Can you see it? Ebert in 1975. Kind of sexy, right? Sexy-smart. Shall we start a poll?

UPDATE: the video was removed from defamer’s site, although it can be found other places, including dlisted. but not for long, i’m sure.

Yesterday gawker.com posted a video interview with Tom Cruise talking about Scientology, supposedly put together for a “church” event a couple of years ago at which Cruise was honored. It disappeared so fast I never had a chance to click on it, but it resurfaced Monday afternoon on YouTube and linked on defamer and popsugar. It’s jaw droppingly weird, especially the last three minutes. If anyone knows what “spectators” are, please comment. Enjoy.

I’m a movie critic, but I don’t know that many people who actually make films, beyond a few documentary filmmakers I met in graduate school at Berkeley. But I do have two friends, San Francisco-based director/writer Dave Munro and his producing and writing partner (as well as wife) Xandra Castleton, who finally got a big, beautiful break this week when their film “Full Grown Men” was awarded IndieWIRE’s 2007 Undiscovered Gems audience award. The prize is a theatrical release, which any first time feature filmmaker will tell you is vastly superior to some dumb statuette to put on the mantle. And I can’t think of two people who have worked harder in the name of creativity or are more deserving of a break. I won’t be able to review the film when it comes out because I am terribly biased in Dave and Xandra’s favor (to the point where one of the most important events of my life was propelled by Dave’s 40th birthday party, but that’s a whole other story). But I can tell you that it is the first film to make me want to go to Florida, Alan Cumming plays a tough guy in it (which is just as crazy and cool as it sounds) and that Dave and Xandra’s devotion to their project shines through in every frame. Dave says he’s hoping for a Spring 2008 release, so keep an eye out for Full Grown Men at your local theater sometime soon.

The San Francisco Film Critics Circle has a policy against sharing the back stories behind our votes. There was a slip up this morning whereby a member had to be reminded of that policy and was then asked to remove a post that elaborated on, among other things, our runners up. If you follow this link about the New York Film Critics voting process, you’ll see why that’s a good policy. I don’t know Rex Reed, but if someone in the group dislikes him enough to characterize him as having a hissy fit with his colleagues over a specific movie, they should perhaps consider whether they want to be in a group with him. As for exposing the fact that someone in their group had a vehement objection to giving Sidney Lumet a Lifetime Achievement Award because they didn’t like “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” what purpose does that serve expect to make Lumet feel less cheery about his award? Film critics’ groups should keep their voting process private.

You may have read that the San Francisco Film Critics, of which I am a member, chose its annual awards winners last night. It’s an interesting list to say the least, in that it breaks with some of the more established groups (we’ve only been around six years) in terms of who we picked as the year’s best. The most “surprising” choice was “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” a film that divided audiences and critics when it was released earlier this fall.
I’m a pretty passionate person — hence the job I’ve got — and so I left the meeting feeling fiesty, aka, pissed, and ready to do some blogging about our choices. Frankly, the only one I was thrilled about was Tamara Jenkins, who nabbed our screenwriting award for her original script for The Savages (opens in the Bay Area on Dec. 21st, look for my review then). But then we all went out to dinner after picking our awards and drank a fair amount. I got home late, contemplated the wisdom of blogging while wasted and was completely grateful that something had gone wonky with our login system, saving me from the embarrassment of waking up to see my drunken ramblings about how much I preferred my particular dude in the Best Actor category to our winner George Clooney (and don’t get me wrong, I think Clooney did his best work of all time in Michael Clayton).

The thing is though, when you sign up to be in a group, pissing and moaning about what the group chooses is as unseemly as gloating over a close “victory.” We’ve got a solid process of nominations and multiple ballots; it’s really democracy in action. Moreover, I like and respect my colleagues, many of whom are much more articulate about who they like and why than I am (I tend to swear and implore). I’ve got my own venue to write about what I like, ie, the Bay Area News Group’s East Bay papers. I’m lucky enough to write a Top Ten (that will show up around December 28) and in January, I’ll be pontificating about the acting and directing awards right before the Oscar nominations come out. And the SFFCC is not and has never been “Mary Pols and her friends.” It’s a group of 24 professionals who come together at a sweet coffee shop called Cafe Bianco (got to give them a plug, they’re so nice about hosting us) to fight a little, mope a little and most important, vote a lot.

From that process we come up with something that represents a group consensus at this particular moment in time. Then we go out to eat together (I can recommend the beef cheeks at CoCo500) and have a great time, now matter how much we disagreed with each other in the hours prior. In fact, at dinner I think the only thing we fought over was the last piece of mushroom flatbread. That, I believe, I wrestled away from my colleagues.

So I stayed up until 1:30 last night to finish “The Kite Runner” in preparation for reviewing the movie next month. When a book this popular is adapted for the screen, I feel I’ve got to read it, since so many movie goers are going to come at it from a point of comparison to the source material. And now that I’m done, I wonder, how can this movie work? Any film that includes as many coincidences and contrivances as Hosseini’s novel is going to be hard to swallow. Don’t get me wrong, I cried at the gym reading the book, I took BART rather than driving to two screenings solely to give myself more reading time and I’m still worrying about Sohrab’s future (Amir, what about some therapy for the boy?). But as involving as the novel was, I kept coming up against the fact that I couldn’t buy its perfect, strained symmetry.

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I just found an email from a screenwriter/filmmaker from Moraga, Gregg Rossen, who I interviewed way back when when his short “Revenge of the Red Balloon” made it into the Mill Valley Film Festival. Gregg is living in LA, working on a pilot for Fox called “Model Family” (well, technically, he’d LIKE to be working on his pilot, if he weren’t a proud member of the WGA and therefore, on strike). He sent along a link to this short he and his writing partner Brian Sawyer made, starring screenwriters from “Liar, Liar,” “Deuce Bigelow” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Personally, I’d rather not see ANY of those movies again (okay, “Sweet Home Alabama,” on a bleak night) but here’s proof they all have a sense of humor.

The Hollywood Reporter warned today of a dire month for movie marketers should the writers’ strike continue. See, all the late-night shows are going to reruns, which means a drastic cutback on fresh opportunities for celebrities to flack their upcoming holiday films. Apparently this means no Nicole Kidman, giggling like a schoolgirl and crossing and recrossing those giraffe legs in front of an appreciative David Letterman while telling him all about “Margot at the Wedding” (a very good movie Letterman would be highly unlikely to care about, since it features a couple of sisters sitting around bitching at each other). Meanwhile Vince Vaughn …

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