"WikiLeaks is America's Tienanmen. Julian Assange is the tank guy. We're all holding our breath to see if we go all the way.

"While the people on the 'don't' side try to discredit the man, and what he's done, the story is still getting out. There are new revelations every day. As Arianna Huffington has said, all it takes is one story to electrify everything. I think in our gut we know [that] if the process is allowed to go forward, we can never go back.

"Assange says let's know all there is to know. Let's tell the people who...Read More

From a Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight posting on the N.Y. Times site this evening at 6:33 pm, called "Sarah Palin's Nomination Chances: A Reassessment."

HE is offering a pat on the back to Jamie Stuart's for his big "Idiot With a Tripod" triumph. I was one of those to whom Stuart sent his blizzard video last Monday. It was Roger Ebert's enthusiastic response, of course, that launched it.

It'll be midnight in Paris in about two hours, so I guess it's time to post my usual "the hell with New Year's Eve" sentiments. 2010 was a very good year movie-wise, and a fairly terrible one politically. But I have few complaints, and I hope that others are feeling as good these days, or are feeling at peace. This is the best era of my life. It's a good time to be happy. Raise a glass, hug someone, smile, etc.

That said, there's nothing fills me with...Read More

Stanley Kubrick was one of the reigning cinematic geniuses of the 20th century, but the defining behavioral trait of the last 30 years of his life was an increasing tendency to lead a hermetic, hidden-away life. I've long felt that this isolation made his films seem more and more porcelain and pristine, and less flesh-and-blood. I mentioned this once to Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother in law, and he didn't disagree. "That was the man," he said. I feel that Kubrick became a kind of cautionary tale.

I wouldn't imply that Sofia Coppola has become an artistic equal of Kubrick's, but she does...Read More

A few days ago someone inserted an idea that The Fighter's Best Picture headwind has somehow diminished because it hasn't done True Grit-level business. Okay, it hasn't astonished. But since opening wide on 12.17 on roughly 2500 theatres, David O. Russell's film had made about $34 million as of 12.29, and boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino is projecting $44 million by Sunday evening.

"So I'd say it's performing on track," Contrino said this morning. "If anything, it might be getting hurt by how well True Grit is doing."

Do you think it's doing well in terms...Read More

I would have edited out the portion in which I get on the L train, but it should be noted that the elderly bum lying sideways on the seat like a dead seal (i.e., briefly glimpsed) smelled of rank intestinal substances, which is why no one was sitting near him. Thank God the aroma was diluted somewhat by other bodies and scents, but this, ladies and gentleman, is the New York subway system at times. The smellies do what they want.

Tyler and Cameron, the Harvard Connection guys, have spoken to the N.Y. Times. Same old tune, we want more money than what we got...waahhh. "It shouldn't be that Mark Zuckerberg gets away with behaving that way," "They didn't fight fair," "Mark stole the idea," "What we agreed to is not what we got," etc.

Tyler Winklevoss (l.), Cameron Winklevoss (r.).

A.O. Scott's 1.2.11 N.Y. Times piece on Black Swan, "a leading candidate for the most misunderstood film of 2010," and especially Natalie Portman's lead performance makes for very stirring reading. He seems to really get into the scheme of it, the duality and the conflict in Darren Aronfosky's melodrama of meltdown.

Add this to Manohla Dargis's 12.3 review and two of my own riffs -- "Effing Brilliant," my Toronto Film Festival review, and an early December piece called "Swans and Fables" -- and...Read More

I've been wrestling with Ron Howard's The Dilemma for 10 months, or since I first read an October 2009 draft of Allen Loeb's script, which was initially called Your Cheating Heart, a.k.a. Untitled Cheating Project. I didn't agree with the basic set-up, which is that a semi-mature male in his 40s would be on the fence about whether to tell his best friend that his wife may be playing around. Friends always wise each other up. Anyone who would dither and/or procrastinate about levelling with a pal is no pal -- it's that simple.

The Dilemma...Read More

David Poland isn't saying True Grit is beginning to pose a strong threat to The Social Network's presumed dominance as a Best Picture favorite. He isn't saying it's elbowed aside The King's Speech and/or The Fighter to become TSN's main challenger. He isn't saying it's now poised to overtake TSN. He's saying True Grit "has muscled its way into the frontrunner slot to win Best Picture."

Because, you know, he's been talking about Grit's Best Picture inevitability for a while now but primarily because the gnarly Coen brothers western is expected to make $90 million domestic by the end...Read More

Bertie and Elizabeth: The Reluctant Royals played on Masterpiece Theatre in '02 and came out on DVD in '05. It acknowledged Bertie's speech impediment but didn't, to judge by reviews and comments, make a big deal of it. It was more about a couple that wasn't exactly cut out for Buckingham Palace being thrust into it by fate and circumstance. It's on Netflix Streaming. I suppose this one time I can put aside my dislike of watching films on my Powerbook.

