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Speculation that the New York Film Festival "snubbed" Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is untrue, according to a spokesperson. The festival committee saw Aquatic last June, in tandem with plans to open the sea-faring comedy-drama in October or thereabouts. And while "they liked it and wanted it," a decision was later made for Touchstone to open Aquatic in December, and the notion of a NYFF debut didn't seem quite as desirable. Aquatic's opening is set for 12.10 in New York and Los Angeles, and 12.24 wide. I would normally be scratching my head over the title expansion (i.e., adding with Steve Zissou), as this sort of thing usually indicates indecision and therefore trouble on some level. But here the addition sounds droll and all of a piece, as with all things Anderson. I also imagine that Anderson, like any director from Spielberg on down, welcomed the extra time to tweak and fine-tune. A suggestion that may not save the James Bond franchise, but will at least halt its downhill slide: arrange for producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to be gently but firmly kidnapped and then taken to an undislcosed location (somewhere in Southeast Asia would be best), where they will be kept in two lavish homes under house arrest, with allowances for family visitations. Once this is done, all serious interest in Eric Bana playing the new 007 will cease and Wilson and Broccoli's successors can look at other options. One of these options should, of course, be to shut the series down. Just because the Bond movies continue to make money doesn't mean they're dead inside, and that one of most compassionate acts anyone could do would be to fire a bullet into the skull of this outdated, cliche-ridden franchise and walk away proud....like Pierce Brosnan has done. Bana is said to be unsure about stepping into the 007 series, according to London's Evening Standard. The tabloid says an offer has gone out to him but that Bana is "currently deciding whether it's something he really wants to sign up [for]." Translation: he's heard the Wilson-Broccoli stories. Eric Bana would be to the 007 tradition as Lex Barker was to the Tarzan series in the 1950s. A suggestion that may not save the James Bond franchise, but will at least halt its downhill slide: arrange for producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to be gently but firmly kidnapped and then taken to an undislcosed location (somewhere in Southeast Asia would be best), where they will be kept in two lavish homes under house arrest, with allowances for family visitations. Once this is done, all serious interest in Eric Bana playing the new 007 will cease and Wilson and Broccoli's successors can look at other options. One of these options should, of course, be to shut the series down. Just because the Bond movies continue to make money doesn't mean they're dead inside, and that one of most compassionate acts anyone could do would be to fire a bullet into the skull of this outdated, cliche-ridden franchise and walk away proud....like Pierce Brosnan has done. Bana is said to be unsure about stepping into the 007 series, according to London's Evening Standard. The tabloid says an offer has gone out to him but that Bana is "currently deciding whether it's something he really wants to sign up [for]." Translation: he's heard the Wilson-Broccoli stories. Eric Bana would be to the 007 tradition as Lex Barker was to the Tarzan series in the 1950s. Hold up on that rumble about the conniving heavyweight behind Ted Griffin's firing off the Graduate-sequel flick not being Jennifer Aniston, but costar Kevin Costner. The Fly on theWall guy claimed in an 8.16 posting, using quotes from an anonymous crew member, that Griffin's dismissal "was totally Kevin's fault, not Jennifer's." But now another guy who was right in the thick of the situation says this account is "completely false," due to the fact that "Costner hadn't started working" on the film at the time Griffin's dismissal went down. Hey, I'm just passing this along. The Entertainment Weekly cover (#779-780) asks if Johnny Depp's performance as J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland (Miramax, 10.22) will deliver a Best Actor Oscar...and in so doing indicates an obvious rooting interest on the part of EW staffers (film critics Owen Gleiberman and/or Liza Schwarzbaum, it's safe to presume) in at least helping Depp land a nomination. In the face of such a boldly-put suggestion, I think it's fair to offer a counter-opinion, which is that Depp's acting in this tenderly composed biopic may be too exacting for its own good. In other words, Depp seems to really "get" the eccentric Scottish playwright who wrote Peter Pan , who, according to the press notes, was said to have a quiet, puckish personality and always spoke in a low burr. And that's Depp in the film. The problem is that his Barrie seems so internal, so into his own quiet determinations and oddball kindnesses, that you feel a strange urge to strangle him after a while. Plus there's something too actorly about his Scottish accent; it sounds at once uncertain and overly studied. In short, Depp did everything right...and in so doing