I didn't read the Grindhouse review, but the headline reads that's great fun, and The Hoax just doesn't cut it? Okay. We just don't like the same things. Grindhouse looks idiotic but it's QT, so I guess everyone's going to love it like they loved Pulp Fiction, which I hated. I will see the Hoax and take my chances rather than take your word for it.

Salon readers with a taste for artistic deception might also wish to find 'F for Fake', Welles' pseudo-documentary hommage (circa 1972) to master Modigliani forger Elmyr de Hory. Splendid retrieved footage filmed by Welles of a lazy afternoon at a seasiside Ibiza villa, featuring an already outed de Hory schmoozing with a yet to be unmasked Mr and Mrs Irving... Picasso also makes an appearance of sorts...

This gem can be found in semi-regular rotation on either The Sundance Channel or The Independent Film Channel, I forget which. It can also be found on Netflix. It is VERY well worth the effort to see it.

Richard Gere and Alfred Molina play the original Odd Couple--and it works. In fact, Gere should thank Molina for playing the reluctant co-conspirator with a comic touch as deft as any Tony Randall performance. Both of them are a riot. (You'll love the scene in which Molina stuffs purloined DOD documents down his pants, then sweats a routine frisking by security on their way out of the building.) Irving is desperate, but the publishing companies of McGraw-Hill and Life magazine are equally desperate for a blockbuster. Everyone wants to believe that the Huges project is the real thing.

Things, of course, fall apart. Irving over-reaches--both for money and sex. His sin is not so much trying to put one over the greedy media, but in betraying his friends: his insecure wife Edith, whom he cheats on then prolificly lies about it; his equally devoted friend Suskind, whom he set up with a pro in order to keep him on task. He uses them shamelessly--they are the ones who actually do the criminal acts for him. These are the betrayals--the immorality--that hits you.

Enhancing the entertainment factor of this film is the terrific music from the times. The choice song to bring this film to a close as you learn of fates of con-artists? The Stones--"You Don't Always Get What You Want (but you get what you need).