If you've ever met the two men who were supposed to put Apparition Films on the map -- meaning indie film wizard Bob Berney and River Road's deep-pocketed Bill Pohlad -- you'd know right away who sucks all the air out of the room.

Pohlad is a nice, genial guy, but very much the earnest, low-key Midwesterner who's probably spent most of his life trying to steer people past the fact that he comes from an incredibly wealthy family. (His late father, the financier Carl Pohlad, who died last year at age 93, was the longtime owner of the Minnesota Twins, which remains in the family, run by another one of Carl's sons.)

Bob Berney is a live-wire guy, sort of the classy modern-day version of Sammy Glick, if Glick had been born in Oklahoma instead of Brooklyn. Famous in indie film circles for launching a wide array of unlikely hits, including "Memento," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Passion of the Christ," Berney has been so lionized by so many media types -- myself included -- that he now has a legion of detractors who say that he hogged too much of the credit for his successes. If he has hogged, he's rarely been caught in the act, perhaps because his wife is a top-flight publicist, so if there's sleight of hand its hard to see which hand is doing the dealing.

At any rate, as you've no doubt heard by now, with the scoop going to Deadline's Mike Fleming, the two men behind Apparition have split, with Berney bailing on the company right on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival and after the company had only released a smattering of films, none of them successes.

Everyone is asking: What happened? Did Berney quit on the eve of Cannes because he knew it was the time when he'd get the most PR play for his departure? Or did he quit because after the debacle of "The Runaways" -- a film that got a million miles of press coverage but only made $3.4 million at the box office -- he realized that Apparition was under-capitalized and that Pohlad wasn't going to be tossing any more of his own money into the ring?

Most people agree that Apparition did not put up anywhere near the kind of marketing dough needed to launch "The Runaways," which never made it into more than 244 theaters at a time. It's possible that Berney saw the writing on the wall and flew the coop. The company's effort to break out Jane Campion's period drama "Bright Star" last fall was also a bust, especially considering that it spent $4.5 million to acquire the film just before Cannes last year.

I'd say that this is yet another example of how the old model for indie film releasing is broken, so broken that even a magician like Berney can't figure out a way to fix it. Pohlad has bankrolled some admirable films in recent years, but since "Brokeback Mountain" back in 2005, he hasn't shown much in the way of commercial taste. So he needs Berney more than Berney needs him. Perhaps that's why Berney -- who's been a free agent almost as often as Milton Bradley in recent years, hopping from Newmarket to IFC to Picturehouse to Apparition -- is looking for a new film team that needs a star talent. 

Berney is an all-star closer, but before he joins a new team he'd better figure out how to rejuvenate the old indie film formula, which looks more anemic than ever.

Photo: Bob Berney, left, Kristen Stewart and Bill Pohlad at the March 11 premiere of "The Runaways." Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

I'm not taking any credit for this myself, but Warner Bros. has been getting such an enthusiastic reception from its early screenings of the new Rob Reiner film, "Flipped," that the studio is moving the movie up from its original Sept. 17 release date to sometime in early August.

I saw the film the other night and was knocked out. It's a great return to form for Reiner, who co-wrote and directed the story about the topsy-turvy relationship between two mismatched eighth graders set in the 1950s. Maybe it's the period, maybe it's the sweetness of the story, but it certainly took me back to the early years of Reiner's career, when he was making such affecting films as "Stand By Me" and "The Princess Bride."

"Flipped" is loaded with nice performances, both from its two young leads -- Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe -- as well as a host of character actors like John Mahoney, Aidan Quinn and Penelope Ann Miller who fill out the ensemble cast. But when I called up Warners chief Alan Horn to tell him how much I liked the movie, I teased him by saying that of all the performances, the one that was sure to get the most attention was by the young actress who plays the relatively minor role of McAuliffe's older sister.

Horn could tell where I was going right away. The older sister part is played by Cody Horn, his daughter, who is an NYU student, model and aspiring actress. It's no secret that Horn and Reiner are old friends, but the studio chief was quick to assure me that he had nothing to do with Cody getting the part, having scrupulously avoided doing anything to promote her career.

As it turns out, Cody had a part in "Twelve," an upcoming Joel Schumacher film. In the course of making the film, she had befriended a young actor who was auditioning for Reiner for the part of one of Carroll's older brothers in "Flipped." Reiner was flying the actor out to Los Angeles last year, so Cody decided to travel with him and surprise her mother for Mother's Day. She went with the actor to Reiner's offices at Castle Rock, where her father had worked years before.

"Rob saw Cody and asked her if she wanted to read for a part, which she did," Horn explained to me. "Afterward, Rob called me up and told me that she'd had a great audition and he thought she was really right for the [older sister] role. I said to Rob, 'Do what's right for the movie. I know we're friends, but if she's not absolutely right for the part, you shouldn't cast her.'"

Reiner brushed aside Horn's concerns, taking the position that all directors take when they need to get studio approval for something they want. "Rob stopped me and said, 'Wait a minute. I'm the one who likes her in the part. Don't you want my movie to work?'" Horn recalls. "So of course, I told him that if you're sure it's the right thing for the movie, go ahead. I'm just happy we got to make the movie. I like the material and its message and it really tapped into the kind of values that I like seeing being portrayed in films. And the music is great. I guess there aren't that many Everly Brothers fans who are still around, but I'm one of them."

Horn and I haven't always seen eye to eye on the quality of Warners releases -- "Clash of the Titans" simply being the most recent example -- but I'm happy to agree with him about "Flipped." It's the kind of film you'll want to take your 12-year-old to see this summer, not just as a respite from the noisy superhero adventures, but because it reminds kids to look past outward appearances -- it's what's inside that counts. And yes, judging from her performance, Cody Horn got the part on her own merits. She has a great scene in the film, telling off her closed-minded father. Meanwhile, I get the feeling that she has a real-life dad who's especially proud of her too. 

Photo: Rob Reiner at the ACE Eddie Awards in February in Beverly Hills. Credit: Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images

As I read Nicole LaPorte's lively new history of DreamWorks, "The Men Who Would Be King," I found myself transported to a time long, long ago, an era so far gone that when DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg once complained to titular DreamWorks production chief Walter Parkes that he didn't have anything resembling a tentpole action extravaganza on the production slate, Parkes calmly replied: "If this is the kind of place where you need to have a big summer movie, well, maybe I'm not the right person for the job."

Ah, those were the days. Founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Katzenberg when they were three of the uber-titans of the entertainment business, DreamWorks was supposed to be the studio that would transform the movie business, a modern-day media behemoth with its tentacles in music, TV, video games and all sorts of other gaudy new media arenas.

Instead of making dumbed-down comedies and  throwaway programmers, DreamWorks would offer glossy, sophisticated films that would appeal to quality-conscious moviegoers -- and still make plenty of money in the process.

