The result is something that feels about as pointless and ungenuine as a movie could possibly be -- one that has absolutely no reason to exist except for the prospect of money changing hands.

That big claim about RED DRAGON telling the whole Harris story - how Lecter got caught, the original ending -- is a tad inflated. All we get is a prologue showing FBI agent Will Graham (Ed Norton) sharing his suspicions about a cannabalistic serial killer with Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), which leads to violence and then Lecter's capture. And the ending is just another one of those you-thought-the-bad-guy-was-dead-but-he's-actually-not routines, which have devolved into cliche over the last ten or fifteen years.

Ed Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Harvey Keitel and Emily Watson -- first-raters, all -- try to bring something extra or different to roles originally played by William Petersen, Tommy Noonan, Stephen Lang, Dennis Farina and Joan Allen, respectively, in the Mann version. But it's like they all have the flu or something. They're saying the lines and hitting their marks, but something's missing. It's like they were hearing the naysayers in their heads as they made it.

Anthony Hopkins is enough of a professional to stay in character while he's playing Hannibal Lecter, but sometimes exudes a certain lethargy, like he's saying to himself, "Dino's check is in the bank, and I must do this in exchange."

Why did Ratner decide to put the same Hannibal mask over Hopkins' face when he's taken out of his cell and detained at one point? Didn't Billy Crystal's wearing the same mask at the '91 Oscar ceremonies pretty much dictate that Hopkins could never again wear it himself?

How come Ratner didn't bring back Miggs, the masturbating looney who lived just a cell or two away from Lecter in Demme's film? Was the actor who played him unavailable? Was he asking for too much money? Why didn't Ratner cast someone else and have him throw a wad of semen at Ed Norton's face as he's first arriving to meet Lecter, for old time's sake? (All right, I'm fooling around...but why not?)

It's sounds petty to say this, but I couldn't suppress the realization that the face of the actor playing the sniveling asshole Dr. Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald) is now much fuller and flabbier than it was in Demme's film. Why didn't Ratner order Heald to go on a crash diet before shooting? You gotta do this right, man.

Al I know is, those SILENCE OF THE LAMBS déjà vu's are killers. Every time one of them appeared I slumped a little lower.

Norton and Hopkins first meet each other in the exact same maximum security cellar inside Baltimore's Prison for the Criminally Insane that Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling first encountered the good doctor in Jonathan Demme's 1990 film, looking at each through that same plexiglass wall and sniffing each other 's aroma through those same circular airholes. Why? Because Ratner is thorough and meticulous and wanted DRAGON to fit together precisely with SILENCE (you know...think of the DVD box set experience), and because he was careful to hire LAMBS production designer Kristin Zea so it would look exactly right.

Except none of it feels right because you can't shake the feeling the whole movie is a whore job. Dino de Laurentiis wanted one last scoop of filthy lucre, and Hopkins was happy with his paycheck (he gets to feel that much more relaxed on his bum-around car trips across the country) and so was everyone else, so they made it and here we are, eating our popcorn and feeling vaguely like chumps.

Says It All

The third update of David Thomson's A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM is hitting the stands next week, except time the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, is calling it THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM...whatever this means or implies. I guess they're trying to convince would-be purchasers that Thomson's book is the definitive Hollywood book to have and hold.

I would agree. I can say without qualification it's the wisest and most beautifully written sum-up book about Hollywood I've ever read. It's not a movie-listings glossary or trivia tome - it's a concise and pointed study of 1300 Hollywood careers -- lives, really -- some of which ended in ruin or semi-triumph (or at least with a kind of end-of-the-day satisfaction), and some of which have only just begun. What's important and enjoyable is that they're all extremely judgmental and delivered with a very sharp blade.

Thomson, a Brit who lives in San Francisco, is a superb writer and film critic. There are very few in his profession who wield a more sardonic wit, or who've seen more deeply to the bottom of what this or that actor (or this or that film) is truly about, and how close they may have come to hitting their creative mark, and how forgiving or unforgiving time has been since their heyday.

There are 300 new entries in this edition, but the whole thing is such a trip I'm just going to flip through and share some random samples.

On Leonardo DiCaprio: In the years since TITANIC, "some gloom has overtaken this extraordinary actor. Now that he is past twenty-five, and beginning to look a touch puffy, there are those ready to dismiss DiCaprio. We'll see how much creative stamina he possesses, but I fear a kind of fey magic has slipped from his face. The world does not seem to please him -- whereas the kid in GILBERT GRAPE was intoxicated and enchanting."

On Joanne Dru: "It is a sign of the times that this wholesome, very pretty and assured actress saw fit to change her name [when she started in the mid '40s]. Twenty years later, anyone called Letitia La Cock would have been welcomed rapturously at the Warhol Factory and could hardly fail to have been lit up with the day-glo camp of the name. But it was as Tess Millay in RED RIVER, barely fazed by an arrow that pins her to a wagon and still able to take pleasure in smacking Montgomery Clift's face, that she established herself."

