Joss Wheedon's The Avengers opens in less than four months and Disney marketing chose to limit their Super Bowl spot...oh, I get it. This is a ten-second tease for a trailer that will debut during the game. I still maintain that Wheedon is a lightweight (i.e., moderately talented) clock-puncher and journeyman, and nowhere near the realm of James Cameron or Bryan Singer even. Here's the most recent trailer.

Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan is a four-CD package of many, many artists signing Bob Dylan songs. The revenue goes to Amnesty International, hence the copy line "this album saves lives." But my reaction when I saw this poster was that music itself can do this. Regularly, I imagine.

All great art in fact -- films, plays, paintings, novels -- has the power to lift people out of the doldrums and turn them on and nourish their souls to some degree. Dylan's music alone made a huge difference to hundreds of...Read More

Earlier today I was buying some regrettably expensive sunglasses at Macy's at the Beverly Center, and I asked the sales girl to just let me wear them out and to forget the imitation leather case and the cleaning cloth and the plastic carrying bag and the receipt even. I just wanted the glasses.

"Are you sure?," she said. "Because you'll need the receipt if you want to return them."

"I won't. They're just sunglasses."

"You'd be surprised how many people come back and want to return or exchange," she explained.

"What do they say when they do that?," I asked. "What...'excuse me...Read More

To me, Universal's decision to advance the opening of Oliver Stone's Savages from 9.28 to 7.6 means (a) they've decided it has definite mainstream popcorn potential and (b) they don't think it fulfills the requirements of a "fall movie" (however you want to define that term) to quite the same degree. I haven't read the script but it's basically a drug-dealing movie costarring Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch that's about saving Blake Lively from Mexican drug cartel kidnappers. Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Emile Hirsch, Mia Maestro and Salma Hayek costar.

"Even The Artist's most vocal detractors -- who would likely not be vocal at all about it under normal circumstances -- would have to confess that the film is not some bloated sop to the Academy, like so many other major studio productions crafted specifically for year-end consideration," writes AV Club's Scott Tobias.

"Its goals are modest, its pleasures refined -- not a whiff of self-importance or middlebrow grandeur, no issues more pressing than a general appreciation of love and the cinema, and certainly no ambition to heal a nation a decade after 9/11 or credit...Read More

Martin Scorsese, the most gifted, tireless, prolific and devout Movie Catholic director of our time, sat down last night for a longish (160 minutes, give or take) on-stage interview with Leonard Maltin, and it was some kind of beautiful and sublime to take a surface-level nostalgia trip into Martyland and to revel in 40 years of Marty memories, Marty anecdotes and Marty insights.

Murky, not-quite-focused shot of Martin Scorsese taken by yours truly from my seat.

It happened at Santa Barbara's Arlington theatre from 8:20 pm to 11 pm, more or less, as part of a presentation...Read More

Tonight the Santa Barbara Film Festival will honor Martin Scorsese with its American Riviera award, starting at 8pm. Two hours of clips, chatter and showing obeisancr. A cool-cats-only afterparty will follow. If only Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, had been shut down at last weekend's DGA awards, and if Marty had won instead.

Santa Barbara's Arlington Theatre -- Monday, 1.30, 5:05 pm.

Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet posted earlier this afternoon about reactions to the ending of Joe Carnahan's The Grey, so I thought I'd kick it around also. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Some have reportedly complained about the finale being unclear, but it's obvious that Liam Neeson gets killed by the wolves. A guy reciting macho poetry to himself ("Once more into the fray...live or die on this day") as he faces a growling threat is surely toast. Carnahan chooses not to show anything, but its a bit like Gary Cooper anticipating death at the end of For Whom...Read More

By prior arrangement a cat sitter is living in my apartment until next Sunday so I won't be able to watch these five Blurays (not to mention Amazon-purchased Blurays of The Apartment and Cleopatra) for a while. So from my room at the Hotel Santa Barbara I've been looking to experience these Blurays by proxy, and John Nolte's Big Hollywood piece on The Apartment Bluray is the best I've come across so far.

