The News: I Am Not Cuba

"He probably did the best he could": Nicky Barnes likes Cuba Gooding Jr., but... (Photo: Magnolia Pictures)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--We kind of predicted this nearly two weeks ago, but whatever moderate love-in you thought you experienced when Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes hit a synergistic gold mine with American Gangster and Mr. Untouchable -- the new films based their respective lives -- is pretty much over. And it apparently starts with Cuba Gooding Jr.'s portrayal of Barnes as a blinged-out, dope-slinging retard in the former film -- not quite the articulate multi-millionaire entrepreneur Marc Levin revived for the latter. "Frank is functionally illiterate," Barnes told Rush and Molloy. "I've read all of Shakespeare. I can quote his sonnets. I read Dickens, Melville, Emily Dickinson. I won a poetry contest against inmates from the entire prison system. I did things Frank is incapable of. They took attributes of me and gave them to Frank. He was an empty vessel." Nicky, really -- you had the script. You loved it when they cast a canned ham to portray you. You didn't see this coming? I mean, really.

--Barry Diller is backing up Michael Eisner in saying the ongoing WGA strike is "stupid." "In order to have gotten to 'strike moment,' everyone must have screwed up, which makes it difficult to get them back to some sort of sanity," he told Fox's Neil Cavuto, adding that there is no revenue yet from online content. Hell yes, I can vouch for that.

--Rummaging through his father's belongings after a tough weekend around the house, John Buffalo Mailer reportedly packed up a handful of polyester ties, a crystal butter dish and the rights to The Naked and the Dead. "I know just the place for these," he is rumored to have told a source. Alas, Harlot's Ghost is still there alongside the silverware and a whole box of yellowed, undistributed mayoral campaign fliers.

--It's hard to tell what's more depressing about this season's big releases: Their subject matter or their quality. Over at New York Magazine, Lane Brown and Dan Kois help us sort it all out. (NB: Where's The Savages here? It touches pretty much all the bases, doesn't it?)

Posted at November 13, 2007 8:18 AM