Aziz Ansari and Drake at The Bing Bar

Day 2 of the Sundance Film Festival found The Observer snowbound in the extreme. We're talking enough snow to give Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City transit system nightmares. Astronomic surcharges became the norm as Park City's anemic livery force struggled to even make the most ludicrous time frames: "Yeah I can have a guy up there in like 3 and a half hours?" deadpanned one audacious taxi dispatcher, who seemed to take pleasure in seeing so many city slickers squeal.

Despite the odds, The Observer met up with Ogilvy Entertainment's Creative Director Otto Bell to snag tickets for what would be our first activity of the day—a 3:30 screening of Escape Fire, an uplifting exposé on the pitfalls of the American healthcare system—which marked our event sans bottle service.

• While procuring popcorn, we overheard a cinema staffer: "Dude that's totally the president from 24, and those car insurance commercials..." And in typical Sundance fashion, it totally was.
• Dennis Haysbert found the film "Spectacular!" noting that everyone in America should see it. We had a hard time disagreeing.

Next stop: Back to the den of debauchery and Xbox game demos, the Bing Bar, for Lay The Favorite's cast dinner.

• Seconds in, we find ourselves in front of a freshly bandaged (just a little "don't worry I'm fine" melanoma) William H. Macy who revealed that he took "the Jitney!" to get to where he was at this very instant.
• As it turns out, a slightly more surly Corbin Bernsen "rented a fucking car."
• Mr. Bernsen could pass as a stunt double for co-star Bruce Willis.
• Chick-boner magnet Joshua Jackson claimed that it was in fact "the shuttle bus" that got him here today, which he conceded was "a bit of a smart ass response, but I'm gonna stick with it. Final answer."
• Cigarettes have not been kind to Laura Prepon, but man is her raspy voice awesome. Keep it up, Laura.

A quick stop to the Grey Goose Blue Door for the cast dinner of Arbitrage

• "Troubled hedge fund magnate" Richard Gere illustrated that no matter how many bespoke suits he may be forced to wear on screen, he's most comfortable in jeans and a baseball cap.
• Grey Goose employs a suspiciously attractive waitstaff. We were fine with this.

Sucked back in, we head to Bing Bar to see what Aziz Ansari and Drake have up their sleeves.

• A friendly (read: not so friendly) turf war erupted on the red carpet between film crews for VH1 and MTV after The Observer posited that VH1 clearly had the cooler microphone of the two.
• Mr. Ansari took the stage, promptly reminding everyone just how well he knows Kanye West.
• Drake's seemingly insulting observation that he knew way too many here right now that he didn't know last year ("Who the fuck are y'all?") was incredibly well received.
• Cuba Gooding Jr.

In it's last gasp of life, our phone lit up reminding us that Ryan Raddon aka. DJ Kaskade would be taking the stage shortly at our favorite petting zoo: Tao.

• Door girls at Tao Sundance did not find it amusing when we informed them that their balaclava and floor length parka outfits resembled North Face Burkas.
• Lil Jon somehow didn't smell like pot, an observation that was quickly rendered obsolete.
• Josh Hartnett had nailed down this look that said, "I'm Josh Hartnett."
• Mr. Ansari genuinely cares about the exposed legs of his nearly all-female posse.
• All bars should be open bars.

À demain.

We took to the raised sitting area above the bar — a welcome reprieve from the madness of the mob below — where we found ourselves surrounded by tubs of complimentary Red Bull. But we could only keep out of the fray for so long, and when the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who were hosted by frequent partner DeLeon tequila, took the stage we braved the heart of the now-muggy stage area. The show was unsurprisingly spectacular, highlighted by Nick Zinner's guitar acrobatics during a spirited bashing-through of the classic "Maps." 

Afterwards, we started talking to Kelly Osbourne about the artwork on the walls. She particularly liked one of Johnny Depp getting into a car — "Soooo hot" — and of course this led to a conversation about getting behind the wheel naked. Is it something you'd ever do, Kelly?

"Hell to the fucking no!" she told us. "I don't have that kind of confidence."

The night ended for us around 3:00 a.m., with chamomile fan Waris Ahluwalia walking around with a girl on his arm and the remaining kids mouthing the words to New Order's "Age of Consent." Ah, yes — after just four nights here, it already feels like home.

Who else has gotten the short end of Murray's ire here in 2010? The Observer offers you a handy guide to the newest members of the Enemies of Bill Murray Club.