This is the only time in my life that I've felt any sense of values-based kinship with Nolte, whose...Read More

What world-famous director could Slate's Bill Wyman be talking about? Excerpts: (a) "He can't do comedy"; (b) "He has a surprisingly weak record when it comes to eliciting great performances"; (c) "He never commits to a worldview that doesn't ultimately have a sunny patina"; (d) "The scares, the drama, the emotional ups and downs [in his films] feel hackneyed and even mannered"; (e) "His lack of interest in narrative coherence is one of his hallmarks"; and (f) His career has ultimately become "an arc of failed promise."

This week's New York is largely devoted to a collection of short articles by Claude Bodesser-Akner about celebrity money. Shorter Brodesser-Akner: They make more but they have loads of expenses, the smart ones exhibit restraint, and most of them funnel their earnings through tax-friendly "loan-out" corporations. Oh, and Brangelina's combined portfolio is worth about $270 million. And Zooey Deschanel lives reasonably .

I didn't file last night about the SAG winners because (a) I genuinely love and worship great filmmaking and revel in the celebration of same, and therefore (b) I don't care at all whether Pleasing But Overpraised Movie #1 (i.e., The Artist) now has a slight chance of losing the Best Picture Oscar to Pleasing but Overpraised Movie #2 (i.e., The Help).

The Spirit of 2011 (as represented by the final Oscar favorites) is virulently opposed to the Spirit of 1999 -- I know that much. The two-headed Artist/Help shrek gollum isn't fit to shine the...Read More

I've heard all the tales about certain old-time Hollywood stars preferring same-sex encounters that everyone else has. Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Cole Porter, Montgomery Clift, Randolph Scott, George Cukor, etc. But I'd never heard, frankly, that Walter Pidgeon and Spencer Tracy played in this pool, and I never knew that Vivien Leigh may have been somewhat lezzy.

(l. to r.) Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Walter Pidgeon, Spencer Tracy.

There are many such stories, in any case, in a new Old Hollywood tell-all book called "Full Service: My Adventures...Read More

I realized during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that not wearing facial stubble is no longer an option for lead actors. Obedience was demanded and every single actor in every single film I saw in Park City complied. And we the ticket-buyers are probably stuck with glistening follicles for the next 10 to 15 years. Or longer. Fashion dictates, monkeys salute and no one resists. Probably because of surveys like this one.

Today's Oscar Poker podcast touched on the somewhat surprising success of The Grey, the underwhelming response to Haywire (which I find deeply depressing) and the blah-blah-blah-blah Oscar season as things now stand. It was a threesome today -- myself, Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino. Here's a stand-alone mp3 link.

Longtime Oscar-watcher and chronicler Damien Bona, co-author (with Mason Wiley) of Inside Oscar and sole author of Inside Oscar 2, has died of a heart attack at age 57. His passing was announced by Awards Daily's Sasha Stone a little while ago. Condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Damien Bona (3.18.54 - 1.29.12)

If I was the Hollywood Reporter editor in charge of dreaming up headlines for the magazine, I'd have a problem with "Being Brad Pitt." It's kinda lame and generic sounding, like something Interview might use. HE alternate #1: "NOT GONNA WIN...and That's Cool." HE alternate #2: "RICH SCRAGGLY BEARDO & The Performance of His Career." HE alternate #3: "LONG TIME COMING: Brad Pitt's Career High."

Last night's DGA Award win by The Artist's Michel Hazanavicius took the wind out of my sails. The last hope of the anti-Artist crowd was a surprise win by Hugo's Martin Scorsese, and now that's dashed. I don't know if I even want to watch tonight's SAG awards. It's certainly possible that The Artist will win Best Ensemble, and that'll be one more stone in the bucket.

