The Screening Room

This AP story on the new Indiana Jones flick premiering in Cannes this weekend seriously buries the lede.

While the article mostly focuses on the layer of secrecy around Crystal Skull -- you'd think Spielberg would have learned his lesson after this backfired so badly on A.I., but whatever -- the writer also delves into why it took so long for the new movie to get made:

In its earliest incarnation, Lucas proposed an all-out alien flick called "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars." Spielberg and Ford didn't like that idea, and it took more than a decade of wrangling to come up with a story all three could live with.

Just let that sink in.

Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars

I think the question is no longer how Lucas managed to screw up the Star Wars prequels so badly, but how he managed to not screw up the original three films.

Sheesh.

OK, so I'm not actually at Cannes. Still never been. May never go. Yes, life is hard. But Manohla Dargis' piece in today's New York Times makes me eager to see Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman's animated film about a 1982 massacre at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Though the tone sounds much different from that of Persepolis, one of my favorites from 2007, I'm struck by the shared use of animation to depict an unsettling time and place in recent international history. Dargis refers to the strategic distancing effect that animation can have, and she mentions Art Spiegelman's Maus in this regard. Wonder when the first animated film about the Iraq War will come?

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (A-)

My Brother is an Only Child (B+)

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (B-)

Before the Rains (C)

My copy-editing cohorts Tatia and Laura and I had a discussion tonight about whether Prince Caspian is, as Nancy Churnin writes in her review of the film adaptation, actually the second book in C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Some research revealed the answer: It is and it isn't.

The Chronicles were first published in this order:
1) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2) Prince Caspian, 3) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 4) The Silver Chair, 5) The Horse and His Boy, 6) The Magician's Nephew and 7) The Last Battle.

But if you go to the bookstore or Amazon and buy a boxed set, you'll find they've been rearranged, and are now published in chronological order according to the timeline set forth in the books. That order is:
1) The Magician's Nephew, 2) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 3) The Horse and His Boy, 4) Prince Caspian, 5) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 6) The Silver Chair and 7) The Last Battle.

So which is right? Purists insist on published order -- that if you read The Magician's Nephew first, you'll find out all sorts of things you're just not supposed to know yet. Others say that if you're looking for the biblical themes and allusions in the books, those become much clearer in a chronological reading. Lewis himself, in a letter published in 1957, said either one was fine with him, although he expresssed just a smidgen of a preference for published order.

What do you think? Discuss.

She's back (Paramount Pictures)

Karen Allen returns to Indiana Jones land next Thursday. She's happy to be back for the ride, as well she should be; Raiders of the Lost Ark was the biggest hit of her career. But, as she told me last week, it's not the only movie that gets her stopped in the grocery store.

"I get recognized for Starman a lot," she says. Certainly Raiders. And Animal House still, even though it was 30 years ago. That film will not stop celebrating itself. And Scrooged because it's on every year at Christmas now, and people see it year after year and it stays in people's minds."

Check out Guidelive.com this Sunday for more on Karen Allen and her Crystal Skull experience.

Slamming on the brakes
Just two weeks into the summer movie season, the first bomb has dropped. Speed Racer, the $120 million adaptation of the television cartoon, earned just $18.6 million and a third-place finish. Meanwhile, Iron Man continued its heroic pace, earning another $51 million to bring its two-week total to $177.8 mil. It should come as no surprise that Paramount has already ordered up the franchise's next installment.

A writer from the New York Post claims to have a script of Oliver Stone's W in hand. And the details he's spilling do seem juicy. In fact, the story is so specific it credits these revelations to page 42 of the script: "Checking a map, being told it passed "Humint," whereupon the President of the United States asks, "What's 'Humint' again?" and being told "It's Human Intelligence." A scene in which, auditing an Iraqi intercept, W. asks, "Wolfowitz, got any Maalox on you? . . . and while you're at it, trim your ear hairs." And Cheney checking his heart pills."
And then:
"There's Rove saying, "The polls have shot up to 80 percent behind the president. The American people want blood. They demand it." And Colin Powell: "This about politics or policy? I'm really confused. What're you doing in this room?"

We know it's not W's year at the polls, but how about at the box office? Not only is there lots of buzz about Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic, W, but now Variety reports that Michael Moore is planning a sequel to Fahrenheit 911

Have you been itching to catch 1982's First Blood on the big screen? Me neither. But that's not going to stop 430 theaters nationwide from showing the original Rambo at 7:30 Thursday night in a digitally remastered print. The screening will be followed by an onscreen interview with Sylvester Stallone as well as an alternate ending. For a list of theaters, go to http://www.fathomevents.com/.