It's odd that the front cover of the Italian Bluray of Il Grande Lebowski says "un film di Joel Coen." What about co-director Ethan? Typos are ubiquitous but how did this find such prominent placement? The IMDB says Joel and Ethan co-directed, and everybody knows the score regardless.

Some kind of ridiculous fever got into the systems of certain fair-skinned actors of yore when they applied face-paint and pretended to be ferocious African or Middle-Eastern or Indian warlord types. I'm thinking of Laurence Olivier as the Madhi in Khartoum, Herbert Lom as General Ben Yusuf in El Cid, and Eduardo Cianelli's Thuggee "guru" in Gunga Din.

Their performances were campy and racist in a kind of minstrel-show way, but they were so outlandish their performances went beyond the mere chewing of scenery. They didn't inhabit...Read More

I never said a word about Lance Daly's Kisses after my one and only posting on 7.7.10, and I'm feeling a little bit bad about this. I gave it a hug review and then stayed away. That's because (a) it has a couple of issues and (b) it had been shot four years previously and felt a bit dated. But it's still one of the most affecting little films I saw all year, and I need to give it a final air-kiss before pushing on.

Kisses is...Read More

Where would The King's Speech be in the Best Picture race, impressionistically-speaking, without Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger? The entire King's Speech bandwagon, face it, is more or less depending on Karger's allegiance. Okay, he's not the only fellow with his finger in the dyke, but in the wake of Karger's recent toe-to-toe with Awards Daily's Sasha Stone it sure seems that way. Karger holds firm, mans up, refuses to turn tail, etc.

It's no secret that Oscar handicappers have been downgrading the chances of Danny Boyle's 127 Hours to earn a Best Picture nomination, largely due to some Academy members refusing to watch the screener due to arm-carving concerns. I believe that if Fox Searchlight had distributed these James Franco holiday gingerbread cookies to press and Academy members, it might have lessened anxiety levels. Seriously. (Thanks to Bill McCuddy for the photo.)

Alonso Duralde's 12.28 Movieline piece says that Anton Corbijn's The American was "mismarketed." That implies error when this was a simple case of Focus Features misrepresenting The American to earn decent coin before the word got out that it's an austere art-house film with almost no action. They lied and made $16,662,333 the first five days. If they'd told the truth they would have made a lot less. Simple.

Earlier today OK magazine critic Phil Villarreal thanked a Pheonix-based film publicist, Barclay Communications' Lindsay Derr, for an invitation to see a 1.25 screening of The Mechanic (CBS Films 1.28), the latest action thriller starring Jason Statham. The invitation, however, says that reviews must be held "until opening day." Villarreal felt this was unfair.

His objection was due to the fact that Arizona Republic critic Bill Goodykoontz, a top Gannett critic whose reviews appear in papers around the country, always reviews Friday openers on Wednesday. "If...Read More

I've never forgotten a line that Hank Worden's cowpuncher character says about an hour into Red River: "I don't like it when things go too good and I don't like it when things go too bad....I like 'em in between."

Worden was talking about driving a huge cattle herd to market across rugged country,
but most moviegoers feel the same way. They don't like films that are unrealistically happy or silly or dopey, and they don't like films that seem oppressively glum and downbeat.

I can't think of a recent "too happy" film that qualifies, but the reason for...Read More

Nearly eight months ago I wrote about Paramount Home Video's failure to even state an intention to put out a Shane Bluray. George Stevens' 1953 classic is one of the jewels in the Paramount crown, and they're reluctant to Bluray it, I'm told, because it'll cost too much to upgrade the materials, etc. How admirable.

A Shane Buray nonetheless sits at the top of my 2011 wish list, however unlikely this may be. Second-ranked is a Bluray of Fred Zinneman's From Here to Eternity, which was remastered by Sony's Grover Crisp in late '09 (and shown in Cannes last May) in...Read More

Short of fart gags, the "humor" in this trailer for Paul seems as low and crude as a film like this can possibly get. The bird-eating at the end is the only moderately amusing bit in the whole thing. What an apparent comedown for Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland), once a cool indie-minded director and now the manager of a dog pound, leading movie culture down the ladder toward an across-the-board mongrelization of comedy.

I'll always admire Donald Spoto, particularly because of "The Dark Side of Genius," his 1983 Alfred Hitchcock biography. But I resolved to stop buying after reading "High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly," which told me that Spoto had become an ally and protector of his subjects' reputations. Now it's being claimed that his Joan Crawford biography, called "Possessed," continues in this vein.

As an Amazon.com reviewer puts it, "Joan Crawford biographies seem to fall roughly into three categories: (1) Utterly Junky; (2)...Read More

Over 13,000 signatures -- mine included -- have thus far protested the incarceration of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. HE readers are requested to join the band. Do it.