It's time for a perfectly rendered Criterion Bluray of Carol Reed's Odd Man Out ('47), one of the most sadly emotional and tragic noirs of all time. I saw it a couple of times on laser disc in the mid '90s, and I have indelible memories of a sweating, barely conscious James Mason (as IRA combatant Johnny McQueen) and of constantly falling snow in a darkened Belfast. I would have them again in high-definition.

The exquisite photography is by Robert Krasker, who also shot Reed's The Third Man.

The only NTSC DVD...Read More

The other day I agreed with Self-Styled Siren's comment that Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat ('44) is "very unappreciated" -- I assumed she meant "wrongly" -- by saying that Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull and Walter Slezak are excellent and that Hitch's studio-water-tank simulation of the North Atlantic easily out-verisimiltudes Waterworld.

The discussion began with my mentioning the forthcoming Masters of Cinema Bluray version, due in mid April.

Siren said that Lifeboat is "a good example of our mutual pal Glenn Kenny's argument that a confined space can still be very...Read More

Last night Christopher Plummer sat for a Santa Barbara Film Festival Modern Master tribute at the Arlington theatre. Plummer said he was unsure if the audience wanted to sit for the whole thing, but it was a pleasure from start to finish with Pete Hammond interviewing, and many -- well, about 20% -- of Plummer's films getting the once-over.

The above clip was taken by yours truly as I leaned against the theatre wall about 15 rows back. It's Plummer talking about playing Mike Wallace ("He was a cruel guy but a great...Read More

As of 8:42 pm this evening, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival had given two awards to Ben Lewin's much-praised The Surrrogate -- the Dramatic Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Acting (a tip of the hat for costars John Hawkes and Helen Hunt). The film was acquired for distribution during the festival by Fox Searchlight.

There's a similarity or two, I gather, between Mischa Webley's The Kill Hole, which is having its world premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and Paul Haggis's In The Valley of Elah. Some bad Iraq War business haunting a veteran of that blighted conflict (Chadwick Boseman) and some harsh truths gradually finding their way into the light.

The Kill Hole director Mischa Webley --- Saturday, 1.28, 2:40 pm.

I won't be seeing it until Monday night, but I had a chance to speak with Webley this afternoon at a small gathering in downtown Santa Barbara. Nice...Read More

The same steamroller-lemming-mob mentality that has pushed The Artist all through awards season has presumably sunk in among the Directors Guild membership. It is therefore likely that Artist helmer Michel Hazanasidvicious will take the top prize at this evening's DGA Awards. The "anything but The Artist" contingent (i.e., myself and I don't know who else) is hoping for an extremely unlikely upset by Hugo's Martin Scorsese.

The 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival's "It Starts With The Script" happened at 11 this morning at the Lobero Theatre. The paneiists included JC Chandor (Margin Call), Jim Rash (The Descendants), Mike Mills (Beginners), Will Reiser (50/50) and Tate Taylor (The Help). IndieWire columnist Anne Thompson moderated. For the first time since I've attended this festival I missed it, but at least I got some photos.

(l to. r) J.C. Chandor, Will Reiser, Anne Thompson, Mike Mills, Jim Rash, Tate Taylor, Roger Durling.

SB Film Festival director Roger Durling, Descendants co-writer Jim Rash.

All day long I felt last night's Moet & Chandon circulating through my system. Moet & Chandon is sponsoring the 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival so the stuff is abundant. The waiters kept filling my glass at last night's Viola Davis after-party, and I kept slurping it down like a fool. A champagne hangover is like a disease. Puffy face, a distinct sense of having been pleasurably poisoned, a lack of concentration, depleted spirit.

Deadline's Mike Fleming has posted an R.J. Cutler tribute to the late Bingham Ray that will be shown at tonight's Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony. Cutler has basically dusted off a 15 year-old piece about October's success with Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. I tried to find an embed code and gave up after five minutes or so.

Bingham Ray after hearing that Secrets and Lies, which October Films distributed, had been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Here's a riff on Favorite Conservative Movies (i.e., "Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- the birth of the Tea Party."). Thanks to Awards Daily's Sasha Stone.