It didn't pan out. For all the hoopla about DreamWorks being the studio of the future, it was very much a studio steeped in the past. Its aspirations had far more in common with the MGM of the 1930s and 1940s than the Pixar of the 21st century. DreamWorks turned out to be nothing more than just another struggling new movie studio -- and quite a whopper of a dysfunctional studio at that -- with its admirable output of quality fare ultimately outweighed by a host of costly live-action misfires and a mixed bag of animation releases.

In short, when you look back at all the high expectations, it was a pretty big disappointment. 

DreamWorks 2.0 is back in business, now run by Spielberg and Stacey Snider with its films being distributed by Disney. But as LaPorte's book makes abundantly clear, the original DreamWorks was doomed from the start. Parkes' reaction to Katzenberg's initial concerns about the studio's mandate is especially revelatory on several levels. Even back in the late 1990s, when the exchange occurred, studios were already turning themselves into franchise engines, filling up their slates with tentpole movies and tons of sequels.

But Parkes was simply reflecting the attitude of his real boss - -Spielberg, who as the book reveals, was so in awe of Parkes' Ivy League erudition, good looks and certitude that as one observer put it, "If an alien from space landed in a room with Steven and Walter, it would think that Steven worked for Walter." So Parkes was reflecting Spielberg's vision for the company, as an artist-oriented studio that would do good works, an admirable vision, but not one that entirely reflected the views of Geffen, a man with a fierce desire to win, and Katzenberg, who having worked for years under Michael Eisner, had both feet firmly planted in the camp of making crowd-pleasing entertainment.

As the book also points out, the tension between Katzenberg and Spielberg, via Parkes, wasn't just about a different attitude toward class versus crass. It also reflected Katzenberg's not always unspoken feeling that after years of studio experience, he was far more qualified to run DreamWorks' live-action division than Parkes, a talented writer-producer with, well, zero actual experience running a studio. But to Spielberg, Katzenberg may have been his partner, but he was still a schlepper. Parkes had good taste. So when "The Peacemaker," DreamWorks' first live-action film, went into production, shooting in Slovakia, its star, George Clooney, was furious to discover that he was always having to learn new lines faxed in from L.A. by Parkes, who it turned out wasn't just the studio chief and a producer of the film but its rewrite man as well.

This sort of thing happened all the time at DreamWorks, which never managed to have any clear divisions of authority, except for the fact that Katzenberg had full sway over its animation wing. A series of production chiefs came and went, including such highly touted talents as ex-HBO executive Bob Cooper and ex-New Line production chief Michael De Luca, none of them lasting very long, quickly discovering that Parkes and his wife, Laurie MacDonald, were the real powers behind the throne.

Shortly after De Luca arrived, LaPorte writes that Parkes and MacDonald took him around town to introduce the new studio president at the top talent agencies. But over and over, De Luca and the other DreamWorks production execs were made to wait outside until Parkes and MacDonald finished the most important piece of business -- offering a presentation of the movies they were producing themselves. "It was unbelievable," one agent told LaPorte. "The writing was on the wall, right there. [Their] agenda was first, and Mike was an afterthought."

After I finished reading the book last week, I asked LaPorte the obvious question: What went wrong? She has some intriguing theories about the company's failure to live up to its high expectations. Keep reading:

I don't know anyone under 65 who actually watches "60 Minutes" and I'm beginning to think I understand why after Andy Rooney, who's a spry 91 years old, weighed in last night on the state of popular music.

His motivation was simple: Someone sent him a copy of Billboard, perhaps as a prank, and he perused the magazine's Hot 100 and discovered that -- gasp! -- he'd never heard of anyone in the top ranks of the pop charts.

This is apparently how "60 Minutes" commentaries are born. Rooney got two good minutes worth of material out of chewing over this development, wondering out loud: Who's Lady Gaga? Who's Justin Bieber? And for that matter, who's Usher?

I know that Rooney has a reputation for being a humorist as well as a commentator, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that at least a bit of his tongue may have been in his cheek. 

But then again, I'm not so sure, since it was Rooney who was widely criticized more than 15 years ago for belittling the media uproar over the suicide death of Kurt Cobain, saying that he'd never heard of him or his band, Nirvana, either, so why were they getting all this attention, especially at a time when a far more dignified personage, Richard Nixon, had so recently died?  

No one is saying that Rooney has to be a hipster. But why is he so surprised that he's out of touch with the wide expanse of pop music? After all, most people after a certain age -- sometimes 55, sometimes 25 -- jump off the pop bandwagon and lose touch with its ever-changing vanguard of new artists, never to return. But I'm not sure it's something worth bragging about on nationwide television.

Judge for yourself:

Photo: Lady Gaga performing at an April charity concert in Tokyo. Credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP/Getty Images 

If baseball ever needs a successor to Max Patkin, the great rubber-faced clown who used to entertain at minor league ballparks around the country -- he has nice cameo in "Bull Durham" -- I'm nominating Will Ferrell. In Texas for a charity golf tournament this week, Ferrell staged an elaborate put-on for the Round Rock Express, the Houston Astros' Triple-A farm team, coming out of the bullpen and posing as newly signed reliever Billy Ray (Rojo) Johnson.

Wearing a No. 99 jersey, a big fake mustache and carrying a paper bag full of beer cans, Ferrell took a few warm-up tosses before digging in against the first hitter from the Nashville Sounds. He didn't last long. He fired his first pitch (though fired might be a tad generous) behind the head of the opposing batter, prompting the home plate umpire to immediately kick him out of the game. Ferrell proceeded to taunt the hitter, then spray him with beer, which led to Ferrell being chased around the outfield and out of the ballpark.

It's pretty funny stuff, almost as funny as watching the Pittsburgh Pirates' Lastings Milledge hit what he thought was a grand slam on Thursday and go into home run trot, only to get tagged out between second and third base when it turned out the ball actually hit off the wall instead of going over it. But no one can top Ferrell when his funny bone's in the right place. Watch for yourself here:   

Photo: Will Ferrell at a welterweight title fight in Las Vegas last year. Credit: Al Bello / Getty Images

Variety has announced that it's promoted Justin Chang and Peter Debruge to the post of senior film critics, which in itself isn't a bad thing. I don't know Debruge's work all that well, but Chang is a terrific young critic who surely deserves to have a bigger platform for his writing.

It's the way Variety editor Tim Gray positioned the promotions that is so, well, pathetic. As you may recall, Variety has been shedding staff left and right, not just having axed Todd McCarthy and David Rooney, the trade's top film and theater critic respectively, but having laid off virtually all of its copy desk as well. So Chang is getting a promotion, but he still has to keep his old job -- being a copy editor on the Variety news desk. Debruge also does double duty, churning out such special section chaff as 10 Comics to Watch and the Youth Impact Report.

