I’ve been presuming all along that Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men: First Class (20th Century Fox, 6.3) is a prequel using a Cuban Missile Crisis backdrop because of the early ’60s chic mentality created by Mad Men and furthered by Zack Snyder‘s Watchmen…right? They’re basically following the stylistic lead of other films.

I’ve just re-watched JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis speech (part 1 and part 2). No mention of mutants, of course, but any chief executive would have kept this aspect under wraps.

I’ve been waiting for months to see Jennifer Lawrence‘s full-blue Mystique appearance in X-Men: First Class, which I’ve been presuming all along would bear some resemblance to Rebecca Romijn’s in the last X-Men series. And yet the Fox guys keep not including her in the trailers. Now it appears that Lawrence’s Mystique has a different, more modest sartorial idea in mind — i.e., a yellow-and-blue leather bomber jacket.

In other words, X-Men: First Class is starting to look like a LexG letdown.

It was announced today that the 2012 Golden Globe Awards telecast will happen on Sunday, 1.15.12, or six weeks before the Oscar telecast on Sunday, 2.26.12. (The 2011 GG telecast happened on 1.16, or a full seven weeks before the 3.6 Oscar telecast.) GG nominations for 2011 films will be announced on 12.15.11.

“The mood around the Tribeca Film Festival had been a bit quiet and uneventful, but on Wednesday night a small documentary — Semper Fi: Always Faithful — delivered a much-needed bang,” reports HE’s Jett Wells. “It’s this year’s Tillman Story meets Erin Brokovich — one man’s investigation into the most widespread tragedy of mass pollution in American history since Love Canal.

Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger in Rachel Libert and Tony Hardman’s Semper Fi: Always Faithful.

“Rachel Libert and Tony Hardman tell the story of Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger‘s quest to find the truth behind his daughter’s death from leukemia and the U.S. Marine Corps’ complicity in covering up behind the likely cause of his daughter’s demise — water contamination adjacent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

“Watching Ensminger combine forces with other cancer victims of Camp Lejuene’s polluted water is tragic and infuriating. We learn about a cover-up directly and indirectly affecting countless lives over the span of 30 years with personal accounts of several cancer victims seeking out answers, some that made it and others that didn’t.

“It’s amazing how Libert and Hardman covered the investigation into the military camp’s water supply from beginning to end through the moments when all hope seemed lost,

to when the victims couldn’t hang any longer, to the moment Ensminger stepped before Congress to give testimony. People may know the tragic story from a news perspective, but Semper Fi gets up close and personal. It’s powerful, powerful stuff.”

Wednesday, 4.27 — photo by Jett Wells.

Shortlist.com has posted a Quentin vs Coens art collection “celebrating both sides of the battle…collated and shown to warring film buffs. The pieces cover classics from both sides, including Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, Kill Bill and Barton Fink.”

If I’d called Fast Five director Justin Lin yesterday and asked for a quick meeting at the Urth Caffe, he would have blown me off. Lin probably feels at this stage that he’s too much of a hot-shot to sit down with an online columnist. But let’s imagine for a second that he might have recalled our chats in ’06 about Better Luck Tomorrow and said “sure, fine…where and when?” Let’s also imagine that we both showed up on time, and we both ordered herbal tea.

HE: Good to see ya again, Justin.

JL: Yeah…four, five years. How ya been, Jeff?

JW: Good, good. It’s been five, I think.

JL: So let’s get into it. You don’t like the film, right? You hate it?

JW: I don’t hate it, no…not really. Well, kind of. It’s just that I really love that low-key Steve McQueen machismo thing. I love serious driving and fine-tuned machinery and high-speed chases. The kind I can really believe in, I mean. Love that stuff! And you…look, no offense, Justin, but your movie flat-out refuses to believe in any semblance of physical reality. You know, the stuff that’s out there when you drive on a real highway? Or a real two-lane blacktop in the desert? And so it locks me out of what’s happening on the screen. It keeps tromping on the accelerator and doubles-down and insists on an infantile and looney-tunes action-geek attitude. And I went into the theatre really wanting to have fun with this sucker…y’know? I wanted to laugh and clap my hands and kick back, and your movie kept pushing me away. So I have to believe you don’t really love fast-car movies like I do.

JL: The fuck…of course I do! Have you even seen the other ones?