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse Angle 2 from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller ('71) was among the 25 films added today by the The National Film Registry to its list of "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" films. My favorite scene is when Julie Christie explains the whore business to Warren Beatty. Closing line: "Now I haven't got a lot of time to sit around and talk to a man who's too dumb to see a good proposition when it's put to him. Do we make a deal or don't we?"

Also named were...Read More

The seven-day period between Christmas and January 2nd is the flattest time of the year. No screenings, nothing going. You can hear a pin drop. And then comes New Year's Eve (which I always ignore with a passion) and then another blank-out on January 1st, and then the Producers Guild and Writers Guild nominees on January 4th, and then the DGA noms on January 10th. But all this time it gets a little bit harder to write with any feeling about the awards race because people are getting sick of it by this time. They need a break already.

So you focus...Read More

Forbes.com's Bill McCuddy has passed along his Top Ten of 2010:

10. True Grit --"I loved every slow, drawn-out, bourbon-infused, sepia-filled breath of this movie."

9. The King's Speech -- "'Stutter Island' feels a little stuffy and claustrophobic in places because it's basically a stage play, but a brilliant one because Colin Firth's "Bertie," an heir to the throne who can't rule a complete sentence, feels like the world is caving in on him.

8. Winters Bone -- "Moral: If you're going to make crystal meth, do it in the city. Not the country. The term dysfunctional family saw this movie...Read More

Paul Haggis, Sean Penn and Harvey Weinstein "have joined forces with British-Iranian actress and Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) spokesperson Nazanin Boniadi to condemn the harsh sentence imposed on Iranian film director Jafar Panahi," a statement reads. Panahi was recently sentenced to six years of Iranian prison confinement plus a 20-year ban on filmmaking for "propaganda against the state."

Why, I'm asking myself, are Haggis, Penn and Weinstein standing alone? Each and every filmmaker the world over needs to co-sign this petition. It should have 5,000 signatures. Could it be that some are having difficulty rousing themselves into full protest...Read More

Asked by Vulture to submit a one-sentence review of True Grit, Steve Heisler wrote the following yesterday at 12:02pm: "Grarrarggra garrgrgargarr garrg ggrggrg agrrargar arggg grgg."

I looked at this trailer for Don Roos' The Other Woman and went, "Wait, wait...didn't I see this last year sometime?" I checked and, sure enough, I saw it 15 months ago at the Toronto Film Festival. IFC Films will make this downish drama available on demand four days hence (1.1.11) before opening it theatrically on 2.4.11.

The Sundance Film Festival team is only just starting to officially inform journalists that their press credentials have been approved. Does anyone else find this just a teeny bit inconsiderate on the festival's part? Hearing today, for example, would afford a little more than three weeks advance notice. Same deal last year: I wasn't notified that my 2010 press credentials were good until 1.4.10, or about 17 days before that festival began.

Within the last month I've spoken to three journalists who felt they had to wait on finding accomodations until they knew for sure. But...Read More

Your Highness won't Norbit-ize Natalie Portman's Oscar hopes since it comes out post-Oscar (i.e., 4.8.11). But to call this latest trailer "not funny" isn't the half of it. The blase throwaway tone doesn't just make me cringe and convulse. It makes me dream about fantasy paybacks. In a word, retribution.

Portman, James Franco and Zooey Deschanel get a pass because...well, they just do. But I'd be okay with the careers of Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green being hurt by this. This trailer completely destroys...Read More

This recently-posted teaser for Kevin Smith's Red State is, for me, great impressionist marketing. It gives you nothing of the basic drill (i.e., three teenage kids suckered into a spider's web by hellfire-and-brimstone religious wackos) but that's fine. Obviously the mood and rhythms seem radically different than Smith's usual boilerplate style. And yet Smith cut it, and the dp is David Klein (Zack and Miri Make a Porno).

The "name" costars are John Goodman, Michael Parks, Melissa Leo and Kevin Pollak.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Oakland Athletics' manager Art Howe in Bennett Miller's Moneyball (Columbia, 9.23.11). It's the story Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland Athletics, and his attempt to make the A's competitive based on a "modernized, analytical, sabermetric approach...in 2000, 2001 and 2002, the A's won 91, 102 and 103 games respectively and made the American League playoffs in each season. But they didn't win a playoff series, and Howe and Beane grew estranged."

Pic politely borrowed from slashfilm.

Until this evening, I hadn't watched this scene from David Jones' Betrayal -- the very last in the film, and the first in the years-long history of Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodges' affair -- since the late '80s, when I caught it on cable. I was prompted to search for it on YouTube by Dennis Lim's 12.26 N.Y. Times piece about filmed portrayals of troubled love affairs with "fractured storylines."

Betrayal has never been issued on DVD, of course. I wouldn't be surprised...

Jamie Stuart went out for two hours last night and shot this. Then he had to edit it, of course.

