And the U.S. of A. gets another year older ... she doesn’t look a day over 221.

CASH & CARRY: Scary Movie 2 and Cats & Dogs were the two big new entries opening on the Fourth of July holiday. And the winner was…. Cats & Dogs! It really shouldn’t be a surprise, Cats & Dogs is a family movie and Scary Movie 2 is a raunchy R-rated comedy. Yet, Miramax should be pretty happy, only $250,00 behind C&D, which opened to $9 million. Warner Bros. victory on Cats & Dogs may be dampened by A.I.’s failure to make a significant leap on Wednesday, suggesting once again that it may already be slowing down in a normal way. There’s nothing wrong with that unless you were projecting a $250 million box office haul for the film. What all this means in the long haul is a big question mark. After all, the Wednesday Fourth of July is an unusual event, keeping the three-day or four-day weekend out of range. I would guess that Cats & Dogs will continue to lead over the weekend, but the question is, how big will it – and Scary Movie 2 – get?

And Pearl Harbor, chasing that $200 million mark, reported a Tuesday to Wednesday increase of 15 percent, and the finals from last weekend ended up improving to a 31 percent drop. If that level of fall continues, the WWII opener will work its way to a II hundred million closing domestic figure.

QUOTE QUIBBLES: I guess it is turning out that my quote whore comments are the least of the problems for those members of the junketeer class who quote without restraint. On Monday, 10 more class action lawsuits were filed against studio blurbing. And this time, the suits named, according to Variety, such quote luminaries as Maria Salas, Jim Ferguson, Jeff Craig, Mark S. Allen, Ron Brewington and Earl Dittman. The quoters are not being sued, but they are mentioned as examples. Still… remarkable.

As with many of my comments on the writers in this business, I don’t blame the writers so much as I blame the outlets and the studios. The studios are in control. And just because my personal judgment wouldn’t allow some of the behavior I see – and honestly, I do judge these people, but on a whole different level – it is the studios’ choice to maintain the system that exists. The studios quote the people listed as examples in this suit often enough for people to notice… and to notice that these writers do not have any other presence in their lives.

So, should these writers be punished for going along to get along? No. Not really. In an odd way, they are victims too. Welcome to the United States of Victimhood, but…. lives have been built around a system that really needs an overhaul. The simple reality is that there are a lot of hard working journalists who live on the junket circuit, traveling way too much for anyone’s sanity, doing tons of interviews that are even more boring for them than they are for the talent… and rarely if ever turning up in pull quotes, much less lots of pull quotes for bad movies.

Of the six quoters pointed out in the Variety story, only Earl Dittman is not a member, in some form, of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. I am also a member. And, while out of respect for the organizations privacy I can’t tell anything specific about the debate currently raging within the organization regarding the creation of a new code of ethics, there is a debate. None of the names in this suit have been mentioned. In fact, we have all been quote careful about not pointing fingers internally. But in an organization that embraces a whole lot of people who are on the junket circuit, there are no easy answers. The debate is sincerely engaged on each side of the issue. And the greatest problem is answering the question of where "the line" between "right" and "wrong" is.

The rule for this column has been judgments are made based on what I see. I’m not interested in scripts. I’m not interested in test screenings. And I’m not interested in the internal workings of the junkets. When the film is done, I write about it. When a review appears, I’ll reflect on it. When a pull quote gets printed, it’s fair game. If the studios get great value out of the junket system, what do I care whether people are flown or housed or per diemed? I’m far more concerned when Time and Newsweek are battling over a cover and their editorial judgment is compromised. (To the credit of those outlets, this summer, early and honest reviews seem to be a part of that equation after years of summer puffery. That doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, but…) Spin The Wall Street Journal if you want to see my blood pressure go up. (And you know there’s only one person I consider spinable over there.) Get the L.A. Times to make your loser of a movie seem highly profitable and I will go to battle. But when I pick up Wireless Magazine in Dallas or watch movie mavens on local TV or chew on any other sort of movie fluff, its buyer beware time… isn’t it?

The Variety story is here.