Josh Harnett

While being interviewed by BlackBook, Murray recalled a time when actor Josh Hartnett came up to him at a restaurant. "This guy shakes my hand and says, 'You worked on Lost in Translation with my [then] girlfriend. Was she as much trouble for you as she was for me?' But Scarlett [Johansson] was 17 when I worked with her, so no, she wasn’t. [...] I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I don’t know who the fuck anyone is." But wait, hasn't he seen Hollywood Homocide? To his credit, Murray also couldn't remember Jennifer Love Hewitt's name either, referring to her in GQ as "[W]hat's-her-name. The mind reader, pretty girl, really curvy girl, body's one in a million?"

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg

The Year One screenwriters might want to grab a couple of helmets. Once a pair of hot commodities -- thanks to their work on The Office -- Year One director Harold Ramis tapped them to write the script for Ghostbusters 3. The only problem? Year One. Said Murray: "Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone." Nothing like a comedy icon admitting that he and his comedy icon buddies laugh at how bad your writing is, right?

Toby Kebbell

You might have never heard of Toby Kebbell before, but now you'll forever know him as...well, let Murray tell it: "I have this friend of mine now, Mitch Glazer, who wrote a screenplay that he wanted to direct. And some actor jumped, just got terrified at working with Mickey Rourke. Just jumped. And lost his balls, really." Not sure what's more emasculating: that statement or the fact that Kebbell is yet another person whose name Murray couldn't be bothered to remember.

Seinfeld

Always hoped to see Murray and Jerry Seinfeld share the screen? Keep hoping. "I never saw Seinfeld until the final episode, and that's the only one I saw. And it was terrible. I'm watching, thinking, 'This isn't funny at all. It's terrible!'"

The loft is on the market for $7,995 per month, but listing broker Danny Davis of Citi Habitats said that his clients would rather sell. According to records, it belongs to the husband-and-wife music executives James Dowdall and Rose Noone, formerly joint heads of A&R at Warner Bros U.K.

Deeds show that the couple spent $2.3 million on the apartment in July 2005, but it was back on the market in mid-2006 for $2.8 million, which became $2,575,000 a year later. It’s been on and off the market since then, the Web site StreetEasy.com shows, taking baby steps down to $2,550,000, to $2,350,000, to $2,300,000, and now to $2,100,000.

Mr. Davis’ listing says the loft has 12-foot-high original tin ceilings, an open island kitchen, gobs of natural light and “a very liberal sublet policy.”

mabelson@observer.com

Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, founders of the Halcyon film company, had never produced a major motion picture when they quietly acquired the Terminator franchise two years ago, while the big studios weren’t looking.

“Through the grapevine we heard that the owners of Terminator were in an egregious split, but it wasn’t on the market yet,” Mr. Anderson told the Transom. "So we tried to figure out what it was worth and, quite frankly, what we can afford to pay for it."

The co-CEOs drew up an offer, not disclosing who they were, which would only be on the table for a brief 24 hours. The answer came back six hours later; it was a yes. The pair later heard that bigger studios made larger offers, but it was too late. The deal was binding.

The culmination of their big coup, Terminator Salvation, opens in New York this week. The Transom caught up with the producers by phone on the morning after their splashy May 14 premiere in Los Angeles, which Mr. Kubicek described as “a little overwhelming.”

Both New Yorkers, Mr. Anderson, 41, a former ad exec, and Mr. Kubicek, 28, a former stock trader, founded Halcyon in 2006 for the simple reason than that they wanted to work in movies.

“One day I was just standing there,” recalled Mr. Kubicek of his last day at the stock exchange, “I looked at the clock and it was exactly 1:11 p.m. I thought, ‘If you’re still here in five minutes, you will never get out of here. So I just left—my feet just started walking!” (Mr. Kubicek later phoned his colleagues to have the "noble conversation.")

“We didn’t know the rules of the game, so we just forged ahead and took chances that maybe other people wouldn’t take,” said Mr. Kubicek.

This seemed to work in favor of the newcomers, who managed to get actor Christian Bale to sign up for the role of John Connor.

“I think it appealed to him that we were doing things differently and that we came from the outside. I think he was impressed by that,” said Mr. Kubicek. “He does things a little differently himself, and he’s a bit of an outsider.”

How did the producers handle the actor’s hugely publicized outburst at director of photography Shane Hurlbut?

