As I was driving around my West L.A. neighborhood this week, doing some hunting and gathering for our Thanksgiving feast, I noticed that Apple had bumped the movie ads off nearly every available billboard to promote the arrival of Beatles music on iTunes. I don't know what it's like in your neck of the woods, but if you drive up Bundy Drive, there's a Beatles iTunes billboard at Olympic, at Ohio and just a couple of blocks north at Bundy and Wilshire.

But what fascinated me was the image on the billboard -- a classic black-and-white photo, taken by Bruce McBroom, of the "Abbey Road"-era Beatles: John with a furry beard, Ringo with a moustache, Paul totally cleanshaven and George with almost the exact same kind of floppy shoulder-length hair popularized today by Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum (who got busted for pot last year, just like George, John and Paul decades before him).

Apple is notoriously tightlipped about its marketing strategy, so it's probably impossible to know why the company went with a 1969 photo instead of a fresh-faced 1964 photo or a "Sgt. Pepper's"-era 1967 photo. But after a little sleuthing, here's what I did figure out: The photo was taken on April 9, 1969, which would place it right at the beginning of the band's sessions for "Abbey Road," which came out later that year.

As you can see from the photos available on the Nemsworld website, the Apple photo comes from an all-day photo session with the band. It began at an undisclosed indoor location, perhaps at McBroom's  photography studio, where the band struck a variety of poses, before adjourning outside. First they posed for some more photos in front of John's Rolls Royce before setting sail on a boat, the Fritz Otto Maria Anna, which the band took for a voyage down the Thames.

The Apple photo offers a great glimpse of late '60s Swinging London fashion: Paul is wearing a vest and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, along with striped trousers; Ringo has donned what looks like (judging from some of the other photos) a purple velvet suit; John is wearing a black polka dot shirt with a white collar and tie (and white tennis shoes); while George is in jeans and a jean jacket. 

I can see why Apple picked this particular photo. The band looks relaxed and confident, as if totally at home in their Beatles skin. But it's also revealing that no one is smiling. The band is nearing the end of its time together, and it's likely that by the time the photo was taken, everyone already knew it. Luckily for us, and for Apple, the Beatles' music lives on, as potent and seductive as the day it was first recorded.

Photo: The Beatles, in a photo from 1969, as pictured in Apple's new iTunes ads. Credit: Bruce McBroom/Apple Corps LTD

If there is an afterlife, I hope that I can be reborn as a headline writer for Fox News, where everyone seems to have a riotiously good time mocking or misrepresenting anything that is ever said -- or even imagined to be said -- by a liberal do-gooder. Last week, the target was Barack Obama. The president's new children's book happened to celebrate, among a host of other American heroes, the Sioux Indian chief Sitting Bull, inspiring a story from Foxnews.com headlined: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General."

And now, just in time for Turkey Day, Fox News is at again, with a story headlined: "Angelina Jolie Hates Thanksgiving, Refuses to Celebrate, Report Says." Of course, if you read the story, which originally appeared at the gossipy PopEater.com, you'd discover that there's zero evidence that Jolie said anything of the sort. In fact, the original story, which reads like a parody of a National Enquirer hit job, never quotes Jolie at all, relying on information culled from anonymous "family friends" and "insiders," who if they were actually friends at all, wouldn't be sharing such preposterous whoppers with a tabloid writer.

I mean, if one of your friends was actually talking to a tabloid snoop, could you imagine them stringing together a couple of sentences like this? "Jolie hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans," the friend supposedly said. "To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn't her style. She definitely doesn't want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder."

Yeah, right, that's just how any one of my friends would put it -- Patrick hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans ... .  But at Fox News, anything that can serve as fodder to ridicule lefty Hollywood celebs is fair game, which must be why Fox's slogan is "fair and balanced."

With Thanksgiving upon us, I'd prefer to take the high road by offering up one of my favorite moments from my favorite Thanksgiving movie, John Hughes' "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It stars Steve Martin and the late John Candy as mismatched travelers trying to get home for Turkey Day. (If you watch the movie, you'll see why every critic in America complained that "Due Date" was a callow rip-off of this wonderful tale.) In this scene, known to fans as the "Those Aren't Pillows" scene, the fellas, stuck for the night in a cheap motel room, wake up in a sleeping posture that turns out to be a little too close for comfort. Enjoy!

Rex Reed raised an interesting issue in his hilarious pan of "Burlesque," the new Steven Antin musical that stars Christina Aguilera and Cher. Judging from the print ads and posters for "Burlesque," not to mention her omnipresence on the promotional-interview circuit, you'd think that Cher was the costar of the movie. But as Reed put it in his review, Cher is "hardly in" the movie. Well, he's exaggerating, but not by much. One of my colleagues who went to a midnight screening of the film Tuesday night dutifully kept track of Cher's screen time.

The verdict? Cher is in roughly 37 minutes of the 116-minute film, and a tidy percentage of that screen time is devoted to cutaways of the 64-year-old diva watching Aguilera perform. So if you're looking for a lot of Cher on screen, you might want to get out that old "Moonstruck" DVD. As the movie's posters say, "It takes a legend to make a star," which in this case means that the legend must've struck a great deal to get equal billing.

Photo: Cher, left, with Christina Aguilera at the premiere of "Burlesque" in Hollywood. Credit: Jason Merritt / Getty Images

Sony bigwigs keep bragging to everyone who'll listen that "Burlesque,"  the new Christina Aguilera and Cher-starring musical from Screen Gems, is one of the studio's all-time highest testing movies. But the showbiz circuit buzz about the film has been nothing but bad, especially after the Hollywood Reporter's Kim Masters weighed in with a knockout punch of a story about the troubled production. The piece focused on the backstage drama between Screen Gems chief Clint Culpepper and his longtime partner Steven Antin, who directed the film.

Hiring your partner was a bad idea when former Paramount chief Sherry Lansing used to give movies to her husband, Billy Friedkin, to direct. And it's still a bad idea today, especially after the twosome made news with a string of jaw-dropping on-set fights, including one where Culpepper poured an iced tea over Antin's head.

It seemed like a good bet that the reviews for the film, which opens Wednesday, were going to be miserable, especially after Sony took out full-page ads last Sunday loaded with rave blurbs from, well, people no one had ever heard of. The so-called critics who called the film "a must-see" and "a high-energy party" included such notables as Jami Philbrick of MovieWeb.com, Fred Topel of ScreenJunkies.com, Jim Ferguson of KGUN9-ABC and Mark S. Allen of Reelz Channel Network.

Having waited to hear from a better-known source, I was rewarded Tuesday by the New York Observer's Rex Reed, who's been writing acid-tongued reviews since Sean Connery was James Bond and Donald Trump had a crew cut. But Rex has outdone himself this time. In his review, he says Aguilera's singing "sounds like calling hogs," claims that her big strip number with ostrich plumes is "stolen toe to pinky finger from an old routine by Sally Rand" and dismisses the embattled filmmaker with a wave of his own pinky, remarking that "it is extremely unlikely that writer-director Steven Antin could direct dune buggies in the Sahara desert."