created a character and a vibe that feels curiously wrong. You like a filmmaker, you find him/her intriguing, you try to show interest and support and....test pattern. I became curious about Abel Ferrara's supposed next film, Mary, in which Vincent Gallo will play an actor playing Jesus Christ in a film-within-the-film. (This, at least, is what the Brown Bunny star-director-producer told me last week.) The focus of Mary, says Gallo, is the actress who plays the mother of Christ, and who experiences a kind of spiritual satori as a result of immersing herself in the part. The film, Gallo adds, is supposed to shoot in Rome in late September or early October. But of course, there can be no contact whatsoever with Ferrara. The guy almost never calls back anyone, I've heard. It's always, "I'll call you." An e-mail to Ferrara's Rome-based producer resulted in zip. Ferrara's New York attorney, Jay Julien, professed a general ignorance about Mary, and couldn't direct me to anyone with a history of replying to phone calls who might. I've learned that whenever it's this much trouble to get hold of someone, it's usually not worth the effort in the first place. Sofia Coppola is set to direct a period costume drama about Marie Antoinette and husband King Louis XVI for Columbia. Wigs and hoop gowns, the French revolution, let 'em eat cake, the guillotine...all that good stuff. This is a joke, right? The reasonably talented Sofia hasn't shown a glimmer of the kind of commanding, exacting vision that the lensing of any historical drama of this sort would require. I mean, presuming Columbia wants something at least half as good, say, as Barry Lyndon, which they probably couldn't care less about. But I am looking forward to watching Kirsten Dunst, who will play Antoinette, get her head cut off. And you have to admire the sense of humor that Coppola and her casting director have shown in choosing Jason Schwartzman ("Max" in Rushmore) to play her husband Louis. If they stick to history, he'll also lose his head. Valor, Max...valor! You won't feel a thing. A tickling sensation, your head falls in the basket, everything turns numb, and then blackness. You can do that standing on your head. Oops..sorry. Regarding the recent death of King Kong star Fay Wray, Move City News' David Poland wrote that Peter Jackson, director of an all-new King Kong flick, "wanted Ms. Wray to close his film with the 'Twas Beauty That Killed The Beast' line, but, ever the lady, Ms. Wray was unwilling (though attempts at persuasion continued) because she felt it would be arrogant to call the character she played -- and thus, herself -- a beauty." Apart from the utterly nonsensical thinking conveyed in Wray's alleged view, the item is another worrisome indicator that Jackson's King Kong is going to be way too Jackson-y. (Which is to say movie-mucky to the point of suffocation.) Can you imagine a line as important as that one -- the big closer! -- given to a 96 year-old woman as an affectionate gesture, however heartfelt on Jackson's part? Art is art and emotions are emotions, and never the twain shall meet. If Jackson is handing out cameo kicker lines as tokens of respect to grand old ladies, forget it....it's over. John Ford once told Nunnally Johnson that to be a good director you have to be a bit of a bastard. This, conversely speaking, may be Jackson's problem. He's too mushy, too much of a sweetheart. This is old news now, but those people who described Collateral's box-office performance last weekend as "so-so" or " middling" or whatever were being a tad dismissive. Unfair, really. A movie as dark as this one, with a gray-haired Tom Cruise playing a cold-hearted assassin, is doing great by taking in $24 million during its first weekend. Only three other Cruise films -- Minority Report and the two Mission Impossible's -- have had better openers. And Exhibitor Relations' Paul Dergarabedian must have been smokin' some strong stuff before telling the New York Times' Sharon Waxman that Collateral "is not a movie that can be supported by teenagers." He's saying...what? That teenagers can't deal with urban thrillers about cops and hit men and what-all? That beautifully rendered mood and ace dialogue don't impress them? I should add there was a different reaction to the film when I saw it with a paying crowd last weekend. They didn't applaud, but the two industry crowds I saw it with earlier did. Hmmmm. Ben Affleck was his usual glib self during his hanging-out-in-Boston segment with Katie Couric a couple of days ago...same-old, same-old...but something different happened when he did a chat thing with Hardball's Chris Matthews on Tuesday afternoon. He was focused, sharp, and quick, and had some very cogent things to say about Kerry-vs.-Bush, voter sentiments and the general lay of the land. In other words, he did himself a huge favor. For the first time in a very long time Affleck was suddenly about something besides Bennifer, chasing girls, iffy movies and gambling sprees. He said he might want to jump into politics down the road, since the movie career thing has its limits in terms of feeling fulfilled or spiritually nourished. He also told Matthews he'd like to have his job, and Matthews said in response, "I do fear you."