Son of Rambow is one of my favorites of the year so far. It's one of those quiet, affecting films where the kids seem so real and the story so unforced that you find yourself melding with their world. A boy from a sect so strict about media exposure that he has to wait in the hallway when his teacher puts in an educational video collides with a boy who is such a troublemaker he is always getting thrown out of the classroom into that same hallway. Somehow the bad kid -- well, bad in a Tom Sawyer-ish kind of way -- convinces the other one to help him make a movie for a contest. They come up with a First Blood sequel in which Rambo's son seeks his father (both boys have father issues, naturally). The charm lies in how they put the pieces together and what they find out about each other -- and themselves -- on their journey.

• Speed Racer (A)
• What Happens In Vegas (C)
• Redbelt (B-)
• Then She Found Me (B+)
• Son of Rambow (B+)
• Girls Rock! (B)
• The Babysitters (F)

The clock is ticking on registration for the Video Association of Dallas' 24-Hour Video Race. But there's still time. Register in person from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Magnolia Lounge in Fair Park, or online at www.24hourvideoracedallas.com. If you do it in person you can watch the winning videos from past races. Registration fees start at $50. The race itself is next Friday night. For more information call 214-428-8700.

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Time Warner Inc. says it is closing its Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures film studios and eliminating 70 jobs.

The move is the latest in a series of cost-cutting efforts by Time Warner President and CEO Jeff Bewkes since he took over as chief executive Jan. 1.

Despite the move, Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn says he is confident the spirit of independent filmmaking will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros.

The company says the job cuts in Los Angeles and New York are meant to eliminate duplicate marketing, distribution and production functions.

In February, Time Warner also announced it was laying off 450 people at New Line Cinema as the independent studio was absorbed into Warner Bros.

/Film reports that Criterion will release 13 films on Blu-Ray this October. Film fans, prepare to get your geek on.

Here's the list (break out the credit cards):

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

David Mamet seems like a tough customer. He certainly writes like one. But Chiwetel Ejiofor, the star of Mr. Mamet's Redbelt, says the Man's Man of theater and film is actually kinda...soft?

"I found him really easy - a really nice, really pleasant guy to spend time with," Ejiofor told me recently. "He's very big-hearted. I don't know if I was really expecting that actually, to find him so soft. His writing has a real edge to it, so I always thought of his demeanor as a bit prickly, having never met him. Spending time with him I realized that there's a slight touch-in-cheek quality to his writing, and people don't really recognize it until you meet him. He's a very funny man."

Read much more about Ejiofor and Redbelt this Friday at Guidelive.com.

As fans of the Wu-Tang Clan know, Ghostface Killah has been known to use the alter-alter-ego Tony Starks as an homage to the dude behind the red-and-gold suit. (Why a guy named Ghostface Killah needs yet another alias is open to debate. But that's the Wu). Said Wu heads might also know that Ghost was originally supposed to have a cameo in the mega-blockbuster, but he got left on the cutting room floor. This may be cause for fans to swarm like killer bees, but at least he can be heard briefly on the soundtrack.

As we reported during SXSW, The Visitor star Richard Jenkins did some time at the Dallas Theater Center (Former DTC honcho Adrian Hall worked extensively with Jenkins at the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence).

Hall once brought Jenkins out to Big D to act in Sam Shepard's Fool For Love. Keep reading for a funny Jenkins anecdote on DTC's sometimes-squeamish audiences.

Did you catch Iron Man Thursday night? Tell us what you thought and share your thoughts on early screenings before official openings.

Here's what else is opening this weekend:

• Iron Man (B+)
• As It Is In Heaven (B+)
• Made of Honor (C)
• The Visitor (A-)
• Planet B-Boy (B)

And start planning your summer vacation with our Summer Movie Guide.

Dallas author Harry Preston has been known to offer his screenwriting courses through Richland College's continuing education department. But this summer the college seems to have run out of classroom space. Yeah, things are tough all over. If you still want to take his course this summer, give the man a shout at 972-276-5427.

No.

I mean, have you seen these trailers?

I guarantee that every gamer that lined up at midnight on Monday for GTA IV is lining up tonight for Iron Man.

If only I had a babysitter, I'd be dragging the wife to the multiplex tonight, as well.

With Iron Man getting strong reviews, and sneak previews being sold out, I think Iron Man could well supplant Spider Man as the most hip comic book movie franchise on the planet.