Jane's curiously charismatic performance as Andre Stander, the Butch Cassidy-like South African bank robber in STANDER (Newmarket, August 6), will, I'm presuming, win over more admirers.

STANDER is a true story about a guy named Andre Stander, a South African cop who impulsively became a bank robber in the mid '70s as a kind of subliminal, not-fully-articulated moral protest against his country's policy of apartheid. Jane's portrayal is partly an underneath thing, full of ticks and suppressed shudders, and partly about dashing bravura.

Jane plays two characters, in a way. In the first 50 minutes or so he's a conflicted, ill-at-ease cop with dark hair, a moustache and a metaphorically beefy bod, and in the second half he's a fearless, spiritually liberated outlaw with blonde locks and no lip hair who's obviously lighter all around. Kind of a caterpillar-into-a-butterfly thing.

I love the way Jane's internal, non-showy acting style takes our attention for granted. I'm up to something unusual, he seems to be saying. You should pay attention, but if you can't or don't want to...whatever. I'm cool either way.

Jane's next role, he says, will be as Glen Sherley, a prison convict who became a briefly successful country music performer (with the help of friend-mentor Johnny Cash) before spiraling into despair and committing suicide in 1978.

The script, simply called GLEN SHERLEY, is by Joe Rassulo and Robert Gibson. It'll be an indie-financed thing that, I'm told, will probably start shooting in early '05. The producer is Lou Pitt. Jane's agent, ICM's Eddie Yablans, says that Ondi Timmoner, director of the awesome rock-music documentary DIG! That everyone saw and loved at Sundance last January, will most likely direct.

Sherley had been in California's Folsom Prison for well over a decade when he wrote a song called "Gray Stone Chapel," which was passed along to Cash by a prison chaplain. The famed singer wound up performing it on his "Live At Folsom Prison" album, while Sherley sat in the audience. Cash was instrumental in getting Sherley released from prison. Cash gave Sherley a songwriting job and produced an album of Sherley songs, but something about freedom and self-determination sent the ex-con over the edge.

Sherley "literally sang his way out of prison," says Jane, although the theme of the script is that "you can take a man out of prison, but you can't the prison out of the man."

Jane said it's too early (or something) to talk about who may play the recently deceased Cash. The actor they choose will have Joaquin Pheonix's performance in WALK THE LINE, a currently-rolling Cash biopic from director-cowriter James Mangold, to contend with, especially since the Mangold film will probably come out first.

Jane was discussing all this stuff on Monday afternoon as he stood in the open doorway of a third-floor room at the Avalon, a hip '50s kitsch hotel on West Olympic Boulevard. Oh, and he was guiltily smoking a cigarette. His efforts at quitting are gaining steam, he said, and he believes (as all tobacco chippers do) he's only one or two stabs away from success.

Jane and g.f./fiancée Patricia Arquette have a daughter named Harlow Olivia Calliope, born a year ago last February, and who would want film noir cigarette smoke to be any part of this?

Jane is taller in real life than he sometimes appears on-screen, and is still PUNISHER-trim, and has the beginnings of a beard. There's an anxious, impatient thing going on inside of him, but that's par for the course with any driven creative type. Anxious but focused. On it, focused, alert, aware. In short, a worthy hombre.

Recapping

I first wrote about STANDER last February, and some of what I said is worth repeating. It's quite special -- exotic, tightly wound, believable, bizarre. Bronwen Hughes' direction has a hard visceral energy that holds from start to finish. No boring parts, no bathroom breaks.

Hughes' last two films, FORCES OF NATURE and HARRIET THE SPY, never hinted she could shoot a political bank-robber flick with this much pizazz, or deliver suspense and high-octane action as effectively as any male brand-name action helmer.

Andre Stander's bank-robbing career was apparently guilt-driven, stemming from his having shot a young black man during a protest in the Soweto township. The movie has two and a half acts -- the guilt-afflicted first hour, the exuberant thrill-of-bank-robbing second act, and then a denouement about Stander's leaving South Africa and coming to an end in Ft. Lauderdale.

The South African Stander was a one-man thieving operation when he first became an outlaw, sometimes knocking off three or four banks in a single rip. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to prison, only to break out in 1980 with future "Stander Gang" member Lee McCall (Dexter Fletcher), and then returning to the slammer to break out another accomplice, Allan Heyl (David Patrick O'Hara).