And as for the movie itself? Reed writes: "Trash comes in all forms, but rarely in a sequined G-string. That's all there is to a brain-dead, cliché-riddled pastiche of old Betty Grable movies called 'Burlesque.' This one is strictly for Cher fans who like their campy shtick loud, lewd and ludicrous. But the biggest problem among many is that it's not her movie. She's hardly in it. Instead of an excuse to breathe oxygen into the twilight of Cher's career, it turns out to be a slutty pasteup constructed out of spit and chewing gum to showcase the movie debut of the caterwauling Christina Aguilera.... This movie is so bad that it makes you realize how much you miss 'Showgirls.' " 

So far "Burlesque" has a lowly 36 at Rotten Tomatoes, which could drop even lower when more of the mainstream press weighs in. It sounds like, if I can channel Rex for a moment, that unless you have a real weakness for kitschy camp, decked out in industrial-strength mascara, this is the one kind of turkey that should be avoided on Thanksgiving.

Photo: Stanley Tucci, left, wth Cher in a scene from "Burlesque." Credit: Stephen Vaughan / Screen Gems

You've gotta love Rupert Murdoch. He is the ultimate big-tent capitalist. As I reported recently, Murdoch happily helps bankroll Jim Cameron's new environmental fund as a way of guaranteeing that his film division gets two more "Avatar" films while, with equal enthusiasm, he throws money at his recently acquired Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page consistently ridicules the notion of extreme climate change, attacking the thousands of leading scientists around the world who believe that global warming is a looming threat to the planet.

The Murdoch strategy of giving with one hand while taking with the other often unhinges the ideological warriors at Fox News, who wish Murdoch would be running more comedy shows on Fox TV nastily lampooning all those Prius-driving, latte-sipping, blue-state liberals. Alas, just the opposite often happens. In case you didn't see it, "The Simpsons" most recent episode had a wonderfully snarky little moment in which a Fox News helicopter, bearing the logo "Fox News: Not Racist, But #1 With Racists," flew into the Statue of Liberty, losing one of its blades. As the chopper tumbles earthward, its captain cries, "Stop! We're unbalanced! It's not fair!"

Great "Simpsons" satire, as always. But it didn't go over so well with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. On Monday night's "O'Reilly Factor," Papa Bear grouched: "Continuing to bite the hand that feeds part of it, Fox broadcasting once again allows its cartoon characters to run wild. ... Pinheads? I believe so."

Note the awkward sentence construction. What O'Reilly really wanted to say was, "continuing to bite the hand that feeds it," since he'd love to make the argument that Fox News revenue is driving Fox's bottom line. But of course, that's not so. Not when you have shows like "The Simpsons" and "American Idol." In fact, it's hard to imagine a show that has been more profitable over its long TV run than "The Simpsons." Which is why those pesky "Simpsons" writers get to take jabs at Fox News. And why Jim Cameron gets Fox to bankroll his environmental causes. When you make a mountain of money for Rupert, you've earned the right to exercise as much freedom of speech as you want. 

Here's the clip:

Photo: Fox News' top-rated host, Bill O'Reilly, at his Fox News headquarters in New York.

Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

Russell Crowe’s new film, “The Next Three Days,” is a box-office stinker. A thriller released by Lionsgate, the movie did a paltry $6.8 million over the weekend, accompanied by a raft of mediocre reviews — one of the worst starts for any picture in nationwide release this year.

Why has the public largely given the Oscar-winner the cold shoulder in recent years? Sure, unlike Will Smith, Johnny Depp or Tom Hanks, who manage to stay affable despite the attention that comes to them as movie stars, Crowe has become better known for throwing a phone at a hotel clerk, constantly sniping with the media and refusing to show any easy affability or vulnerability. When Crowe sat down to talk with my colleague Steven Zeitchik recently, he was as prickly as ever, complaining about the burden of celebrity, challenging the premise of the reporter’s questions and mocking the whole idea of a film junket, even as he was about to do one himself. “If I were ever going to torture somebody,” he said, “I’d put them in a room where they can’t leave and have someone new come in every three minutes and ask the same question.”

But Crowe is hardly the only celeb to bristle in the glare of today’s 24/7 news cycle. When Kanye West was being interviewed by “Today’s” Matt Lauer this month, the hop-hop star went ballistic when Lauer aired a clip of West interrupting Taylor Swift’s MTV acceptance speech, in itself another one of West’s media missteps. Unhappy about constantly being grilled about his steroid use, former Dodgers star Manny Ramirez stopped talking to the media entirely. When sportswriters asked Lakers star Kobe Bryant on Friday about his appearance in an ad for a new ultra-violent video game, Bryant snapped: “That’s a silly question,” he said, raising his voice. “Next question.”

Nor has Crowe broken new ground when it comes to bad behavior. I was reminded of this over the weekend when I read the newly released “Steve McQueen: The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon.” Like Crowe in his heyday, McQueen was the epitome of masculine cool, a virile, sometimes surly, often inscrutable alpha male action hero.

McQueen clashed with his costars and bullied his directors. He was so insecure that when he was starring opposite Paul Newman in “The Towering Inferno” and discovered that Newman had 12 more lines in the script, McQueen insisted that the screenwriter insert more dialogue so as to even things up with his costar. The similarities between McQueen and Crowe are striking. McQueen’s friends recall him as being chilly one minute, unbelievably warm the next. As for Crowe, “A Beautiful Mind” filmmaker Ron Howard said that directing the actor was like “shooting on a tropical island — the weather is going to change several times a day.”

In his personal life, McQueen was perhaps even more reckless than Crowe. The married McQueen had innumerable affairs and one-night flings, even keeping a rented office for his trysts. He drank and used drugs to excess.

Yet for all McQueen’s flaws, the public adored him. When he died at age 50 of cancer in 1980, there was a huge outpouring of grief.

“Steve was a charmer,” recalls producer David Foster, who was McQueen’s press agent for most of the 1960s. “He could do whatever he wanted [messing] around in his private life, but he really watched himself in public. He’d never get caught throwing a phone. He knew how to enchant the media. He’d ask who the reporter was, what they liked or didn’t like, and then when he did the interview, he’d charm the hell out of ’em.”

Of course, the public adored McQueen because relatively little was known about his peccadilloes. In the ’60s, at the peak of his stardom, a compliant press still largely only printed the legend when it came to America’s royalty, whether it was JFK and his extramarital affairs, Mickey Mantle and his boozy womanizing or McQueen and his escapades.

When making “Le Mans” in 1970s, McQueen got behind the wheel in the midst of an all-night coke binge, took a curve too fast and crashed a sports car into a cement bunker, sending the actor and his companion, a Swedish soap-opera star he was sleeping with, through the windshield. All McQueen had to do was call his agent, Stan Kamen, who as Marshall Terrill’s new McQueen biography recounts, “magically appeared” the next day to clean up the mess. It never made the papers.

If that sort of accident happened today, it would be instant headline fodder, since the modern-day news cycle has an immediacy and repeatability that didn’t exist in McQueen’s day. When McQueen got into trouble, his press agents had time to strategize and decide how to get the news out, if at all, and if so, whom to give it to. In today’s universe, stars are in the public eye every step of the way, whether it’s on the film set, in a taxi or at the grocery store. Everyone they meet is a potential paparazzo, armed with a cellphone camera whose pictures can show up on TMZ in the flash of an eye.