Frame capture from Idiot with a Tripod.

Ditto.

How my neighborhood looked when I arrived back from Connecticut around 5:40 pm.

Her blazing-crazy Black Swan performance aside, Natalie Portman's just-announced pregnancy has to boost her chances as a Best Actress contender, no? Who doesn't love a pregnant woman at the Oscars? The dad, to whom Portman is reportedly engaged, is ballet choreographer and minor Black Swan costar Benjamin Millepied.

I'm feeling less dispirited about 2011 now that I've tallied everything up. I'm looking at 42 films that will almost certainly intrigue and perhaps more than that -- 9 from top-grade filmmakers (whose films seem the most likely Best Picture candidates at this stage), 27 that are promising maybes at the least, and 6 that will most likely qualify as "entertaining," however you want to define that. Here's hoping that other surprises turn up. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.

Major League (9):

The Descendants (d: Alexander Payne). Cast: George Clooney, Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Shailene Woodley, Robert Forster, Michael...Read More

Metro-North trains aren't running ("temporarily suspended") so I'm stuck in Connecticut. The snow has stopped but the wind chill is around ten degrees and the 40 mph to 50 mph winds are painful and blinding. It's Klondike time. You could die out there. I'm dying of boredom in here. I left my Keith Richards autobiography in Brooklyn. I'm DVD'd and Bluray-ed out. But the roads are semi-negotiable so there's always the exploration aspect.

The usual intriguing conversation, except the tech snuff wasn't up to snuff. I was in a bedroom in Fairfield, Connecticut, and talking into a 1997 cordless phone. Phil was in his usual spot. And Sasha was handling her end from her mother's place in Ojai, California. No intro or close-out -- Sasha couldn't figure out how to record one with the laptop she had. Sound, face it, is bad all around. You know how it goes -- we reach for perfection and don't reach it.

Brooks Barnes has written a post-Xmas N.Y. Times piece about how big-studio crap doesn't float anymore, and how movies have to be sharp and dynamic and pushed along these days by social-network organs (and conversation-starters like HE?) or it's hasta la vista, baby. Slick sludge ain't doin' it no more. Which explains this weekend's modest success of Little Fockers.

There were plenty of 2010 films "clinging to the tried and true in 2010," Barnes writes. "Humdrum remakes like The Wolfman and The A-Team; star vehicles like Killers with Ashton Kutcher and The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp; and shoddy...Read More

Early this evening a friend and I were among the few who dared navigate the country roads of Fairfield, Westport and Wilton during the Great Blizzard of '10, which is still going as we speak. "The totals in some New York areas could pile as high as 20 inches, forecasters said, [with] gale-force winds whipping in excess of 50 miles per hour," the N.Y. Times reported.

In today's 12.26 N.Y. Times, Michael Cieply offers a cursory profile of Concept Modeling guru Winston Peretz.

"In a business as ephemeral as the entertainment industry, it's easy to lose track of what you're really selling," Peretz says. "The truly great ideas are built on concept" because filmmakers need to "get beyond plot and dialogue" and into "the essence of a movie, a video game or an entire film-based franchise."

Peretz isn't wrong in identifying plot and dialogue as secondary elements, and saying that movies tend to sink or swim because of things within that resonate with people...Read More

Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides, a PBS/American Masters documentary airing on 1.12.11, is apparently a standard ass-kiss thing. Surely a wonderful talent and great fellow! Didn't Bridges get enough adoration last year during the Crazy Heart parade?

I initially thought the focus of this 90-minute doc might be about Bridges and the Coen brothers and The...

N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich has written a "death of reasonable economic proportion in America" piece in today's edition. He contrasts the old-time theology of Robbins Barstow, a Connecticut family man who believed in 1956 (along with everyone else) in an essentially fair American system that offered bountiful or pot-of-gold fortunes to any enterprising American, with today's corrupted Inside Job reality.

Barstow's Eisenhower-era faith was reflected to some extent in some "family goes to Disneyland" home movie footage that he shot in '56, He edited it...Read More

In mid November Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross told Deadline's Pete Hammond that "we have the biggest and best reviewed film of the year in Toy Story 3 [so] we're going for the Best Picture win...if not this year and not this movie, when?" Disneyland Resort hotel workers have a response: "Some other year, pal. Your Disney corporate colleagues are trying to screw us out of health benefits, so you and Toy Story 3 can symbolically share the blame."

The facts do seem to suggest that...Read More

On 12.31 a "remember Inception?" trailer will be shown in "key" movie theaters around the country (i.e., not located in Waco, Tallahassee and/or Dubuque) and will appear online. The purpose will be to remind folks that Chris Nolan's film, which has been available on DVD/Bluray since 12.7, "is every bit the artistic achievement that its rivals are, and that it deserves to be part of the Oscar conversation," writes Popeater's Jeff Labrecque.

