The News: Marion Cotillard, Conspiracy Theorist

Skyline philosopher Marion Cotillard -- New York, May 2007 (Photo: Star-Ledger)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

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

--Talk about perfect timing: With her Oscar firmly in hand (and my prognostications thus validated), the French media are finally introducing us to the real Marion Cotillard. And really, this Cotillard is way more fun than the demure ingenue who charmed Hollywood over the last two months: "I think we're lied to about a number of things," she told a French TV interviewer in a video (now unavailable, natch) invoking skepticism about what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001. "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? There was a tower -- I believe it was in Spain -- which burned for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed!" She goes on to doubt the moon landing as well. I love her no less, of course, especially knowing that, as a journalist for The Guardian writes today, "If Hollywood proves unforgiving, the actress can always fall back on her Bohemian enthusiasm for knitting and jewellery making."

--Glen Hansard is also cashing in with a fantastic post-Oscar slag-off of his own: "If you look at my head, my head looks totally weird, because whoever did the Photoshop job was shit," he told Pitchfork about the revised poster (dis)gracing the DVD packaging of Once. "They don't give a fuck. They want you to look at the DVD cover and get everything from that." [H/T: Scanners]

--Poor Mary-Louise Parker. So beloved, so irreproachable, so... oh, to hell with it. So disingenuous: "She bristles at the attitude that tabloid attention comes with the job, comparing that to saying a sexual assault victim was asking for it by wearing a short dress," writes Campbell Robertson in a profile in today's New York Times. “ 'I understand the fascination, and I understand the curiosity, but at the same time I understand the fascination and curiosity of staring at someone who has fallen off their bicycle and has a bloody nose,' she said. 'Does that mean you should stand there and point and look at them as though they can’t see you?' " Please. If Mary-Louise Parker fell off her bicycle, not only would everybody stand and point, they'd also call 911, offer her every comfort and say she handled it in as dignified a fashion as you'd expect Parker to exhibit under the circumstances. I'd rather hear talk about 9/11 than lament her celebrity. Again. In a 1.1-million circulation newspaper.

--Novelist Blake Nelson's Sunday interview with Gus Van Sant -- whose adaptation of Nelson's Paranoid Park finally opens in theaters this week -- is either the most ironic in-joke ever played on The New York Times (Sample questions: "Does the gray climate of Portland affect you in any way?" "What do you think of teenagers?") or the dawn of a fantastic new era in chat-room journalism.

Posted at March 3, 2008 7:38 AM