This 1.20.12 Romney riff is good also.

Gifted people always know they're gifted. Some allude to this knowledge but they usually indicate otherwise, feigning modesty and humble uncertainty, because it plays better. Last night it seemed to me that Viola Davis, Best Actress Oscar nominee for The Help, conveyed a little bit of that "I'm good and I know it." Good on her. The last time I heard this in a public forum was from Errol Morris, and before that from Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mike Wallace televised interview.

I arrived late for the Santa Barbara Film Festival's Viola Davis...Read More

During the 2012 Sundance Film Festival I noticed at least two films (Red Lights, Black Rock) in which a protagonist who's recently been in an ultra-violent altercation walks around in public view with dried blood on his/her face. (I think at least one other Sundance film went in for this.) This is similar to Ryan Gosling walking around during the final 25% of Drive with brownish blood stains on his white scorpion jacket.

This is a bullshit affectation favored by wanna-be-cool directors, and I'm saying right now to Nicholas Winding Refn and all the others that it ends here and now. Nobody in...Read More

A 1.27 Sundance Film Festival article by N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis proclaimed that "nothing else...came close to stirring up the excitement and sense of discovery generated by Beasts of the Southern Wild...a hauntingly beautiful [film] both visually and in the tenderness it shows toward the characters."

Dargis has an eagle eye and highly refined taste buds, but there are two things I can usually count on when it comes to her Sundance Film Festival coverage: (1) She'll never share or suggest what it's like to live in a film as you're watching it -- how it actually tastes and feels from...Read More

In a deliberate effort to take ad money out of Hollywood Elsewhere's pocket, a piece by "agent turned manager turned producer" Gavin Polone about the over-ness of the Oscars appeared in New York magazine on 1.23:

"Any film thought to have a shot at an [Oscar] award has to be released in the late fall or early winter, meaning that almost every film released between January and September is pretty much out of the running. Distributors select the films they think can garner awards and release them during the last quarter of the year all at once, meaning that the holiday season...Read More

I reviewed Matt Ross's 28 Hotel Rooms on 1.22. The trailer went up hours ago.

What do you mean people should take the comments I recently passed along about Darren Aronofsky's Noah "with a grain of salt"? Are you thinking Matty Libatique isn't a straight shooter or someone to be trusted? Because he's only a dp and isn't the heavy-hitter authority that Aronofsky is? Or are you thinking...what, that I was drunk when I spoke to him? (I wasn't.) He said what he said and I said what I said during the last Oscar Poker.

I hadn't read good things about Katie Asleton's Black Rock, a kind of chick mumblecore Deliverance thriller, so I didn't expect much when I finally sat down to see it yesterday at the Egyptian. But I was still appalled at how lame it is. Asleton and husband Mark Duplass, who wrote the script and exec produced, need to stay the hell away from the action-thriller genre henceforth, or at least up their game. Because Black Rock -- surprisingly, stunningly -- verges on the incompetent.

Black Rock costars at Sundance Film festival premiere (l. to r.):
Jay Paulson, Lake Bell, Katie...

I'm leaving Park City today and arriving late this evening at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which kicked off last night. The opener was Lawrence Kasdan's Darling Companion (Sony Classics, 4.20), a lost dog movie which is very, very slight. Variety's Lael Lowenstein said it "won't be long before this one turns up at the Netflix pound."

It's basically about an older, well-to-do Denver couple (Kevin Kline, Diane Keaton) getting in touch with their issues through a relationship with a mixed collie they've adopted after Keaton and her daughter (Elisabeth Moss) find him huddling...Read More

I really must have three forthcoming Masters of Cinema Blurays -- Lifeboat, Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend -- to have and hold. British and region-locked, of course. Which means I'm finally thinking about getting a Momitsu 799 or 899 multiregion player. Recommendations?

