Brad Pitt

To call the three-hour-long "Meet Joe Black" leaden would do an injustice to lead. To call it phlegmatic is to dishonor phlegm. To describe it as turgid does a disservice to honest turges everywhere.Only the hardest-core Brad Pitt fans will want to brave this static, deflated entry into the Screen Angels Sweepstakes. If they insist on disregarding the best advice -- Don't go! -- then they should at least heed the following: Bring adequate lumbar support and gallons of coffee, not to mention a box of Kleenex.

HOLLYWOOD -- When it comes to the fans of the Oscars, the real winners are in the bleachers.That's where the luckiest fans get to sit, the ones willing to sleep outside a few nights, subsisting on the food they're able to carry in and enduring chilly L.A. evenings (Hey, in L.A., 50 degrees is chilly).Their prize: They get as close to the Oscars as the average fan can get. Last night they watched the stars arrive, snapped a few pictures, breathed the same air as the stars they adore.They also earned the envy of a couple thousand more fans who can't get that close, who are forced to flit around the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion like moths surrounding a flame, getting close but never actually getting inside.

Brad Pitt has been the flavor of the month for so long he should start wearing a Baskin-Robbins uniform.He has been one of Hollywood's hottest actors-on-the-verge-of-stardom since his celebrated, albeit brief, breakthrough role three years ago in "Thelma & Louise." There were the inevitable "next James Dean" whispers."A River Runs Through It" was supposed to be the star-making vehicle that drove him to his destiny. His fans said he was terrific in the role, and the film was a sleeper hit but not enough of a hit to shine Mr. Pitt's star.

Transcript, Trial of the Century, Day 257Bailiff: Hear ye, hear ye, the court is now in sess . . .Defense: Objection, your honor.Judge: To what?Defense: Nothing, your honor. We're just warming up.Prosecution: Your honor, the people would like to state that we also have no objections at this time.Defense: Objection, your honor. Every time the defense says something, the prosecution always feels it has to say something.Prosecution: The people do not.Defense: Do too.Prosecution: Do not.Defense: Do too.Defendant: OK, stop, I confess!

Washington. -- What do women want?'' Freud famously asked, then failed to answer in a slew of books. But suppose he were still with us and asked, ''What do teen-age girls want?'' That's easy: Brad Pitt and a nice prom.That conclusion is reached after deep and prolonged immersion in the fat, glossy magazines that cater to that cohort of females. The two most successful magazines are Seventeen and YM (which stands for young and modern).The New York Times recently reported that those two, each with a circulation of about two million, are in hot competition for the advertisers who are in hot competition for the loose change in the pockets of the baggy jeans of teen-age girls.

Dear me. It's Demi again, posing naked on the cover of a magazine. This time, the star of "Disclosure" has dissed clothes for the Feb. 9 Rolling Stone. It's a bit of a cliche by now, isn't it? Twice already, the aging 1980s-styled Brat Packer has won eyes and ayes and oys for streaking across Vanity Fair's front window. Anyhow, the dull Q&A has the actress responding to writer Mim Udovitch's stale comments on Paula Jones and Anita Hill, as well as this question: "Who has the superior butt, David Letterman or Michael Douglas?"

I like guts, both in people and movies, and "Seven" has guts up to its eyebrows. It's a kamikaze of a film, a flaming Zero that doesn't waver a millimeter as it follows a doomed trajectory into the superstructure of our hopes and aspirations.Delivering a crushing downer of an ending that will, I'm certain, utterly destroy its commercial prospects (and explains why such a potent star vehicle wasn't released by a major), the film is the rare movie about ideas more than its own plot.Alas, the idea it pursues with a terrier's tenacity is nihilism.

"Interview with the Vampire" does seem to have discovered something like the secret of eternal life. At least when you leave the theater, you feel as if you've been in it for a thousand years.Derived from the beloved first novel by mistress of the dark Anne Rice, it unfortunately seems a work primarily intended for Rice Krispies -- that is, people who've already had their brains toasted by reading too much Anne Rice.They'll at least get it. The movie's fundamental flaw, from an outsider's point of view, possibly stems from the fact that Rice wrote the screen adaption, under the assumption that her viewers would be familiar with the original text and that her main thrust should be to get as much of the book into the film as possible.

"I'd cast Tommy Lee Jones as Jim Williams, definitely," he says. "And for Danny Hansford, somebody like Brad Pitt . . . you know, the whole young hunk thing."Writer John Berendt is sipping coffee at the Dunhill Hotel in Charlotte, N.C., one recent morning, imagining the movie version of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (Random House, $23), his best-selling book about Savannah, Ga.He's negotiating a sales price with Hollywood deal-makers, and though he didn't plan it that way, he concedes that the book has "all the ingredients" for a box-office hit."

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT(Columbia TriStar, rated PG, 1992)Robert Redford has accomplished with his director role in "A River Runs Through It" what few veterans have managed: He has created a deep sense of feeling.It's not that the film evokes a specific emotional response from the viewer, although it does that as well; it's that the film itself is the celluloid crystallization of the indescribable deep-seated feelings that drive most everyone but are seldom consciously acknowledged.If an alien were to land on the planet and you were at a loss to verbally convey the emotion of love for a family member and all the unspoken bonding, lack of understanding, joy and frustration that that entails, you could show the creature this film and he would immediately comprehend.

