By Borys Kit

Straight from the mouth of Hugh Jackman comes this unlikely nugget about the actor's upcoming role as Wolverine: he took cues from the original Mad Max.

Jackman told a packed crowd at Grauman's Chinese Theatre ahead of the L.A. premiere that he rented the action classic before stepping into the character's shoes. Jackman didn't elaborate on the reasons, but one could guess which sections of the dystopian action thriller — in which Mel Gibson's character chases down villains in a lawless society — might have been relevant  to the "X-Men" star.
 
That Gibson factoid wasn't the only surprise. After revealing the "Mad Max" bit, Jackman thanked Gibson for the film, calling out the actor-director as being in the audience. 

As everyone tried to catch a glimpse of Gibson in a rare public appearance, that caused electricity to course through the crowd like, um, a mutant power unleashed.

By Steven Zeitchik

Like a teenage boy caught stealing a look inside his neighbor's window, we're stuck on the fence. About a lot of things, come to think of it, but at the moment it's about the revival of Wall Street with the same actor and director who made the 1980's version so memorable.

As THR's Jay Fernandez and Borys Kit report, Fox has landed Oliver Stone to direct the Wall Street sequel — don't call it a reboot — and Michael Douglas to revisit his iconic Gordon Gekko character. Gekko will be seen two decades older, if not exactly wiser, as part of a rare move (for a non-action movie) to pick up the thread of a character so many years on.

On one level it's understandable that Fox would want to gin up a reunion. Stone's "Street" earned $43 million in 1987 dollars, defined a generation and earned an Oscar statue for Douglas. Getting the band together at a time when nothing is certain offers a studio more than a little comfort. And doing it when banking — and banking villainy — is high on people's minds offers more than a little appeal.

But on another level we wonder how exactly you revisit the character in this day and age. Douglas' Gekko was an odd, contradictory hybrid, a mix of hero and  cautionary tale.  We knew we weren't supposed to like him, but even after he was felled by his own pride and seemed headed for jail, there was a part of us that still coveted his power and self-confidence. After all, Stone and co-writer Stanley Weiser may have been criticizing the runaway wealth, but they were nonetheless right in the middle of it. The original Wall Street was a boom-time movie.

Plunking that kind of character into today's world, where the banker isn't seen as a king of the universe  but an inept and short-sighted shaman — and where wealth doesn't seem just ill-gotten but elusive — will be a very different story. We liked watching Gekko finally get his because everyone knew, or at least read about, a similar type who scammed his way to the top. Now it's no fun watching that guy on the big screen — we've already seen him fall to the bottom in real life.

Sure, the film could find a creative way to show Gekko learning his lesson– we imagine him going out and making a killing in the real-estate market before the bubble collapses on him. But the fun and force of the original "Wall Street" was seeing a man this powerful game the system for so long. In Wall Street circa  2009, the only message that might land with any force would be the one about staying far, far away.

By Steven Zeitchik

We don't usually use this space to cover some of Hollywood's more insidery news, but the merger of William Morris and Endeavor — officially announced , if not formally consummated, on Monday — will have broad implications even if you're just an average moviegoer.

Basically, since it's in many ways a product of shrinking studio slots and a contracting business, its effect will be to both counter and heighten that trend.

Tentpoles will be more prolific, since packages with top-tier directors, writers and talent will be easier to put together by a factor of two.

At the same time, be prepared for some of the bigger writers and directors to be in a position of flux for a while, as many of them will be repped by agents who are themselves in flux (and are targeted by new agents — as one person at a rival shop put it, "It's a Wild West out there"). That could mean a period of transition more than a period of creativity, deals and greenlights for the players in question, at least in the short term.

There are other ways there will be a reaction for every equal and opposite action.

The shakeout of scores of agents will reduce the overall pool of deals and projects, just as a simple matter of math.  But, further down the line, the world will suddenly get a raft of new producers and managers, which could then deepen the pool again.

(One interesting subplot/case study comes on the indie side, with figures like WMA's Cassian Elwes and Rena Ronson, and Endeavor's Graham Taylor and Alexis Garcia. If any of them aren't a part of the new WME — and there's been speculation that it could go that way  — whoever departs will be just fine in their new incarnation since they all have strong connections on the financing side).

We suspect there'll be more movement and even project news as the new WME — we're almost starting to get used to it — makes its case to the industry, while other agencies make their case by landing former clients and lining up new deals for them. It's a realignment, but not just in a musical chairs kind of way — it changes what gets made and who's making it. So the announcement may have finally come today, but the story's kind of just beginning.

By Georg Szalai

The Tribeca Film Festival kept much of lower Manhattan buzzing Monday night, but the star power was concentrated in midtown, as the industry feted Tom Hanks with the Chaplin Award at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's gala tribute.

"Movie stars turned us down," said Ron Howard, who opened the roasting, about the casting process behind "Splash" that first made Hanks a leading man. "And then we turned to this," he added, showing a picture of Hanks in women's clothes from his time on "Bosom Buddies."

Howard also made some sport of the upcoming theatrical release of "Angels & Demons," saying facetiously and to some laughter that the film sees Hanks "risk his life to try and save the Vatican."