Every new movie generation delivers its own attitude and aesthetic. I was reminded of this when I first saw Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson 's black-and-white Bottle Rocket short in '94. And I was reminded again today when I caught Andrew Edison and Luke Loftin's BINDLESTIFFS early this afternoon at Slamdance. They're only 20 and 21, respectively, but they're probably a two-headed version of the new Todd Phillips, or maybe they're a new hybrid of Wes Anderson mixed with John Waters or something like that. I haven't quite figured it out.

(l. to r.) Andrew Edison, John Karna, Luke...

High-Def Digest's Josh Zyber has assembled a four-panel video that shows that the allegedly "fixed" overture sequence in the West Side Story Bluray still isn't right. Here's how he explains it:

"As you can see [in the video], the original version of the sequence dissolved from a red (or orange) still image, to green, and finally to blue. In the first Blu-ray, the green section was missing entirely, replaced with a fade to black and then a fade back up to blue. In the new 'fixed'; version, the green is still missing.

"Instead, the...Read More

Here are four non-finalized versions of Reid Rosefelt's one-sheet for Turn Me On Dammit! (New Yorker, 3.30). He's asking HE readers to rate them in order of preference plus offer up any comments that might occur. The line illustration is by Kelly Lasserre. Three of the color treatments are by Ron Ramsland of New Yorker Films; one is by Rosefelt.

"As you can see the poster is not in any stretch of the imagination in Saul Bass territory," Rosefelt writes. "Along the way I had to make compromises and one of them was that the...Read More

It's 8:50 am, and I'm committed to catching a 9:30 am screening of Room 237, the doc about wackjob fans of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, followed by a 1 pm Slamdance screening of Andrew Edison's Bindlestiffs. The final viewing of the day will be a 6 pm Egyptian showing of Katie Asleton's Black Rock.

Yesterday I wrote for half a day and then saw Shut Up and Play The Hits, Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister and finally California Solo. Too shagged to write about any of these late last night, and no time to get into...

A good friend who goes to a lot of parties and film festivals often talks about how delightful it is to run into people who are "so nice." Meaning that they're friendly, gracious, funny, witty, open-hearted. It's the easiest thing in the world, of course, to turn on your nice lights at a social gathering. The worst psychopath in the world can put on a "nice" face anywhere, any time. About as meaningful as a snow cone.

What impresses me is whether a person exudes a straight, no b.s. vibe, and looks you in the eye when they shake hands and seems to...Read More

There's a little bit of Strangers on a Train thread in the plot for this, the latest Nicolas Cage potboiler. Guy Pearce isn't exactly Bruno Antony with a shaved head, but he's talking the same basic concept of murder-swapping. If only they'd stuck with the original title -- The Hungry Rabbit Jumps.

Yesterday's Oscar Poker was recorded a few hours after yesterday's Oscar nomination announcements. Just myself and Awards Daily's Sasha Stone. Here's a stand-alone mp3 link.

Set in the early '90s, James Marsh's Shadow Dancer is a low-key LeCarre-esque thriller about a young IRA-allied mother (Andrea Riseborough) who's nabbed by a British MI5 officer (Clive Owen) and told she'll go to prison and lose her relationship with her young son unless she turns snitch and rats out her own. She reluctantly agrees, and you know (or can certainly guess) what probably happens from this point on.

Andrea Riseborough in James Marsh's Shadow Dancer.

But you can't know until you see it, of course, and I'm telling you the ending delivers jolts and eerie...Read More

The passionately praised Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I finally saw last night at Park City's MARC, is everything its admirers have said it is. It's a poetic, organic, at times ecstatic capturing of a hallucinatory Louisiana neverland called the Bathtub, down in the delta lowlands and swarming with all manner of life and aromas, and a community of scrappy, hand-to-mouth fringe-dwellers, hunters, jungle-tribe survivors, animal-eaters and relentless alcohol-guzzlers who live there.