But Crowe has also run up against something that McQueen never had to contend with: Our culture’s attitude toward masculinity has radically changed in the decades following McQueen’s box-office reign. In mid-20th century America, our heroes had a swagger to their step, a drink in their hands and were allowed, even encouraged, to live outside the bounds of responsible behavior. When Mickey Mantle and his teammates got into an epic brawl at the Copacabana nightclub, it only enhanced his reputation. When Norman Mailer got into fistfights with other writers and stabbed one of his wives, his literary stock only went up.

In today’s culture, when you throw a phone at a desk clerk, your stock plummets. Is this all for the good? In some ways yes, since the alpha males of the past often ended up ruining their lives, along with most of their marriages, with all their womanizing and boozy excess. Yet we’ve lost something too, since many of today’s best-known actors and athletes are cautious and dull, fearful of jeopardizing their careers with any intemperate behavior.

Perhaps that’s why we still secretly swoon over bad-boy behavior, at least as long as it’s set in the gauzy past. Why else would we so adore Don Draper, who gets to booze it up and sleep around on “Mad Men” every week? Yet we can’t accept it in modern life, and especially not when it is accompanied by a whiff of arrogance or a sense of privilege, not to mention the moaning and groaning we get from Crowe, West and a variety of sports stars about the price of fame.

Steve McQueen came from a school whose motto was: Never complain, never explain. Maybe that’s why even today, long after his death, McQueen is still the epitome of cool, his name and likeness used to sell more than 50 products, from Gap jeans and Absolut vodka to Ford Mustangs, while Russell Crowe still can’t figure out how to sell himself, much less his latest movie.
 

Here's a look at the McQueen mystique in action:

Photo: Russell Crowe at a special screening of "The Next Three Days" in West Hollywood.

Credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images

Anyone who has watched Fox News personality Glenn Beck with any regularity has heard warnings of an end of life in America as we know it, specifically a Nazi-style takeover of the government. That could be the eventual endgame, according to Beck, if the big-government policies of the Obama administration go unchecked.

But in an interview this week, it was Beck's Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, embracing the Nazi rhetoric. And this time the target was National Public Radio. Speaking to the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, Ailes said NPR's bosses revealed their fascist stripes when they dismissed commentator Juan Williams.

"They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude," Ailes told Kurtz. "They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."

The left-leaning media watchdog group, Media Matters, was first to note how Ailes seemed to be echoing Beck, or vice versa. Media Matters charged: "Fox's 'Nazi' rhetoric also comes straight from the top."

The group's online critique went on to cite the many times Beck has invoked the Nazis in taking on his liberal foes. In one instance last year, the report noted, Beck compared Obama's call for the expansion of the foreign service via a "civilian national security force" to Hitler's SS and brownshirts.

Although Beck and some other Fox hosts have leaned heavily on analogies to fascism lately, other media figures have invoked the same super-heated rhetoric in the past. Back in the 1990s, it was CNN founder Ted Turner who compared Rupert Murdoch to Hitler. Murdoch leads News Corp., which owns Fox News.

[For the record at 10 p.m.: A previous version of this post referred to the head of News Corp. as Roger Murdoch. It is Rupert Murdoch.]

After NPR chief Vivian Schiller spoke Thursday afternoon at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC, an audience member asked what Ailes might have meant to accomplish with his "Nazi" remark.

"I have no earthly idea," Schiller said. "I don't know what he was getting at. It was quite baffling to me to be perfectly honest. I think his words really speak for themselves."

Ailes apologized Thursday to the Anti-Defamation League, saying he had been "ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word."

He had not, however, apologized to NPR.

-- James Rainey
Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News. Credit: Reed Saxon / Associated Press

If you were compiling a short list of the preeminent documentarians of our time who are still working at the top of their game, it would be hard to imagine the list not including the always adventuresome, always unpredictable Werner Herzog. But when it comes to the motion picture Academy's just-announced short list of the 15 films eligible for this year's Oscar for best documentary, Herzog's remarkable 3-D documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is nowhere to be found.

It's not the first time Herzog has been snubbed. In fact, of all his recent documentary work, only "Encounters at the End of the World" made the Academy short list. His other work, even the profoundly disturbing and critically beloved "Grizzly Man," has been roundly ignored.

I'm a big fan of a number of films that did make the Final 15, starting with Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job," David Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman" and Shlomi Eldar's "Precious Life," a heartbreaking humanist portrait of the staggering gulf between Israelis and Palestinians that I wrote about recently. But it's still a shock to see Herzog's "Forgotten Dreams" absent from the list, especially after the warm reception it received when it debuted this fall at the Toronto Film Festival. Also absent from the Final 15 is "Catfish," a strange, unsettling documentary about a Facebook romance that is not at all what it initially appears to be. 

My suspicion is that both films didn't make the cut for the same reason: They are too iconoclastic for the Academy's all-too-conservative tastes. The Academy's doc slate is full of straight-forward narrative films, many of them muckraking critiques about political and social issues. Herzog's film is quirky and personal, not to mention technologically groundbreaking, since it is one of the first documentaries ever to be filmed in 3-D. That alone would make the Academy nervous, since 3-D smacks of commercialism and technological innovation, two things that always give the Academy the heebie-jeebies. Ditto for "Catfish," which has sparked criticism for its narrative leaps and raised concerns about whether its filmmakers were really as gullible as they portray themselves in the film.

Still, if the Oscars can't make room for documentaries that push the medium in new directions, especially when a gifted old master like Herzog is at the helm, then the Oscars once again seem to be guilty of celebrating filmmakers who play it safe over the ones that embrace new ideas and artistic innovation.

Photo: Werner Herzog at an Academy screening of "Swing Time" last month.

Credit: Valerie Macon/Getty Images

Harvey Weinstein has been quietly fuming for weeks over the MPAA ratings board, which has slapped two of his company's films with what he considers overly restrictive ratings. "The King's Speech," a leading best picture Oscar contender about an Australian speech therapist who helps Britain's King George VI conquer a terrible stammer, was slapped with an R rating for one scene in which the royal curses to help cure his stutter. "Blue Valentine," a dark romantic look at two young lovers in a crumbling marriage, was given an NC-17 rating because of a scene  involving oral sex.

But Weinstein, who has been uncharacteristically silent for months, is ready to roar again. He  announced Thursday that he's hired a team of superstar lawyers to oversee his company's appeals of both cases. The legal eagles include fabled Hollywood litigator Bert Fields; David Boies, who helped lead the legal challenge to overturn California's Prop 8 ban on gay marriage; and Alan Friedman, who has been involved in a host of previous ratings battles. In an exclusive interview, Weinstein said he was confident of winning both cases, especially the appeal for "Blue Valentine," whose slim commercial chances would be hurt the most if it were saddled with the scarlet letter of an NC-17 rating, which would prevent most theater chains from playing the film starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling.  

"I've always felt that the ratings board saw what wasn't there," Weinstein told me, referring to the scene in "Blue Valentine" involving simulated oral sex. "It's just a credit to the persuasiveness of Derek Cianfrance's directing skills. There's no oral sex. Michelle Williams isn't even naked. It looks like she is, but it's just the angle of the shots."

