• Some thoughts on Vanity Fair’s Bright Young Hollwood thing: the only people I recognize besides for Jonah Hill and the kids from The Wackness are on this page, but that’s because I don’t watch Gossip Girl, right? Also: is Kat Dennings, like, wearing a bat suit?
• There are some things in No Country For Old Men that look a lot like things from Raising Arizona. Discuss.
• Considering similar lines in Wanted and Jumper that each put the audience member in the unfavorable position of being condescended to by a pretty-boy unlikely action star, Glenn Kenny wonders, “Have screenwriters become so defensive/resentful on account of churning out quasi-nihilistic, faux-convoluted, graphic-novel-mytho-Babel tripe like this that they feel compelled to lash out at the audience that laps their nonsense up?”

Now that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness.

“Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment:

Yeah, I don’t know about that. …Read more

The New York Daily News reports that just days after Disney tried to shame Vanity Fair and photographer Annie Leibovitz for releasing a photo of tween Disney Channel sensation Miley Cyrus wrapped in a bed sheet, it’s been revealed that the company is selling Disney underwear in China via billboards that show adolescent models wearing even less. A Disney spokesman claimed the Chinese ad “has caught us totally by surprise” –– which seems about as credible as the suggestion that the company had no idea what was happening on Leibovitz’s set. The shock shouldn’t be that Disney is selling sex; the shock should be that Disney is not only feigning shock, but that they’ve turned feigning shock into a business model.

…Read more

• “Sex appeal is a big deal,” notes Ryland Walker Knight. “These Vanity Fair restagings seem to understand this, and are, for the most part, pretty cool.”
• Michael Guillen reviews Medicine for Melancholy, which is due to premiere at SXSW, at The Evening Class. Barry Jenkins first feature, says Guillen, “looks like it was shot in black and white and tinted by hand.  Whether or not Jenkins and [cinematographer James] Laxton intended this to parallel how the color can be taken out of a person of color through the compromise of assimilation and the coercion of gentrification is anyone’s guess; but, that’s how I read it.”
• At ShortEnd Magazine, Noralil Ryan Flores reviews a book I’m currently dying to read, Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New. “Each moment, vivid as a snapshot, seeks its soul in that tireless inspiration not uncommon in Americana, that unflappable desire to produce, often at all costs–million dollar costs–the next big trend.”
• Did Dennis Lim’s much-linked interview with Jacques Rivette inspire you to [re]familiarize yourself with the old French master’s work? You can watch three of his features on Jaman.

• Above: an ambitious aspiring film editor bought a fixer-upper and Hitchcockified the bathroom. More images here. Via BoingBoing.
• Jeff Wells finds a way to justify talking about “what a gutless dithering douchebag pussy John Edwards has turned out to be” on his movie blog by pulling a Chris Matthews, accusing the former presidential candidate of “acting like the softer, squishier, less decisive brother of Gregory Peck’s character in The Big Country.”
• UnitedHollywood links to a PDF version of an essay from Joan Didion’s After Henry, about the 1988 writers strike.  “Agree or disagree with how this strike has been waged, she puts her finger on realities that sound eerily familiar, 20 years later — and on some key differences as well.”
• Just in time for Valentine’s day, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a Texas statute restricting sales of sex toys. Jette Kernion finds the movie angle at Slackerwood.
• I think this is what qualifies as “comedy” from Vanity Fair. Go easy on them–at least they’re trying.

• The Underwire points to Barackula, “a short political horror rock musical about young Barack Obama having to stave off a secret society of vampires at Harvard when he was inducted into presidency at the Harvard Law Review in 1990.” The ten minute film is not online yet, but we’ll be first in line for its debut.
• Speaking musicals that plumb unlikely sources for kitsch, Chuck Palahniuk, David Fincher and Trent Reznor are apparently trying to put together a Broadway show based on Fight Club, to coincide with the film’s ten year anniversary in 2009. American Idol castoffs should start working out now, I guess…
• Whoops! According to Andy Baio via Steve Bryant, the slow closing of the theatrical to DVD window, of which one benefit is supposedly the reduction of piracy, is actually making piracy worse.
• Pitchfork’s offers a short review of Kurt Cobain: About A Son, sparked by news that the doc is soon coming to DVD. “So basically what I’m saying is if you want your childhood dreams shattered, go see About a Son. (Kidding.) But really, it’s an essential movie for Nirvana fans.”
• The apartment that Heath Ledger died in is already on the market––and rent has been jacked up about 15%.
• EVERY SENTENCE of Ed Gonzales’ review of The Hottie and the Nottie is too good, I can’t isolate just one. Well, maybe this one: “Fuck this movie.” THAT’s a pullquote!
• This is probably the most horrifying celebrity glamour shot that I’ve ever seen. But this, this and this are all kind of amazing.