The gang went on a long wild-ass spree, fooling the police through a series of elaborate costume changes and daring tactics, and becoming, after a fashion, South African Butch-and-Sundance figures, having been painted with this brush by the South African media.

The story feels rushed at times, as Hughes is trying to compress a fairly complex story into a running time of roughly two hours. (Pic actually runs 111 minutes.) This is par for the course, although I was so fascinated by this outlaw group I was hoping for some more details about the particulars of this and that heist.

The fact that I would have liked to have been told more about this guy doesn't mean I was unsatisfied with what Hughes and Stagg chose to convey.

I came across a piece from a South African paper that said Stander the cop had eight dogs, which isn't revealed by the film. Although he deeply loved his wife Bekkie (played by Debra Kara Unger), Stander was apparently a womanizer -- also not shown. He was a huge Bob Dylan fan -- ditto.

But the action stuff is terrific; ditto the Soweto protest scene that comes early on. Each and every supporting player seemed fully believable to me, although Unger could have been utilized more aggressively.

Jess Hall's photography -- a bit on the washed-out, bleachy side -- seems to be getting exactly the right angle and the right info with each and every cut. Editor Robert Ivison helps make the action scenes seem extra-throbby and hyper. All good bank-robbing films give you a taste of the rush all thieves feel when they're pulling off a job, and this one certainly does that.

Bima Stagg, who wrote the thoroughly believable, well-sculpted STANDER script eons ago, is due a respectful salute. (Hughes did a rewrite when she came aboard.)

Stagg got things rolling by getting producer Peter Hoffman to option it in 1993, although it was plagued by several false starts. Director Barbet Schroeder was "madly in love with it," says Stagg, and was attached for about four years. Roger Donaldson (NO WAY OUT) was interested for a short period after Schroeder.

It's reasonable to expect good reviews for STANDER, although I'm sure some movie fans will perceive a strange tale that has nothing to do with who and what they're dealing with now. Okay, maybe...but if seeing something that qualifies as "original" and "startling" means anything to anyone, STANDER will not be a burn experience -- trust me.

Amazing Bill

If I can write about THE SOPRANOS I can write about great television, and great drama is great drama, and that 9.11 tribute on Monday night with that 16 year-old kid playing "Amazing Grace" on his violin in front of the Democratic National Convention was really touching. I thought I'd vented all my sadness about that tragedy, but suddenly I was feeling it again. I'd never had an actual red-eyed 9.11 moment before.

And then along came Bill Clinton and it was Elmer Gantry time. He's a rock star, a virtuoso, and he totally killed. The Fleet Center crowd was tripping off his authority and inner music. WASHINGTON POST columnist Tom Shales said it was like watching "a veritable combination of Elvis, the Beatles, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen put together."

Anyone with any respect for the art of great political speechifying had to be feeling it also. Even nyah-nyah righties.

Kerry had a do-or-die task before Clinton's speech, knowing he has to pretty much sell himself to millions of show-me fence-sitters in his big speech this Thursday night. Now he has a tougher one. He has to be charismatic enough so that viewers don't say to each other, "He's okay but Clinton was da coolness. Why can't he run again? Why are we stuck with Lurch?"

Spirit of Woody

I didn't see Greg and Evan Spiridellis' "This Land" until last Thursday, but I had good company. The hilarious musical-political short, which lampoons or reiterates (or both) the gut impressions everyone is carrying around in their heads about George Bush and John Kerry, was downloaded by 3.7 million people that day.

I spoke to Evan yesterday (Tuesday, 7.27) by phone, and he told me that the total views have now hit 20 million, give or take. Not counting the millions who saw portions of it on Jay Leno Monday night during a segment in which Greg and Evan sat on the couch and talked it up. And NBC aired the vaguely raunchy parts.

Evan told me the software they use to track views is so clogged up they've turned it off, for now. I called their office for a follow-up early yesterday afternoon, and their voice mail also wasn't working due to overload.

If you haven't seen "This Land," go to www.jibjab.com or http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/this_land_af.

It's basically a cartoon musical review, performed to the tune of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is My Land." Please write in and complain if it doesn't make you laugh out loud several times. (Especially the bit between Bill and Hilary Clinton.)