It's something to sink into and take a bath in on any number of dream-like, atmospheric levels, and a film you can...Read More

Andrea Riseborough (W.E., Brighton Rock) delivers an unforgettable traumatized-Irish-lassie performance in James Marsh's Shadow Dancer, which screened tonight at the Eccles. The after-party happened at the Grey Goose lounge on Main Street. Thanks to Susan Norget for the invite, etc.

A brief portion of Josh Radnor's q & a after Sunday's 3:15 pm screening of Liberal Arts, which many (myself included) are calling a mature and significant uptick from Radnor's last film, happythankyoumoreplease.

In 1981 I was that guy in this shot. Almost. It didn't happen on a Fifth Avenue apartment balcony overlooking Central Park, but on an apartment building rooftop during a fairly wild party on a hot July night. I was wearing a suit and she was dishy and a little bit bombed, and she smelled like soap and flowers and had cigarette breath. We came close to forgetting ourselves. It all came back when I happened upon this DVD Beaver frame capture from the just-out Bluray of Woody Allen's Manhattan.

Here's a larger version.

As much as I tell myself I'm Lee Marvin, the truth is that sometimes I'll cave in to peer pressure and follow the crowd. And when I do that I'm usually a bit sorry. Which is to say not always. But today I am.

After seeing Ben Lewin's The Surrogate at 8:30 am, recording a special Oscar Nomination Announcement Oscar Poker with Sasha Stone and then tapping out a three-paragraph Surrogate review, I caught a 1 pm screening of Craig Zobel's Compliance. The plan after that was to go to Joe Berlinger's Under African Skies at 3...Read More

I saw Ben Lewin's The Surrogate this morning, and yes, it's a touching, thoughtful and comforting film about touching, needing, being open and the finding of fulfillment. It's an emotionally erotic variation on the themes in My Left Foot, The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with a little dash of Who's Life Is It Anyway? thrown in. And John Hawkes will almost certainly get some awards action eight to ten months hence; ditto Helen Hunt.

The only thing the film (i.e., Lewin) lacks is a strong visual imagination. Any film about a paralyzed protagonist needs to somehow free...Read More

"This is cheerful news for me and for the family of cinema in Iran, specially the nomination for the best original screenplay. It seems that although people speak different languages around the world but there is one common universal language which everyone understands -- the language of cinema." -- Asghar Farhadi, director-writer-producer of A Separation, reacting to nominations for Best Foreign-Language Film and Best Original Screenplay.

Says a critic friend: "The fact that the Academy gave a Best Picture nomination to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close but blew off Shame and Drive and [forgetting his last example but fill in the blank]....says it all.'

If only five Best Picture nominees were allowed, which of this morning's nine nominees would be included? Not The Help -- be honest. Not Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close -- due respect. Probably not War Horse or The Tree of Life. It's delightful, of course, that The Tree of Life has been nominated but I'm stunned that 5% of the membership gave #1 votes to the other three. These moves are worthy and commendable in their own way, but they're #3 or #4 picks.

This morning's biggest "holy moley" is the Academy's blowoff of the great...Read More

I got caught up in a couple of Bingham Ray posts late this morning and consequently missed the 12:30 Eccles screening of Ben Lewin's The Surrogate, which played like gangbusters, I'm told. (The crowd gave it two standing ovations.)

I made the 3:30 showing of Sheldon Candis's LUV, and I'm sorry to say that I found it dispiriting and repetitive (too many characters with malevolent minds and motives) and generally Dante-esque.

Then came Julie Delpy's comedic 2 Days in New York, which follows the rules of farce, French or otherwise, by keeping the dialogue peppy, the action frenetic and...Read More

Late this afternoon the San Francisco Film Society held a memorial gathering at a brewery bar on Park Avenue for the late, legendary Bingham Ray, who died earlier today following a stroke. I arrived only during the last half-hour, but the sad faces were all familiar-- Ray's former October Films partner Jeff Lipsky, various Indiewire staffers; IFC Films' Jonathan Sehring and Ryan Werner; producer Christine Vachon; former MGM honcho Chris McGurk, Sony Pictures Classics co-chief Tom Bernard, and several journalists, ex-pals and acquaintances.