John Patrick Shanley had the audiences in stitches with a series of raunchy comments. After quipping that Hanks has to watch the crowd laud his work and realize that his life is "swiftly drawing to a conclusion," he said after he and Hanks worked together (on the ignoble "Joe Versus the Volcano") his own career went southward, while Hanks' took off.

And they kept coming: Nora Ephron mentioned that Hanks has a large typewriter collection before quipping that he was born Pincus Greenblatt on Long Island and was bar-mitzvahed in Shirley Temple.

Julia Roberts noted that "Everybody f#%@ing likes you," adding ""What can I tell you that's new? Tom Hanks, what the f#%@!?"

Bruce Springsteen, who, strangely given the Upper West Side crowd, drew some boos amid the cheers, noted that Hanks "has the regular guy thing going," and then, self-referentially, "I've perfected that schtick myself. But there was room for someone to do that in film."

And finally Steven Spielberg — who stood out even among a crowd of boldfaced names like Spike Lee,  Mike Nichols, Julia Roberts, and Lorne Michaels — took the stage, and quickly dubbed Hanks, in a reference to his nice-guy reputation, "as the legend next door."

And then Hanks himself got up, saying "I took notes tonight, you bastards," poignantly described art as a battle against loneliness.

Hanks also said "You Got Mail" was made at a time AOL membership cost something like $17, but Ephron was eager to film right away in case the technology would change quickly. "She foresaw Twitter and YouTube", he quipped.

By Steven Zeitchik

New York may be a big place, but the Tribeca Film Festival can feel like a small one. Which is kind of how you end up at a table at an extremely cozy dinner with Melissa Leo, Elisabeth Shue, Philip Noyce and Lucia Noyce (his daughter and an Amnesty International exec).

Said dinner was part of a charming event Amnesty threw Saturday night for the film "Don McKay," Jake Goldberger's story of two lovers, Thomas Haden Church and Shue, reconnecting after many years apart.

Shue was in classically unassuming form, talking about why she took on the role in "McKay" and why she's excited about her role as a sheriff (!) in horrormeister Alexandre Aja's "Piranha," the 3D pic for Dimension she's set to start shooting in a few weeks.

Noyce was thoughtful on everything from the South African political situation, Clint Eastwood's extraordinarily efficient way of essentially editing before he even shoots (and optimism for the director's decision to tell the Mandela story through one central sporting event) and the difference between working with Angelina a decade ago in "The Bonesetter's Daughter" and working with her now on "Salt," of which he says he's shot about fifty minutes (basically, she's mastered her craft between now and then, become savvy about her own scenes, an "Olympian," particularly in action scenes).

 Amnesty of course does great work, as a small pamphlet featuring its universal declaration of human rights shows – not that you need that to tell you. And the dinner showed what's best about both the org and the fest — even when the reach and ambition are big, the best moments are often small and intimate.

By Steven Zeitchik

So it's taken an eclipse to bring out the light.

Yes, there's swine flu and torture interrogations and that most torturous of events, figuring out the future of William Morris-Endeavor. But in the little bubble known as the Tribeca Film Festival there's actually a sliver of good news — even if it's, um, eclipsed by all the bad news everywhere else.

First off, we should say the quality of the Tribeca pics hs actually been high this year. Sundance saw a raised bar, but we expect quality from Sundance. Tribeca is less consistent. But quality is pretty much what we're getting.

Amir Naderi's "Vegas: Based on a True Story," about a man on a quixotic quest to find treasure under his own home, is a clever metaphor for and trenchant comment on our compulsive, irrational real-estate dreams. "The Lost Son of Havana," as we wrote about last week, evokes a real-life "Field of Dreams." But far and away the best pic of the festival that we've seen is "The Eclipse," a tight — really tight — relationship drama with some truly spine-tingling horror elements.

Conor McPherson, an Irish playwright with a stellar track record in the theater world, takes his keen eye for detail and economic sense of storytelling and transfers them here, to a pic about a man who lost his wife and begins seeing ghosts. Far from an easy pulp tale, but equally distant from the quiet relationship drama you've seen at a thousand festivals, "Eclipse" is both emotionally and psychologically surprising. The mood is both serene and gothic, the love story convincing and ominous. And the performances are uniquely great – Ciaran Hinds as the reticent widower, Iben Hjejle (of High Fidelity fame) as the ethereal British beauty and Aidan Quinn doing the smarmy American abroad thing he's been perfecting of late.

More important than us liking it, distributors like it too. At least three buyers are circling — a verb you don't hear often at Tribeca — and it's likely one of them (from among Lionsgate, Magnolia and Roadside) will walk away with it by the end of the week. The comparison from an industry standpoint is to "Transamerica," which back in 2005 also stirred the buyer pot in New York, though that film premiered in Berlin, while "Eclipse" is a true world debut.

So the world may be turning upside down everywhere else. But atTribeca, given the traditionally cool sales environment, upside down may not be such a bad thing.

By Steven Zeitchik

There's been a burst of press and stories, if not exactly outrage, about "Outrage," Kirby Dick's new documentary about closeted politicians.