The trailer tells me the following: (1) The highest-ranked honor that Inception can...Read More

Sunday Update: Coming Soon's Ed Douglas is reporting that Little Fockers has "made $34 million just over the weekend, $48 million in five days. It's going to do over $100 million easy and probably around $130 to $140 million total, if not more. Just because people didn't rush out to see it didn't mean they didn't want to see it. Sure, it's a failure compared to Meet the Fockers but they were lucky to get another movie out of the franchise. Hopefully they'll end it there and not embarass themselves further."

Yesterday I wrote an assessment based on Friday's earnings that was incorrect....Read More

Swan swag received from Fox Searchlight two or three days ago. The classic moderne style works. It's like a Weimer-era German poster from the early 1930s.

The Hangover in Iowa...terrific. If anything can save this one, it's the wit and aplomb and savoir faire of Ed Helms.

Have we moved beyond "dump" months (February, March, August) and into the concept of a dump year -- i.e., 2011? If you think things are going to be bad in Washington with the Republican House majority, wait until you endure next year's mainstream films. I'm talking about what looks to be the biggest mudslide of Eloi fast-food movies in human history -- cheap/shallow/rancid concepts taken to the corporate limit, formula eye-dazzle, superhero comic-book/ComicCon crap. Just scan any list. It's devastating. Shoot me now.

I realize that things always seem grim at the start of any annum, but apart from a list...Read More

During last night's 7 pm performance at Manhattan's Unitarian All Souls Church, 1157 Lexington Ave.

Those DVD Beaver frame captures from the recently-released Bluray of Henry Hathaway's True Grit reminded me how similar this 1969 film is to the current Coen brothers version. Same or similar courtroom dialogue, same horse-bargaining scene, same rattlesnake bite near the end, same shoot-out dialogue ("one-eyed fat man," "fill your hand!," etc.).

I can't see clear to buying the Bluray, but the ornery rascal in me would like to argue that the Hathaway isn't half bad and that the Coen's version...Read More

Rabbit Hole is as good as a high-pedigree grief drama can get. Ordinary People, In The Bedroom...all in the family. Believably performed, concisely written, touching, earnest and true. A major score for director John Cameron Mitchell, producer-star Nicole Kidman, screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (who adapted from his stage play), costars Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, etc.

And for all of it, Rabbit Hole doesn't seem to be connecting all that strongly with ticket buyers. Or not so far, at least. It's only playing in five theatres...Read More

Yesterday I quoted ESPN's Bill Simmons about The Fighter, but in the comment thread HE reader crazynine was especially taken with Simmons' assessment of what's happening with the movie audience these days and how they like to watch films, and how this is demanding a sea change in exhibition strategy.

It turned out that producer Cotty Chubb (among many others) has been kicking around the same notions as Simmons, or at least ones that are fairly similar. Day and date, day and date, day and date. Yesterday Indiewire's Anne Thompson posted an open letter/suggestion Chubb has made to...Read More

I was eleven or twelve when I jettisoned the idea that I'd have to pay for my sins in the afterlife. But every time I watch Bryan Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol, and particularly Michael Hordern's big Act One scene as Jacob Marley's ghost, the concept of suffering in death for one's lack of kindness, charity and compassion in life, childish as it seems, is revived. Hordern's performance half-scares and half-transforms, if only for the moment.

Hordern was an old-school British actor whose emoting and body language in this scene are quite broad and...Read More

VCI Entertainment's Bluray of Bryan Desmond Hurst's A Christmas Carol ('51) came out thirteen and a half months ago. I bought it, of course, but I missed the big reveal with the little guy in the mirror (i.e., to the left of Alistair Sim). Now that I've seen it I'll never not notice it. It's like the kid extra in North by Northwest who plugs his ears before Eva Marie Saint shoots Cary Grant in that Mt. Rushmore cafeteria.

In tribute to the about-to-commence Christmas holiday, which I dread with every fibre of my being because of the silence and calories and carol-singing and football games and endless TV-watching it brings, I'd like to dispute the notion that people don't go online during the holidays because they're otherwise engaged with family and partying and watching football games.

Not in my experience. People are always online with their handhelds, iPads and laptops...always. Okay, traffic does drop somewhat during Xmas week, although I can't imagine why. No under-50 person focuses on a single diversion or distraction these days -- it's always two or...Read More

Here's another piece of evidence indicating that somewhat older women, who presumably constitute the majority of the membership of the Women Film Critics Circle Online, are not favorably disposed towards Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. This view is sharply disputed, however, judging by nominees put forward by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. How to explain the disparity? Does the latter group skew younger?

Everyone knows what this frame capture is from so I'm not going to explain it. But the first time I saw this still a few days ago a voice told me that some kind of caption or cartoon thought-balloon needs to be created. Something that applies to today's world and terms. Maybe something that alludes to movie production or online journalism or politics...I don't know. But I know there's at least one good one to be had.