On Steve McQueen: He "did too much routine work in which his famed, if not dogmatic, impassivity grew monotonous. Even in his years of stardom - and he was immensely popular, with men and women, in the late '60s and early '70s -- he was inclined to be more interested in machines, or a boyish, incommunicable honor, than in other people. But as time passes, his remorseless honesty becomes more affecting. He may be brutal, or brutish, at times -- but when is he fake?"

On Michelle Pfeiffer: "As a regular Hollywood performer, Michelle Pfeiffer is a mystery. For a few years (around 1990), she was beautiful, mysterious and potent. People guessed she could do anything - but then anything turned into so many forlorn choices. She still carries the rather stunned, obedient air of an ex-checkout girl at the El Toro Vons supermarket, as well as the luster of an Orange County beauty pageant winner. To judge by her appearance on the Barbara Walters show, Pfeiffer is not all honey and buttermilk. Indeed, she seemed odd, hidden and rather ungiving in spirit. [Yet] she has great skill and inventiveness, a genuine glamour, and an appealing vulnerability."

On Steve Martin: While he "has the largest movie career of al the SNL people, he seems fundamentally averse to acting. 'Fake' bells go off in my head when he says lines. That is not to say he is unfunny [but] simply that this viewer feels a barrier, a tenseness in Martin, that cannot yield to pretending."

On Cary Grant: "There is a major but difficult realization that needs to be reached about [him] -- difficult, that is, for many people who like to think they take the art of film seriously. He was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema. The essence of his quality can be put quite simply: he can be attractive and unattractive simultaneously; there is a light and a dark side to him, but whichever is dominant, the other creeps into view."

Buy this book and you'll be able to pick it up 10 or 20 years from now and sit down with it and come away delighted. It's not only one of the most dense and brilliant books of its kind, but is also, oddly, one of the most loving. Every time I read one of Thomson's short biographies I find myself liking or respecting the artist a bit more than I had previously, and wanting to see one or more of his or her films.

Stuart's Latest Score

Stuart Acher became briefly famous three and a half years ago when he managed to get critic Roger Ebert to watch his 20-minute short BOBBY LOVES MANGOES at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, which led to Ebert giving it a "thumbs up" review. The then 22 year-old filmmaker called me about this lucky break a week after the festival ended, which led to my writing about Ebert and MANGOES in my Mr. Showbiz column.

I've kept in touch with Acher since then, knowing sooner or later he'd tell me about his next big surge up the ladder. He tipped me last week about a music video he's just directed of the Los Angeles-based turbo-pop group Powder performing a single called "Up Here." I couldn't attend a combination screening and after-party last Friday night at Moomba, but Acher slipped me a tape of the video the day before yesterday (i.e., Wednesday).

It's sexy and imaginative and pretty damn cool. It has a vaguely futuristic, BLADE RUNNER feeling, although most of my attention was focused on the skimpy outfits worn by Powder's buxom lead singer, Ninette. Acher has officially graduated out of the interesting short-filmmaker category. He can shoot, cut, and do razzle-dazzle somersaults as good as any other supposedly "hot" music-video director. He's on his way, baby.

Powder is a popular, well-known group in L.A. circles. They were handed a pair of LA Music Awards last year in the category of Best Rock / Pop Artist and Best Live Show. Rock City handed them an Independent Rock Band of the Year award also, along with a tribute by NoHo News last Sept ember as the Rock Band of the Year. One of their biggest scores was appearing on the PL AYBOY sponsored pay-per-view program NIGHT CALLS last December, which was taped at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion. Acher hooked up with the group on the night of the taping.

The video starts with a team of thieves (led by JAY AND SILENT BOB star Jason Mewes) about to hit a bank. Cut to a classroom with a matronly-looking Ninette instructing her students. She and the Powder band members -- guitarist Phil X, bass player Allan Hearn, drummer J-Bo Dynamite - tear off their bland clothing and launch into the tune, which is suitably catchy and hard-chopping.

The plot has something to do with Ninette and the boys thwarting Mewes and his partners in crime...but I wasn't paying much attention to this, frankly. Not with Ninette shaking that booty.

Acher is proud of having thrown the video together for next to no money. He borrowed cameras, convinced the good fellows at Filmworks FX (who worked on a few MATRIX shots) to do effects on the cheap, got Kodak to donate free film, etc. Filmmaking talent is obviously crucial, but no one gets anywhere in this town without moxie and persistence, and Acher has all these bases covered.

When will our fair-haired lad make his first feature? His agent has just put Acher's latest script, LOST -- an eerie science fiction piece about a dead 12 year-old kid paying a visit to childhood friend who's now fully-grown -- on the market, and there's also a previous script called DaViD, so we'll see what happens.