The memorial was reportedly "originally planned by Ray as a party for the San...Read More

The following is from the opening pages of a draft of "Down & Dirty Pictures," a screenplay adaptation of Peter Biskind's book by Joshua James Craig and Dean Craig. The story is by Ken Bowser & Joshua James. I'm posting this excerpt because the late Bingham Ray appears as a character with some (for me) amusing dialogue. Here it is:

TITLE CARD ON BLACK:

"To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: Whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes...Read More

Bingham Ray, one of the coolest, smartest and most passionate fellows to work in indie-level distribution and one of the absolute stars of Peter Biskind's Down & Dirty Pictures, has died of a stroke suffered over the weekend in Park City, according to the Sundance Institute announcement and a Variety link that came through on my iPhone. He was a man of honor, and one of the funniest guys (with one of the darkest senses of humor) I've ever known in this racket. My heartfelt condolences to his friends, colleagues and especially his family.

Someone should organize an impromptu memorial service of...Read More

This isn't anything special -- just a clip of Spike Lee and the cast of Red Hook Summer during the post-screening q & a at the Eccles. And a welcome realization that someone besides myself is walking around Park City with a black cowboy hat.

I've just spent about 75 minutes tapping out my final Oscar nomination predictions in anticipation of tomorrow morning's announcements, and then it wouldn't save so I refreshed the profoundly weak and unreliable wifi signal at the Park Regency and somehow the whole post was wiped out. Great! I don't care all that much anyway. Partly because my favorites haven't been faring as well as they should, and partly because one of the shallowest and most gimmicky Best Picture contenders in the history of the motion picture industry is likely to win.

Sasha Stone and I will voice...Read More

Upside: Another effervescent, perfectly calibrated, spot-on Judy Greer performance. Positive Indicators: Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon. Downside: Spending half of the film thinking about Jason Segel's weight issues.

Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, Jeff Who Lives At Home is out March 16th via Paramount Vantage.

I've liked all Duplass ventures so far so here's hoping. But it was a bad idea to tell/allow Segel to load up on the Hostess cupcakes and Ben and Jerry's before filming. The man is a walking billboard for fat-titude. He doesn't need to underline this by actually packing...Read More

A New York friend wrote to ask what Sundance 2012 films have really been worth seeing, "for real." I replied as follows:

Heidi Anderson at last night's after-party for The Raid, held at Gray Goose space on Main Street.

My big "miss" so far is Beasts of the Southern Wild, which everyone tells me is masterful. Fox Searchlight has acquired it. Seeing it Wednesday or Thursday.

Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts is a step up in somewhat (but not quite) the same way Annie Hall was a step up for Woody Allen. Almost. Mature, at times melancholy,...Read More

Ry Russo-Young's Nobody Walks just finished screening at the Eccles, and my sense during the q & a was that relatively few audience members got much from it. Ray Pride has called it "a tactile, tensile, bittersweet bruise...a terrific Teorema riff"...naah. I couldn't see how it meant much. Cute little girl with a pixie haircut fucks this guy and then this guy and that guy...uhhm, wow...okay, uhm, yeah.

Olivia Thirlby plays Martine, a 23 year-old Manhattan artist who comes to Los Angeles to get some technical help on the sound design of a black-and-white art film about insects (or partially...Read More

Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, the most enjoyable action thriller I've seen in a long time and the first film ever to convince audiences that a female action star (i.e., Gina Carano) is really and truly capable of kicking all variety of male ass, hasn't exactly set the box-office aflame...but it's done moderately well.