The whole Lucas/Spielberg Indy 4 cover made a certain kind of sense. It’s an epic narrative, the story of underdogs turned Hollywood royalty, and it’s also about the passing of torch from the star sphere of the 70s-80s-90s to the new generation, however annoyingly it may be embodied by Shia LaBouf. This kind of reification of Hollywood myth is the only way to pay Graydon Carter’s salary nowadays, even if it’s not something the average Christopher Hitchens reader really has much use for.
But why is Vanity Fair exhaustively covering a new Star Wars video game? To the point where they’ve not only posted a three-pager about the technology behind Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but a 14-page slideshow of stills from the game itself? Are they that desperate to win the Digg crowd, and if so, do they really think teenage gamers will become loyal customers after this issue reels them in? Was this a contractual thing––ie: did Lucas only agree to the Indy interview on the grounds that the game would get coverage as well? And if so, why didn’t he offer better quality images than the one screen-capped at right?

• Vanity Fair has canceled their annual post-Oscars party, as a show of solidarity for the striking writers, and also presumably because there may not be a “real” Oscars to throw a party after.
• That said: the WGA is planning a “bicoastal powwow” for Saturday in order to present a tentative contract plan to their members, and if all goes well, says Dave McNary, “the boards could quickly start the ratification process — and possibly issue a back-to-work order that could take effect as early as Monday.”
• Welcome to the seventh circle of hell: an awards show honoring publicists, hosted by Billy Bush. It would almost be irresponsible to craft a joke around the following: “‘This is an event by publicists, for publicists, honoring publicists yet nobody knows about it because it’s not publicized,’ host Billy Bush joked in his opening remarks at the luncheon, to the delight of the flack-filled room.”

Vanity Fair recreated a number of famous shots from Alfred Hitchcock films for their March 2008 Hollywood Issue, and they’ve got a story about the shoot on their website. It’s pretty much content-free––unless we’re really supposed to be blown away by Renee Zellweger’s professionalism and commitment to the endeavor because she waited until she was getting her hair done to watch the Vertigo scene she had been assigned to ape––but Jeff Wells still finds something to grumble about.

“Of all the actors Vanity Fair could have picked to stand in for Cary Grant in a restaging of the classic crop-duster scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, they chose (who else?) Seth Rogan.” Yawn. Of course, George Clooney would be the obvious choice for the role, but even George Clooney seems to be tired of playing Cary Grant. The whole idea of having people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley star in these slavishly recreated spreads is so milquetoast and boring, that the casting of Hollywood’s new, chubby-nerdy-hot guy as Cary Grant––especially Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, an ordinary guy who becomes sort of unexpectedly invincible––ends up looking strange enough to be inspired.

• Today in Pre-Strike Deals: Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are coming back for Da Vinci 2: Big Trouble in Vatican City; Robert DeNiro will play a mob hitman forced to come out of retirement in Michael Mann’s Frankie Machine; Woody Harrelson will star in Oliver Stone’s latest rumination on Vietnam, Pinkville; and Jim Caviezel (who last popped up as a bit player in the affair between Andy Samberg and the president of Iran) will star in a remake of the 1978 Australian film, The Long Weekend.
• After Dark Films and Lionsgate have teamed up to acquire Mulberry Street, a low-budget horror film about rats who bite New York City dwellers and turn them into rodent zombies. When the film premiered at Tribeca, Eric Kohn at The Reeler said it was “the best attempt to tackle a New York state of grime since Abel Ferrara turned NYU students into vampires in The Addiction.” After Dark will put Mulberry Street on 300 screens November 9th, as part of their aptly-named After Dark Horrorfest; Lionsgate will handle DVD distribution.
• With Morton’s closing, Vanity Fair will hold their Oscar party at a new location for the first time in 14 years. Of the party’s new home, VF puppetmaster Graydon Carter says, “Craft is the ideal place for the party: great food — which we will not be serving family-style, by the way — great location with a dramatic entrance and a big, sweeping space.”