• Hancock is expected to make around $100 million this weekend, simply because Will Smith + July 4th = boatloads of money, regardless of negative buzz.
• SAG still doesn’t have a contract, but nobody seems to be particularly concerned. According to Variety, “There’s a ubiquitous sense among studio and network execs, talent reps and multihyphenates that SAG does not have the bedrock of support among its members to call for a work stoppage.” Meanwhile, Tom Hanks is supporting a ratification of the AFTRA deal, which would almost certainly nix any possibility of a SAG strike, whilst Jack Nicholson wants his compatriots to hold out for a better deal.
• Sacha Baron Cohen will play Sherlock Holmes opposite Will Ferrell’s Watson in an as-yet untitled comedy based on the detective stories. But they’ll have stiff competition from a competing Sherlock film being developed by the week’s most famous male maybe-divorcee, Guy Ritchie…right? [crickets]

I keep forgetting that Mike Myers is not actually playing an Indian in The Love Guru, and yet I’m constantly reminded by the film’s commercials, which show that ridiculous shot of a little kid’s body with Myers’ giant head digitally superimposed onto it. Really, Myers’ character (Pitka) is a white American who is left on the doorstep of an Indian ashram when he’s a child. Then he’s raised as Indian, I guess (or simply Hindu, but then why the accent?).

Apparently the character, Pitka, couldn’t simply look and talk like Myers. He had to have that silly accent and the clothes and the facial hair, despite the fact that Deepak Chopra, who partially inspired the character (and who appears in the movie), is able to wear jeans and be clean-shaven. Because who would believe Myers as an Indian guru with just the voice, the clothes and his baby face?

Of course, Myers is not the first actor to wear or grow a beard and/or mustache in order to take on the guise of another ethnicity. Sure, it’s also the accent and the makeup that transforms the actor, but with the most recognizable faces, it’s the facial hair that really seals the deal for supposed authenticity.

1. Charlton Heston as Mexican in Touch of Evil (pictured above) - Maybe if Heston could maintain the accent he wouldn’t have needed the mustache. But then in photos he still would have just looked like regular old Heston. With the whiskers, however, he looks like regular old Heston with a mustache. If this look defined a man as Mexican, then many characters from the ’30s must have been Mexican. Rhett Butler? Mexican. Nick Charles (and anyone else played by William Powell)? Mexican.
   …Read more

• Spike Lee has spent his own money to acquire Time Traveler, “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation’s first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” He’ll co-adapt and direct.
• David Gordon Green’s The Pineapple Express will screen at the Just For Laughs Film Festival on July 19, three weeks before Sony opens the stoner comedy wide.
• Passchendaele, a Canadian WWI drama about the famous muddy battle, will open the Toronto Film Festival.
  
• Universal will release the second Da Ali G Show theatrical spin-off, Bruno, on May 15, 2009, a date already occupied by the sequel to The Da Vinci Code.

A U.S. District judge threw out a defamation case against the makers of Borat yesterday, on the grounds that Sacha Baron Cohen’s fake journalist schtick is protected under the same laws as real journalism. A New York businessman had sued for unspecified, claiming he was humiliated against his will when footage of Cohen chasing him down the street appeared in the film, and complaining that 20th Century Fox had no right to make a profit off of said humiliation. But the judge disagreed, citing a section of a NY State civil rights law that says  “nonconsensual use of a person’s image to depict newsworthy events or matters of public interest is exempt from the law.” If you’re scratching your head trying to puzzle out just how performance art built around the harassment of strangers qualifies as a “newsworthy event,” here’s Judge Loretta Preska’s explanation of her ruling:

[Borat] employs as its chief medium a brand of humor that appeals to the most childish and vulgar in its viewers..[But] the movie challenges its viewers to confront, not only the bizarre and offensive Borat character himself, but the equally bizarre and offensive reactions he elicits from `average’ Americans.

I’m alternately admiring of and infuriated by Cohen’s ability to exploit the right loopholes that allow him to get away with using real people as raw material for his act, which never seems to be as sharp as either comedy or social commentary as he thinks it is. But childish, vulgar, bizarre and offensive *does* sounds like a pretty accurate description of most televised news.

• Variety looks into reports from the British press that Steven Spielberg is gearing up to make a movie about the Chicago Seven, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman. Spielberg apparently won’t confirm nor deny it; Aaron Sorkin signed a deal to write a script six months ago, but there’s no progress to report on that. Apparently.
• Not much has changed in the box office picture since Monday––National Treasure and Alvin and the Chipmunks are still dominant––but business was up seven percent over the comparative week last year, and that’s worth remarking on. Apparently.
• Chinese censors have issued an order asking producers to refrain from depicting “hardcore activities, rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals or sex freaks.” Not only would films involving such content be banned from receiving national awards, but their makers could “face a total ban from the biz for five years.”

Today’s the hump day between the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. We’ll be rolling out some final coverage of the former as the day progresses, before moving on to a burst of coverage of the latter tomorrow. First, here’s a look at some of the trade news from the past few days that we missed over the long weekend in Colorado:

• Variety’s Pamela McClintock says a super summer for the studios is bad news for smaller/artsier films. “[W]ith the debut of one successful studio pic after the next this summer, indie distribs and studio specialty arms had trouble drawing attention to their pics and keeping even the most successful ones in theaters. How much this pattern will affect future release strategies remains to be seen.” But she has a prescription: “the box office success of horror titles this summer reinforces the notion that studio specialty arms and indie production companies need to balance out their slates with more commercial genre titles.”
• In Telluride, people seemed to either love or hate Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, but Todd McCarthy offers the only lukewarm review I’ve seen. McCarthy says Cate Blanchett’s performance is “electrifying,” but the later section starring Richard Gere “is poorly conceived on every level, as it dramatizes and contributes nothing.” The critic’s assessment of the film’s cross-over appeal is pretty dismal: “In the end, it’s a specialists’ event.”
• A theatrical “spoof” of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps will hit Broadway this fall.
• Sacha Baron Cohen has finally confirmed a rumor that’s been going around for a year: he’s following up Borat with Bruno, based on the fashion correspondent character from The Ali G Show.
• It’s old news by now, but in light of the recent “horror is dead!” hand-wringing, it’s significant: Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake broke box office records over Labor Day weekend, earning $30.6 million over four days.
• The SXSW Film Festival is still 6+ months off, but Matt Dentler and his team have already announced conversations with two special guests: documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson, and composer/source cue generator/tea impresario Moby.
• Spike Lee will judge entries in the upcoming Babelgum Online Film Festival. The fest will award about $130,000 in prizes to six short filmmakers.