AND THE WINNER IS…

A friend recently introduced me to this footage of Henry Thomas‘ incredible audition for the starring role of Elliott in Steven Spielberg’s now-classic E.T.: the Extraterrestrial (1982). I can’t help but wonder what Thomas—who was only ten at the time—was drawing upon to evoke such an emotional performance at his audition and in the film (opposite another child prodigy, Drew Barrymore). Regardless, you’ve gotta hand it to the kid… he was damn good. So, the inevitable question… what ever happened to Henry Thomas? He attended college in his native Texas; showed up in modestly sized roles in decent films like Legends of the Fall (1994) and Gangs of New York (2002), as well as in a lot of junk; married and divorced, re-married and separated; and now, at thirty-six, is apparently dabbling in producing.

This, direct from MSNBC.com, is quite possibly the funniest “news” headline/article that I have ever come across… if you’re not laughing, you must be dead inside.

Hillary Clinton greets Obama supporter Doris Smith yesterday in West Virginia

CHARLESTON, WV (AP): “Doris Smith went downtown early Monday to see about getting tickets to Barack Obama’s rally. Advance seats were sold out, she said, and the only option was to stand in line for two hours or more and hope for the best. Disappointed, she decided instead to go for breakfast—and walked right into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign stop. ‘Oh, I didn’t want to do this,’ Smith said, embarassed, wearing an Obama T-shirt as Clinton walked into the restaurant. ‘I didn’t know she was going to be here.’”

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Where do we find such girly-men?”

I just got off the phone after one of the most special interviews I’ve ever conducted: I spoke with national treasure Doris Eaton Travis, the last surviving “Ziegfeld Girl,” who is 104 years old and still sharp as a tack mentally (she remembers everything!) and physically (as you can see here, she’s still dancing!). Over the course of an hour, we talked about her entire life, but especially about the three years (1918-1920) during which she worked for Broadway empresario Florenz Ziegfeld and appeared in his famed Ziegfeld Follies showgirl-spectaculars, which were the most popular thing on the Great White Way during the first quarter of the 20th century. I have uploaded our entire conversation and you should be able to listen to it below—but the site has been experiencing some technical difficulties, so if you can’t hear it now then be sure to check back soon…

This afternoon, Glenn Kenny, the premier film critic at Premiere since 1998 (in other words, from the time it was still a print magazine through its fairly recent transition to being exclusively on the web) announced on his Premiere blog that he has been handed his walking papers, and then this evening re-emerged on what appear to be his new stomping grounds, at least until he lands somewhere else. I was introduced to Kenny last year at an event in New York for Lust, Caution, but I can’t say that I know him. I can conclude, though, that his exit has hit a major nerve simply by reading the dozens of reader comments posted on his Premiere site and/or the numerous posts by his colleagues on their own sites, including Ty Burr, Lou Lumenick, Anne Thompson, and Jeff Wells. Many film critics have been getting the boot lately (film critic Sean P. Means of the Salt Lake Tribune has been keeping a list of the recently departed), but I gather that most were nearing retirement, and/or bought out, and/or given another position, and/or not as high-profile as Kenny. I now get the sense that those who are still being paid to write about film are really shaken up by this particular case and feel that if Kenny is considered disposable… who isn’t? Anyway, here’s wishing him the best of luck. In related news, today’s NPR show “All Things Considered” included a brief segment about the rapid disappearance of film critics—I’m not sure if it was scheduled prior to or as a result of Kenny’s situation, but check it out.

It was one thing to teasingly pose nude (from the back) for a PETA ad last month (see above), but actress Eva Mendes (Training Day, Hitch, Ghost Rider) has kicked things up to a whole ‘nother level with this photoshoot for Vogue Italia in which she is made to look like Sophia Loren in her prime… only topless and/or sucking her toes and/or wearing leather or lingerie in about a dozen photos. I heard about them today and, as a heterosexual male who has always found her to be pretty hot, checked them out… but they actually don’t strike me as all that flattering. Frankly, it is unclear to me why the 34 year old, who was recently released from a stint in rehab and was presumably trying to restore her good-girl reputation, agreed to do this—her next movie, a re-make of The Women (Picturehouse) that is rumored to be pretty weak, isn’t coming out until September 12, so this is definitely not taking one for the team. It seems like a fairly desperate act from someone trying to revive a floundering career…

On Tuesday night, an old high school friend was in town and wanted to check-off two Boston “musts” that I had somehow never gotten around to during the years I’ve lived here: (1) eat dinner at the restaurant on the top floor of the city’s second-tallest skyscraper, the Prudential Center, and (2) see a movie at the famed Brattle Theater in Harvard Square, where young cineastes have been screening classic movies since the fifties (when they famously championed Citizen Kane, which had been a critical and box-office failure during its initial run, and helped cement its reputation as the greatest movie).

After dinner at “The Top of the Hub,” which was expensive but worth it if only for the amazing views of the entire city offered by the full-length windows, we rushed over to the Brattle for a 9:30pm screening of Raging Bull (1980), the second part of a double bill that also offered Rocky (1976) earlier in the night. Many critics (and moviegoers) believe the great Scorsese-De Niro collaboration is the best film of the last thirty years; I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pretty damn good and holds up terrifically. (I’d obviously seen it before, but never on the big screen, and it was definitely neat to do so.)

Anyone who is in the Boston-area should make a point of stopping by The Brattle, especially over the next week or so, when it will continue to screen celebrated classics as one of the 20 select “markets of independent theaters and cinema houses in key cities throughout the United States” playing host to the United Artists 90th Anniversary Film Festival. (Not a bad promotional idea from the historic studio purchased by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner in November 2006, right?) A single screening costs $9.50, but there are several double features for which you get both movies for the price of one. You can click here to see the full schedule, but some highlights include The Manchurian Candidate (1962) on May 9, The Great Escape (1963) on May 10, West Side Story (1961) on May 11, The Apartment (1960) and Some Like It Hot (1959) on May 12 and May 13, Rain Man (1988) on May 14, and Annie Hall (1977) and Midnight Cowboy (1969) on May 15.

The London Daily Mail has hit a new low by covertly snapping photos of a dying Patrick Swayze and publishing them on their web site. The 55 year old actor is reportedly suffering from pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest sorts, and has been making final arrangements with his wife of 32 years for after he’s gone. Swayze will always be remembered for his potting wheel scene with Demi Moore in Ghost (1990), which was voted the top love scene of all time in 2003, and his dance floor moves with Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing (1987), which were brilliantly imitated in this recently-viral YouTube clip of a newlywed’s first dance. Grey recently told a newspaper, “I wish him all my love and I have great faith that he is a fighter.” (I had dinner in March with Swayze’s Ghost co-star/nemesis Tony Goldwyn, who was in town to pick up an award, and asked him if he had heard anything from Swayze. He said they hadn’t really kept in touch much over the years, but had heard the news the same way as the rest of us and was very saddened by it.)