Despite what Stephen Colbert says in the video above, Will Smith has not confirmed that he’s a Scientologist (nor has he denied it, of course). All that happened was that, according to the Daily News, Will Smith distributed cards promoting the Church of Scientology personality tests. Now, that may sound like Smith is attempting to recruit people, which isn’t something that a non-member would necessarily do, but the I Am Legend star has only so far claimed to be a “student of world religion” and has only really proven himself to be a good friend to Tom Cruise and a non-committed supporter of this particular religion (including donating thousands of dollars to Scientology programs).

So if Scientology is but one of the many world religions Smith is a fan of, where is the news that he’s handing out bibles and other religious promotional materials? Well, even if he was doing that, the news would still highlight this event because of how the media treats Scientology. Actually, I’m surprised the story hasn’t been covered more widely than it has been. Could it be that the media companies don’t want such potentially career-damaging news to be covered because they depend on Smith to save their Hollywood-centered butts? After all, Smith is currently the second biggest movie star in terms of box office gross, and it would be a shame if he suddenly became the sort of box office poison that Tom Cruise is now considered to be.

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Here is my follow-up to last month’s question of what mainstream movie will feature on the most top ten movie lists. And the winner is … Ratatouille. Oh wait, didn’t I disqualify that one for being too obvious? No? Well, I should have. Yes, according to Movie City News’ Big Ass Chart (aka Scorecard) of critics’ top tens, the Pixar movie made it on to 51 best-of lists, making it the best-grossing best movie of the year. But maybe it wasn’t the most mainstream, if you define mainstream as studio-produced fare. Under that qualification Zodiac was the best mainstream movie of 2007, having been made jointly by Warner Bros. and Paramount and showing up on 70 best-of lists. Other Warner successes include Michael Clayton, which featured on 54 lists, Sweeney Todd, which received 44 mentions, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which showed up on one list, and Letters From Iwo Jima, which showed up a little late on one list.

As far as those mainstream movies I predicted would feature heavily, Knocked Up (34 lists) ended up defeating Superbad (25 lists) — meanwhile, the third Judd Apatow movie of the year, Walk Hard, managed to get on one critic’s list — though both were actually behind The Bourne Ultimatum (28 lists), when it came to “average vote” (average numerical placement on the list). If we’re going by mainstream appeal (and if Karina is correct in her view of the film), then Juno was the best mainstream comedy of the year with 63 lists. Hairspray (13 lists) beat out its crappy musical siblings Across the Universe (7 lists) and Enchanted (8 lists). In addition to showing up on Richard Corliss’ list, Beowulf managed 3 other mentions. And Transformers not only showed up on a top ten list, it featured on 3! Of course, it’s more surprising that Spider-Man 3 made it on 4 lists. The greatest thing to happen, of course, was Manohla Dargis listing The Kingdom as one of her favorites. Joining her is Don Payne. If I had made a top ten list (instead of this thing), the film could very well have beaten Transformers. Oh well, at least nobody put the shocking blockbuster Alvin and the Chipmunks on their list … yet.

Unless Amy Ryan prevails, Cate Blanchett is expected to scratch away the significance of Linda Hunt’s 1982 Oscar win. But wait: even if Blanchett fails to be the second person to win an Academy Award for playing a character of the opposite sex, John Travolta could also be up for that honor. On the eve of the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations, Travolta is expected to fill one of the five slots in the best supporting actor category for his performance as a big-boned mama in Hairspray.

The predictions come from two awards-season blogs, Scott Feinberg’s And the Winner Is … (via The Carpetbagger), and Tom O’Neil’s Gold Derby, with the latter claiming his to be “100% accurate” and based on information received from both “industry insiders” and “sources close to members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.” Feinberg, meanwhile, points out that with a Globe nomination, Travolta will be a “major threat” contender for the supporting actor Oscar.