Pitt laughs over New Orleans mayor T-shirt push The idea of Brad Pitt running for New Orleans mayor has generated a lot of buzz around the city even though he isn't eligible. It also generated some laughs for the actor in a Thursday television interview. Many residents have been sporting "Brad Pitt for Mayor" T-shirts since mid-June, when a Tulane University professor and two brothers who own a New Orleans T-shirt shop joined forces to launch a quasi-campaign to persuade Pitt to run. The actor founded the Make It Right organization in 2007 to build houses for low-income residents who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina.

HOLLYWOOD - The days might be numbered for the old Brad Pitt - the Hollywood heartbreaker, the absurdly handsome leading man who couldn't seem to keep his shirt on in a movie for more than five minutes, the prankster who once ran amok through the streets of Los Angeles in a gorilla suit. History. Outta here. Going, going, gone. Now it's time to meet the new, older (and presumably wiser, but no less photogenic) Brad Pitt, who a couple of weekends ago reflected on the themes of his latest film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which opened in theaters on Christmas Day. Portraying the title character, a man who's born as an octogenarian and ages backward into infancy, Pitt says he had some personal reckoning to do with the temporality of things - a fitting assignment for a man at life's midway point.

Brad Pitt runs Shakespeare's "seven ages of man" in reverse in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which ranks with the best films about youth (say, Hope and Glory) and mortality (say, The Dead). It starts in 1918, when Benjamin Button is born with an old face and dilapidated plumbing and wrinkled skin over an infant body, and ends in 2005, when his true love, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), completes the telling of his story. Every chapter in between brings with it a fresh air of discovery. And the movie's emotional completeness leaves you poised between sobbing and applauding - it comes from a full comprehension not just of one man's life, but of the intersection of many lives over the course of the 20th century.

CONCERT Merry Kixmas: After all these years, the big-hair bands of the '80s can still take themselves way too seriously. (We're talking about you, Axl.) But not so for Baltimore's own Kix. The band gets it just right by putting on potent, rock-heavy shows a couple of times a year and not wearing out its welcome with devoted fans. Show starts 8 p.m. Friday at Rams Head Live. For more: ramsheadlive.com FILM Brad Pitt in 'Benjamin Button' : When A-list actresses want an Oscar, they usually go ugly.

Lakeview Terrace * 1/2 ( 1 1/2 STARS) $15 million $15 million 1 week Rated: PG-13 Running time: 110 minutes What it's about: An interracial couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) move to an L.A. suburb and almost immediately suspect their neighbor, a veteran black cop (Samuel L. Jackson, above), of plotting to drive them out of the neighborhood. Our take: It's one more failed thriller about men behaving badly - and stupidly. Burn After Reading ** 1/2 ( 2 1/2 STARS) $11 million $36.1 million 2 weeks Rated: R Running time: 96 minutes What it's about: Espionage gets mixed up with a gym worker's desire to get a Hollywood body, a CIA wife's move to get a divorce, and a U.S. Treasury agent's propensity to get some thrills.

Burn After Reading ** 1/2 ( 2 1/2 STARS) $19.1 million $19.1 million 1 week Rated: R Running time: 96 minutes What it's about: Espionage gets mixed up with a gym worker's desire to get a Hollywood body, a CIA wife's move to get a divorce, and a U.S. Treasury agent's propensity to get some thrills. Our take: You can't fault the ensemble, which includes Brad Pitt (above), but the movie lacks internal combustion. It's more like a lava lamp than lava. The Family That Preys * ( 1 STAR)

HALF THE people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered and the other half are afraid they will be," said the actor Lionel Barrymore. My favorite story of late is about a press agent. Not just any press agent, but the queen of them all these days - the party-giver, movie premiere maker, social fixer Peggy Siegal. There she was at Cannes for the Film Festival, well, not r-e-a-l-l-y for the festival itself, more for the atmosphere and contacts. There were only about six American films seen at Cannes during that period, and most of the foreign movies were pretty deadly.

THERE'S MORE babies coming, you know me!" That's what Angelina Jolie said to a Swedish reporter, on the red carpet in Cannes. No, she was not referring to the twins she is now carrying. Jolie wants more children, after these arrive. She already has Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh. The first three adopted, the last her daughter with very significant other, Brad Pitt. And Brad is, of course, the proud papa of the coming double blessing. Jolie is ravishing these days. She always looks better pregnant, not concerned with keeping a movie-queen figure.

Early on, local audiences may feel the thrill of anticipation when they hear the narrator of this sprawling Western say, "Alexander Frank James was in Baltimore with his wife and child when he read the news about the assassination of Jesse James." But even though Sam Shepard lends his cryptic, windbeaten visage and a fine, dry delivery to Frank James (Jesse's brother), he never enters the picture again after we hear those words. The line occurs on Page 348 of Ron Hansen's engrossing novel.

For real movie lovers, fall is the season of our greatest content. It's when the Oscar contenders start making themselves known, when the big-name directors get their names up on the marquee, when the potential blockbusters promising both popularity and prestige start to open amid great rejoicing. Except ... maybe not so much this year. With fall 2007 just around the corner, no one film is dominating the movie-going discussion. The big-name directors - the Spielbergs, Scorseses, Eastwoods, Jacksons - are taking a breather, gearing up for big-time releases in 2008 and later.