ADD PULL QUOTE: Just a few weeks ago, someone on the grapevine told me that Ron Brewington – who doesn’t talk to me - had decided to stop quoting. I thought that was very interesting. But Scary Movie 2 brought Brewington’s first quote in a long, long time. The ad is headed by a pull from someone named Gil Robinson of The Robinson Report… can’t find it anywhere. But there are lots of Gil Robinsons with reports on the web. Here is one Robinson Report

JUST WONDERING: I don’t recall whether I gave Inside.com proper credit for being the first to get and write about the Shooting Gallery internal e-mail laying off the staff. I would link to the story, but Inside.com is now a subscription only site. I have not been inspired to join yet, even at the new, low price. As I write this, there are no movie headlines on the site’s cover. No soup for you.

LYNCHING: David Lynch’s TV pilot turned feature film and Cannes Film Festival hit, Mulholland Drive, has found a distributor for theatrical release in Universal Focus. Most folks expected the film to sell quickly after being one of the few highlights of this years bash on the Croisette. Lynch even shared the fest’s Best Director with Joel Coen. But apparently, Lynch & Co. were holding out for a higher bidder than seemed to be in play initially. I don’t know if Universal stepped up or if the price was stepped down, but The Drive is on the way to the multiplexes. Cool.

JUST WONDERING 2: If Variety is now charging for content access on its site, why are there more ads – and more obnoxiously aggressive ads – than ever on the site? It feels kind of like the theaters upping the ticket price and adding more and more commercial non-movie ads before we get to see that for which we’ve paid.

READER OF THE DAY: NY Nat writes: "MY BRAIN IS FALLING OUT"

When the superb actor Haley Joel Osment delivered that line near what I was hoping would be the end of the film, I was stunned by how moving it was... but he had no help from the film itself. This line for me represents what was happening with Mr. Spielberg behind the scenes. He bit off more than he can chew. He starts with an absorbing premise, sets dozens of fascinating ideas in motion and  then proceeds to destroy them one by one. Every intelligent or fascinating idea is either tossed aside, contradicted, or deeply misunderstood in the latter half of the film....It's a deeply weird and incoherent film. The maker (Spielberg) did not understand his own creation (the movie.) -rather fitting since that's ostensibly one of the themes of the piece as well.

When discussing the film with its defenders I've heard three lines of reasoning.

A) You’re missing the point in getting hung up on the plot and structure. The movie is a statement about consumerism and waste.

If it's really about that -why are we asked to side with the product? (That's "David" of course.)

B) You're a cold hearted cynic. The movie is a fable about the quest for love...

If it's really about that why is the Frances O Connor character portrayed as an abusive/ neglectful mother. And why should we applaud our protagonist's need to seek that out relentlessly for thousands of years. The love was not real. That's an abusive cycle. That's not love. If it's a quest for love story -if Spielberg wanted us to root for "David's" quest for love then the love needed to be real rather than imprinted and the object of his affection needed to be worthy of the love.

C) Don't be so hung up on plot and minor details. The movie is symbolic -it's not meant to be a literal story.

Fine with me...but if it is meant to be a fable, to not be taken seriously as a literal story... Then why are we hammered over the head with long scientific expositions about what can and can't be done...Like, oh for example, how 24 hour resurrections work.

These inconsistencies/contradictions are not delicious ironies. They are sizeable mistakes in storytelling and thematic coherence. The film does have a lot going for it: Janusz Kaminski 's (sp?) cinematography, the visual effects, Haley and Jude. But rarely have I seen such a divide between good scenes and bad film. In the end the only useful purpose the movie serves is as an excellent conversation piece.

And this is an aside to wrap this all up but I am already tired of people referring to A.I. as the only daring, ambitious, and fascinating movie on display. Moulin Rouge has all three of those things going for it. AND it's a good film. Luhrman set the bar high for the summer and Spielberg more than just missed the mark."

For more Civilian Voices about A.I. ....

E ME: Where do you stand on the junket debate? Do you respect the work of people who spend every weekend on the road, even if it is on the studio dime? Can you tell the difference between fluff and serious criticism? Do you care?