Final scene from a certain Twilight Zone episode that initially aired on 11.11.60.

The Fighter "is a souped-up indie film about family, drugs and boxing, and probably in that order," ESPN's Bill Simmons wrote two weeks ago. The 12.10 piece was called "Sports Movies Continue To Evolve," and the main point was how common boxing movies have become since the 1976 success of Rocky. Since then we've seen an average of one per year. So what's the big deal with The Fighter?

Mark Wahlberg in David O. Russell's The Fighter.

"Your best-case scenario for a boxing flick?," Simmons asks. "The Million Dollar Baby route -- fantastic reviews, multiple award...Read More

To hear it from Matt Damon, Steven Soderbergh wasn't just going through a temporary blue patch when he told Esquire's Stephen Garrett (in a piece posted in January 2009) that he intended to retire at age 51, or three years hence. Soderbergh is now 48 years old. He'll be 51 on January 14, 2014.

"He wants to paint and he says he's still young enough to have another career," Damon has told L.A. Times Geoff Boucher in a piece posted yesterday. "He's kind of exhausted with everything that interested him in terms of form. He's...Read More

A lack of fair proportion is evident in today's Rotten Tomatoes ratings. 88% for The Fighter, okay. Black Swan is also at 88%, Biutiful is holding at 81% and Somewhere is at 78%. I might dispute this or that but I can live with these estimations. What I don't get is True Grit's 96% rating.

I'm not a huge fan but I respect Grit for being an expertly made "straight" western with two or three exceptional set pieces, some wonderfully flavorful 19th century dialogue and...Read More

A 12.22 HuffPost piece has listed 20 things that have either disappeared or are on their last legs since 2000. Texting has overtaken phone calling but it will never disappear, but travel agents are all but gone, of course, and so are bookstores (fading), phone sex, maps, print classifieds, dial-up internet, encyclopedias, CDs, landline phones, film cameras, yellow pages, address books, printed catalogues and fax machines.

I for one am fine with the separation between work and personal hours have completely dissolved. Buy watches will always be...

Oh my God...a 2010 compilation montage that actually pays attention to what the year's films were about -- what they said, felt, emoted, conveyed, shared. And has some good visceral whizflashbang in the bargain. It took three tries before we made it, but thanks, Matt Zoller Seitz! [Update: I had to take the embed code down because the video automatically launches when the page is refreshed.]

Okay, who's the MGM Home Entertainment art director who ordered that the Eiffel Tower be pasted in the background? In so doing, he/she was presuming that some potential buyers may, despite the title, not fully understand which European city this renowned 1972 Bernardo Bertolucci film takes place in. So he/she used a felt-tip pen. The basic idea is to appeal to the schmuck tourists who go straight to Times Square when they hit Manhattan, and who loved When In Rome.

Of the three 2010 montage reels that have appeared on YouTube this month, Kees van Dijkhuizen's is the best. During the early and concluding portions, that is. But most of it, like the other two, is still too whizflashbang. It has a bit more dialogue and seems to actually toy with the themes, emotions and characters that were the actual brick and mortar of 2010 films. But too much of it defaults to GenY eye-candy flashcrap. All hail Greenberg!

Here are the othe rtwo...

When I was launching this site five and a half years ago I was told that the dash between "Hollywood" and "Elsewhere" would be bad for traffic. It probably was in the early days, so in '05 I asked the guy who ran www.hollywoodelsewhere.com, a deadbeat site if I ever saw one, if he wanted to sell. He said "okay, $10 grand." I didn't even reply. Early this month he got in touch again, saying he wants to give me the opportunity to purchase the domain "before we list it on sedo and other domain-selling sites." I could be wrong, but...Read More

There are three reasons why Little Fockers didn't get an absolute zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and MSN critic (not to mention Hollywood Elsewhere's own) Glenn Kenny is one of them. His curiously amiable non-condemning review plus two other passes resulted in this plastic poison IV comedy getting an 8%, which is fitting but not the historic blank-out I was hoping for.

"It must be said I did not find Little Fockers to be particularly excruciating," Kenny wrote. "Indeed, I laughed pretty hard several times. My father-in-law, whom I brought to the...Read More

"In some ways, much like Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter, which the Coens quote both musically and visually, True Grit is a parable about good and evil," writes N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. "Only here, the lines between the two are so blurred as to be indistinguishable, making this a true picture of how the West was won, or -- depending on your view -- lost."

Blurred indeed. As in "what's going on here, if anything?" As I said in my original review, True...Read More

Marshall Fine's interview with Biutiful director-cowriter Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, which he did, I suspect, at the same time I did my Inarritu chat in early November, has some truly sublime quotes:

(a) "I joke that 60 years ago, [Luis] Bunuel went to Mexico to shoot Los Olvidados and, 60 years later, this is my version, shot in Barcelona...I wanted to shoot in my own language[ and] it's the first film I did in Europe, and the food is fantastic."