“It’s hard to understand something without having complete context,” said Mr. Anderson, who was on set when it happened. “Christian was doing that scene in the middle of the night after the longest day. What happened is what happened, but what everyone didn’t hear was after that was all over, there was talking and hugs and apologies all around.”

Lately, the rookie filmmakers have been making advances on the New York social scene. Last year, they formed the Edmont Literary Society along with Vogue features assistant Stephanie LaCava and author Nathaniel Rich. And they were sponsors of the New Yorkers for Children spring gala last month.

“I don’t mind getting my picture taken. It’s part of our business, and it’s good for our company’s profile for people to know that we’re giving back in places where there is visibility,” said Mr. Kubicek. “We brought [director] McG, and friends Josh [Hartnett], Common and Serena [Williams]. I think the whole room thought they were fabulous and the bulbs were going off, but for us it was actually just a nice way to bring some friends together.”

“He seemed like the antithesis of all the jocky guys I went to high school with,” she said. (The women in this story agreed to discuss their romantic pasts only if identified by their middle names.) “He was sensitive, funny, supersmart, not athletic at all and not physically imposing. But there was something that was so charismatic—a gentleness and gracefulness and a confidence.”

Katherine and the director began a weeks-long courtship. There were late-night rehearsals in a dark theater that turned into surprisingly intimate later-night conversations. But then summer came. They both left New York for a while. And every time Katherine tried to reach him, he never returned her phone calls and ultimately disappeared altogether. 

“People told me he was trouble, but I really thought he was too evolved and sensitive to hurt me the way he did,” Katherine said.

Katherine’s director was an Homme Fatale—a genre of man that New York women have come to know well. Often the creative type, he projects a deceptive vulnerability, while maintaining an appealing confidence. He’s usually not the best-looking guy in the room, but he is the smartest; he turns these traits to his advantage, playing up the contrast with the typical hot guy or womanizer (physical inferiority, emotional evolvement). His courtship begins with a rushed sense of intimacy and, yet, a disarming lack of forward physical advances; a first date might involve a game of Scrabble or perhaps a cup of tea; his target usually leaves wondering if in fact it was a date at all. And yet the story always has the same ending—he grows distant, stops calling and eventually disappears with little explanation, if any.

Dangerous femme fatale heroines, as portrayed by Rita Hayworth in Gilda or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, are nearly extinct or have been reduced to tragic cougars while their male counterparts have only proliferated; now they can be found roaming the halls of magazines, publishing houses and the better English literature Ph.D. programs by day, and frequenting ironic dance parties in cramped Boerum Hill apartments by night. And unlike the typical womanizer, whose game is laughably easy to detect, the Homme Fatale’s modus operandi is more emotional and controlling than it is physical, leaving a wreckage that is, in the end, more disastrous.

(We pause here to note that the Homme Fatale, while related, is not the same as the oft-bemoaned indie rock or emo boy. While he may exhibit similarly sensitive qualities, an Homme’s emotional side is a learned part of his manipulation, not an authentic sentimentality.)

The Homme Fatale has also slyly insinuated (as is to be expected) his way into popular culture. Take, for instance, the Aaron Rose character played by John Patrick Amedori on the teen drama Gossip Girl, the young downtown artist and RISD grad with the unfortunate goatee. In the six episodes in which his relationship with the glamorous, blond Upper East Sider Serena van der Woodsen has progressed in fits and starts, he has yet to actually have sex with her. (Also, he doesn’t drink. Possible evidence of control issues!) But he sends her suggestive gifts, thoughtful texts and even asks her to be his muse. And for a somewhat nebbishy, shy person, he seems to have a suspicious number of beautiful female friends hanging around at all times. When Serena is justifiably confused by the other “muses” in his life, he simply says, “I could explain who Tamara is and why she was at my apartment last night, but the fact is, you feel something or you don’t. If you’re looking for an excuse to keep us apart, that’s fine.” It’s a classic Homme Fatale move: come on strong, then, when confronted with evidence that points to a lack of commitment or deception, turn it around so the woman feels like it’s her issue. (It’s a variation on the “I never said I wasn’t seeing anyone else” theme.)

“This guy, the Aaron Rose archetype, is not particularly attractive but he figures out somewhere along the line that he can get pretty girls by simply not acting as if they were that special, and girls are intrigued by that—because pretty girls find it fascinating to be treated as though they’re not pretty—and so many girls fall head over heels for this detached act,” said New York magazine Daily Intel senior editor Jessica Pressler, 31, who in her legendary Gossip Girl posts has referred to Aaron Rose as “the ultimate regrettable ex” and an “emosogynist.”

