By Steven Zeitchik

Get ready to read a lot of favorable pieces about “Frost/Nixon.” That’s not because the movie is flawless (it’s good, with strong performances and cultural tonalities and a powerful sense of justice, but not flawless), but because no movie flatters the press like this one.

You have to go back to 90’s entertainments like “The Paper” to see even traces of this kind of moral elevation, and all the way back to “All the President’s Men” to find a heroism so comprehensive. Most journalistic movies in the past thirty years have been informed by more cynical conceptions: opportunism, (”The Insider”), naivete (”Absence of Malice”) cheating (”Shattered Glass”) shallowness (”The Devil Wears Prada”),
and all of the above (”Broadcast News”)

A quick summary on F/N: The movie, based on Peter Morgan’s play, takes a look at the verbal sparring — more like a lopsided UFC match until the inevitable final-round comeback — between Richard Nixon and David Frost in the months shortly after Nixon’s resignation. But the real drama is between Frost and his team, the former of whom comes from a slick talk-show background and the latter of which are relentless (though not entirely humorless) truthseekers.

The movie, like so many about journalism, understands reporting as a mix of detective work and cross-examination, not as a quest for revelation and information. The great achievement comes when Frost corners Nixon, like some kind of debate-team champion,  into a confession, and the coup de grace is pulled off with some kind of muddy investigative triumph (the smoking gun was in federal papers…the…whole…time)

No matter. Frost wins his battle, and the team, which includes the righteous James Reston Jr. in Sam Rockwell’s best turn in a long time, is celebrated not just onscreen but through viewer catharsis.

The timing couldn’t be better for such a message of uplift. Journalists, you may have noticed, are taking a beating on all fronts. There’s Sarah Palin, telling us how she’d rather go directly to the American people instead of through pesky and unnecessary filters; they just get in the way. There’s the Tribune company, cutting meat and bone and the entire animal. And then there’s all the media itself telling us, tendentiously, how all the other media is too tendentious to listen to.

Amid all this, what could be more comforting than a reminder — no, a celebration — of a time when journalists mattered, when they didn’t just have the courage of their convictions but used those convictions to topple leaders, and were celebrated as rock stars for doing so. At the Westside media screening we attended Tuesday evening, there was knowing, sometimes showy, laughter to many of the media jokes, vocal reminders that the many press in the audience Get It and will happily crow about this movie to show that they Get It.

When “Sideways” made its unlikely run to awards and box-office glory four yeas ago, it did so on the backs of critics drawn to Paul Giamatti’s inner critic and curmudgeon. Print  and broadcast reporters will be similarly enthused to see such glowing versions of themselves.

By Steven Zeitchik

“Milk” is one of the most promising movies of the year. Though it’s a Gus Van Sant flick, it follows in the steps of his more focused previous efforts — call it Good Milk Hunting. The movie is poignant and political. And given both Sean Penn’s skill and the general polarized climate of November every four years, a culture-wars movie — even one with a general message of love and understanding — is always on point.

Yet before its San Francisco premiere Tuesday night, Focus is being more targeted in its media appriach; while it did do some ads around the presidential debates, it didn’t take “Milk” to fall festivals and has been more restrained about showing the pic to short-lead media. Of course San Francisco will no doubt finally set the press in motion on the Van Sant title. (What’s also clear about the future of Van Sant and scribe Dustin Lance Black, who came out of nowhere to write the spec for “Milk” and steal the thunder of the long-gestating Zadan/Merron project, is that the pair will again team up to chronicle the country’s countercultural history; as Borys Kit reports, the duo will collaborate on a project that will finally move toward the goal of putting Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” on the bigscreen.)

The quieter approach to “Milk,” which we spent the last few days hunkering down in, has a specific goal: with all the politicking going on (not just the election but, here in California, with Proposition 8, a subject that mirrors eerily one of Harvey Milk’s battles), the company was eager to avoid talk-radio defining the movie for it.

Lionsgate took a somewhat different tack with “W” and “Religulous.” When you’re promoting a smaller political picture (the budget for “Milk” is probably in the $20 million range, high for a Van Sant movie but humble given the movie’s ambition of capturing an entire place and time), editorial page coverage isn’t just a way to save on your publicity bills — it’s a chance for the movie to seem bigger than it is.

