side. Surprise omissions include Gibney's Hunter Thompson doc Gonzo; the Mardi Gras movie The Order of Myths; and Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The well-reviewed doc Dear Zachary was clearly an emotionally-charged film with a strong personal POV.

On the other hand, so was Scott Hicks' gorgeous Philip Glass doc, which went pretty easy on the famous composer as he went through a tough patch in his marriage. The Academy made up this time for overlooking Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man by including his must-see Antarctica doc Encounters at the End of the World. I suspect the Philippe Petit tightrope thrill-ride Man on Wire is going to be a strong contender, as well as the New Orleans doc Trouble the Water and Pray the Devil Back to Hell, an inspiring story of the women who fought against war in Liberia and won.

Here's the list:

At the Death House Door
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Encounters at the End of the World
Fuel
The Garden
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
I.O.U.S.A.
In a Dream
Made in America
Man on Wire
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Standard Operating Procedure
They Killed Sister Dorothy
Trouble the Water

"What we don't have for Propositon 8 is a leader; there's no Harvey Milk today," said producer Dan Jinks last week at the L.A. premiere of Milk, which played well for the Academy crowd. At the after-party there was much talk about California's surprise passing of Prop 8, the gay marriage ban, as well as the angry reaction from the gay community, which while understandable, is generating some mixed response as well. Here's the Variety story posted Monday night.

That's because some gay activists--and they aren't all the same, they come in many shapes and sizes--are targeting various institutions they blame for passing Prop 8. Most prominent is the Mormon Church, which gave millions to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. The Circuit blog has been tracking the boycott Utah and Sundance Film fest story. So have Movie City News' David Poland and Kim Voynar. And Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez.

One website posted a list of Prop 8 donors, presumably to bring them shame and embarrassment. Film Independent found itself in the middle of a ruckus over the discovery that its LA Film Fest Director Rich Raddon, a Mormon, sent $1500 to support Prop 8, and listed his employer.

"I was furious that he was idiotic enough to give to this in a public way when he works with so many gay people," wrote one board member in an email. FIND eventually released a statement, amid rumors that Raddon had tendered his resignation, saying that the organization does not police its employees' religious beliefs. Raddon's current employment status has not been revealed.

Time.com posted an article entitled "What Happens If You're On the Gay Enemies List."

The LAT reports on how Prop 8 blowback affected Sacramento's non-profit stage company, the California Musical Theatre:

following the revelation via the Web that its artistic director gave $1,000 to back the state constitutional amendment.

Among those weighing in with dismay over Scott Eckern's donation are Tony winners Jeff Whitty, who wrote the book for "Avenue Q," and Marc Shaiman, composer and co-lyricist of "Hairspray." Shaiman said Tuesday that he phoned Eckern on Friday to protest, then e-mailed more than 1,000 contacts to alert them about the donation.

I understand the need to raise awareness, via protest, for the same-sex marriage cause. But I fail to see how protesting outside churches, whose worshipers have the right to hold their beliefs, or conducting witch hunts is the best way for the gay rights movement to raise positive support for the next phase of their battle to legalize gay marriage. More productive is the kind of consciousness-raising PR provided by Oprah Winfrey, who on Friday interviewed via Skype Prop 8 opposers Melissa Etheridge and her partner, at home, holding their two children.

Paramount has launched its first trailer for Star Trek, which opens May 8, 2009:

As someone who actually grew up with the first Star Trek TV series and faithfully watched all of its subsequent incarnations, I confess that this origin story feels a tad young to me. I'm hearing that Chris Pine is terrific as Kirk--you see how he becomes the Captain of the Starship Enterprise--and Simon Pegg got a laugh out of me in this fast-moving trailer. This feels sort of like the new Bond movie Quantum of Solace--at what point do you leave out so much of the original DNA that you've gone too far to reinvent something? Of course the point is to create a new movie out of the old so that a younger generation can appreciate it. I get it. I will keep an open mind. (BTW, the excellent opening for Quantum is based on the success of Casino Royale. Next weekend will tell the tale of how it actually plays.)

But I have to say that while I admired the Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman script for Transformers (their rep insists that any claims on the Internet to have read the Star Trek script are bogus) and adore the TV work of J.J. Abrams (his Mission Impossible installment played like an episode of Alias on steroids), if this movie leaves generations of Star Trek fans feeling left out, that could be a problem. UPDATE: Here's Sci-Fi Wire's interview with Chris Pine. And EW's Trek cover story. The trailer played well to younger folks in my office. Wired is worried about early reaction to Trek footage in Europe. New York has seen some material and L.A. has its preview Wednesday.