How does Gray spin the fact that Chang and Debruge, who apparently have to do everything around Variety except for actually delivering the paper in the morning, are going to simply have to do even more work, while of course getting paid far less than McCarthy or Rooney ever did? In Variety's official announcement, Gray crowed that the two young critics not only bring a fresh voice to their writing, but "the fact that they have other duties at the paper is a great advantage: It helps a critic have an awareness and perspective on everything that is happening in the industry."

Talk about a snow job. What Gray is really crowing about is the fact that he's saved a ton of money by laying off two highly paid critics and is getting two hard-working but much lower-paid young guys to do the work of three people each. It's a great deal for Variety, but to say that continuing to toil as a copy editor helps a critic have any kind of unique perspective on the movie business is like saying that Steven Seagal could become a better actor by studying Shakespeare.

Come on, Tim. You're just getting more work out of these guys. Nothing more, nothing less. When I read this kind of preposterous spin I really worry that Variety is in a steeper downhill slide than I'd ever possibly imagined.  

Recent and related:

HOLLYWOOD REACTS TO VARIETY'S AXING OF TODD MCCARTHY: 'WHAT WERE THEY THINKING'?

Photo: Tim Gray, pictured with former Variety editor Peter Bart, at the paper's offices in 1998. Credit: Los Angeles Times 

Just when showbiz talent agents start inching toward respectability -- which I guess you could measure as the distance between the Ari Emanuel-style hustler on "Entourage" and the Ari Emanuel who can impress office visitors by yelling at his assistant to get his brother, the president's chief of staff, on the phone -- we get the news, via this wonderfully detailed story from the Wall Street Journal, that the business is still full of backbiting, deception and general chicanery.

As you may have heard, CAA has been moving into the sports world in a big way, shrewdly having realized that sports is the new entertainment business, with tons of highly paid media stars slam-dunking and home-run hitting their way to glory. It takes years to sign and grow your own stars, so CAA, as the Journal reports, has been poaching lots of top agents and executives from IMG, the longtime sports agency giant. These raids have netted such prominent sports stars as baseball great Derek Jeter and NFL running back LaDanian Tomlinson. 

But now IMG is fighting back, the old-fashioned way, suing CAA for poaching Matthew Baldwin, a $90,000-a-year junior agent who defected to CAA last month. The details of the story will sound familiar to anyone who's followed Hollywood's poaching skirmishes of the past. According to the lawsuit, Baldwin, who had been based in Minneapolis, began secretly discussing a job post with CAA earlier this year. According to his sworn declaration, Baldwin said that he signed a lease on an apartment in L.A. on March 29. On March 31, he collected his 2009 bonus from IMG. On April 1, he told his boss that a rumor of his imminent departure to CAA was false.

But the next day, lo and behold, while his boss was safely on a plane, out of cellphone range, Baldwin left him phone and e-mail messages announcing his resignation. That same day, he went to work for CAA and sued IMG in federal district court in California to void the clause in his contract barring him for two years from soliciting IMG clients he'd repped.

The best part of the legal tussling comes from IMG, which says that it's suing to mitigate damages from the loss of trade secrets and proprietary information. Messy break-ups happen all the time, including the time that ICM abruptly fired Emanuel and a trio of young fellow agents after they made off with a cache of personal files in a nighttime raid on their own ICM offices that led to the 1995 formation of Endeavor.

But what's all this about trade secrets? After all, Baldwin was a junior agent representing football and basketball coaches. What sort of secret licensing or salary strategies could possibly be involved in the poaching of a middle-grade sports agent? Had IMG found a new way to commission the coaches' cut from their teams' Nike deals? It may take a while to sort out all the legal ramifications, but this much is for sure: With entertainment star salaries in free fall, expect to see more clashes like this on the sports side of the entertainment universe, which seems to be the one place where stardom is still a growth business.

Photo: New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter at a May 5 game at Yankee Stadium. Credit: Jeff Zelevansky / Getty Images

I guess it's no longer a shock to discover that film critics, along with a sizable portion of early moviegoers, are discovering that "Iron Man 2" is, ahem, not nearly as fresh, daring and intoxicating as the original film that took critics and fanboys by storm two year ago.

As my colleague Kenneth Turan wrote Thursday morning, as sequels go, "this one is acceptable, nothing more, nothing less," which is the faintest of praise, because with sequels, you're already grading on a curve at the start. The reaction has been glum in most other critical quarters as well, with the sequel currently earning a lackluster 65 fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, quite a drop from the original's amazing 93 rating.

But I've noted a common thread in the early reviews of the new film. The complaint isn't just that "Iron Man 2" is such a disappointment, especially considering the top-flight talent associated with the film, from Robert Downey Jr. on down the line to director Jon Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux. It's that the behind-the-scenes gurus at Marvel, who have done such a great job in recent years of stretching the creative boundaries with their big-screen characters, seem to have settled for less -- much less -- when it came to propelling this sequel down the summer movie-visual effects-extravaganza assembly line.

When it comes to a prized property like the "Iron Man" franchise, you need to push the envelope. But more important, you need to create something that doesn't feel fabricated just to replicate the original film's formula of success. Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek put it best: "'Iron Man 2' is more of the same -- a lot more of the same -- and yet a lot less. ... The big problem with [the movie], maybe, is that it so dutifully gives the people what they want, instead of giving them what they didn't know they wanted."

Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum echoed those sentiments in her review. As she described it:

"The diminished satisfaction [from this film] has less to do with the quality of the star's trademark catch-me-if-you-can energy than it does with a performance anxiety that now pervades the whole shebang. Are returning director Jon Favreau and the Marvel Studios producing team buckling under pressure to give the people more of what they think the people want, and make it bigger too?"

If you get a chance to see the film this weekend, let me know where you stand. But I have to wonder: Isn't it time (with "The Dark Knight" as the template) for people who make sequels to spend less time worrying about reprising all the popular stuff from the original and more time inventing stories that take us where we've never been before?

Photo: Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in "Iron Man 2." Credit: Francois Duhamel / Paramount Pictures/MCT

Brooks Branch is best known in Hollywood circles as a veteran Paramount Pictures licensing executive who, from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, oversaw the studio's strategic marketing and development of its top film properties. But now he's done the one thing that any business executive would tell him not to do -- he's gone off and directed an indie movie and decided to basically distribute it himself.

That's the story behind "Multiple Sarcasms," an oddball drama that stars Timothy Hutton as an unhappy architect who tries to find himself by writing a play about the relationships in his life. The movie has its moments, and it has a nice supporting cast that includes Mira Sorvino, Dana Delany, Mario van Peebles and Stockard Channing (who is hilarious as a hard-as-nails agent). But there's no way to put this nicely -- "Multiple Sarcasms" is like hundreds of other low-budget indie movies that people like me see at hundreds of film festivals every year.

