* It nice to lead with some good news. Jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi has reportedly been released on bail from his imprisonment. The director, who was supposed to sit on the Cannes jury, had been on a hunger strike. The acclaimed film-maker appears to be in trouble because of a documentary about the Iranian protest movement.

* The lower than expected box office performance for “Shrek Forever After” had an effect on Wall Street. Moreover, Patrick Goldstein wonders if those inflated 3-D ticket prices might already be starting to backfire. I tend to agree. People may not mind paying a little extra for something that feels like a real event, but 3-D is already starting to feel old hat and, as Goldstein reminds us, there’s a lot more coming.

* This story fell between the cracks a few days back — and Louis Black doesn’t work for me — but Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me“) really is doing that comicon documentary that was rumored sometime back. It was originally plugged as a collaboration of some sort with Joss Whedon, but it turns out Whedon is just one of a few geek superstars who will be executive producing. That’ possibly the most elastic job title in show business, so his involvement could be fairly minimal though I’m sure he’ll appear on screen. Accompanying Whedon in backing the film are none other than Stan Lee and Harry Knowles.

* A long time ago, I found the novel, Less Than Zero, oddly compelling reading in that it was a vivid portrait of a human train wreck. That being said, Brett Easton Ellis is certainly not dispelling the widespread opinion that he might be a jackass with his pronouncements about female directors. May he shortly be visited by the ghost of Ida Lupino.

* The real winner at Cannes: Eliot Spitzer.

* Call me a luddite old fogey with terrible hand-eye coordination, but I can’t get excited about movies based on videogames. Nevertheless, Warner Brothers disagrees and is starting things up on a film version of “Mass Effect.”

* Speaking of movies based on video games, apparently “Hitman” — a movie I’ve never heard anyone say they liked — made enough cash to instigate a sequel. Yay.

* Note to Kim Masters and her mysterious “talent representative.” The reason Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy aren’t as popular as they once were has nothing to do with the Internet or “dumbing down.” It has a lot to do with their failure to make funny and/or good movies. It eventually gets to you.  I do agree with producer David Friendly that “the concept is becoming the star.” That, in a way, is as it should be.

* If you’ve got some time, you should check out the really good and really long New York Times piece about the late author of the latest hot book-based franchise, Steig Larsson of The Millenium Trilogy. The very decent Swedish film version of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which believe it or not combines classical style mystery/detective fiction with blunt portrayals of sexual abuse and a character partially inspired by Pippi Longstocking, is already a huge international hit. A big-star laden American version is coming, perhaps with Brad Pitt.  And the books are just one element of Larsson’s fascinating and somewhat tragic life. Anne Thompson has more on the film, in particular.

* If he didn’t provide the links to back himself up, I’d wonder what the Filmdrunk was imbibing, but apparently Martin Scorsese thinks that Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro would be good as the older Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, respectively, for his long delayed film about the Rat Pack. Perhaps fortunately, it’s destined to be delayed a bit longer as Scorsese has a lot on his plate right now.

* I know nobody really cares, but just for the record, “The Switch,” based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, will not be a prequel.  Not really. The book “Jackie Brown” was based on, Rum Punch, was a sequel. The movie might be “blessed” by Quentin Tarantino, whatever that means, but it sounds as if it will have no real connection to the terrific Tarantino film, which Leonard has said is his favorite adaptation of one of his books.

* Our top story tonight, however, is far away from anything likely to screen in, or even out of, competition at the world’s most famous film festival. Seems that Megan Fox, who you might remember compared director Michael Bay to Hitler some time ago, will not be returning in “Transformers 3.” Apparently Bay has finally realized there are lots and lots of unnaturally attractive young women in Hollywood and some of them can act a little.

In any case, Nikki Finke brings you a crash course on the apparent Fox/Bay hate affair, while AICN’s Merrick reminds you of some of those other unnaturally attractive women.

* I had a feeling that Paul Greengrass’s style of hand-held action mayhem might not be a fit in 3-D. Of course, I had no way of knowing if the director was going to maintain his “Bourne” style for the upcoming remake of “Fantastic Voyage,” but now I guess we’ll never know.