The crude criticisms that Bush and Kerry throw at each other in this thing are a clean distillation of what most of us believe to be their deep-down faults and character issues. Bush is a dumb-ass crusader by way of Slim Pickens in DR. STRANGELOVE who gives tax breaks to his rich friends. Kerry is a rich, somber-voiced intellectual Lurch with a stand-up Vietnam record ("I won three Purple Hearts"), but whose Senate voting record has "more waffles than House of Pancakes."

The waffling label is Bush crap (read the Kerry profile in the current issue of THE NEW YORKER), but let's be honest and admit that the stick-figure characters in "This Land" hit home. You can say "This Land" is foolery, but on the other hand it's not. That's why it's funny.

"Over the past few days the thing has spread from within the U.S. to around the world," Evan told me. "South Korea, China, Antarctica...people from Iraq... soldiers and that sort of thing. Our first week out of the box (roughly two weeks ago) we got five million views."

Their Santa Monica-based company is called JibJab Media, Inc. They do shorts, ad spots and children's books. (One is a collaboration with LL Cool J; another is a self-genrated original called "Are You Grump, Santa?"). They've also done fairly well with a "Nasty Santa" toy business.

They showed a short called "Arnold for Governor" at the 2004 Sundance Online Film Festival last January.

Disconnect

I was driving on Wilshire Blvd. near Westwood last weekend when a bus came up on my left, and I took a look at an ad for LITTLE BLACK BOOK (Columbia/Revolution, August 6), and right away I was thrown. It's not a big deal, but it's a little bit weird.

The ad photo shows Brittany Murphy, the female costar, reaching into the pocket of romantic costar Ron Livingston and pulling out a PDA. It's not a sign of the coming Apocalypse, but PDAs and little black books don't synch in the vernacular.

We all know what the phrase "little black book" means (a repository of sexual secrets, designs, dreams), and we know that a lot of people use hand-written address books, but that more and more professional under-40s these days aren't putting addresses into "books" but PDAs (or pocket PC's, Palms, Palm Pilots, etc.)

Except nobody but nobody calls them "little black books."

L.A. TIMES reporter Jon Healey, who covers new technologies and knows the lingo better than you or me, says he's "never heard anybody refer to a PDA as a book or a black book...never." Todd Woody, a business and technology editor with the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, says he's "never heard of [PDA's] referred to as a book. People call them PDAs or they say 'my Clie' or 'my Palm.'"

"I saw the movie before I saw the art," a Revolution spokesperson said Monday, "but to me it seemed so organic and so easy. The PDA is the modern little black book...this is the modern version." Okay....except no one confuses the two.

It would be one thing if LITTLE BLACK BOOK was about a guy who literally keeps his names, numbers and addresses in a black book, as a kind of anachronistic thing. He's a sharp dude and all, but he likes writing things down with pens....fine. But this isn't the deal, from what I'm hearing. (The film hasn't been screened for press. Not for me, at least.)

This two-faced print ad is saying, in effect, "We know there's a bypass between the title and what Murphy is holding in her left hand, but we don't want you to think we're not hip, or that our heads are locked into 1987 or something, so we're putting the PDA into the photo, even though it's nonsensical."

One possible answer is that Melissa Carter and Elisa Bell's screenplay was written 10 or more years ago, before PDA's had really penetrated, and the script just kept hanging in there and never changed. The Carter script was reportedly bought by Ricardo Mestres Productions sometime in the mid to late '90s, when he was based at Disney. Mestres eventually put the script into turnaround, and Revolution Studios picked it up in April, 2001.

If you go to the Palm website (http://www.palmone.com), you'll see a promo for LITTLE BLACK BOOK. The title "LITTLE BLACK BOOK" and the date "August 6th" appear on the screen of a blue Palm Zire, one of the cheaper Palm PDA's. And yet the device that Murphy is holding in the photo appears to be a Treo 600 Smartphone, which is much more costly.

The movie's plot unfolds around the set of a daytime talk show starring Kippie Kann (Kathy Bates). It focuses on an associate producer, Stacy (Murphy), whose boyfriend (Livingston) is commitment-averse. Murphy steals his Palm Pilot when he's not looking and starts interviewing all of his old girlfriends (telling them it's for a segment on Kann's show) to learn why his relationships didn't take in the past, and to find out if he's a total wash or worth the trouble.