“Neil Strauss and the guys from The Pick Up Artist harnessed this behavior and turned it into the Game,” she continued. “Aaron Rose would never admit that he has a system, probably because he likes to think it’s his own personal mystique. But he is doing the same things—the mustache and the scarves are nothing less than what Gamers call Peacocking. But he is a lone operator, and therefore more dangerous.”

But even Mr. Strauss himself admitted that the Homme Fatale is a dangerous creature best avoided.

“These guys just sound like the emotional addicts that view women as projects,” said Mr. Strauss, whose best-selling book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists spawned a VH1 reality show, The Pick-Up Artist, featuring the abhorrent yet strangely intriguing pick-up artist “Mystery.” “Obviously it’s much worse than a one-night stand because it’s someone you get emotionally involved with.”

Of course, Aaron Rose has countless real-life pop culture counterparts. There’s Ryan Adams, the sensitive music artist and poet, who has reportedly dated women like Alanis Morissette, Parker Posey and Mandy Moore. Or Justin Long, the “I’m a Mac” actor, who projects an endearing self-deprecating quality at New York parties that has won him the affection of Drew Barrymore and possibly Kirsten Dunst. Or Josh Hartnett—also a partial facial hair victim!—the dark-eyed actor who, in addition to the variety of actresses he’s supposedly dated (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller), also befriends regular New York girls at bars like Black & White in the East Village or the Rusty Knot in the West Village, with an innocent and unassuming introduction: “Hi, I’m Josh.”

When Helena, 31, a Ph.D. student who lives in the West Village, met her ex, a 30-year-old political speechwriter named Bruce, she found him nonthreatening—at first.

“He’s not like the hottest guy, but he’s cute and sweet in like a Jewish–boy–from–New Jersey sort of way and very self-effacing. He’s not what you picture when you think of your typical dicky guy,” recalled Helena. But the relationship only lasted three months.

“I was really an anxious mess with this guy,” she said. “He’d email me and text me all day and then just fall off the face of the planet for three days. I am not an insecure person and I was terribly insecure. I was constantly checking texts and emails. I would be at home drinking whiskey and smoking a cigarette in the corner, waiting for him to call. Finally, I was like, ‘I am 30 years old! What am I doing?’”

James, a 23-year-old editor at a literary magazine, referred to himself as a “reformed Homme Fatale.” He would typically become interested in a girl, achieve a sense of trust and intimacy quickly and bail once the conquest was complete, which at times took months.

“The strength of an Homme Fatale is not like you meet someone at a bar and you pick them up. It’s a long-term game, a dance,” he said. Still, the seemingly immediate affection of an Homme Fatale is genuine, despite its brevity.

“In my opinion, being an Homme Fatale is more of an affliction than a conscious course of action,” he said. “I think you’re in love with the feeling as much as you are with each of those people. The Homme Fatale is not a slut, but the interest is both in the person, and even more so, in the feeling it gives you.”

This constant search for “the feeling” is something that Claire, a 25-year-old assistant in the music industry, eventually detected in her ex-boyfriend, whom she met at a rock show one summer.

“He has this voice he does when talking to girls. It took me a while to start noticing it, but it’s high and nonthreatening and almost squeaky, like he’s being a cute little boy,” said Claire. “It’s pretty strange. But, it works. Nothing else was ever over the top, but that’s what was so sneaky. All of a sudden he was at my house every night, and I didn’t even remember how he got there.”

Claire moved in with her boyfriend, but soon learned that he was using that same “voice” on some of her friends. They broke up and are now friends—and she’s watched him rebound from one relationship to another.

“He’s not a bad dude, but he just doesn’t know how not to have this over-the-top magical romance which eventually leaves girls completely broken. He’s like a love monster,” she said. “I think this type of guy is more dangerous than the typical one-night-stander because there is so much more emotion and attachment involved that is ultimately more destructive.”

It’s hard to say whether the Homme Fatale’s serial conquests are intended maliciously; most of the women with Homme experience tended to think not, in contrast to the deliberately sleazy womanizer.

“It’s not like he walked around saying, ‘I’m going to get laid tonight,’” said Katherine, the actress. “He was more, ‘I just want someone who’s on my level intellectually.’”