It has all sorts of strikes against it: It doesn't have a big-name star, it doesn't have a crowd-pleasing storyline and it doesn't have anything that would distinguish it from all the other nicely made, well-intentioned films that never see the light of day in terms of a mainstream theatrical release. So, when I sat down with Branch, an engaging guy who comes off like a much, more upbeat version of the character Hutton plays in a film, I had to ask him: What was he thinking?    

"I know, I know," he said. "I'm the guy that the studios would bring in to try to break through all the clutter in the marketplace, so it's ironic that now I'm the guy -- as a writer-director -- who's trying to get the salmon to swim upstream. I'm the epitome of the guy who knows not to make a one-off film."

As it turns out, Branch didn't really want to reinvent a whole new distribution model for small films like "Multiple Sarcasms." He wrote the film in the 1990s, when he was still at Paramount. He eventually raised about $3 million to get the film made, shooting it in the spring of 2007. But by the time he was ready to look for a distributor last year, the bottom had fallen out of the indie film marketplace. There were no serious buyers.

"The joke is on me," he says good-naturedly. "When we started doing this, there was still an indie film template where you could market a film like this to a niche audience. But while I was away, finishing the film, the whole indie film world imploded. It was like, by the time I got to the party, the party was over. We had some private-auction screenings, but it was pretty obvious that the best offers would basically be a New York and L.A. release -- and then the film would disappear."

So Branch has put together an ad hoc distribution system and has his actors out beating the drum for the film. He's opening it in four cities this Friday (N.Y., L.A., Seattle and his hometown, Salt Lake City) before adding two more cities on May 14, with the hope that a few good reviews and some nice audience buzz might propel the film to bigger and better venues. It's still a long-shot gamble, but Branch remains optimistic.

He doesn't have a lot of marketing money, but as puts it: "That's what I've always done for a living. I make the money go further. We're trying to get a lot of media exposure that we don't have to pay for. For a film like this, it's not going to be Taco Bell cups and billboards. It's going to involve a lot of viral marketing and hard work, and figuring out ways to use free media."

As for the future of indie film, he says: "I think the expectations of success need to change. You can't shoot for the moon anymore. You just have to make enough money to justify your existence. The irony is that I've been this guy who helped the studios market their assets, and then I'd moonlight on my own movie. But now I'm trying to find a way to merge the two. I think it can happen, because I still believe that people have a real thirst to see interesting movies. That's your audience. You just have to find them."

I wish Branch well, but I still wonder what the future holds for indie movies. It used to be a wonderful niche business, but for now, the niche in the marketplace seems awfully small.

Photo: Brooks Branch taking questions after the premiere of "Multiple Sarcasms." Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Since I know that my conservative pals are always keeping tabs on such things, they can now get out their lineup cards and enter "American Idol's" always opinionated Simon Cowell on their showbiz conservative team.

Until now, Cowell has appeared largely apolitical, but he's come out with a stirring endorsement of David Cameron for prime minister (via London's conservative tabloid, The Sun) in the big U.K. general election Thursday. 

What makes Cowell's endorsement so intriguing is that, despite his plummy British accent, he's a classic example of an immigrant entrepreneur -- a man who's enjoyed the fruits of America's classless society and is frustrated by England's mass of restrictions and barriers to (noninherited) wealth. It's also interesting that Hollywood is full of people like Cowell who've struck it rich with a great creative notion or a savvy business plan -- and yet the overwhelming majority of them have remained liberals, perhaps because for decades, America's conservative political class has been so unyieldingly hostile to popular culture.

At any rate, Cowell clearly hopes that England, via Tory leaders like Cameron, would emulate America's free-wheeling free enterprise system. As he put it in this condensed version of his endorsement:

Right now it takes twice as long to start a business in the U.K. as it does in the USA. I was recently told that around 40,000 new regulations have been introduced since 1998 -- that's 14 every working day. The problem with this tinkering is the State can stifle and frustrate ambition, rather than encourage entrepreneurs, which is crazy. I believe everyone has the right to be heard and the right to make a better life for themselves. I have seen that the American Dream is a reality -- and I would love to feel the British Dream is also a reality. To enable that, we have to bring back some common sense and make people believe they have a decent chance to build a business or career for themselves.

Some of Cowell's other remarks are pretty laughable, starting with his dismissal of Liberal Democratic candidate Nick Clegg as being a candidate who "is made for T.V.," since all of the politicians vying for prime minister are surrounded 24/7 by political consultants weighing their every move and gesture. (You could argue that Gordon Brown is losing, in large part because he is so grumpy and caustic that he is incapable of coming across well on television.) As for other issues, Cowell also echoes the American conservative complaint that his homeland's legal system is too permissive, saying: "There is a tendency to punish the victim, not the criminal. If someone broke into my house or my mum's house, I worry that the burglar has more rights than me."

I doubt that Cowell's endorsement is going to swing the election for Cameron, who is already leading in virtually every poll. And I'm not sure that voters are going to be swayed by someone who is, to be kind, not exactly a deep thinker. When asked to pick the one book he'd take to a desert island, Cowell unabashedly chose Jackie Collins' "Hollywood Wives," which you could probably argue is, in its own way, another tribute to America's wonderfully classless society. 

But who knows? If England is anything like America, and if Cameron wins handily, maybe there will be the offer of an ambassadorship in Cowell's future. Either way, he's certainly a man who's found a way to make his mark in the world. 

Photo: Simon Cowell arriving at Elton John's Academy Award party earlier this year. Credit: Dan Steinberg / Associated Press 

Paging Ashton Kutcher: Do you know who's really following you on Twitter?

When I had a little downtime with this year's Summer Movie Posse, I asked them how they kept up with the buzz about movies. As you might expect, they spent a lot of time online, which gives them a chance to look at trailers or hear word of mouth about upcoming movies on their friends' Facebook pages or sites like Slashfilm.com or Comingsoon.net.

But when I asked whether they kept abreast of things via Twitter, they all looked at me like I was crazy. Rajiv Rao, who's 17, said "I don't know one high schooler that uses Twitter." His friend, Arya Zarifi, also 17, added: "It's something for adults who feel like it makes them hip or something."

Yalda Chalabi, 17, was especially dismissive of actors and celebrities who use Twitter as a self-promotional tool. "I hate it when they say, 'Follow me on Twitter,' as if we're interested in every little thing they have to say," she explained. "It's just an adult thing. Our music teacher kept saying that she would put stuff up for us to follow on Twitter until one day she said, 'OK, who's following me on Twitter?' And no one raised their hand. You keep hearing people talk about it, but I don't know anyone my age that uses it."

I guess that won't stop Mr. Kutcher from having a million followers on Twitter, but it won't make any celebrity an iota more hip just because they know how to tweet about where they're going for dinner tonight.

Photo: Ashton Kutcher at a premiere for "The Joneses." Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP/Getty Images

If there were ever any better evidence that Jay Leno has creatively run out of gas, it's the news, from Politico, that his labored performance at Saturday night's White House Correspondents' Assn. dinner wasn't exactly, ahem, loaded with new material.