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Here’s a round-up of a few late-afternoon tidbits from across the film blogosphere:

• At Slackerwood, Jette Kernion has a fully-illustrated review of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Simpsons Feast. “The second course soon followed: Blinky (the three-eyed fish) in a sauce made from tomacco (Homer’s magical crop that resulted from planting tomatoes, tobacco, and uranium from the nuclear power plant)…His eyes were made from white asparagus and caviar. He was a very tasty three-eyed fish.”
• AJ Schnack takes a look at the year thus far in documentary box office. When you see the year’s Top 20 docs laid out by grosses, the discrepancy between the fiction and nonfiction economic systems really hits home: “Looking at the year to date documentary box office, the elephant in the room (there are so many mixed metaphors in that) continues to be SICKO … no other [documentary] film has crossed $1 million at the box office.”
• Like Film Junk, I too got really excited when I heard that a trailer for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind had leaked onto YouTube. And then I tried to watch it.
• At Edward Copeland On Film, Odienator remembers The Roach, “one dance that blew me away” upon watching John Waters’ Hairspray for the first time. “I laughed so hard that I choked on my popcorn. If you lived in the neighborhood I grew up in, this was an activity with which you could identify. It was pure John Waters, a mix of absurdity and social commentary. Here was the rich snob girl from Baltimore stomping roaches and shaking her ass while the lyrics commanded her to “squish, squash, kill dat roach!”
• My creepy old-lady crush on Michael Cera continues unabated.

Here are the facts: the Adam Sandler gay-sham com I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry won the weekend box office derby, pulling in about $35 million to Harry Potter and The What Kind Of Magical Scrape Have These Spooky Kids Conjured Up Now?!?’s $32 million. $35 million is a significant opening take, and it would not have been possible to rack up if Sandler’s base audience had been turned off by the pic’s pro-gay tolerance theme. Not only was the gay marriage thing not a problem–it might have been a plus. Just look at the numbers: Adam Sandler fans are more likely to rush out opening weekend see their guy pretend to pretend to be gay, than watch him in a serious film about post-9/11 ennui…by a factor of seven.

And now, here’s the spin: Jeff Wells, LAist and the New York Times think Mr. Potter’s 58% weekend-to-weekend decline may have been the result of Harry Potter overload. LAist has the better quip: “My guess is that the release of Deathly Hallows cost Order of the Phoenix a second consecutive weekend crown (I still can’t believe that Voldermort turned out to be Harry’s father!).” I honestly can’t tell if Nikki Finke is being sarcastic when she writes, “There’d been speculation whether the new Harry Potter book would cut into the franchise’s movie ticket sales. Nah!” I can tell you that she definitely loses points for using the term “fivequel.”

Meanwhile, Box Office Mojo couldn’t really care less about gay marriage vs. boy wizardry–for these datamasters, it’s all about Hairspray. Brandon Gray devotes the opening four paragraphs of a 7-graph writeup to the musical, which broke records for its genre. Gray notes that even adjusting for inflation, Hairspray’s $28 million opening easily beat the record for the best musical opening weekend ever previously held by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And it’s not just good news for song-and-dance lovers–New Line needed this hit. “It marks New Line’s first $20 million-plus launch since Wedding Crashers two years ago and breaks the distributor’s losing streak that had persisted since Final Destination 3 in February 2006.”

More spin:

Transformers is still doing okay — Comics2Film
A victory for homophobia? — Lou Lemenick
…or one for Jessica Biel’s butt? –Obsessed with Film

New Hairspray director Adam Shankman is responsible for some of the most profitable/least watchable films of the past decade. But he started out as a choreographer, and below you’ll find his best work: the disco dance scene from Boogie Nights:

Way back in April, Spout partnered with The Reeler to bring you video coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival. Now S.T. VanAirsdale and friends have re-launched ReelerTV as a weekly show, and I had the honor of being a guest on this week’s installment. After a rundown of the week’s news and a man-on-the-street segment, I join The Reeler himself in the lobby of the Pioneer Theater, to discuss two films opening this week: Hairspray and Goya’s Ghosts. I’ve embedded the episode above; you should also be sure to check out TheReeler.com to watch and/or subscribe to past and future installments.

The gay marriage debate seems to have been relegated to the back-burner of late (apparently, there’s a war going on). Could Adam Sandler help bring it back?