According to James, the Homme Fatale is neither a womanizer nor a sociopath—though these categories might overlap a bit.

“The Homme Fatale is a different, possibly more modern condition than a sociopath—he is not as aware of his actions. My understanding is that sociopaths are more clever and conniving. Maybe this is my personal bias, but I think the Homme Fatale is a slightly more sympathetic character,” said James. “The empathy is there, but people who do the most harm are people who don’t know what they want, and Hommes Fatales don’t know what they want.”

And unlike a sociopath, James described feeling a genuine sense of remorse. He’s been trying to change.

“I don’t think you can ever really shed it completely, but as with any sort of psychological problem, it can be made better,” said James. “The first step to reforming one’s actions is to become aware of the pattern you’ve laid out.”

ialeksander@observer.com

After attending New York Fashion Week with her boyfriend, DJ Mark Ronson—the two attended Alexander Wang's show last week—Daisy Lowe has returned back to London a single woman.

The Daily Mail reports that Ms. Lowe, who is 19, split up with the 33-year-old Mr. Ronson last week. After walking in the PPQ show at London Fashion Week yesterday, she was seen heading back to the apartment of her closer-in-age ex, 21-year-old singer Will Cameron of the band Blondell.

The model and daughter of Gavin Rossdale was apparently late to a PPQ show yesterday due to a delayed flight from New York. And as her friends were waiting for her at the after-party, they found out she had gone to Mr. Cameron's place. 

"She went to see Will for a shoulder to cry on. She’s been really upset over the last few days after her split from Mark," one friend told the Daily Mail. Another friend said, "Daisy never lost touch with Will, and has always remained close friends with him. They have always been close, and Will was pining after her when she dumped him for Mark."

Also, after meeting the entire Ronson clan last week, Ms. Lowe reportedly told a friend, "I feel like a Ronson now. I’ve been playing with the nieces and nephews and being polite to Mark’s mum. I’m exhausted." (Honey, those Ronsons will wear anybody out.)

Meanwhile, Ms. Lowe has also been spotted about London with actor Josh Hartnett. And to make the whole thing even more confusing, Mr. Hartnett was seen leaving Bungalow 8 in London at the same time as actress Mischa Barton last night. The two were later holed up in Mr. Hartnett's hotel room.

So whom did we nab? Screenwriter David Goyer! “This film is intense intense,” he said. “It’s about escalation, both good and bad.” What’s new about this Batman? “He’s the most realistic. In both films, we made sure that the technology he uses is based on technology that is being used or developed by the Department of Defense right now.” Now that’s truly scary. …

“More intelligent and more human,” said Michael Caine, who plays Bat-butler Alfred Pennyworth, wearing a black suit created for him by his recently deceased English tailor (“I can’t get any more alterations!”), when asked about the updated superhero.

Lauren Conrad of the splashy reality series The Hills was crowing about her maiden visit to the Hamptons. “It was great,” she said. “Beautiful.”

But overall, the mood was muted. A black carpet lined the entrance to the theater, and the absence of the late Heath Ledger (the Joker) was palpable. “I’m very thankful to have worked with him,” said the actor Chin Han. “He was so inventive—it was invigorating.”

cbankoff@observer.com

Worse still, there’s a deadly, amateurish infection going around called August, with yet another novocained performance by zombified Josh Hartnett as a dot-com Internet star named Tom Sterling, who invents a company called Landshark with his brother Joshua (Adam Scott). Nobody knows what Landshark does, but when Tom explains it, he says: “That’s so third quarter ’99. You want bleeding-edge, mission-critical, cross-platform robust scale. What you want is E. Pure E. Not E commerce. Not E business. Not click and mortar. Anything but that. E. Not old, not hired, not stepped on. Not one gram of E and 10 grams of baby laxative. Pure E. Josh knows E. I know E. That’s what Landshark does. And somehow when E changes, we’re there first on the shore. Beckoning. Is there anyone who can aggregate the way we can? I don’t think so, because if there was, I’d be there.” O.K., so now you know what you already don’t know in the first place and never will. With gibberish like that passing for dialogue (the movie is filled with it), no wonder Landshark is running out of capital and going down the drain—because obviously nobody has a clue what the company does.