UPDATE: Star Trek will be a test for Brad Grey's Paramount. Launched under the aegis of Grey and ousted production chief Gail Berman, the movie is now being shepherded into the marketplace by Grey's lieutenants Rob Moore, John Lesher, and Brad Weston. 2009 will be a year when Paramount will live or die on its own slate, with tentpoles Star Trek, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, plus fall films from Peter Jackson (The Lovely Bones, developed and produced by DreamWorks), and Martin Scorsese (Ashecliffe, based on Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, stars Leonardo DiCaprio). There's only one 2009 DreamWorks Animation movie (Monsters and Aliens) and no Marvel films until 2010. Paramount will start shooting Nickelodeon's M. Night Shyamalan family adventure The Last Airbender in March, but the pic isn't scheduled for release until 2010.

There are rules for getting through a long Hollywood awards banquet. Work the room. Have as much fun with your friends as possible. Pick at your rubber chicken and empty your wine glass. And hope that some of the presenters do their job.

The pros, the ones who recognize that putting their best face forward is always smart, even during a boring awards show, put a little extra spin on the ball, just like they do in their work. Especially the Brits. At last week's BAFTA/LA Britania Awards, for example, Hugh Laurie charmingly presented for honoree Tilda Swinton, who elevated an early "absolute turd of a sketch" he wrote for her, while Patricia Clarkson and Paul Thomas Anderson both wrote heartfelt, funny and personal tributes to Sean Penn, picking up the Stanley Kubrick Award.

Anderson compared Kubrick to Penn: "Stanley Kubrick made 'Spartacus.' Sean Penn spent 32 days in an L.A. jail," Anderson said as Penn laughed his head off. "Stanley Kubrick was a photographer in the beginning of his career. Sean did considerable damage to photographers' cameras in the beginning of his career."

But Ben Affleck, who was having a fine time before the show charming his buds Penn, Anderson, Gus Van Sant, Don Cheadle and Eddie Izzard, breezed through a standard-issue teleprompter speech before presenting Cheadle with his humanitarian award. We know that Affleck can write and entertain. Does he do himself a service in front of a roomful of peers and bigwigs reminding them that he's capable of being boring?

Guillaume Canet's unexpected French hit Tell No One, a twisty thriller that was overlooked by bigger stateside distribs and released by upstart Music Box Films, has now grossed over $6.2 million in the US, which makes it the highest-grossing foreign-language film of the year so far.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are due in the first quarter of 2009.

Here's the trailer:

Tell No One could wind up on a lot of ten best lists. Critics' groups tend to give one film a year a best foreign film prize. For me, so many of my fave films this year come from abroad, where filmmakers have the freedom to make small-scale dramas with great actors and unexpected stories that dig into the human condition in a way we don't. Even indie movies, these days, are striving for commercial acceptance (Steven Soderbergh and Charlie Kaufman aside).

Another foreign import that could be rewarded by critics is Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film that is artfully made in a way that rarely happens here. While it's about vampires, with horrific but not sexy elements, it is an art film, not a horror thriller:

German-born Roland Emmerich is a director of great visual and technological skill who can be brilliant (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow) or awful (10,000 B.C., Godzilla). Having found his greatest success with end-of-the-world scenarios, he's going back to the well with 2012, due next summer. The teaser trailer for 2012, which Sony won in a bidding war, gives me a chill:

As well as things are going for Slumdog Millionaire, which opened well and is heading into strong Oscar contention, Fox Searchlight has its work cut out on marketing its Toronto-fest pickup The Wrestler, which stars the one-and-only Mickey Rourke in a tour-de-force performance. A hit on the fall fest circuit, Darren Aronofsky's low-budget drama features intense fight scenes that play a tad violent for some viewers. And Rourke is giving one salaciously entertaining interview after another as he redefines the Hollywood comeback. (Here's Time's review.) This is not your ordinary Oscar campaigner.

Here's the new Wrestler poster.

Oprah Winfrey took advantage of her Friday Live show to do an as-it-was-happening report on the fire ravaging her own Montecito neighborhood. She telephoned neighbor Rob Lowe, who did a great job of telling her what was going on. Oprah has gotten used to doing "live" Skype interviews on the show, talking to people all over the world. And she's getting strong response to her live Friday roundtable discussions. This was immediate, news-breaking use of live television.

Hollywood loves comics. No question about that, as Warner Bros. denies that Megan Fox will be filling a Wonder Woman costume any time soon (Beyonce wants the role in Justice League), despite this fetching fake poster, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson assemble the financing for Tintin.

One current debate questions whether most of the really strong comics have already been exploited for movies. Are only the second tier titles left still to make? Are the ones that haven't yet made it to the big screen out of their time, no longer relevant, or simply not commercial? Even mighty Marvel could soon find this out. Den of Geek lists 75 upcoming comics projects.

I love it when autocratic artists make lists. They should learn not to do it. They can be downright embarrassing. (Remember the Marcus Nispel manifesto that got him fired off End of Days?)

Vanity Fair.com has posted a 16-point aesthetic guideline from kitsch artist Thomas Kincade for his movie Christmas Cottage, starring Peter O'Toole, which went straight to video.

I can't get enough of this movie. UPDATE: This trailer is more specific about who the Watchmen are--superbeings vigilantes--- and what they think their role is: to save the world, maybe?