(b) Biutiful's story "came from sitting...Read More

Gone in Sixty Seconds + Grindhouse aesthetic + Nic Cage's tax debt goading him to do almost anything + 3D whoopee cushion = popcorn flatulence.

Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil and Deadline's Pete Hammond answer two key questions: (1) Why has Hammond ditched The King's Speech?, and (2) Can The Fighter pull off an upset? (Take note, incidentally, that Hammond has The Fighter in second place above The King's Speech in his rankings.)

I've always loved Renata Adler's 4.4.68 review of 2001: A Space Odyssey. She didn't really get it and in fact puts it down, but she'd gotten parts of it, or several fragments, and she knew (or sensed) there was probably more where that came from. She was only 30 when she wrote her piece, and probably had more than a few space-cadet friends who were getting high and listening to Dylan and the Beatles, etc. And a voice was telling her, "You'd be smart not to pan this outright despite your gut feelings...go a little easy."

...

The One By The Famously Exacting Director With The Great Script By The Famously Jerky Screenwriter: The Social Network.

The One Where You're Going Insane Waiting Around For The Crazy Thing To Happen, Then It Happens: 127 Hours.

The Super-Loony One, Holy Shit, Was That Fucking Nutballs Or What?: Black Swan or Inception.

The Sweet-Hearted-But-Poignant Animated One We're Supposed To Take More Seriously: How To Train Your Dragon. (Many have obviously taken Toy Story 3 quite seriously.)

The One Where The Whole Thing Might Have Been A Dream: Black Swan or Inception?

The One Where The Whole Thing Might Have Been A...Read More

"What the hell am I gonna tell ya 'bout what they got against you? Christ, they're women, aren't they? You ever listen to women talk, man? Do ya? 'Cause I do till it's running outta my ears! I mean I'm on my feet all day long listening to women talk and they only talk about one thing -- how some guy fucked 'em over. That's all that's on their minds. That's all I ever hear about! Don't you know that? Face it, we're always trying to nail 'em and they don't like it. They like it and they don't like it. It's...Read More

All large-format films of the '50s and early '60s (70 mm, VistaVision, Technirama, etc.) need to be remastered for Bluray, so I have no argument against Warner Home Video scheduling a Bluray of Nicholas Ray's ('61) King of Kings on 3.29.11. It was shot in Technirama by Manuel Berenguer, Milton R. Krasner and Franz Planer, and "presented in 70mm Super Technirama at selected first-run engagements," according to the film's Wiki page. So the detail should be quite nice.

2010 was my big Phil Spector Rediscovery year. Last summer I saw Vikram Jayanti's The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, and it put the hook in and turned on the switch. A week or so ago I bought a Spector retrospective set called "Back To Mono." Here are two of my favorite cuts -- Zippity-Doo-Dah and the Ronettes' Walking In The Rain . (Here's a stereo version without the storm clouds.)

Jayanti's doc was paid the ultimate compliment -- imitation -- when Barry Levinson, David Mamet and Al Pacino announced...Read More

With four injury/mishaps so far (including last night's), Spider-Man: Fall Into The Pit has turned into the biggest B'way disaster of all time. Can't catch a break, can't turn a profit...eye-filling but fucked. The upside is that it's become a kind of NASCAR attraction. People are going to see the prepared show, but now there's the added factor of "will some new calamity happen?"

About 14 months ago I ran a Best of Decade list using the years 2000 to 2009 (although '09 had another couple of months to go at the time). Here's another shot at the decade but this time defining it as 2001 to '10. I'm not saying these films were the "best," but they do possess, in my mind, the strongest positive after-flow effect. Right now, looking back, this is what the decade feels like to me. And it could change a bit down the road.

I decided this time to also throw in some legendary first-decade stinkers but I didn't try...Read More

23 Gold Derby pundits are now declaring that The Social Network is ahead in the race for Best Picture over The King's Speech, and that one of the Networkers -- this is fairly significant, I think -- is former (and very recent) King's Speech supporter Pete Hammond.

Twelve pundits are now supporting The Social Network while only nine now foresee The King's Speech pulling ahead in the end.

This really needs to be repeated. Pete Hammond of Deadline.com has abandoned Best Picture support of The King's Speech! Pete Hammond of Deadline.com has abandoned Best Picture support The King's Speech!...Read More

Don't tell me it wouldn't feel good to somehow make the Iranian authorities suffer for having today sentenced director Jafar Panahi to six years in jail. They've also told him to forget about making films for 20 years. They're pigs, of course, but I wonder why Panahi didn't just lam it when he had the chance and move to Paris? Home is where creativity takes you.

Jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi after winning Berlin's Silver Bear award in 2006.