But the tradeoff is one Focus doesn’t want. Maybe it’s gunshyness from all the Brokeback culture wars — which helped at the box office but probably led a little to the Brokebacklash that cost it a best picture Oscar. Or maybe it’s just the realization that this movie, unlike that one, really is much more of a political firebomb at the Parents Television Council, the Yes on 8 crew and all their anti-gay-rights cohorts, so it would rather not tackle them head-on.

Either way, the movie world premieres in San Francisco, site of all the historymaking, Tuesday night. Expect the media coverage and Bill O’Reillyization to follow. And expect the movie to be as much of a political football as anything Peyton Manning has ever thrown.

By Steven Zeitchik

The amazing thing about the “Saw” franchise is not so much that it continues to have life five movies in — other series have done that, especially in horror — but just how amazingly reliable it has become.

With its $30.5 million <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ia353f77f11f28ab9658fbf3d82fecc9d?imw=Y
“>opening weekend, “Saw V” is not simply the fourth straight movie in the series to open in respectable territory, dollar-wise: it’s the fourth straight opening that’s within a few percentage points of the others. (By contrast, another long-running horror franchise, “Friday the 13th,” shot up by 30% and then down by that much between its second and fifth iterations.)

Unless Lionsgate is spending wildly on P&A to prop up its numbers — and it hardly seems like that’s the case — that means the franchise has now become the studio holy grail: the (nearly) automatic success. Saw has the consistency of a highly rated television show, only in the more slipper realm of theatrical openings.

Just another $30 million this time around and the movie will set a record for the highest grossing horror franchise of all time. With its recurring plots of victims trying to escape torture in small rooms, the success shows that the video-game approach (familiar format, new challenges) has a life on the bigscreen.

Some will say that the franchise benefits from the annual release schedule, since the zeitgeist and audience doesn’t have a chance to outgrow it. There’s something to that. But pushing against that is the fatigue factor; when you open a new movie every twelve months, you risk an audience backlash. The conventional wisdom is that, like an Italian dinner, a certain amount of time has to pass before filmgoers are hungry again. But Saw doesn’t seem to prompt that (in fact, this new movie worked despite a switch in directors for the first time in three pictures).

There’s also the conventional wisdom that a sequel hast to fall off twice in a row, or very precipitously, before an entire franchise is killed. Which means you pretty much can expect a Saw VII.

What has gone down is critics’ approval. You wouldn’t expect a franchise like Saw to ever be on David Edelstein’s top ten list. But the first one played Sundance and earned a not-entirely-disrespectable 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. The last one scored a thin 15%.

Also on the sequel front this weekend came, of course, “High-School Musical 3,” which earned a tuneful $42 million. It’s not really surprising, given the tens of millions who watched even re-airings of the original two telepics, that the movie would pack such a wallop.

But the outgrowing factor may play a role here – -not for the audience, which seems to constantly replenish, but for the stars, at least some of whom will move on after this movie. If only Disney could find a way to trap them in a small room.

By Steven Zeitchik

We’ve been getting more than a few interesting responses to the notion that Ben Stiller could direct “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” the DreamWorks passion project that’s had big names like Spielberg and Greengrass associated with it over the past six months.

A lot of responses, we should say, but not necessarily diverse ones. Mostly the reaction has been — Stiller? The Zoolander guy?

The idea is that Stiller would take the reins of the period political story about the 1968 Democratic-convention riots and their aftermath, and may or may not come on to star himself, though he usually does in his directorial efforts. (It should be noted this is a 50-50 proposition at best; the conversations are happening at least in part because DW is trying to show Stiller the full range of possibilities as it woos his Red Hour banner to come with them. There are other names we’re hearing as well, including Bill Condon and Stephen Daldry.)

We get at some level the skepticism about Stiller, who’s proven adept as a director but generally in the same satires that people associate with his roles. But we’ll take the contrarian position and say he could pull this off.

First, Stiller would be working from an estimable foundation. The project as a script from Aaron Sorkin and pedigreed producers in Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. Plus there’s the source material: producers have bought Brett Morgan’s “Chicago 10,” the ambitious but uneven animated doc that opened Sundance a couple years back. That movie may have been flawed as a doc, but the characterizations were colorful and the history was powerful, and with the right twists it could make a hell of a feature.