* Getting back to Cannes, Anne Thompson brings us up to date on some of what has been picked up by the studios for release, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” which has been doing fairly well in terms of response.

* A.J. Schnack summarizes the hugely impressed reaction to what might be the important film to screen at Cannes in terms of real-world consequences. It’s “Inside Job” from Charles Ferguson, he of the outstanding Iraq war documentary, “No End in Sight.” This time the topic is Wall Street and last year’s worldwide economic debacle and near depression. Not at all surprisingly, it apparently contains some sharp words regarding some of President Obama’s economic appointees many of whom have deep Wall Street ties that are regularly flailed by progressives and populists.

As for Logan Hill‘s breathless query: “Is Matt Damon’s Narration of a Cannes Doc a Sign that Hollywood is Abandoning Obama?” there are so many wrong assumptions folded into those fifteen words, I don’t know where to begin.

* Speaking of Wall Street exposes, the new film about fallen Wall Street scourge and ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer from Alex Gibney, who produced “No End in Sight,” has been picked up. I’m also amused by the description of the film as a “Downfall Doc.” Somehow, I expect to hear about ‘net denizens in Germany making hilarious videos in which ex-Gov. Spitzer rants via subtitles about bad video games and David Hasselhoff.

* Department of intra-critic controversy. First, in the interest of equal time, we have the brilliantly petulant Glenn Kenny‘s response to a review of Jean-Luc Godard’s latest and possibly last film from Todd McCarthy (which I linked to yesterday) and a Tweet, or something, by Roger Ebert, which I can’t seem to find. If you’re into this kind of thing, be sure to check out the really interesting colloquy in comments, which I would say even if if I hadn’t just left a comment there of my own. Really interesting thoughts from a bunch of smart people, not necessarily including me.

Speaking of really smart people, Dennis Cozzalio has his really interesting two cents on a controversy about the audience for classic film screenings sparked by his own piece on the TCM Fest. And then he talks about westerns. Yee-freaking-haw.

*And speaking of Todd McCarthy, his rave review of “Carlos,” about the legendary and utterly ruthless terrorist of seventies and eighties, has me way excited to see it. It sounds like it might pair nicely with “The Baader Meinhof Complex.”

* Nicholas Cage doesn’t like how pigs pork, so he won’t pig out on pork.

* Steven Soderbergh is even busier than Alex Gibney, I think. And he’s doing George Lucas one better by fixing an old movie of his that I thought was actually fairly broken, 1991’s “Kafka.” To me, it started out like a really strong homage to Franz Kafka — with the conceit that Kafka’s life was, you know, Kafka-esque. Then, it turned into an episode of “Wild Wild West” — or I guess “Wild Wild Central Bohemia” — and not in a good way. So, I’m curious to see how this new version will come out, even if we have to wait two more years for it.

* Hercules is right, I think. Jemaine Clement should make a nice alien-villain type guy.

* Some “Twilight” news for those who care.

* I saw “Get Him to the Greek” last week and am looking forward to a press day coming up this weekend. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s breaking any press embargoes to say there’s probably more than enough material for an “Infant Sorrow” EP, if not a full-on album. There’s certainly more than enough music, good and not so good, for a decent soundtrack.

There’s no doubt that Alex Gibney is on a historic roll as a documentarian. Within only a few years, he’s been involved with probably the largest number of popular and influential documentaries of any single human being not named Michael Moore. Those works would include the outstanding “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and the equally strong, and Oscar winning, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about American use of torture in the “war on terror.” Gibney has also made his share of more historically themed documentaries, including “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.” He was also involved as a producer in two of the other most important and controversial documentaries of recent years, the Iraq-war expose, “No End in Sight” and “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

If Gibney’s past output is hugely impressive, however, his upcoming list of films is dizzying. At the recently wrapped Tribeca Film Festival in New York, he premiered as a “work in progress,” a new and apparently very revealing, look at former New York state governor, attorney general, and Wall Street watchdog Eliot Spitzer and the sex scandal that drove him from office. He also has a segment in the upcoming film version of the super-hot bestseller, Freakonomics, as well as new films about two very different cultural legends: bicyclist Lance Armstrong and author/super-hippie Ken Kesey of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Merry Pranksters fame.