Panahi has no choice, of course, but to sneak out of Iran and make films elsewhere...Read More

The Chicago Film Critics Association has gone with The Social Network for Best Picture, Best Director (David Fincher) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin). Colin Firth for Best Actor, Natalie Portman for Best Actress, Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor....zzzzzzz. Hold on...True Grit's Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress instead of Melissa Leo or Amy Adams? Okay.

I wasn't that all that keen on attending tonight's all-media screening of Rob Letterman's Gulliver's Travels (20th Century Fox, 12.25). I've been getting a weird vibe from the ads, like something's wrong or off-balance. Maybe I'm Jack Black-ed out. And then I read this 12.20 "Vulture" story about anemic tracking and went, "Oh...well, that fits then." Still trying to reach boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino to see if his sources and indicators are saying the same thing. "If people don't wanna see something, you can't stop 'em." -- Samuel Goldwyn.

Last Friday Awards Daily's Sasha Stone bravely became the latest significant voice to question the mule-ish insistence by several Gurus of Gold that The King's Speech is the odds-on favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar. And she did so by pointing to an apparent change in Academy thinking that began to manifest in 2006 -- a change that those feet-stuck-in-cement Gurus seem reluctant to acknowledge.

"If I could name one of the biggest changes I've seen since 1999, when I first started covering the race annually," she begins, "it would be this: after...Read More

I spent two hours this morning doing Sundance 2011 research. I read synopses and followed web threads about the various premieres, dramatic competitors, docs (premieres and competition), int'l features, Park City at Midnight, etc. I'll wind up going, of course, to the same 20 or 25 hot films that everyone else will be clamoring to get into, etc. But right now? Honestly? Three films stand out: (a) Jason Eisener's Hobo With A Shotgun, (b) Andrew Rossi's Page One: A Year Inside The N.Y. Times, and (c) Eugene Jarecki's Reagan.

I will settle for...Read More

Cheers to Amir Bar Lev's The Tillman Story for snagging the Florida Film Critics Circle's Best Documentary award. (The San Francisco Film Critics Circle felt the same way.) Otherwise the Floridians succumbed to the same Social Network juggernaut (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay) that has swept the nation like Alexander the Great. Plus The King's Speech's Colin Firth for Best Actor, Black Swan's Natalie Portman for Best Actress plus the Fighter twins -- Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor, Melissa Leo for Best Supporting Actress.

"The rap on Sofia Coppola's Somewhere is actually true," writes Marshall Fine. "This is a film in which very little happens and very little is said. [It is] the second seriously Antonioni-esque film of this year (The American was the other) and one that is bound to divide viewers dramatically.

"Coppola's minimalism has bothered me in the past; both The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette seemed like films in which the look, the feel and the music were more important than the characters or the...Read More

The new Salt Unrated Edition Bluray (out tomorrow) actually contains three versions of Phillip Noyce's spy thriller -- the original theatrical cut (95 minutes and 54 seconds), an extended version (96 minutes, 56 seconds) and a director's cut (99 minutes and 48 seconds). The longer cuts are said to be worth the purchase price in themselves.

The extended version is the original cut before Noyce went back to shoot a new ending (Jolie leaping out of chopper, splashing to the Potomac, running into the woods, etc.)...Read More

Last Friday I wrote that the existence of those 17 minutes of cut footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey, sitting in a vault in Hutchinson, Kansas, has been known to Warner Bros. for the last 42 years, and is therefore no discovery, and that re-integrating the footage into the standard 139 minute cut that's everyone's familiar with would probably be a bad idea.

This morning a statement from Warner Bros. arrived: "The additional footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey has always existed in the Warner vaults. When [director Stanley] Kubrick trimmed the 17 minutes from 2001 after the NY premiere, he made...Read More

The Museum of Modern Art's Bernardo Bertolucci restrospective kicked off 12.15, and runs until 1.12.11. (I'll be revisiting La Luna, 1900 and The Spider's Stratagem, and catching Serge July and Bruno Nuytten's Once Upon a Time: Last Tango in Paris, a doc about the landmark Marlon Brando-Maria Schneider film showing on 12.27). Bertolucci's The Conformist has four days left at the Film Forum. And a new Bluray of Last Tango in Paris streets on 2.15.

For me, getting lost in Bertolucci will be a way of combating Christmas-holiday gloom. It's the holiday per se,...Read More

If Todd McCarthy is ripping Little Fockers (Universal, 12.22) a new one ("focking dismal...nothing but a paycheck project"), so can I. This is a franchise-killer for the simple reason that it's just not funny. To watch it is to slowly succumb to a kind of corporate poison that spreads through your veins like embalming fluid, causing your skin and your soul to turn gray. Never again will I watch a Focker film...ever. It's not family fun. It's not some kind of half-okay Christmas hoot. It's narcotized horseshit.