Odd place for a premiere

The Michael Mann film Collateral stars Tom Cruise as a hitman in downtown L.A. at night, so it was fitting perhaps that the premiere Monday was held at the old Orpheum on Broadway. Big movies stopped debuting in the opulent downtown movie palaces soon after theaters began to light up Hollywood Boulevard and the opening of the very artsy Carthay Circle, where the Herman Miller offices now stand at San Vicente and Carrillo near Beverly Hills. Steven Rosen chronicled the return to downtown in Monday's Variety. Meanwhile, Cruise and John Travolta are talking more openly to reporters about Scientology these days, writes Emmanuelle Richard — who speculates that the church may be trying to fend off competition for the celebrity mind from Kabbalah.