JW: I’ve seen two of them. This one and Tokyo Drift, and they didn’t get me off, man. They’re not about the real thing. The first one, Rob Cohen‘s, was pretty good. But Fast Five is so cranked on CG cartoon steroids…it’s robotic, man. I’m almost sitting there in tears, begging to be let into the world of this movie so I can have some fun, and time and again it’s like you’re leaning over and saying to me, “Look, Jeff…I’d like to give you what you want to see, but it’s so much easier to make a bullshit CG Tom-and-Jerry action movie.”

JL: So you want to see another Bullitt?

JW: I want to believe in the action.

JL: McQueen was cool but you gotta move on. Y’know…embrace the now.

JW: I saw a YouTube video of a guy being chased by a cop car. Maybe two or three years old. He had video cameras mounted on the front and rear of his helmet. It was happening on a highway in what looked like cold, rainy weather, and the chase went on and on. Mostly the cop car was staying fairly close and sometimes the guy was pulling ahead. Really high speeds. And then the guy got off at an exit and cornered really hard to the left and the cop tried to do the same but his car couldn’t hold the pavement and he went sliding off the road and into some nearby brush and the motorcycle got away. I was into that video for thrills much more than any part of your film.

JL: I believe in Fast Five.

JW: You believe…what, in the money you’re making?

JL: I believe in doing it well, getting it done, people liking it, making movies that guys like James Rocchi are going to favorably review. And I believe in working with Universal and…you know, the marketing guys. And Fast Five is the kind of movie they want to sell.

JW: I was sitting there like a zombie, Justin….c’mon!

JL: You don’t understand what’s going on, Jeff.

JW: What’s going on?

JL: As a big-studio action director, I live in a kind of jail cell. Well, at least I do in my head. I mean, I can’t be Paul Greengrass…you know? I gotta be Justin Lin. And most big-studio action movies are about one thing — doing it louder, faster, cooler and more excitingly than the last action film. That’s all it’s about — the last movie made by the last guy. And if I can’t top the last guy, I’m dead. They’ll get somebody else to direct the next one.

JW: I liked that silent stare-down moment between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. It’s a very gay film. All the guys are really bulked up with lots of torn tissue and nobody really pays attention to the women. I mean, the women are “there” but it’s the male bodies and the eye-ball-to-eyeball male attitudes that dominate the film.

JL: Did you like their fight scene?

JW: No.

JL: Why?

JW: Because every time somebody hits or gets hit, they go “auggghh!” Or “whoooff!!” Or “ahhwwrrrll!” I hate that. People never groan when they hit each other in real fights. Ever. And fights are always over really quickly. Usually win a minute or two. Okay, I believed that long fight between Matt Damon and that North African agency guy. That went on for three or four minutes. But you’re…you said you’re not Greengrass. Not in your quiver. I only know that I was bored by the fight scenes. And the driving scenes. And the scene when they drag the vault through the streets of Rio.

As I said last month, if Will Smith wasn’t such a sad little status-quo money whore (i.e., playing only “safe” cool-guy roles that pay his whopping salary), he’d agree to portray Barack Obama in Jay Roach and Danny Strong‘s Game Change. No one has been cast as Obama yet…right? Ed Harris is playing John McCain.

(l.) Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in HBO’s Game Change; (r.) caption unnecessary.

Apologies for failing yesterday to post Jett Wells‘ review of Massy Tadjedin‘s Last Night, which screened Monday night at the Tribeca Film Festival: “My first Tribeca Film Festival got off to a slow start last weekend due to my dog throwing up in the car before dropping him off at my mom’s apartment, and then my shuttling down to D.C. to see a friend,” Jett begins.

“Directed and written by Massy Tadjedin, Last Night is about the age-old question on whether to cheat or not to cheat. The film portrays a struggling, newly married couple (Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington) having doubts about whether they got married too soon or not. Heard this one before?

“You don’t really get a feel for the couple nor find them likable before they get into their first fight. Even though I’m blinking slowly and wondering why writing about this is more boring than the plot, you do stick around to see who’ll cheat first.

“The film jumps back and forth between Eva Mendes acting annoyingly, somewhat ridiculously and almost sadistically flirty with Worthington despite knowing he’s married, and Knightley bumping into an old flame, played by French actor-director Guillame Canet. I’m not going to spoil the third-act finish, but let’s just say you usually know where these kinds of movies are going to go depending on the gender of the director. And I’ll also say this: the abrupt, somewhat mysterious ending is, for me, pretty satisfying.

“Since Mr. HE himself has unique views on cheating, I’m sure he’d have more disdain for the banal storyline. But for me it boils down to this: it’s never good to cheat, and one should never keep it a secret because chances are it’s going to happen over and over again until the truth becomes a ticking time bomb in the form of a lie (to yourself).