Maybe more to the point, though, is Stiller’s previous credits. Sure, he directed some pretty goofball comedies. But he also helmed “Reality Bites,” which in many ways covered events and trends as defining to Generation X as the Chicago riots were to baby boomers. And even his high-concept comedies like “Tropic Thunder” and “Zoolander” take on some zeitgeisty topics that “Chicago 7″ would inevitably tackle.

Plus there’s this factor — the comedy isn’t a bad thing. With so many political pics taking deadly serious tones, he could bring some much-needed light-heartedness. Stiller’s most-maligned directorial effort, “The Cable Guy,” was maligned because it was too dark for a comedy. Maybe here he, mercifully, brings a little comedy to a drama.

By Steven Zeitchik

A day without fall-scheduling news is a day without sunshine. As Carl DiOrio reports, Warner Bros. has finally set a date for “Gran Torino.” The movie will follow the limited-December, wide-January pattern of many late-season awards movies, opening in limited on December 17 and widening after New Year’s. That’s not just a tactic that recent kudo successes like “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “There Will be Blood” followed — it’s a pattern that has served Eastwood himself well with movies like “Million Dollar Baby” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”

In fact, this year for Clint is looking a lot like 2006, when he also had a movie from a non-Warners studio earlier in the season (”Flags of Our Fathers”) and a Warners one later in it (”Letters from Iwo Jima”). Then, perhaps like now, the first one was the hotter awards candidate coming in, but it was the latter film that ended up drawing the Best Picture nomination. Given the mixed reviews of “Changeling” — and readers who remember our Cannes wriite-up recall our own deep ambivalence — could we be in for a 2006 repeat?

(There’s also this bit of handy bit of potentially instructive trivia, given that Eastwood stars in “Torino” but not in “Changeling.” Eastwood has  been nominated for best director and picture four times. The two occasions he won those awards he starred in the film; the two times he didn’t, he wasn’t on screen. The already Eastwood-partial Oscar voters for some reason seem to be more sympathetic to him when they get specific reminders.)

As for how much Warners is still thinking of “Torino” — which has been shrouded in secrecy; what little is known is that it’s about a Million Dollar Baby-esque premise about a hardened older man who befriends a younger person from a troubled background — the studio’s Dan Fellman tells THR all you need to know. “It’s a film that’s sure to have great appeal both with moviegoers and critics,” he said.

Not to mention those voters with a soft heart for Clint.

By Steven Zeitchik

The bombshell scoop comes courtesy of Borys Kit’s exclusive in today’s THR: Relativity Media could be moving into distribution with the acquisition of Universal genre label Rogue Pictures.

Rogue has been as much a label as a standalone entity, one whose movies were meant to balance out the prestige pics at specialty label Focus and, since it became part of Uni, augment the company’s wider-quadrant titles. That would suggest a unit that’s hard to break out from the rest of a studio.

But as Kit reports, the companies have been negotiating for several months for a deal that would essentially give Relativity the Rogue library (jewel in that crown is summer sleeper “Strangers”) and a development slate that includes desirable genre titles like “Castlevania” and the “Strangers” sequel.

But the big coup in the deal is access to Universal’s distribution pipeline — which means that the movies Relativity makes, whether it’s the potential Leo vehicle “The Low Dweller” or last year’s “3:10 to Yuma,” would automatically go through Uni’s pipeline just like, say, Marvel and Paramount, without having to be set up anew each time.

There are some implications for Universal if the deal happens, many of them having to do with NBC U and GE and its desire to divest. But for Relativity it’s a true gamechanger.

Ryan Kavanaugh’s company has been itching to get into theatrical distribution for some time; though the firm is a powerful financing and co-production entitiy, it has lacked a distribution component. (Kavanaugh in an interview with THR several weeks ago said that he wants to “solidify (the company’s) role as a competitive media entity.”). With the Uni distribution pact, it now essentially has that, and comes closer than ever to covering the many tasks a studio does.

It also means, given that these pics are smaller, that the company could now be making a lot more movies entirely on its own, instead of the co-financing deals more common to its bigger titles.

Of course how this distribution deal will work out, especially given that Universal already has a beefed-up slate thanks to DreamWorks deal, remains to be seen. And the development slate, while a nice wholesale purchase, don’t encompass as many tentpoles as a top-tier financier might want.