We caught the film at its Tribeca Film Festival world premiere on Friday, and the director who gave us the surprisingly intense and revealing "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" doesn't quite deliver the same explosive revelations here, though it's still a well-told and compelling vehicle for Dick's main argument against closeted politicians who don't support gay rights. As Rich Tafel, a former Mark Foley staffer, offers, in a characteristically notable if not eye-popping moment, D.C. is "one of  the most gay places but also one of the most closeted."

Dick was careful, both in the film and at the Q&A, to say he's not endorsing outing for outing's sake. His goal in exposing closeted politicians is to change their politics, because it's the fact that they're in the closet, he says, that makes them vote so vehemently against gay rights in the first place (to deflect attention from their own sexuality, among other things).

Some of the men who get the attention — and they are men; there are no closeted lesbians featured — are  former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey (present at the screening, and lauded in the movie for his decision to come out), Barney Frank (also lauded, and with some of the best lines), Idaho senator Larry Craig (lampooned repeatedly for what Dick charges is hypocrisy), California congressman David Dreier (criticized directly, if not as directly as Craig), former New York mayor Ed Koch (ditto, with one especially tough charge) and Florida governor Charlie Crist (who gets a good chunk of the airtime, presumably because, of the entire lot, he's currently the most important political player, with a potential 2012 presidential run in the cards).

There's no direct evidence of Crist's homosexuality, but Dick lands a minor coup when an ex-girlfriend, Kelly Heyniger, tells Dick's film crew that "I think I should just keep my mouth shut….call me in ten years and I'll tell you a story."

The other coup centers on Koch, who Dick charges threatened an alleged former lover, Richard Nathan, if he talked about their relationship, and essentially ran Nathan out of New York.

But by and large this is a documentary that brings together the issue more than it does offer shatteringly new reporting about it; it's in the spirit of Robert Greenwald's "Outfoxed" — you basically knew the M.O., now you just get to see it up close.

Dick also wonders about, and shows subjects criticizing, the mainstream media's under-coverage of the subject, which he suggests is motivated either by a) discomfort or b) misplaced sensitivity — though one could reasonably argue that some in the media might simply responding to the message of the gay rights movement desire that people are judged irrespective of sexuality.

Whatever the reason, Dick is right to point out that this is a topic that doesn't get much mainstream media attention. Now, at least, it will get mainstream film reviews.

By Steven Zeitchik

Blame it on our seeing "Field of Dreams" at too impressionable an age, but baseball movies featuring fathers and sons get us every time. And so it goes with "The Lost Son of Havana," a surprisingly effective doc about the displaced Cuban pitcher Luis Tiant that premiered Thursday at Tribeca.

Jonathan Hock's documentary offers a deceptively simple premise: young Cuban pitcher comes to U.S. just after Cuban revolution, enjoys fruitful Major League career but can't return home to see his family until he (and a documentary crew) finagle spots on a baseball trip back nearly fifty years later, when much of said family is gone or much older.

Tiant can be a little quiet and reflective as a subject; you don't know if he's too wise or too pained by life to say much, and sometimes it seems Hock should go deeper to get at his essence.  But the moments Tiant reunites with his family are quietly powerful, genuinely heartfelt stuff in which he laments with relatives time lost and lives passed by. And they're juxtaposed kind of brilliantly with dramatic on-field scenes from Tiant's comeback-filled career. (An injury robbed the reticent, roly-poly, cigar-puffing hurler of his fastball at the tender age of 29, so he developed new pitching motions that enabled him to play another decade, including three 20-win seasons and two heart-stopping World Series shutouts with the Red Sox in the 1970's).

Hock captures some great slice-of-life moments in Cuba — a park where locals gather to argue about the best Cuban baseball players of all time, for example. And the film has one of the most memorable scenes in a recent doc not named "Man on Wire" — George McGovern, on a trip to Cuba, convinces Fidel Castro to let Tiant's father (at one time a pitcher in the Negro Leagues who had fallen on hard times back in Cuba) make the trip from Cuba to the U.S.. Tiant Sr. eventually travels to Fenway and throws out the first pitch before a game his son starts, in a moment that's right up there with Costner's "Wanna have a catch, Dad?" at end of aforementioned sentiment-filled 80's baseball pic.

"Lost Son of Havana" was exec produced by the Red Sox-worshipping Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who actually ended up down in Cuba playing a game to rationalize the trip to the Cuban government. Bobby Farrelly at the Q&A (where, incidentally, Larry David wandered in, by himself, slightly foggy, it seemed, but applauding vigorously to several comments made by the Farrellys and Tiant): "You saw these guys who play against us, who cleaned our clock, and we gave them our hats and our shoes and our gloves because they didn't have anything — our team literally walked on the bus in our underwear — and it was the most moving thing you could imagine, because they loved this game but they didn't even have gloves or bats to play it with."

There's something wistful about the film, not just the shots of 70's baseball games on long summer evenings, but the whole pace of life Hock captures down in Cuba, hardships and all. ESPN just bought the movie for a summer airing. Outside of visting the ballpark, we couldn't imagine a better way to spend a sultry August evening.