As part of Weinstein's appeal of the rating, Cianfrance and his actors can appear before the board to argue their case. Although many filmmakers have unsuccessfully argued their case in the past, Weinstein believes this time things will be different. "When we show the board how the movie was filmed, with Derek and Ryan and Michelle explaining it to them, I think that will change their minds."

There are skeptics, myself included, who wonder if this last-minute challenge isn't just another inspired Weinstein PR campaign to gain attention for his films, which are due for release in the coming weeks. Weinstein has pretty much written the book on creating controversy for embattled films, dating back to 1990, when he sued the MPAA after it gave an X rating to Pedro Almodóvar's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"

Weinstein lost that fight, although the battle did prompt the MPAA to replace the X rating with the NC-17. Weinstein has played the celebrity lawyer card in the past as well. In 1991, he hired Alan Dershowitz to monitor the national TV networks after ABC, CBS and NBC refused to air ads for the film "The Pope Must Die."

"I know that I've done a lot of that in the past," he acknowledged. "It was always great fun, when Jack Valenti was still alive, for us to joust with each other over some of my movies. We really had a great time arguing about the 1st Amendment. But in this case, especially with 'Blue Valentine,' the NC-17 rating really jeopardizes the movie's box office chances, which are really fragile as it is. I'm not hiring big-gun lawyers just for the PR value. I'm looking to them for their brains and thoroughness. My movies' livelihoods are at stake."

Weinstein says that Fields, who is overseeing the appeal for "The King's Speech," has an unusual argument in mind to help overturn the film's R rating. "Bert actually has a strategy involving the contextualization of the swear words," Weinstein explained. "The way the filmmakers won with the British ratings board [which eased up on its initial rating] was they argued that the F-words were used in a speech therapy manner. They were simply used as a way to channel the king's anger. They weren't used as swear words. And I think that winning in England, where the board is almost as unyielding as it is here, bodes well for us."

However, Weinstein faces a procedural problem with his appeal on "The King's Speech." He is requesting what is known as a "special hearing" with the MPAA, which is necessary because the film is now within 25 business days of its theatrical release. But according to MPAA rules, filmmakers can only have a special hearing if their appeal is filed "not more than 25 days after the date when the rating is certified" as well as within 25 days of its actual release.

Since "The King's Speech" was given its rating more than a month ago, it would only be eligible for a special hearing if Joan Graves, the head of the appeals board, grants a waiver because the filmmakers were unable to comply with the deadlines.

I find it hard to imagine that Graves will revisit the ratings decision, since when I spoke to her several weeks ago she was firm in her belief that the MPAA was justified in awarding an R to "The King's Speech," even if it meant that the MPAA was putting a heartwarming history lesson in the same ratings category as "Saw VII" and "Jackass 3D." Graves wouldn't comment for this story, instructing an MPAA spokesperson to say that "we have not yet been contacted by the Weinstein Co. about an appeal."  

When I told Weinstein that he needed Graves to grant "The King's Speech" a waiver for it to be considered for a special hearing, he sounded unfazed. "My bet is that this is the kind of movie she likes. I can't imagine someone as erudite and intelligent as Joan not having an open mind about this. I know she doesn't really want to have people wondering why my brother Bob's movie, 'Piranha 3D' has the same rating as 'The King's Speech.' I mean, Bob is laughing about how much he got away with in 'Piranha' while his poor brother Harvey is getting killed here with a movie that most kids would think is a Disney movie."

I wish I was as hopeful as Weinstein is about his films getting a fair hearing. But even some sly flattery aimed at Joan Graves probably won't do the trick. The MPAA not only gets to make up its own rules about what ratings to give movies, but it seems to live in its own alternate universe when it comes to what sort of language and sexual situations merit a firm hand from the ratings police. Fields and Boies may have won a ton of legal battles, but they'll have their hands full going up against the ratings board.

RECENT AND RELATED: TO THE MPAA, 'THE KING'S SPEECH' IS JUST AS BAD AS 'SAW 3D'

Photo: Colin Firth portrays King George VI in a scene from "The King's Speech." Credit: Laurie Sparham/ Associated Press/The Weinstein Co.

The Indian wars have been over for roughly 130 years, but at Fox News, no war is too distant in memory to go unnoticed, especially when it comes to opening up a new avenue of attack on Barack Obama.

My wife writes about children's books, so she always lets me have a look at titles that deal with my favorite subjects (baseball, the South, Bob Dylan, high school basketball, tropical gardening and, of course, Sioux chiefs). So I'm already familiar with President Obama's new children's book, "Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters," which went on sale Tuesday (all royalties from book sales go to a scholarship fund for children of American soldiers who've been killed or disabled).

The book pays tribute to 13 groundbreaking Americans and the ideals they personified, including such familiar icons as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Jackie Robinson, Jane Addams, Neil Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Oh, yes, and Sitting Bull. Obama describes Mr. Bull as a "Sioux medicine man who healed broken hearts and broken promises. ...  Though he was put in prison, his spirit soared free on the plains, and his wisdom touched the generations."

I take a special interest in Sitting Bull because my great-great-uncle, Julius Meyer, was an interpreter and trader who lived in Omaha from the late 1860s into the 20th century. Uncle Julius not only befriended Sitting Bull but took him to Europe as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in the early 1880s. I have a photo of Uncle Julius with Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and a couple of other somber-looking Sioux chiefs. Sitting Bull was a warrior but by no means a bloodthirsty killer. If you ask almost any historian, they'll tell you that the Sioux took up arms against the U.S. government only after suffering through a series of broken treaties and under the threat of forced imprisonment for opposing the government's efforts to hand over the tribe's lands to gold miners and settlers. 

Only in the nutty world of Fox News is there anything possibly controversial about celebrating a renowned chief. But apparently the Fox News crew hadn't managed to fill the daily quota of anti-Obama screeds, so the Fox's website got hold of a typically bland USA Today story about Obama's new book, zeroed in on the one potentially controversial angle and came up with this headline: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General." Fox even managed to get that wrong, since there is zero evidence that Sitting Bull actually killed George Armstrong Custer at the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn. If you go to the post, you'll see the headline now reads: "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Defeated U.S. General." 

It seems like such a rinky-dink thing to get worked up about, but this is the way Fox News operates, always willing to stoop as low as possible to demonize its opponents with some potentially damaging accusations, even if they might come from a harmless children's book. Interviewed a year or so after Custer's ignominious defeat, Sitting Bull had his say on the subject of Fox News-like inflammatory media coverage. "They say I murdered Custer," he told a reporter. "But it was a lie. He was a fool who rode to his death." 

Photo: Sitting Bull from the book cover of "Sitting Bull and his World" by Albert Marrin. Credit: Dutton   

As a Jew who has been a baseball fan his entire life, I guess I'm the perfect target audience for "Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story," which opens Friday at the Music Hall Theater in Beverly Hills and the Town Center in Encino. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, the Peter Miller-directed film hits all of what you call the Hebe Highlights in this unlikely love affair -- providing profiles of Hank Greenberg, the first slugging Jewish superstar; Moe Berg, the Jewish catcher who was a spy for the OSS; Sandy Koufax, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace who didn't pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur; and Sean Green, the graceful outfielder who was such hot stuff (he hit more than 40 homers three different years in his career) that when he was traded to the Dodgers in 1999, every rabbi in town tried to woo him to join their synagogue. 