No wonder many critics said that President Obama, with a little help from joke-smiths at "The Daily Show," ended up getting far better reviews for his comedy performance than Leno himself. In fact, as Politico's video sleuths discovered, a host of gags from Leno's routine came -- pretty much word for word -- from prior opening-monologue routines on "The Tonight Show" and the short-lived "The Jay Leno Show."

We've got the Politico video to show you, but here's a couple of examples of how baldly Leno cribbed from his own comedy routines:

From “The Tonight Show” (March 16): "If you took all the money the Republicans have spent trying to stop healthcare, and all the money Democrats have spent trying to get healthcare, we could afford healthcare, you know that?”

From Saturday’s routine: “If you took all the money Republicans spent trying to stop healthcare, and all the money Democrats have spent trying to get healthcare, you know somethin’? We could have had healthcare!”

From “The Tonight Show” (March 22): "Supporters of the bill say the American people now get the same health benefits members of Congress get, which is great. See, if we could just get some of those other perks: the free travel, the envelopes with the cash in them, the get-out-of-jail-free cards ...."

From Saturday’s routine: "Supporters of the bill say that the American people will now get the same health benefits that members of Congress get, which is great. How about some of the other perks? The free travel, those envelopes with the cash in them, how about some of that? The get-out-of-jail-free cards. Why can’t we get that?”

This is embarrassing on oh-so-many levels. Did Leno really think no one would notice that he was passing off old material as new? In today's video-centric era, there's no way to hide your past, as "The Daily Show" has proven nearly every day of the week. Even worse, is this what Leno does all the time at the dozens and dozens of stand-up gigs he performs around the country every year? Did he really think the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which is crammed with lofty media personages -- not to mention the leader of the Free World -- was a place where he could get away with a second-rate rerun act?

I admit to never having been the biggest Leno fan in the world, but at least I was always willing to grant that he was the hardest-working comic in the business. But now it looks like even that title is undeserved. After this charade, Leno looks like the laziest comic on the planet. Take a look at the damning evidence yourself:

Photo: First Lady Michelle Obama with President Obama and Jay Leno at the White House Correspondents' Assn. dinner. Credit: Olivier Douliery / Getty Images

Every year as the summer movie season looms on the horizon, promising a steady stream of movies punctuated with loud explosions, visual-effects-studded superhero exploits and unbelievably bad dialogue, I ask a group of teenagers to offer their assessment of the summer films' trailers, which are, after all, the key ingredient in their multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.

This year marks the 10th year that a new assortment of kids, known as the Summer Movie Posse, have offered a wealth of acerbic, insightful and often surprising thoughts on the current crop of films.

In fact, I've been doing this DIY-version of a focus group for so long that when I took a filmmaker to lunch last week at a nice restaurant in my neighborhood, the eatery's chef turned out to be Gabe Feuer, who organized my first posse as a young teenager a decade ago.

In the past, studio marketers have complained -- usually after their trailer received a crummy score -- that the posse members, who were often private school kids who live on the Westside of L.A., were not representative of typical American teenagers. So this year I found a group of teens who attend public school and live in the heart of Orange County. They were organized by Arya Zarifi, who attends Northwood High School in Irvine and, at 17, has already made a number of short films and has an encyclopedic knowledge of recent film history without being a Harry Knowles-style moonstruck geek.

And guess what? This year's posse sounded just like their Westside brethren, preferring fresh-looking original films to sequels, giving the thumbs down to films they felt appealed to their younger brothers or sisters and panning films that appeared formulaic (like "The Prince of Persia"), starred actors they had no interest in (like "Knight and Day") or felt like unnecessary remakes (like "The A-Team," of which Jacob Perry, 17, said: "I don't think anyone can ever replace Mr. T").

When it comes to actors, the posse was full of love for Michael Cera, Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, but had mixed emotions about Russell Crowe and Jake Gyllenhaal, who they thought was laughably miscast in "Prince of Persia." They were also growing increasingly tired of seeing Angelina Jolie in the same action movie role and underwhelmed by the idea of having Tom Cruise teamed up with Cameron Diaz in "Knight and Day." "It just felt like they cast them together solely for the box office," said Shaine Meulmester, 17. "I guess they thought all they had to do was throw two big stars together and they'd have a movie."

The posse's favorite movie trailer, by far, was a new trailer Warners has cut for Chris Nolan's upcoming "Inception," which the kids thought made the movie feel intriguing and strikingly original. "You know there's some sort of corporate dream espionage going on," said Rajiv Rao, 17. "But the trailer is great because even though you feel a little lost, it leaves you wanting more, whereas with most trailers, you feel lost and you don't even care."

The posse, like previous participants, were big fans of the summer comedies. We only watched three comedy trailers, yet they all ended up in the Top 5 of the rankings. The movies that scored the worst were ones that skewed to a younger audience, which surprisingly -- at least for me -- included "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," which got the lowest score of all 14 movies, not only because the posse felt that they were too old for the film, but because they thought the series had become way too, shall we say, down-market.

As Shaine, one of three girls on the panel put it: "The whole mass hysteria around the series really turns me off. It feels like 'Harry Potter' for the pre-teen set." Noting that the new trailer is loaded with vampire-army action sequences, Alexia Rosenfield, 18, observed: "It looks like they've added a lot more action scenes to broaden the audience, almost the same way they did with 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' which had a lot more action scenes in it as the series went along."

It turns out that it this was hardly the first time the posse had seen some of these trailers. They spend an extraordinary amount of time on the Web, where they often watch trailers and send their favorite ones along to their friends. Although I showed the posse the green-band trailer of "Get Him to the Greek," which is approved for all audiences, Universal Pictures has a red-band trailer up online that is far raunchier than the all-audience version. 

"The red-band trailer is much funnier," said Arya. "Well, it's probably funnier because it has some restricted content in it," Rajiv responded. Arya laughed. "Some?" he said. "A lot more than some." Here's a sampling of their comments, followed by their scores for the 14 trailers they watched:

"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"

Yalda Chalabi, 17: "No offense to Jake Gyllenhaal, but he's not Persian and he doesn't even look Persian."

Rajiv: "He's miscast. It doesn't seem like his kind of role. He's just not your action type of guy."

Shaine: "He's better in the quiet, more sensitive roles."

Rajiv: "In terms of plot, you have to think that it's either really complicated or really superficial. Watching the trailer, it's hard to say which. It doesn't help that its made by the same people who did 'Pirates of the Caribbean.' Let's face it, after the first one, those movies got progressively worse and worse."

"Robin Hood"

Schyler Simon, 17: "When someone says Robin Hood, I think of the Disney movie -- of the cartoon. But when I saw this, it looks a lot more like 'Gladiator,' which I really liked."