“Neither Knightley or Worthington are bad people — that’s not the point. And it’s obvious neither is going to lie about what they did and didn’t do.”

Jeffrey Wells interjection: Jett chose not to explain my views about cheating so here they are: (a) infidelity is pain — a terrible and hurtful thing to inflict upon your partner — and therefore you should never go there; (b) If you do you should keep it to two or three episodes because extended affairs are always discovered sooner or later; and (c) if you’re questioned by a partner always lie and deny, lie and deny and lie and deny. As Lenny Bruce once said. “Deny it even if she’s got pictures.”

More mythical-fantasy CG crap in the mold of Louis Leterrier‘s Clash of the Titans, and directed by Tarsem Singh. The bare-chested guy yelling “noooo!” at the beginning is Henry Cavill, the star of Zac Snyder‘s Man of Steel. The moustachioed guy in the cattle-horn helmet (i.e., “King Hyperion”) is Mickey Rourke. And poor Freida Pinto (triple-devalued between You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Miral and this thing) costars as Phaedra.

To mark the 15th anniversary of Saul Bass‘s passing, web designer Christian Annyas yesterday posted a Vertigo movie-poster-design page that includes some alternate images that Bass designed but weren’t chosen as the primary. My favorite is the sexier lower-left image, followed by the despairing lower-right.

The upper-left was chosen for the ’58 one-sheet but the hat worn by the male silhouette dates it, obviously. Here’s my 7.16.10 riff on that awful brown suit worn by Vertigo star James Stewart.

The actual art was done by Bass associate Art Goodman. “Bass designed everything, but often other people were involved in the execution of his ideas,” Annyas explains. Here’s a list of Saul Bass/Art Goodman collaborations.

Here’s an article about Bass by Pat Kirkham that’ll be published later this year.

20th Century Fox… I mean, MGM has created a new 70mm print of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins‘ West Side Story (’61), and Fox Home Video will issue a Bluray, I’m told, sometime later this year. The 70mm print will screen it this Sunday at 7pm at the American Cinematheque under the aegis of TCM’s Classic Film Festival.

The 1961 consensus, of course, was that West Side Story lacked the snap and vitality of the 1957 Broadway play, and that the play was an exuberantly jacked-up theatrical impression of street conditions among upper-west-side Manhattan’s poor whites and Puerto Ricans in the early ’50s. So the film was twice removed to begin with, and by today’s standards it seems almost satirically inauthentic.

But the overture really works emotionally, and so does the helicopter footage over Manhattan that precedes the opening Jets-vs-Sharks dance number (which was shot not far from where Lincoln Center stands today). The overture, really, is the whole ball game. I can watch this section and the scherzo and ballet sequence over and over. But the rest of it? Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn and those freshly painted bright-red tenement walls and Natalie Wood wearing brown Puerto Rican makeup? Later.

Donald Trump‘s response to the White House’s release this morning of Barack Obama‘s live birth certificate was frankly my own: why did they wait so long?

With all the idiots out there claiming President Obama was born in Kenya plus that huge block of Republicans who right now believe the Kenya scenario, what was the upside of not producing this document and putting the issue to bed once and for all?

The certificate was physically obtained in Hawaii at Obama’s personal expense and flown back to Washington, D.C. yesterday.

From the HuffPost‘s Sam Stein: “Last Friday the president himself wrote Loretta J. Fuddy, the director of health at the State of Hawaii, requesting ‘two certified copies of my original certificate of live birth.’ Fuddy complied. Shortly thereafter, the president’s counsel, Judith Corley of the firm Perkins Coie, flew to Hawaii to pick up two copies of the form. The trip was not taxpayer funded but, rather, paid out of the president’s personal account.

“Corley returned on Tuesday at roughly 4 p.m. with the copies. The White House announced a “morning gaggle” for reporters shortly thereafter. One aide explained that they did not want to “hold” on to the documents for release on a later date.”

So far Fast Five, a steroid male-attitude robot fantasy about muscles and possessions and whale-sized physiques and high-octane flamboyance and studly one-upsmanship, has an 81% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It is what it is (blah, blah, blah) and I’m not suggesting that Universal executives or director Justin Lin be indicted for a felony, but I’m going to rip it a new asshole tomorrow morning anyway.

Along with the smart critics who know better but have given it a pass because they know that the regular-guy mob is into it and they don’t want to seem too fickle or prissy or metrosexual if they don’t take off their shirt and jump into the passenger seat and shout “hell, yeah…a good time!” In other words I, Jeffrey Wells, am man enough to pan this thing.