And yes, it shows a snippet from Dennis Leary's famous comic rant when he discovers that Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, originally known as the Greek God of Walks, was actually Jewish. The film sometimes feels a little stodgy, especially because virtually all of the on-camera commentators are pretty long in the tooth, starting with Larry King, who bemoans for the 900th time the Dodgers departure from Brooklyn. On the other hand, I learned a few things I didn't know. First, that the earliest Jewish baseball players had to change their names, just like the Jewish movie stars did, because being named Cohen just wouldn't cut it with the blue-collar fans of the early 20th century. And second, that in 1954, when Jewish Cleveland Indians slugger Al Rosen -- who with his baby blue eyes and bulging biceps looked like a cross between Paul Newman and Popeye -- didn't put up the same spectacular numbers he did in his MVP season the year before, the heartless Indians general manager made him take a pay cut. The shocker? The cutthroat GM was none other than Hank Greenberg.

But wouldn't you know it, the best story in the film comes from filmmaker Ron Howard, who needless to say is about as Jewish as Arnold Schwarzenegger. As we learned from the Rosen incident, before free agency came along, ballplayers were the property of the team that had originally signed them, free to be bought, sold or traded at the team owner's will. That all changed when players association head Marvin Miller, who is also featured in the film, along with St. Louis Cardinals star Curt Flood, successfully challenged baseball's reserve clause, ushering in the era of free agency.

But back in the 1960s, players got paid what the owners decided they were worth. Finally, in 1966, Koufax and fellow Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, then two of the best in the game, decided to hold out, refusing to report to spring training. They were asking for a pittance by today's standards. But the Dodgers wouldn't budge. Howard was then a 12-year-old boy in Los Angeles and was better known as Opie, costar of "The Andy Griffith Show." A rabid Dodgers fan, Howard recalls being disappointed that Koufax, his favorite pitcher, was threatening to sit out the season.

But when he got out a pad and paper one day, Howard discovered that, lo and behold, he was making more money than the sainted Sandy Koufax. "I remember feeling something was just not right in the universe if a kid actor on a TV show could out-earn Sandy," he says in the film. So the next time you hear some loudmouth on a sports talk-radio show complain about how overpaid major leaguers are today, it's worth remembering that for the first 100 or so years of the game, even the best players in the game got paid less than a child actor. 

But I want to give the last word to another non-Jew: Drysdale. When Koufax went to temple instead of pitching the first game of the 1965 World Series, the starting assignment was given to Drysdale, who proceeded to get shellacked. When Dodgers Manager Walter Alston trudged out to the mound to take him out of the game, Drysdale quipped: "Right now I bet you wish I was Jewish too." 

Photo: Sandy Koufax, left, with Don Drysdale after the Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Braves 3-1 to win the National League pennant in 1965. Credit: Associated Press

If Hollywood had ever wanted to hire its own publicist to keep its public image untarnished and well-scrubbed, it would've been Ronni Chasen.

The circumstances of her death early Tuesday  -- she was found in her Mercedes in Beverly Hills, shot five times in the chest -- remain mysterious. But what is clear is the profound sense of loss everyone in this town is feeling.

Even though Ronni was only 64, it often seemed as if she'd been around since the day they invented the talkies. When we'd schmooze at a screening or a press party (with me usually trying to distract her from pitching an article on a client I had no interest in writing about), she'd tell stories about working with George Burns on "The Sunshine Boys" or helping John Travolta do one of his first interviews after he became a TV star on "Welcome Back Kotter." One of her first jobs, in the late 1970s, was as head of publicity for American International Pictures, Sam Arkoff's fabled B-movie factory. (Her older brother is the writer-director Larry Cohen, a cult-favorite B-movie guy himself, who wrote and directed such low-budget classics as "It's Alive" and "Q.") 

Ronni knew all of Hollywood's old royalty, most of whom she'd represented at one time or another. Her client list included movie stars, composers and directors, but for me, her most interesting clients were A-list producers like Richard Zanuck, Irwin Winkler, Lee Rich, Bud Yorkin and Arnold Kopelson. They were clients for decades because they became her friends.

"We were together for 30 years," Winkler told me Tuesday. "She would come to our house every year when we broke the fast on Yom Kippur. Nothing ever discouraged her. She always believed in the people she was representing. You couldn't say anything bad about any of her clients because they were part of her family. It's why I feel so awful, because I really feel that I lost a member of the family."

Ronni was already a legend when I began writing about entertainment in the 1980s. Back then, she had the L.A. Times so wired that she seemed to know what stories we were doing before we actually got around to doing them. It often felt as if she had some sort of hypnotic power over our top editors and writers, even though as I got to know her better it became evident that Ronni had such terrific access and influence largely because she was simply the kind of person who would never take no for an answer.

I can't say Ronni ever hypnotized me, but I'd be the first to admit that she probably persuaded me to do more stories on people I didn't care about than any other publicist. If you said no, she took it to mean "not now." If you said maybe, she knew your resolve was already crumbling.

How did she do it? Pure, unadultered salesmanship. Once she detected even a faint glimmer of interest, she would begin calling relentlessly, trying one angle after another until she found one that hit paydirt. It helped that Ronni also had a stable of great clients who were always in demand, including class acts like  Zanuck and Winkler, who turned out to be two of the best storytellers in the business.

One story Ronni didn't have to nag me into doing was a column I wrote about the prominent Hollywood composer Michael Kamen, who revealed that for years he'd been secretly suffering from multiple sclerosis. He died a couple of years after the story ran, but getting to spend a day with Kamen, soaking up his remarkably optimistic outlook on life, was one of the best days I've ever had doing my job.

When Ronni called afterward to thank me for the story, I told her that this time around, our roles were reversed. "I have to thank you," I said. "It was an inspiration just being around him."

It's probably the way a lot of Ronni's friends and clients feel now. When you were with Ronni, whether you were watching her work the room or grouch about the awful 24-hour media buzz cycle, you knew you were in the presence of an old-fashioned star. When it came to showbiz publicity, Ronni was a queen, surrounded by jesters and pretenders to the throne. 

Photo: Ronni Chasen at a Fox Searchlight Golden Globes party this year. Credit: Timothy Norris / Getty Images

Correction: In writing about a scene from Tom Shadyac's new film, "I Am," I inaccurately transcribed a line of dialog. When Shadyac talks about his agent, he actually says: "My agent. A source of stress in show business!" My apologies.

There’s a scene in Tom Shadyac’s new documentary, “I Am,” where the filmmaker visits the Institute of HeartMath, a research organization in Northern California that explores the scientific basis for understanding human connectedness. Shadyac sits in front of a bowl of yogurt, which is connected via electrodes to a meter that can somehow register your heart’s emotional reaction to various stimuli. When the needle on the meter doesn’t move, Rollin McCraty, a senior researcher at HeartMath, suggests to Shadyac that he should think of something that might trigger a reaction.

Shadyac jokes, “Maybe I should call my agent.” The camera cuts to the meter, which gyrates wildly, like a Geiger counter near a uranium deposit. Shadyac’s mouth opens in amazement. “My agent. A source of stress and humiliation in show business!”