Yalda: "When I think of Robin Hood, I still think of the tights. This isn't the Robin Hood I grew up with, the gangly guy who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. That's definitely what's happening here."

Rajiv: "It gives it a whole new perspective that it's made by Ridley Scott, who's one of the few directors who could make an exciting movie just with arrows. Well, and a lot of swords. But isn't Russell Crowe a little old to be Robin Hood anyway? What about Jude Law?"

Jacob: "I don't see him in it either. How about Michael Cera?"

"Grown Ups"

Yalda: "I want to see this movie. Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James -- they've all been in movies I like. And it's not even a remake."

Jacob: "My only worry is that with every comedy, all the best stuff is in the trailer. I mean, it looks like it's funny, but you never know. Look at 'Date Night.' All the good lines were in the trailer."

"The A-Team"

Shaine: "Wow, it's such a guy movie. It feels like every movie we see is so peppered with special effects, people jumping out of buildings and random special effects."

Arya: "Welcome to the summer. I bet the only reason they put Bradley Cooper in the movie was to attract a female audience. All the girls I know get excited by the idea of him taking off his shirt. And well, he takes his shirt off in this movie too."

"The Last Airbender"

Schyler: "It feels like every other trailer out there. You hear this guy say [in fake deep voice] 'And now....' And then you see a huge burst of fire."

Rajiv: "After Night Shyamalan's last couple of movies, I'm pretty skeptical. He's really fallen from grace."

Arya: "And it's a 3-D conversion, so I don't know how good it's going to turn out to be."

"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"

Arya: "It looks amazing. I read reviews online that say it's like the most geek-tastic movie of the summer."

Rajiv: "I think Kevin Smith liked it a lot too."

Arya: "Ever since 'Superbad,' you kind of know the Michael Cera character. As soon as he says his first line, you go -- oh, it's that guy again."

"The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"

Schyler: "I don't have anything against 'Twilight.' I'm not one of those guys who says, 'Oh my God, it's so stupid. But still, this looks really bad."

Arya: "I actually read the book out of boredom once and it wasn't so bad. But the first movie was really atrocious. I mean, the acting was so awful."

"Salt"

Jacob: "I like Angelina Jolie, but I'd have to hear that the movie is good before I'd go see it."

Arya: "I think she's a great actress."

Schyler: "Come on, she's just really hot. That's all there is to it."

To find out which movies got the highest scores from the posse, keep reading:

The politics of piracy wreak havoc in every almost facet of the entertainment business, most notably with movie openings. So it makes sense that there has been a lot of speculation about why Paramount, if it was so concerned about "Iron Man 2" falling victim to rampant piracy, opened the movie in most of the world this weekend, even though it doesn't open in the U.S. until this coming Friday. When it comes to piracy, dissemination happens at warp speed: Copies of "Iron Man 2" are already available on Pirate Bay and other torrent sites.

It's no secret that Paramount wanted to get the movie out into the world before June's World Cup, which for potential moviegoers in Europe and South America is the equivalent of a never-ending Super Bowl. "If you have a big movie, you definitely want to get it out ahead of that," Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore explained to me Monday morning. But as the Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner put it: "Is a mega sports event more than a month away a bigger threat than the prospect of piracy this week?" Gardner noted in his blog post this morning that 20th Century Fox scrambled the jets after "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" leaked out a month or so before its theatrical release. So why is "another studio basically shrugging off a leak" that could also lead to massive piracy?

Of course, the Fox case was complicated by the fact that "Wolverine" was leaked a month ahead of the film's release, giving moviegoers a lot of time to chew over the film's strengths and weaknesses. But as it turns out, the world is a very complicated place, especially when it comes to attitudes toward piracy and copyright theft. According to Moore, Paramount did want to get "Iron Man" out into the world market in time for it to have a solid theatrical run before World Cup mania distracted a huge part of its potential audience. But a closer look at the film's global release schedule shows that Paramount carefully crafted its theatrical bows to reflect individual country's attitudes toward piracy.

As Moore noted, one of the countries that has the least amount of piracy is Japan. "There is a very low social acceptability in Japan for stealing copyrighted work -- you just don't see movies showing up online right away there," he said. So with that in mind, Paramount is holding back the release of "Iron Man 2" in Japan for several weeks, having little fear about the country being swamped with bootleg copies of the film.

However, when it comes to Korea, it's a different story. "For better or worse, there are certain countries -- notably like Korea -- where it's culturally acceptable to download movies online pretty much right away," said Moore. "By the third week of a movie's release, you're starting to see a large part of the audience who will start consuming the film online. It's why Korea has almost no home video business anymore."

So Paramount knew it couldn't afford to wait. It released "Iron Man 2" in Korea this weekend -- and is hoping for the best. "There are still some countries that don't respect the rights of intellectual property," said Moore. "So we're working aggressively with them to address those issues. But it means that when we open a big new film, we have to really understand the country's cultural attitudes when it comes to formulating our release dates." 

Photo:  Mickey Rourke in the role of Whiplash during the filming of "Iron Man 2" last year. Credit: Associated Press photo / Paramount Pictures

Every year as we approach the onset of the noisy summer movie season I get together with a bunch of high school kids to talk about the summer films. I show them the trailers from a dozen or so hotly anticipated films; they decide whether the trailers make them want to see the films -- or run as fast as they can in the other direction.

This year's Summer Movie Posse is made up of a bunch of kids from Orange County, which means that the studio marketing execs can't complain that their movies were unfairly judged by a bunch of jaded Westside L.A. private schoolers (look for my post to go up early next week).

I've been watching the trailers, trying to figure out which movies might be interesting for the Posse to see. I have to say that it's quite a fascinating immersion experience, since it's almost impossible to find a trailer that isn't crammed with fiery midair explosions, high-speed car or plane chases, gunplay of one kind or another (with really, really big guns) and tons of fantasy creatures who often morph into extremely scary looking monsters. It generally feels like you're watching a bunch of movies that were originally written by the team of C.S. Lewis and Mickey Spillane.

I make a point of never letting the Posse members know what I think of the trailers, not wanting to influence their opinions -- and more importantly, not wanting them to laugh at me. But for you, my loyal readers, I offer a few off-the-cuff opinions of some of the summer movie trailers that I've been watching:

"Salt": Actually, Ken Levine put it best on his tongue-in-cheek assessment of the summer movie crop when he write that "Salt" was an "action adventure developed for Tom Cruise now starring Angelina Jolie because they wanted someone more masculine." It looks like a thinly veiled knockoff of "Wanted," with Jolie as a suspected Russian spy on the lam who always seems to traveling at about 180 mph.

"Get Him to the Greek": I know there must be some good laughs in this picture, but does anyone care about rock stars and their bad behavior anymore? It feels like a comedy that should've been made in 1985 starring David Lee Roth.