There’s also the recently completed “My Trip to Al-Qaeda” and the film Gibney was promoting at his publicist’s L.A. office one recent afternoon, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money.” It’s a work of amazing journalistic detail that also works very hard to be lively and accessible.

Even if I felt that Gibney didn’t quite master that “accessible and lively” aspect too consistently this time around, his “Casino Jack” reviews so far have been great overall. He’s certainly a filmmaker to be reckoned with and one with an outstanding body of work behind him and much, much more to come. Not my idea of a lazy person.

Premium Hollywood: Things have been busy for you lately.

Alex Gibney: I’ll say.

PH: They’re calling the Tribeca Festival the “Alex Gibney Fest”…

AG: Right, right, right.

PH: I was reading the Wall Street Journal article about you and it said that the reason these have all come out at once is that all these interviews have materialized for you fairly recently. These are movies you’ve been working on for several years, though.

AG: That’s right. Some of them were supposed to have been finished one or two years ago, but they weren’t quite ready and we hadn’t quite gotten to the center of the story. You hope that these not only have an immediate impact but a kind of lasting impact. If you’re trying to tell a story from the inside out, you can’t really tell it until you get to the inside.

PH: Which brings us to “Casino Jack.” Now, you did speak to Jack Abramoff off-camera but not on-camera. What made you decide that you were ready to go?

AG: In waiting for Jack, two other people came forward, [jailed former Ohio congressman] Bob Ney and [ex-Abramoff gambling associate] Adam Kidan, who were close enough to the center. So, it feels like a story from the inside out. I was telling somebody earlier, in “The Wizard of Oz,” you don’t spend a lot of time with the Wizard of Oz. It’s called “The Wizard of Oz.” But you learn an awful lot about the Emerald City and the Land of Oz. I think in this film you find out a lot about the Oz-land of Washington, D.C., and you find it out from the inside out. Bob Ney also closed the circle. Not only did he know Jack, he was part of Jack’s circle, and he was manipulated by Jack. Also, his close personal relationship with Neil Volz, who was Bob’s chief of staff and then went to work for Jack — by having those two people in the film, that showed in a very personal way not only how this “revolving door” thing works in Washington and how people like Jack manipulate it, but also how corruption tears at the fabric of human relationships.

PH: I was looking in the press notes, and one of the interesting things you allude to there and in the movie is the whole question of “rotten apple or entire barrel?” You definitely lean toward the entire barrel side of the story.

AG: Yes.

PH: Do you think it’s always been this bad or do you think this is a recent development, that it’s gotten worse?

AG: It’s not like powerful people didn’t always have influence in government, they always did. They probably always will. What has changed is the cost of getting elected now is just going through the roof. It shows no sign of abating. These TV spots turn out to be very effective. They’re very expensive to produce and they’re also very expensive to buy the time to put on. Every year, the price of getting elected gets higher. When you need that much money to get elected, what do you do? First of all, you spend more than half your time, sometimes, raising that money, but also you go to lobbyists who have connections with people or companies with lots of money to be able to solve your election problem. Then, we have a real problem because it’s become so immense that it’s now unbalanced. In the past, big money would be balanced by, say, popular rage. It’s very hard to mount enough popular rage to counteract the power and influence of money.

PH: And, of course, we have that recent [Citzen’s United vs. F.E.C.] Supreme Court decision…

AG: Which will exacerbate the problem, which says now that corporations have the same rights as citizens. I have huge issues with that. By the way, I do think that, [about] that Supreme Court decision, a modest decision that was more focused on that particular case would have been appropriate. In other words, I think that Citizens United had a certain good argument, but the idea that a corporation is the same as a citizen, I don’t buy.

PH: Changing gears just a little bit, one of the things I noticed in the movie was that you constantly go back to movies. You start off with Jack Abramoff’s career advice to you about giving up documentaries and to start making action films and then you elude to “Patton.” “Fiddler on the Roof” plays a big part….