I still can’t figure out how the yogurt so quickly identified high-level anxiety, but when it comes to Shadyac’s feelings about his Hollywood career, the meter was right on the money. Once the most celebrated comedy director in the business, having made a fortune with hits like “The Nutty Professor,” “Liar Liar” and “Bruce Almighty,” Shadyac is now a Hollywood dropout.

Now 51, he hasn’t made a feature film since “Evan Almighty” in 2007. He sold a 17,000-square-foot mansion in Pasadena and moved into a trailer park in north Malibu. He’s been giving away most of his money and was well on his way to shedding his possessions several years ago when he took a serious fall while bicycling in Virginia, breaking his hand and suffering a concussion.

The hand healed, but Shadyac ended up with a nasty case of post-concussion syndrome, an ailment common among professional athletes that can cause depression, disorientation and has even prompted some victims to commit suicide.

It took Shadyac months to recover. When I visited him Friday at his trailer park home, he pointed to a closet in his tiny bedroom. “That’s where I would sleep a lot of the time,” he says. “Everything felt too loud and too bright because my brain had lost the ability to filter things out.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Awards on Saturday night offered up lots of nostalgia and heartfelt sentiment, which is probably why Jean-Luc Godard didn't bother to show up to accept his honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. It's hard to imagine a filmmaker who has loathed nostalgia and sentiment more than the refreshingly blunt and famously cranky French filmmaker, who needless to say has been roundly ignored by the academy until now. As you've probably heard, Godard has been the focus of controversy in the weeks leading up to the Governors Awards for his alleged anti-Semitism.

Having read a lot of what Godard has had to say on the issues, I'd be comfortable calling him pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, but it's hard to find any decisive evidence of clear-cut anti-Semitism. Godard is against so many things that it's often difficult to know when he's being a bigot and when he's just being a contrarian. But this much is clear: Even though the academy and Godard kept sending cordial greetings to each other, Godard had utterly no interest in his honorary Oscar.

He finally gave a serious interview last week, which has now been translated into English, that offered his reaction to the whole academy imbroglio, along with some wonderfully tart Godardian quips. Let's start with the lifetime achievement award. Asked what the award means to him, Godard replies: "Nothing. I think it's strange. I asked myself: Which of my films have they seen? Do they actually know my films? The award is called the Governors Award. Does that mean that Schwarzenegger gives me the award?"

As Godard sees it, he earned the award for his early work as a critic, not as a filmmaker. As he put it: "Maybe it is a late acknowledgement that I -- like Lafayette in the American War of Independence, in the uprising against the English -- supported the beginning of the revolution. In the 1950s, when I was a critic for Cahiers du Cinema, we loved independent films. We discovered that directors like Hitchcock, Welles and Hawks fought for artistic independence within the big studio machinery. After the war, we praised this -- back then, a sacrilege for French film criticism. They sniffed at directors like Hitchcock and said: He's just making commercial films."

As for the issue of anti-Semitism, Godard is as provocative as ever. He volunteers a traditional explanation for why Jews have always been overly represented in Hollywood, alluding to the quota system in early 20th century America, arguing that Jews "were neither authorized to be bankers or doctors, nor lawyers nor professors. That's why they concentrated on something new: cinema." 

Just when you're nodding your head in agreement, thinking Godard is making a fair historical point, he goes on to add: "The Jews also came to an arrangement with the Mafia quite quickly. But if you say this, immediately you are accused of being an anti-Semite, even though this is not true. People don't see the images -- one should have a closer look at the people who founded Las Vegas."

It's classic Godard. After all, as anyone who's ever seen "Bugsy" could tell you, Las Vegas was largely the brainchild of an alliance between Jewish and Italian mobsters, looking for an unregulated oasis where they could sell the romance of gambling and make tons of money. It just sounds a lot less romantic the way Godard says it. Maybe that's why he remains the cinema's leading enfant terrible -- in movie after movie, we've mythologized the whole idea of Las Vegas, while Godard insists on reminding us of the unsettling truth behind its origins.  

Photo: Eli Wallach, right, with director Francis Ford Coppola and film historian Kevin Brownlow, left, at the conclusion of the Governors Awards ceremony. Credit: Fred Prouser / Reuters

I'm already feeling a little safer as I've been driving around L.A. today knowing that the Walt Disney Co. has announced a new policy threatening employees with all sorts of punishments, including firing, if they text while they drive. It's unclear exactly what prompted this new policy, though I'm guessing it had something to do with a narrow miss involving Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny ("Watch the woad, you wascally wabbit!"),

But seriously, the Disney action offers a fascinating new wrinkle on the perennial American cultural debate over personal freedom vs. social responsibility. If you're a libertarian, you probably see Disney's ban as the latest example of the horrible Nanny State in action, while if you're a liberal, you probably view the ban as a necessary restriction aimed at saving lives. I'm definitely in the latter camp, since what good is all that precious personal freedom after you've been flattened like a pancake by some distracted studio production exec, furiously texting away to some equally distracted talent agent as his BMW crashes into the back of your car?

After all, accidents involving people using their mobile devices have caused thousands of deaths already, prompting states like California to make it illegal to drive while using a hand-held cellphone. I know, I know, this is surely the least observed, not to mention least enforced, law since Prohibition. But it's a law that's surely worth enforcing. Just the other day, I was almost rear-ended by a driver who (since he was on the phone) didn't notice until the last second that I was stopped at a green light because the lady in front of me hadn't noticed that the light had changed since she was staring down into her lap, the universal body posture of an inveterate text message addict.

I'd be lying if I said that I haven't been guilty of similar behavior on occasion myself. But isn't that all the more reason that the state--or its corporate equivalent, Nanny Disney--do something to encourage some small semblance of driving safety? Feel free to take issue with me here if you disagree, but as a parent, I'd be happy to give up a few small freedoms in exchange for knowing there was less of a chance of my wife and my kid and my mom and my next-door neighbor and, what the heck, even my editor being turned into road kill by some distracted driver. Fifty years ago libertarians argued against seat belts for the same reason, saying that ordinary citizens should have the right to decide for themselves whether they wanted to take more or less risk on the road.

But when your risk-taking, via texting, lessens my chance of survival, then I'm ready to suckle up to the teat of the Nanny State. For my money, texting while driving is a lot like getting a nice window seat on a plane--it's a privilege, not a right.

Photo: "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart posing with "Star Wars"-inspired Disney characters Stormtrooper Donald Duck and Princess Leia Minnie Mouse. Credit: Todd Anderson/Disney via Getty Images.

I remember having drinks one night with an ambitious young producer who was still trying to find his place in the industry. But he already knew his role model — Dino De Laurentiis. And why? “Because regardless of whether the movies were good or bad,” the young producer said admiringly, “he kept getting them made. He’s a guy who knows how to get things done.”

De Laurentiis, who died Wednesday night at age 91, was the last emperor of Hollywood producers, a man who made movies with everyone from Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch to Sidney Lumet, Michael Cimino and Brett Ratner, as well as a host of hacks that were never heard from again. Along the way, De Laurentiis changed the shape of the movie business, inventing the system of financing films by selling off movie distribution rights to foreign territories. Most independent producers still live by that today.