"Iron Man 2": All I can say is -- thank God for Robert Downey Jr. He makes all the material he's in feel hipper and more irreverent than it probably is. (If only I can could get him to do the audio track for this blog, I'd look a helluva lot smarter.) If he wasn't in this sequel, it would might be hard to tell it apart from all the other tech-geek superhero movies. Although you have to admit that Mickey Rourke has great teeth.

"Robin Hood": I don't want to beat up poor Russell Crowe anymore than I have to, but for all the smash 'n bash battle scenes, you still find yourself going -- do we really need another Robin Hood movie?

"Karate Kid": Hey, no one is going to accuse Will Smith of nepotism. His kid looks very cool in the trailer, especially starring opposite Jackie Chan, who finally gets to play a wizened old warrior part. 

"Prince of Persia": Every time I see this trailer, I think to myself -- is the box-office genius of Jerry Bruckheimer his ability to make sure there are never any original ideas in any of his movies?   

"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World": Every summer you see one trailer that feels like it signals a sleeper hit. And this one is it. Everything in the film looks cool, starting with Michael Cera.

"The Last Airbender": Remember when M. Night Shyamalan was going to be the next Steven Spielberg? Now he's making what looks like a totally generic special-effects movie, complete with such dialogue as "You are the only ones who can control the elements and bring peace to our world." Yikes. Maybe he should've made this movie in 4-D, because 3-D may not be enough to distract us from the impenetrable storyline.

You could argue that Hollywood's sequel mania really began in earnest in 1989, when the box-office grosses started piling up for both "Ghostbusters 2" and "Lethal Weapon 2," proving that there was no good reason -- from the business end of the equation -- why you had to come up with an original idea for a blockbuster movie when you could just milk something that had already worked. "Lethal Weapon" went on to a long and happy sequel life.

But Sony has never been able to mount another installment in the "Ghostbusters" franchise -- though you can't say it hasn't been for lack of trying. It feels as if every time I turn around, I read a story about how sequel efforts are moving ahead with another round of screenwriters at work, trying to figure out how to spin something off from the landmark 1984 comedy that ushered in an entire era of "Men in Black"-style comic special effects films.

If there's always one fly in the ointment, it's Bill Murray. Even though pretty much everyone else involved with the project seems to have a vested interest in making a "Ghostbusters 3," Murray, who is nothing if not an iconoclastic free spirit, keeps saying -- no way, Jose.

That doesn't mean that Sony couldn't just write him out of the movie, although some recent stories have argued that Murray, along with his fellow original stars, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, have veto power over any new project moving ahead.

But everyone seems to want his blessing. But bless his heart, Murray seems to feel the same way about sequels that I do: that with rare exception (and yes, Geoff Boucher, I'm willing to admit that "The Dark Knight" is a worthy exception), studio sequels are almost always more dutiful than inspired. In New York, promoting his new film, "Get Low," Murray laid it on the line. Asked if "Ghostbusters 3" was ever going to happen, he replied:

"No, it's ridiculous. That's an absolutely -- that's just a horrible rumor. It's like illegitimate children in Antarctica, it's ridiculous.... Mind you, we only made two, and the first one was still the better one, so another one wouldn't seem to be any better. The studio wants to make it because they can re-create the franchise and put new Ghostbusters in it. That's what it's about."

If you're laying odds, I'd say the odds of Murray giving his blessing to a new "Ghostbusters" sequel are about as good as the odds of Sandra Bullock getting back together with Jesse James.

Photo: Bill Murray smoking a cigar at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am earlier this year. Credit: Dan Honda / Contra Costa Times/MCT

Geez, talk about inconvenient timing. Just as Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood has been touting the far-fetched claim that conservatives in Hollywood can't reveal their, well, conservativeness, without being in danger of losing their jobs, along comes the news -- via Variety -- that outspoken conservative uber-producer Joel Surnow ("24") has signed an all-star cast to appear in his upcoming miniseries, "The Kennedys." The show, set to run for eight hours on the History Channel next year, landed just as many top actors as Oliver Stone got for his biopic, "W.," which debuted in theaters in 2008.

Greg Kinnear will play JFK, with Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Bobby Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as family titan Joe Kennedy.

When news first surfaced about the project, liberal critics who'd read early drafts of the script lambasted the project for being an unbridled attack on the Kennedy clan. But as I wrote earlier this year, it seems wildly unfair to assume that just because Surnow is a conservative, that he would have a conservative agenda when it comes to portraying history -- especially if you want to have any credibility in defending Oliver Stone's right to make movies about George Bush and Richard Nixon.

I read the scripts myself and thought they were pretty impressive, and certainly well within the bounds of propriety, especially considering the reams of conspiratorial, often sleazy revisionist histories that have been written about JFK's womanizing and the Kennedy family dysfunction. The casting of Kinnear as JFK also makes it hard to believe that Surnow is doing a hatchet job, since if Kinnear is anything, judging from most of his roles, he is the epitome of someone who represents middle-American decency and idealism. It would be hard to imagine JFK coming off as a total heel with Kinnear in the part. I mean, how could you not like a guy who's played both the overwhelmed dad in "Little Miss Sunshine" and open-hearted Philadelphia Eagles football coach Dick Vermeil in "Invincible."

In fact, even if Kinnear might be -- gasp! -- a liberal in real life, I'd argue that the characters he plays often represent conservative values, which might be why Surnow liked the idea of him playing JFK in the first place. I think this is a miniseries that definitely bears watching.

Recent and Related:

CONSERVATIVES SAY THEY HAVE TO 'TALK IN WHISPERS' IN LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD

 THE HISTORY CHANNEL'S JFK MINISERIES: IS IT REALLY RIGHT-WING CHARACTER ASSASSINATION?

Photo: Greg Kinnear at a 2008 screening of the film "Ghost Town." Credit: Evan Agostini / Associated Press

If you are a devoted reader of Andrew Breitbart's ultra-conservative Big Hollywood website, as I am, you'd think that the world as we know it is surely coming to an end, being turned into a hideously ever-shrinking black hole by Hollywood liberals and their fellow travelers.

The site is chock-full of posts lambasting liberal film critics for not liking vigilante movies, decrying the "gutless" Comedy Central for editing out any references to the prophet Muhammad in "South Park," mocking global warming activists, getting into a tizzy for weeks on end about Tom Hanks' elitist, anti-American view of American history and, of course, celebrating Sarah Palin at every turn. My favorite recent headline  -- and I've linked to it, just in case you thought I made this up -- was "Is James Cameron a Genocidal Maniac?"  

One of Big Hollywood's pet causes is promoting the notion that if you're a conservative, working in liberal Hollywood is like trying to survive in an oppressive gulag-like Soviet state where everyone has to conform to a rigidly controlled form of liberal political thinking. The site features an interview with "Northern Exposure" actress Janine Turner, who's launching a new organization, Constituting America, where she contends that "it's hard for conservatives in Hollywood because they're afraid to step out. Because when they do, there could be repercussions where they don't have work, and that can mean -- I think there are a lot of conservatives in Hollywood ... [but] no one is really willing to take the first step. And I don't blame them. I mean, it's affected my career too. And I think it’s hard ... when you step out as a conservative, it’s just such a – the environment is very left, very, very different to our type of environment.”