The year is 2001. Nobody wants to bankroll cyberspace. Tom lives in his dot-com sandbox and dates multiple women, like Hugh Hefner in the ’60s; drives a Camaro convertible; and fixates on a black chick with a bizarre accent who has just returned from designing housing projects in Barcelona. Josh, the square brother, has a wife, a baby and a mortgage. The business is his life, and he blames Tom because it’s in lockup. Meanwhile, at the office, located in a warehouse on the Bowery, the Landshark staff members sit at their cute little Ikea desks, play solitaire on computers and eat Oreo cookies while their stock options evaporate. All of which gives Mr. Hartnett a chance to mouth brilliant lines like “Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” Wanna bet?

Oh, yes, there are parents (Rip Torn and Caroline Lagerfelt), aging Brooklyn hippies who see through Tom’s sham and make the mistake of asking what Landshark really does. Tom goes ballistic. “I grew up with cinder blocks, two-by-fours and five copies of Soul on Ice. You wanted to change the world? Stop the war? Tiananmen Square was a fax machine. Think what we’ll do now that we have the Web. And then it’s like, ‘Go tell the maid to dust the Godard poster.’” I mean, more pretentious, brain-busting argot has never been assembled in one film—or mumbled so fast by an actor who can scarcely say “Which way to the men’s room” with any coherence. It probably wouldn’t matter if you could understand what Mr. Hartnett, a graduate of the mashed-potato-mouth school of dramatic art, was saying anyway. But you do need an interpreter here. At the risk of driving you to the bottle, I can best express what I hate most about this plague by quoting more of Mr. Hartnett’s dialogue: “We’re at the forefront of a revolution in technology. You already know that. If I say what you already know I’m gonna say, then it’s like the hamster scurries and the wheel spins and at the end of the day you know we’re all still in the cage, right? So instead of that prepared shit, I’m just going to tell you what’s in my heart. You know what the problem is with—uh, I don’t even know what to call it—with our thing? The problem is, what are we doing? Are we making the world a less sucky place, or more sucky? Are we every day impacting the suckage?” I swear I copied this incomprehensible sludge word for word from a DVD. You think I could make up this stuff?

Or how about this? “What the Net is supposed to do—what the new broadband is supposed to do—what digital whatever is supposed to do—is increase choice. But what are we offering in the way of choice? AOL or Earthlink? Gates or Edison? Miller Lite or Coors? Bush or Gore? We help big greedy advertising agencies sell the useless products of massive, morally corrupt multinational corporations. We advise them on how to aggregate eyeballs. Have you ever seen the beginning of Un Chien Andalou? You know, with the eyeball and the straight razor? That’s what we do. Click here is over. I—whatever is over. Cross platform is over. Disintermediation is way over. The startup is over. Branding is so over. Dot-com and whatever it stands for is over. So what’s left is what we do.”

The chief problem with this mess, among many, is that it never bothers to tell you exactly what that is. The script threatens eternal pretentious palaver. (Impossible to believe it was written by the same Howard Rodman who did such an eloquent job on Savage Grace. How do you go from one of the best films of the year to what is now quite possibly the worst film of the same year?) The direction by somebody called Austin Chick gives the appearance of being phoned in from an Internet bar in another town. If he has any talent behind the camera, this movie is not going to move it up a notch. The acting is uniformly abysmal. After Pearl Harbor, Mozart and the Whale, The Black Dahlia and Hollywood Homicide, Josh Hartnett continues his history of making the worst movies of any actor still working in films today. He’s like a pretty vacant lot, with all the energy and charisma of a dead spark plug. August may not be his worst movie, an award still held by Lucky Number Slevin, but it’s right down there on the bottom of the sludge heap. The atrocity ends when Landshark is bought by David Bowie, of all people; Mr. Hartnett is fired; and the camera backs away from him, hunched over a pinball machine. Life continues, and so does garbage.

rreed@observer.com

Mr. Hartnett plays Tom Sterling, a luxury car-driving, babe-bedding start-up mogul behind an Internet start-up called LandShark. It's not clear what kind of Web site it is ("What do you actually do?" says Rip Torn, "Why the hell would somebody give you a million dollars?"), but the names are pretty absurdly similar.

PropertyShark founder Matthew Haines responded thusly: "I watched the trailer and found no similarities with PropertyShark," so apparently there won't be any thrilling lawsuits.

Bonus: Anyone who can name the creepy glam-era film that co-starred Messrs. Torn and Bowie will get a free bag of popcorn from The New York Observer's real estate writers