At AfterElton.com [via GreenCine Daily] Alonso Duralde says I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry “will probably do more for the national debate on gay marriage than every book written by conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan and every letter you’ve sent to your senator put together.” He goes on to explain that this is mostly because “average” Americans are apparently willing to pay money to see Adam Sandler do just about anything, regardless of whether or not the themes of his films jibe with their personal preferences or political beliefs. It seems like a valid point, even if Paul Thomas Anderson might disagree.

But at the Village Voice, Nathan Lee has much more fun nailing Chuck and Larry’s potential power; the openly gay critic boldly claims that the film is “as eloquent as Brokeback Mountain, and even more radical.” (Lee, it should be noted, famously defended Brokeback’s “middle-brow man-on-man masochistic romanticism” around the time of that film’s release.) The whole review is basically begging to be blockquoted, but here’s a choice excerpt:

This sodomite had a gay old time. The coup of the movie is that Sandlerites will, too. They’re the ones unmistakably addressed in the courtroom climax, the moment when Chuck and Larry confess their deceptions and assert their principles. Momentarily possessed by remarkable authenticity, Sandler seems to step out of character as he appeals to the crowd to stop using the word “faggot.” I’ve used it a lot myself in the past, he says in a manner less like a line reading than a mea culpa, but it hurts the same way it does if you called me a kike.

Meanwhile, Jeff Wells links to a clip of Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff promoting his boycott of Hairspray on The O’Reilly Factor. Naff says Scientology is anti-gay, and since John Travolta is a Scientologist, ergo, a film that began life as a Broadway musical based on a cult film starring a drag queen and written/directed by the most successful openly-gay filmmaker of the last thirty years is — wait for it — also anti-gay. “Gay people are not so desperate for entertainment that we should be lining the pockets of those who want to cure us,” Naff huffs. Adam Shankman, director of the new Hairspray, responded: “Everybody involved in Hairspray - all the creators - are gay…me, the writers, composer, John Waters - all gay.”

I guess the only question is this: how many gay pockets do you need to line to outweigh the damage done by putting cash in the pants of one Scientologist?

The latest incarnation of Hairspray had its New York premiere last night, and it was an apparently uneventful evening– pity the poor celeb blogs, who have nothing to pump other than the “Katie Holmes Left The House, Possibly Pregnant” vein. But back in 1988, the premiere of the first Hairspray took Baltimore by storm. This amazing clip (from Jonathan Ross‘ late-80 cult film documentary series The Incredibly Strange Film Show) features interviews with John Waters and a tuxedo-wearing Divine, as well as a brief history of Waters’ pre-Hairspray output.

Towards the end, Ross, interviewing Waters weeks after Divine’s death, asks the filmmaker to define his late muse’s appeal. Waters sighs and answers, “He represented to any kind of rebel somebody that could win.” THAT’s what’s missing from this new version of Hairspray–it’s an incredible crowd pleaser, but it’s got nothing on the original film’s spirit of insurrection.

I saw the new Hairspray yesterday. I don’t want to blow my wad just yet, as I’ll be talking about it with Stu VanAirsdale next week on ReelerTV, but here are a few preliminary thoughts:

1) The John Waters original version of Hairspray appears to be up on YouTube in its entirety, and I’ve embedded one of my favorite chunks above. Penny and Tracy are making out with their new boyfriends in a rat-infested alley. A drunken hobo ambles by, and that’s romantic; Tracy’s mom drives down the alley looking for her daughter, and it’s time to run. Seeking shelter, the kids stumble into a beatnik lair, and stumble right out again when shit gets too weird. It’s the perfect encapsulation of Waters’ nuanced vision of the young vs. old/class vs. race/culture vs. subculture paradigm, and it’s miles beyond anything this new version has up its sleeve. Spoiler alert: the new Hairspray doesn’t even have beatniks.

2) That Zac Efron kid is amazing. He’s the new Gene Kelly. I can’t wait for him to get old and play the dashing American in a postmodern French homage to his earlier successes. At least then maybe my creepy old lady crush will seem a little bit more age appropriate.

3) Not once, in a hundred years of cinema, has a fat suit actually been funny. Prove me wrong and I’ll give you $100.***

***Reward only realizable if you can get me to admit defeat.