Mystery novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan, a leading conservative activist, put it more bluntly: "There's a culture in Hollywood where if you're a left-winger, you can talk very openly.... If you go in to sell something, you can make anti-American, anti-military, anti-religious remarks, but I'm the kind of guy who's going to say, 'No, I disagree.' But that's pretty much the end of my sale. Whereas, if you're a conservative, especially if you're a religious person, people like that meet in secret, talk in whispers. It's a very disturbing kind of culture."

Being a Jew who grew up in the South, I sympathize with all oppressed minorities, but I think that conservatives need to get a grip here. Yes, Hollywood is lousy with liberals -- they're everywhere. That's a given, OK, just like where my family comes from, there's a Baptist church on every block. But where's the evidence that conservatives are denied jobs because of their political beliefs? For all the vague charges being bandied about, I've never heard any specific examples of suppression in action. If you're a conservative and can offer me chapter and verse, I will be happy to take up your cause.

And I will do the same for any liberals who can support their claim that they've been denied work in talk radio simply because it happens to be dominated by, ahem, a lot of moral absolutist conservatives. In both cases, I suspect that each field has strong political leanings because of greater cultural forces at work, not because of bias. But if you think you can prove me wrong, have at it.  

Photo: Janine Turner in the 1999 Lifetime drama "Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Secret Affair." Credit: Justin Canning / Lifetime

If I were ever going to pitch a reality TV series, I'd simply say: Put a camera and a mike in front of Sumner Redstone, Hollywood's craziest octogenarian mogul, follow him around for a few days and, well, just see what happens.

The feisty Viacom czar, who will be 87 next month and never misses an opportunity to boast that he'll live forever, was on stage late Monday at the Milken Institute Global Conference, accompanied by a supporting cast made of producer Brian Grazer and Michael Milken himself.

According to this post from the Hollywood Reporter, Redstone had an itch involving longtime rival media czar Rupert Murdoch -- and decided to scratch it. Clearly still smarting from the fact that Murdoch makes more money from his media empire than Redstone does from his, the Viacom chief took aim on Murdoch's investment in the Wall Street Journal. Here's what Redstone had to say:

"He paid $5 billion for the Wall Street Journal without competition. And you know what? There won't be any newspapers in a few years. The difference between me and Murdoch is, he lives in ink and I live with movies and television. Ink is going to go away, and movies and television will be here forever -- just like me."

Like I said, Sumner is always bragging about how he's never going to die. I guess when he finally does keel over, the obituary headline will read: Mogul Who Promised to Live Forever Goes Back on His Word.

As for Murdoch's other U.S. newspaper, the oily New York Post, Redstone complained that the Post's notorious Page Six gossip column once claimed that he was romantically involved with a woman seated near him in a restaurant, when he was actually having lunch with Tom Cruise. I'd say Redstone got off easy, since it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if Page Six, just for sport, had wondered if Redstone was romantically linked with Cruise. "You have to be careful with any newspaper that Murdoch runs," Redstone complained. "He enjoys gossip, but not about himself."

But the really great thing about Redstone is that he can still remember what movie won the Oscar nearly 15 years ago. At one point during the presentation, Grazer told of the time that he was in the audience at the Academy Awards in 1996, waiting to hear if his film, "Apollo 13," would win best picture. Grazer said that he could see a "B" rolling off presenter Sidney Poitier's lips, as if he were about to say "Brian," and started to get up from his seat, only to hear Poitier say, "Braveheart" instead. Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, who was sitting with Grazer, consoled him by saying, "I never made it to the moon either."

You could imagine everyone's heart in the room going out to this portrait of Grazer as the poor loser. Well, everyone's heart except for Redstone, who chimed in with the thoughtful reminder: " 'Braveheart' was my picture.' " Isn't it nice to know that in Hollywood, nice guys never finish last?

Photo: Sumner Redstone pictured at the Los Angeles premiere of "How to Train Your Dragon." Credit: Nina Prommer / European Pressphoto Agency

"Iron Man 2" looks like it will go the way of almost all sequels since the dawn of the corporate age of moviemaking. It may well make more money than its predecessor, but unlike "The Godfather 2," the last sequel that actually took its original to a higher level of greatness, it won't have as secure a place in our moviegoing hearts. The refreshing thing about "Iron Man," which launched the summer season of 2008, was that, thanks to a great performance from Robert Downey Jr. and savvy filmmaking from Jon Favreau, it felt bold, intoxicatingly exciting, irreverent and, to come back to that first adjective -- refreshingly new.

Of course, sequels, by definition, aren't new, which is why they are invariably creative disappointments, even if they make boatloads of money for their studios. So it comes as no surprise to see that the early trade reviews for "Iron Man 2" are underwhelming at best, pretty much insuring that "Iron Man 2" won't match its predecessor's sky-high 93 score from Rotten Tomatoes. The Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt was especially tough on the film, leading off his review by saying:

"Well, that didn't take long. Everything fun and terrific about 'Iron Man,' a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, 'Iron Man 2' has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines. A film series that started out with critical and commercial success will have to settle for only the latter with this sequel."

Variety's Brian Lowry was a bit more forgiving. He says the sequel isn't as much fun as the original, but survives on the good will its original brought to the party. Here's the meat of his argument:

"There are enough fun moments in Jon Favreau's playful direction (from Justin Theroux's workmanlike script) and Downey's performance -- a tycoon who's equal parts Warren Buffett and Kid Rock -- to satisfy a weekend audience, but one needs a forgiving nature to get past the flabby midsection ... All told, 'Iron Man 2' suffers the same fate as many a sequel. Where the first film felt buoyant and occasionally inspired in helpfully demonstrating that, done right, there's considerable treasure to be culled even from second-tier occupants of the Marvel universe, the new pic feels more duty-bound and industrial."

Just in case you weren't sure, calling a movie "industrial" is not a compliment. Even my fellow Times blogger, Steven Zeitchik, who got to go to the premiere, was choosing his words carefully in describing the film's effect, noting that several of our colleagues "did not find themselves in a pose of jaw-dropping awe but, like us, they felt the film has a sense of confidence in its own mission that almost wills you into liking it (or distracts you from its convolutions)." 

In other words, "Iron Man 2" is not exactly awe-inspiring. But then again, it's a sequel. And if anything is true about going to the movies in the sequel-studded summer months, it's that you have to be willing to expect something that is clearly less than the very best. 

Photo: Robert Downey Jr. arrives at the "Iron Man 2" premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Credit: Matt Sayles / Associated Press