AG: “The Manchurian Candidate”…

PH: There’s a clip from that and also…what was the other one?

AG: There’s a couple of other ones. There’s actually a pirate movie, one of my favorite pirate movies, “The Crimson Pirate.”

PH: Really, “The Crimson Pirate” with Burt Lancaster? It was in black and white [in “Casino Jack”] though…

AG: Yeah, I know, we took the color out. Don’t tell anybody — and also “The Natural” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” And, “Patton”…did I say “Patton”?

PH: We mentioned “Patton.”

AG: And, of course, Jack’s movie.

PH: “Red Scorpion” [the propagandistic Dolph Lungren action film from 1989, produced and with a story by Abramoff and his brother, Robert]. Yes, I decided to not look it up and see who directed that because then we’d end up talking about nothing but that.

AG: Oh my God.

PH: But, obviously, movies play a part in your understanding of Abramoff’s psychology.

AG: He was a movie buff and I also think he was a fantasist — a man of great imagination. I think to some extent he was Walter Mitty-esque. He imagined himself as inhabiting a sort of larger-than-life narrative. And he was a not only a movie buff but a movie producer. So, it seemed somehow essential to his life and in that sense I felt I had license to go there. It was part of telling the Jack Abramoff story.

PH: You do indulge [the movie side of the story] a little bit. I actually really like the opening a lot, where you follow up that suggestion from Abramoff that you should make action films with….

AG: An action film.

PH: An action film sequence.

AG: Right.

PH: You’ve done this in other films, as I recall.

AG: “Enron,” I think.

PH: When do you decide that it’s time to do a staged sequence?

AG: Both “Enron” and this one, they happen rather early in the film. They each come out of a certain moment. In this one, it follows immediately off that Jack Abramoff e-mail — and, by the way, that was a playful bit of mine, too. It was a comment he made to somebody that I put in e-mail form because, later on, we’ll get to a whole e-mail section. But, up front then, within that context, that serves the function of creating that action movie but also, in a very visceral way, showing the violence of a murder [the mob-style killing of Greek ex-casino owner Konstantin Boulis]. And then we immediately flash — which has similarities to “Enron” — to the real-life consequences of that murder: the actual car on the sidewalk. The news report saying that someone’s been murdered on a Miami street. So that, rather than in the middle of a real sequence suddenly going to a recreation, you’re in a moment emotionally which is purely that. And then you snap out of it and realize, “Oh my God, I’m in real life now.” It’s done for that reason and partially to get you into the movie vibe but also partially to elicit that emotional vibe of a murder. In the Enron film, it was to put you on the seat of an executive who might blow his brains out — who does blow his brains out. I think by being on that seat you see the Enron executives and the cost of that corruption more effectively than would just by covering that with archival footage. So, that’s the purpose. I’ve never done it to kind of fool you or to be a recreation inside the film which says, “Well, we don’t have good footage now. Let’s hire some actors.”

PH: I don’t think anybody ever doubts what’s real and what isn’t in your films.

AG: Right.

PH: That actually brings me to an interesting thing. I was thinking about how you’ve got this body of work behind you — I can’t think of anybody else who’s put out this many documentaries and with a lot of acclaim. But when I think about “what makes an Alex Gibney documentary?” it’s not the same thing as thinking about what makes an Errol Morris or a Werner Herzog doc.

AG: My view is that form follows functions. So, you look at the story and try to craft a style for a film that seems to suit the story rather than become precious about your own style.

PH: I was going to get to the flattering part where I mentioned William Wyler and Stephen Frears and other great movie directors without obvious personal styles. I mean, if Errol Morris is kind of the Orson Welles of documentaries….

AG: I mean I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t denigrate that at all. I think it’s important. For some people, that’s a kind of a signature thing. That’s not what interests me.

PH: [I look up and see the very nice publicist making a “wrap it up” gesture behind Mr. Gibney.] They’re telling me to finish. I’ll give you just one more thing. This came up in The Wall Street Journal today and, getting back to the politics a little, all of these last few films — “Enron,” “Casino Jack” — and the upcoming one that’s getting all the press right now, the Eliot Spitzer film, all seem to come back to Wall Street.