A diminutive man with outsized ambition, De Laurentiis knew how to coddle movie stars, court lordly filmmakers and hustle up money from the most unlikely sources. His English was never good, but being a consummate salesman, he knew exactly how to get to the heart of any matter. Even though most of the original creative team behind “Silence of the Lambs” wanted nothing to do with the sequel, eventually known as “Hannibal,” Dino forged ahead undaunted, proclaiming: “The pope dies, you get another pope.”

When critics and historians celebrate the great movie producers, they often forget that the real art of the profession involves problem solving. Sometimes De Laurentiis used charm, but sometimes he relied on cunning and stealth. When Fellini refused to cut a glacially paced 10-minute segment out of “Nights of Cabiria,” De Laurentiis simply stole the footage from the editing room. In the 1970s, when people told him there were no facilities to house his crew on Bora Bora where he wanted to film his disaster epic “Hurricane,” De Laurentiis bought a freighter to ferry the equipment and built housing for his crew and an army of extras.

Stacey Snider made several films, including “Red Dragon” and “U-571,” with De Laurentiis when she was chairman of Universal Pictures. She found the producer “unbelievably charismatic,” but what she valued the most was De Laurentiis’ professionalism. “Even though we were financing the pictures, Dino treated everything as if it was his own money,” she told me Thursday. “If he gave you a number for the budget, he’d come in right on the mark.”

In 2001, not long after 9/11, Snider was organizing the studio’s annual retreat, made all the more important that year as a way to bring some good cheer to people still trying to get over the heartbreak of the terrorist attacks. “We had hired the Gipsy Kings to be the entertainment, because we thought their music would be joyous and life-affirming, but they were in Europe and with all of the post-9/11 security measures, they couldn’t get visas to get into the country.”

Who could possibly solve such a thorny problem? Snider called De Laurentiis. He came by the studio, sat at Snider’s assistant’s desk and made a number of phone calls, which were punctuated by a lot of emphatic yelling in Italian. After nearly an hour, De Laurentiis hung up the phone, turned to Snider and said, “Don’t worry. It’s done. They’ll be here.”

After Snider profusely thanked him, De Laurentiis revealed an extra tidbit of information. “It’s not really the Gipsy Kings — it’s their cousins,” he said with a sly smile. “But they play their music. No one will know the difference.” Snider laughs telling the story now. “And it’s true — no one did know the difference,” she says. “They put on a great show. Everyone loved every minute of it.”

De Laurentiis was great with talent, always knowing what button to push, what weak spot to attack. He was shrewd enough to know that everything began with the script. Unsure of his English, he had an assistant at the ready to translate everything into Italian. De Laurentiis was always hiring the likes of David Mamet or Steve Zaillian to work on his projects, knowing they would lend an aura of class to the proceedings.

Lorenzo Semple Jr., who first got to know De Laurentiis while writing “Three Days of the Condor” for him, says that De Laurentiis wasn’t impressed by clever dialogue. “He’d always say, ‘I don’t want to be fooled by pretty words. Just tell me a good story,’ ” Semple recalls. Semple’s agent, however, tried to keep him away from De Laurentiis, worried that the producer would somehow woo Semple into writing disaster epics instead of more ambitious work.

“But Dino knew my weakness,” says Semple, who went on to write less distinguished pictures like “Hurricane” and the 1976 “King Kong” for De Laurentiis. “He’d call me up and say, ‘How’d you like to come London? I’ll send you a couple of tickets for the Concorde. We’ll have a good time.’ And that’s how I’d fall under his power. My agent would beg me not to go, but I couldn’t resist. I liked Dino too much.” It hardly mattered if the movies were memorable or not. Everyone was happy to be around De Laurentiis. He was small in stature but when it came to filmmaking, he was larger than life.

Photo: Dino De Laurentiis at his home in Beverly Hills, in a file photograph from 1984.   

Credit: Wally Fong/Associated Press

For months there has been nothing but bad buzz about Sony's troubled, Seth Rogen-starring "Green Hornet" film, which has been something of a punching bag for fanboys, especially when its footage didn't exactly go over like gangbusters this summer at Comic-Con International, Hollywood's favorite media hype festival. To hear it from the blog snarkers, the Michel Gondry-directed film was a debacle, with worriers worrying that Gondry was the wrong filmmaker for the project, Rogen was miscast in the lead role and the movie played far more campy than cool.  

Skepticism only grew louder when Sony gave the movie a Jan. 14, 2011, release date, which hardly felt like an auspicious weekend for a costly comic-book hero film. Things got so bad that one Web report this summer claimed that "the feeling at Sony is the movie is a disaster."

But it's now looking like the worm has turned. The studio had a test screening Tuesday night in Long Beach that went better than anyone could have hoped for. According to one of my spies who was on hand, after the ratings cards were tabulated, the movie had scored a 93 rating in what is known as the top two boxes (the percentage of people saying the film was either excellent or very good) with 83% of the moviegoers saying they would "definitely recommend" the film to their friends.

Even if the film was shown for the kind of younger audience that would be most likely to want to see it, those are impressive numbers, which is perhaps why the studio executives on hand at the screening were seen breathing huge sighs of relief. In fact, the Sony high command was so buoyant that Amy Pascal was overheard talking about the possibility of a sequel after seeing the test results.

It still remains to be seen whether the studio can win over the film's original fanboy skeptics. But Sony's decision to release "The Green Hornet" in January looks a little less like a sign of desperate Hail Mary pass, especially now that several studios have had success with January releases in recent years. If anyone should be happy, it's Gondry, who is a truly gifted filmmaker that has never managed to connect with a mainstream audience (his most commercial film, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," grossed less than $35 million in the U.S.). It's too early for Champagne, but finally "Green Hornet" fans have some reason for cautious optimism. 

Photo: Seth Rogen at a Marvel party during Comic-Con International 2010 in San Diego. Credit: John Shearer/Getty Images

When my 12-year-old asked me last week if he could see "Due Date," I told him I'd be happy to take him one night, but only after he'd prepped himself for the experience by watching "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." As virtually every critic in America took note of in their reviews last weekend, "Due Date" is a thinly veiled rip-off of the wondrous 1987 John Hughes movie, which finds Steve Martin and John Candy stuck together on a series of cross-country misadventures. (My son, who'd never really seen John Candy in all his glory, can't wait to watch "Uncle Buck" next.)

Needless to say, critics were largely united in their opinion that "Due Date" was a pallid imitation of the original. But little did they know that this week would deliver "Morning Glory," yet another example of Hollywood's new Knock Off Cinema. It seems that today's studio bosses, not content with churning out a never-ending stream of remakes and sequels, have now decided that even flimsy retreads of 20-plus-year-old movies can be passed off as original stories.

If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review aggregation site, you'd be hard pressed to find a review of "Morning Glory" that doesn't compare it--unfavorably--to "Broadcast News," James Brooks' 1987 comedy masterpiece, which, like "Morning Glory," offers a romantic comedy take on the dumbing down of TV news. Of course, this being Hollywood 2010, even the dumbing down has been dumbed down. In "Due Date," the comedy is cruder and noisier than "PT&A" while in "Morning Glory," written by Aline Brosh McKenna, the relationships are blander and oozing with far more sitcom shallowness than anything in "Broadcast News."