Reese Stuff

"The 'untitled tennis project' you mentioned in your Wednesday piece about Reese Witherspoon is one fucking funny script. I read it on a plane to Paris six months ago. I laughed out loud a few times. This could work very well for Reese, as she's not a sympathetic character at first but we grow to love her over the course of the film. Plus there's a great lead role for a Bill Paxton/John Cusack type actor opposite her. It could be a huge hit down the road." -- Jean-Francois Allaire

"It's my understanding that Ms. Witherspoon is in talks to play Becky Sharp in Mira Nair's film of William Makepeace Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair,' which, if true, would hardly seem to qualify as another fluff project and could be another quality breakout role for her. I would like to think a young woman with her talent, intelligence, and charisma would not devalue her serious creativee urges as an actress." -- Paul Kolas

IMAX Apollo

"Not to beat a dead horse, but I have now seen the IMAX-format APOLLO 13, and I think those complaints about IMAX censorship are off-base. Yes, you can complain about the need to edit for time, and I was amazed at how many of my favorite bits had to be excised, but the edits for time so far outnumbered any cuts of objectionable material that I frankly think Ron Howard would have welcomed any excuses to cut any material which did not serve to advance the plot.

"Even though I found some of the cuts upsetting, I did find the IMAX presentation to be amazing. Having seen APOLLO 13 many times in normal cinemas, I thought this new version to be the most convincing argument I have ever seen for the way the enveloping large-format experience can be so much more emotionally involving.

"The launch sequence, which I think is one of the best-executed bits of filmmaking ever, ranking up there with the chariot race from BEN-HUR, always gives me a chill or a lump in my throat (Marilyn Lovell gets choked up during this part on the Lovell's commentary on the DVD). In IMAX this sequence made me feel like I was going to explode.

"The Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, Virginia, by the way, is a great place to see this film. How many places showing this version of APOLLO 13 have an Apollo command module (from the Apollo 12 mission) just outside the theater entrance?" -- Jay C. Smith

Leo Dropout

"I'm still shilling for DiCaprio, I guess, but how can you take him out of the Oscar Balloon in the Best Actor category as a possibility for CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, when you're leaving Hanks in the Supporting Category as a possibility? Do you have some inside information, or are you just going on Hanks track record? I don't think DiCaprio has a chance in hell of getting a nod, even if he is excellent in either film. Just a feeling I have. Maybe you have it now also." -- Sheila Houking

Wells to Houking: A guy I know knows someone who saw CATCH, and he says it's on the comedic or lightweight side, and that not even the DreamWorks people are trying to push it as a heavy Oscar caliber thing. And I've been hearing for a long while that Daniel Day Lewis is supposed to be the generator of the big Oscar-quality performance in GANGS...not that Leo's isn't pretty damn good also, but Lewis is allegedly scoring higher. I don't know anything; I'm just passing along what 'they' tell me.

Obscura

"MOONLIGHT MILE plays with Brad Silberling's bio without Brad having to deal with the ultimate nightmare of Rebecca Schaeffer's murder. In the film, the love interest is an innocent bystander killed by a madman...instead of the harsh fact that Schaeffer's murderer was a fan. Brad took such an emotional easy way out instead of forcing Jake's character to wonder how can someone who 'loved' her would hunt her down and destroy her. Now he and her parents only have to wonder how and why such an accidental homicide could happen. It's like there's another movie waiting to be made about such a moment." -- Joe Corey

Role Playing

CHICAGO TRIBUNE film critic Michael Wilmington was first to identify Wednesday's Cast. They appeared together in Jules Dassin's NAKED CITY (1948).

Today's cast: Earl Holliman, Lon Chaney, Jr., Howard St. John, Lori Nelson, Jack Palance, Lee Marvin, Shelley Winters.

What's That Line?

Willie Craig was first to identify Wednesday's dialogue. It's from CLEOPATRA (1963), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and written by Mankoiewicz, Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht and Ranald MacDougall. The dialogue was spoken by Roddy McDowall's Caesar Augustus, reacting to the death of Richard Burton's Marc Antony.

A bad guy is having a candid heart-to-heart with a good guy, or a facsimile thereof. They're sitting in the good guy's apartment, in the living room.

Bad Guy: Do you know who I am, Mr. [name]?
Good Guy: (Faintly amused, or pretending to be) I give up. Who are you?
Bad Guy: (Very casually, if he's telling a neighborhood friend he's looking to sell a couple of tickets to an upcoming Dodger game) I'm the anti-Christ. You got me in a vendetta kinda mood. You tell the angels in heaven you've never seen evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you.

A couple of seconds for these words to sink in...

Bad Guy: My name is [name], counsel for Mr. [four-syllable name], whom your son stole from. I hear you were once a cop, so I can assume you've heard of us before. Am I correct?
Good Guy: I've heard of [bad guy's four-syllable boss].
Bad guy: I'm glad. We're gonna have a little q & a, and at the risk of sounding redundant, please....make your answers genuine. You want a Chesterfield?
Good Guy: No.
Bad Guy: I have a son, my own, about your boy's age. I can imagine how painful this must be for you. But [name] and that bitch-whore girlfriend of his brought this all on themselves. I implore you....not to go down that road with them. You can always take comfort in the fact you never had a choice.

Name the film, the year of release, the director, the screenwriter(s), and the two actors in the scene.