Drew Barrymore. Christian Bale. Bruce the Shark. It’s an elite class of young talent that has found launching pads in the films of Steven Spielberg. And while Jeremy Irvine is a little older than those actors who preceded him, you can go ahead and add the 21-year-old to the list thanks to his breakthrough in Spielberg epic Oscar hopeful War Horse .
This kind of silly public skirmish seems a little too convenient to just naturally occur in a week when The Artist and War Horse are dominating awards chatter, but either way, stroppy megaproducer Scott Rudin is furious with The New Yorker for breaking a review embargo on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo . Who can blame him, especially since critic David Denby — along with the rest of the members of the New York Film Critics Circle who saw the film before voting last week — signed an agreement assenting to hold his review until Dec. 13 at the earliest? Or maybe the more important question is: Why should you care? I can think of a few reasons, chief among them being that Denby’s excuse for breaking his word is hilarious .