Nearly every "Morning Glory" review takes note of the debt the film owes to "Broadcast News," but no critic did a better job of capturing its clumsy ersatzness than Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, who had this to say:

The end of the year tends to bring about the release of a new James L. Brooks movie or, more often than not, an imitation James L. Brooks movie — usually directed by Nancy Meyers, who I would say now makes them better than Brooks does. "Morning Glory" might be described as a fake imitation James L. Brooks movie. It's trying for the same mixture of romance and repartee and social observation, but it's pretty light on all three.... The whole film is really just a chintzy work-family sitcom.

Gleiberman's colleagues were all on high "Broadcast News" alert. The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday viewed "Morning Glory" as a huge drop-off, saying "to compare Rachel McAdams' ditsy, meaningless mannerisms to Holly Hunter crying alone at her desk...is to realize how far movies have deviated from recognizable reality." The Arizona Republic's Bill Goodykrontz calls "Morning Glory" a "slight movie that makes 'Broadcast News' look like 'All the President's Men' by comparison." USA Today's Scott Bowles dismissed the new film as "an ill-fated comedy, pollinated by 'Broadcast News' and 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.' "

The Toronto Star's Peter Howell thought the film was such a lox that he not only compared it unfavorably to "Broadcast News," but to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." The Boston Globe's Ty Burr was the most succinct of all, saying " 'Broadcast News' this ain't.' "

Thank god we have a far more original movie, "Unstoppable," coming this Friday, a film about an out-of-control train starring Denzel Washington and directed by Tony Scott, whose last film was--yikes!--about an out-of-control train too (although, in fairness, the early reviews say its story is far more accomplished than "The Taking of Pelham 123," which was a remake). Still, if you're a film critic or regular moviegoer, when you head out to the multiplex these days, you often feel like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," fated to relive all the same stories over and over again. 

Photo: Rachel McAdams, left, with Harrison Ford in a scene from "Morning Glory." Credit: Paramount Pictures

As my colleague Scott Collins notes in his post today, the premiere of Conan O'Brien's new TBS talk show put the whooping stick to all his late-night rivals, with "Conan" scoring a heady 4.2 million total viewers. That catapulted him ahead of not only "The Daily Show" (with 1.3 million viewers) and "The Colbert Report" (1 million viewers) but NBC's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" (3.5 million viewers) and CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman" (3.4 million viewers).

But more importantly, if "Conan" can keep its numbers up--granted, a big if--it might turn out to be the one late-night show that delivers those hard-to-find young viewers that advertisers crave. The median age for an O'Brien viewer is 30. Stewart and Colbert's viewers are nearly 10 years older; the median age of Letterman's viewers is 53, while Leno's viewers' average age is nearly 60.

If you're a movie marketer, a show drawing 60-year-olds, even millions of 'em, isn't exactly an advertising gold mine, that is unless you're going after every Harrison Ford fan on the block. So it's no surprise that "Conan" literally sold out its opening-night block of movie ads, with nearly every studio buying time for an upcoming film. NBC/Universal, whose network was O'Brien's former home, was one of the few media giants to steer clear of "Conan," even though Universal has a young-skewing sci-fi thriller due out this weekend in "Skyline." Maybe they were worried about hurting Jay Leno's feelings.

But virtually every other studio in town bought into the "Conan" debut in a big way. "Everyone knew it would be an event, so every studio figured it would be a great place to show their wares," said one veteran movie marketer. "These days people are desperate for eyeballs, especially for viewers who don't normally watch late-night TV. So everyone was making a bet that 'Conan' would get a lot of younger viewers showing up, just to see what the all the hubbub was about."

"Conan's" movie ad buys could drop off somewhat after this week. But if the show's numbers hold up, especially his numbers among younger viewers, his show could wrestle away a lot of the ads that have traditionally gone to "The Daily Show." I'm just hoping that Conan gets more guests like opening-night visitor Seth Rogen, who didn't feel obligated to act like a walking billboard, since he doesn't even have a new movie coming out till next year.

Photo: Conan O'Brien, making his debut on the new late-night TBS show, "Conan."  Credit: Meghan Sinclair/Associated Press/Conaco LLC for TBS

I had lunch the other day with Tom Hooper, whose film, "The King's Speech," has been earning plaudits everywhere for its absorbing portrayal of King George VI's relationship with his cheeky speech therapist, who helps him overcome a lifelong stutter. Colin Firth, who plays the king, and Geoffrey Rush, who's the therapist, are both getting Oscar buzz for their engaging performances.

Meanwhile, Hooper, a 38-year-old Londoner who's become the go-to filmmaker for posh British TV and HBO dramas ("Elizabeth I," "Longford" and "John Adams") has been getting something of a Hollywood education. Adept with actors and unabashedly ambitious, Hooper would clearly like to make films on a larger canvas (it's telling that his big heroes are outsiders like Ridley Scott and Peter Weir, who found ways to make personal films on a grand scale). But as Hooper has discovered, Hollywood has its own peculiar language and mores.

"I've discovered that the film culture in Los Angeles is very indirect -- it's almost Japanese in that way," he said. "No one says what they actually mean. It must be why you need an agent, because you need someone to interpret the indirectness for you. It's really quite odd. You'll hear that the person from the studio doesn't want to meet with you because they're afraid that they'll have to say no to you and you'll be upset. So rather than risk saying no, they would rather not see you at all."

Hooper admits that he's often the cause of some of the cultural confusion. When his American agent would send him scripts, he would often be unimpressed. "So I would say 'I quite like it,' which in the English way means that I really didn't like it. But my agent would go, 'Oh, great, you liked it--we'll set up a meeting.' It took me a while to realize how different the meaning was over here."

The problem, Hooper says, often begins with American television. "We have so much exposure to American TV that we get lulled into a false sense that we understand the culture, when it fact, it's a very different world. I've had a lot of the same cultural missteps that seem to regularly happen to Larry David on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' " he laughs. "In fact, you could say that I've learned a lot about what not to do in L.A. by watching 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' "

Still, after the success of "Elizabeth I" and "John Adams," Hooper found himself being wooed all over town. He ended up signing on to do a new version of "East of Eden" at Universal Pictures, with Christopher Hampton ("Atonement") penning the script and Brian Grazer, the studio's top producer, overseeing the project. Everything seemed on target until the week that Hampton finished the script, which coincided with a shift in priorities at the studio (which had suffered a series of costly box-office failures). "Chris was due to turn in the script on a Friday, which turned out to be exactly the same time that [Universal co-chairman] Donna Langley gave an interview announcing that the studio was getting out of the drama business," Hooper recalls. "So suddenly the project wasn't happening. It was as if 'East of Eden' had fallen on the wrong side of history."

The one thing that does translate nicely from Britain to America is numbers. When "The King's Speech" was finished, the Weinstein Co. tested the film in New York City, where it scored a sky-high 93 with its test audience. "That was great," Hooper says. "But I went to Harvey Weinstein and asked him if we could test it somewhere else, just to see how it played in a different place." So they had a test screening in Kansas City, where the film scored a 93 again.

"We all found that really heartening, to know that the film really plays everywhere," says Hooper. "People just identify with it, whether they see it in London, New York or Kansas City. We've really been getting a good response." In other words, people don't quite like it -- they really like it. 

Photo: Tom Hooper, left, with Colin Firth at New York City premiere of "The King's Speech." 

Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images