AG: Look, it’s the problem of our time. Our economy and our polity has been hijacked by people who have found an extraordinarily lucrative way of making money, in part by manipulating the federal government, that’s unproductive. It’s also outrageous in the sense that there’s never been a kind of money machine that bestows so much on so few. Yeah, Henry Ford made a lot of money. Rockefeller made a lot of money. They also employed a lot of people.

PH: Right. [Wall Street is] not really producing anything.

AG: They’re not producing anything except wealth for themselves and at some cost to us now. It’s one thing to enjoy the fact that a guy goes out at night and wins at baccarat and takes home a million dollars. It’s great. God bless. But when he loses $20 million and comes to us and says “Now, you have to pay,” that’s a kettle of different fish.

* The non-extra initial Blu-Ray/DVD release of “Avatar” has, guess what, done very, very well.

* Thanks, Hef! He saves the world for heavily retouched naked women, pays writers more than just about anybody, and now he ponies up the missing funds to save the Hollywood sign.

* One item I don’t actually have to link to report on is that the TCM Classic Film Festival is going to be back next year, with the idea of being an annual event. I can do that because I was present at last night’s big screening of “Metropolis” where none other than Robert Osborne announced it to the assembled multitudes at the more beautiful than ever Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

What was interesting about the way this festival was marketed is that people who live in Los Angeles were clearly not the primary target. Individual ticket prices were roughly double what film geeks like myself are used to paying to see similar presentations — actually more than double when you consider that most repertory programs are actually double bills. With the exception of fellow press and a USC film student who had picked up one of thirty free tickets that has been donated, everyone I spoke to was from elsewhere, and usually a place where the opportunity to see such frequently revived cinematic warhorses as “Casablanca” and “Some Like it Hot” on the big screen are nevertheless beyond rare.

The crowds were older, far less exclusively male and as far as I could tell a lot happier than the usual folks who one finds at revival screenings though absolutely no less enthusiastic or devoted than us usual film geeks. They were, in fact, kind of great.

Another observation worth making is the rock-star like status of TCM host Robert Osborne at the festival. Jen Yamato puts it perhaps even more accurately. I saw this myself.

…As I left the closing night party on Sunday I happened upon Mr. Osborne holding court in the middle of the dance floor, intently chatting up a fan. Behind that fan stood a massive line of more fans, all Osbornites waiting patiently for their chance to meet the man. As one made his exit, the next stepped up and took Osborne’s outreached hand and I had a sudden vision of Robert Osborne as the Pope of Movies…

* It’s an unfortunate juxtaposition with the word “pope,”  but I think it’s safe to say that having your DP arrested for child sexual assault is about the worst thing you can think of for morale on a movie like “Moneyball.”

* If you want to make a movie about a real life convicted criminal, it might be better never to approach them about it. At least that’s what Danny DeVito might tell you now regarding trying to make his “Crazy Eddie” movie.

* I’m embargoed, I guess, from saying anything review-y about it, but I have seen “Iron Man 2.” Regardless of what I think, “Iron Man 3” looks to be a few years off yet. And, hey, it’s just possible that Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys and Aliens” will be a better film than either “Iron Man” made so far. (I know, heresy!)

* I’ll be talking to documentary king Alex Gibney tomorrow for an upcoming feature here. The guy is definitely keeping busy. He’s following up his current upcoming film about the Jack Abramoff scandal, “Casino Jack,” with a new film about sex scandal plagued ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer that seems to be getting quite a reaction.

* I’m supposed to be the indie-friendly cinephile guy around here, but I don’t “get” everything. For example, the love which Sylvain Chomet’s “The Triplets of Belleville” received a few years somewhat baffled me a few years ago — so much so that I didn’t feel I could review. It was clearly not a bad movie, but why wasn’t I, you know, enjoying it? The appeal of the films of hugely acclaimed French comedian/auteur Jacques Tati have baffled me as well in a similar way, at least so far. (I’ve been known to change my mind and I always try to keep an open one.) Still, it’s looking like I might be doubly baffled by the animated art-house release, “The Illusionist.”