Still, it’s a remarkable story. Relativity began life essentially as a hedge fund, evolved into a production banner with financial muscle — and thus greenlight power — and may now be adding a distribution component and a slate in one fell swoop, becoming as close to a studio as a non-studio can get. It’s not quite DreamWorks circa 1995, but if the deal happens, it’s about as diverse a company as you’ll get growing out of film-financing roots.

By Steven Zeitchik

Creating movies out of video games has always seemed a little like creating a car to look like a horse-and-buggy — fine to reassure those skeptical about the transition, but really, what’s the point?

That’s probably why we’re always a little surprised when a film adaptation of a video-game works at the box-office. A video-game that springs from iconic moments from, for example, “Scarface” appeals because it’s a cool bit of merchandising that extends the life of the original. But the other direction makes less sense — if you can actually become the character, why pay money to see a pale and static version derived from him?

Which is another way of saying that we’re surprised at the $18 million success of  ”Max Payne” at the box-office this weekend. Audiences uncharacteristically bent to the bigscreen, controller-less version of the underdog crimesolver, a lot more so than the did many previous vidgame-derived disappointments (”Doom,” “Silent Hill,” “Final Fantasy”). (”Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” of course did a hefty bit of business, but that was drawn from a game with an unusually sophisticated backstory and also had what anthropology grad-students might call the Angelina factor.)

“Payne” got shelled by critics (17% on Rotten Tomatoes) and gamer friends say filmmakers did little to satisfyingly deepen or extend the mythology. Like with other adaptations, the film couldn’t reinvent itself for the screen.

Still, the movie succeeded financially, at least in its devotee-friendly first week, and for Fox that should be enough. But creatively it also seems like another example of how, for all their respective virtues, the twin forms of vidgames and movies are too often shoehorned into one another. It’s a continuation of the problem, in reverse, of too many movies unconsciously taking their cues from video games;  look at how Indy 4 wandered from level to level–um, storyline to storyline–without narrative cohesion.

Don’t get us wrong — there’s plenty of creative, even cinematic, expression in video games, and tons of opportunities for cross-pollination between the two worlds as a result (check out the way the new outerspace shooter Dead Space owes a debt to James Cameron’s “Alien,” while “Payne” itself draws strongly from John Woo.) But the worlds may need to evolve more fluidly than they do with adaptations.

We once heard Paul Schrader say that the 20th century was the century of film but the 21st century would be one of another, far more interactive, medium. That strikes us as prescient. And as a reason why Payne may turn out to be a flash in the pan.

By Steven Zeitchik

If you thought the Dow was swinging around lately, you should see the Oscar
race. In three days, three movies were effectively knocked out. And though of course there’s still a chance that Ed Zwick’s “Defiance,” Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” or John Hillcoat’s “The Road” — the wide releases of all of which were moved to 2009 — could get noms because of qualifying runs, we wouldn’t even bet something as worthless as that Dodger World Series ticket on the notion. (Technically “Defiance” releases in 2008, though it’s rare for a movie that doesn’t widen until mid-January to draw enough attention to be nominated.)

Now, the truth is that despite the directorial pedigree, “The Soloist” was not a frontrunner even in the actor categories (random insight: in tough economic times, will the movie hit a snag or tap a vein because it features a man down on his financial luck?). And “The Road” may or may not have crossed far enough over the genre line to be an Oscar movie. But still, even the appearance of room is going to give encouragement and impetus to smaller and out-of-season movies to make a run, particularly in the actor categories where the aforementioned trio were strongest.

That means Richard Jenkins for first-half release “The Visitor” — sure, memories aren’t always long but the movie did get nearly $10 million in tickets and his low-key performance fills a void other roles on the shortlist don’t — and even stars of tentpoles (we’re thinking particularly of Robert Downey, who could have had a career of Oscar neglect — he’s had only one nom, for “Chaplin” 16 years ago — mae up for with “Soloist” and now might have it made up for with “Iron Man”). And let’s not get into whether these moves makes Warners sufficiently emboldened to bet the house and put Ledger in best actor.

Every year there’s talk of an acting race beind weak or wide open and yet somehow the Academy manages to find five people who are not “The Rock” by the time January rolls around. Still, drop a few actors out and that openness has turned a race very close.