Haywire's weekend tally is around $9 million in 2439 situations, which averages out to $3690 per screen. Relativity is saying in a staement that the $9 million is "just slightly above both internal and industry expectations." The statement also says that "the film's production budget is $23...Read More

I'm seeing Ry Russo-Young's Nobody Walks at 12 noon at the Eccles. And then, with more than a little trepidation, Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts at 3:15 pm, also at the Eccles. Or maybe So Yong Kin's For Ellen instead. And then Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer at 6:30 pm. Or maybe "the Frears" if I change my mind. And then we'll see. A voice is telling me to calm down and get a little rest today.

In a 1.22 N.Y. Times interview with former (i.e., recently canned) Village Voice film critic Jim Hoberman, co-authors A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis include a quote that struck a chord with me. Hoberman mentions Francois Truffaut's Shoot The Piano Player as "the first movie I really wanted to live." He meant that Truffaut's film was the first "sacred text...a kind of synthesis" that he really want to live in.

That's about the most passionate thing anyone can say about a film they've fallen in love with. Not that they merely admire it, per se. Or adore what it's saying about this...Read More

45 minutes from now I have to leave for my first screening of the day, Stephen Frears' Lay The Favorite, which starts at 8:30 am. I could stay here and file and catch "the Frears" (similar in a Denby-esque sense to "the Daldry") at a 7:30 pm press screening but in so doing I'll have to miss Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer, which has a public screening at 6:30 pm. I've heard that Lay The Favorite is light and nimble but...let's not go there. Eff it. I've just decided to see "the Frears" at 7:30 tonight and catch Spike's film tomorrow morning at...Read More

The Artist's latest triumph, having last night won the Producers' Guild Daryl F. Zanuck award from the Producer's Guild, totally cinches the Best Picture Oscar. Michel Hazanavicius' lightweight bauble has had it in the bag since early December (thanks to a steamroller effect begun by several critics groups), and now it's really a done deal.

I was at a Sundance after-party for Nicholas Jarecki's Arbitrage and having a pretty good time when I heard the news, and I wasn't even moved to tweet. Game over, let it go, drink up, watch the snow.

For me, there's one upside in this otherwise...Read More

Matt Ross's 28 Hotel Rooms, which I saw yesterday afternoon, is a two-character drama about a longterm affair that happens entirely in hotel rooms and never really "goes anywhere," story-wise. The lovers, richly portrayed by Chris Messin and Marin Ireland, are both attached in the outside world. And yes, naturally, they gradually fall in love with each other.

But they never leave the realm of hotel rooms, and after a while (sometime around the 15th or 18th vignette) this starts to feel confining and unsatisfying. It's a fairly absorbing film as...Read More

Today's West of Memphis press conference started 20 minutes late...grrrr. The participants were director Amy Berg, producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the formerly incarcerated Damien Echols and Jason Baldiwn, Echols' partner Lorri Davis, and lawyers Stephen Braga, Dennis Riordan and Don Horgan. MCN's David Poland moderated.

The above clip is of Jackson and Echols offering final thoughts about the case, and what value the movie has to everyone right now. The final statement is a request for anyone with additional hard evidence to please call the West Memphis 3 tip line.

This is the first peek I've had of Nicholas Jarecki's Arbitrage, which will screen four and half hours from now at the Eccles. The synopsis (hedge fund trader trying to unload his company before fraud is revealed) makes it sound like similar to Margin Call. Costarring Richard Gere, Nate Parker, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling, Laetetia Casta and Tim Roth. (Vimeo clip posted by Deadline's Brian Brooks.)

Everyone and everything from the beginning of time has existed in color...but we tend to forget that. Here are an assortment of colorizations. Nice stuff, although some seem overly "painted."

The best looking representation of Abraham Lincoln in color that anyone's ever seen...right? Seems that way.

For me, Atticus Coffee/Teahouse/Books on lower Main Street has the only really really fast wifi in town. Park Regency wifi is sluggish, Park City Marriot wifi is passable, Eccles wifi is shit and Yarrow Hotel wifi is covered in molasses. But Atticus wifi is smooth and clean and just about perfect...thank God. I'm there right now, the blizzard coming down outside, sipping a hot chocolate.

I felt a little iffy about attending this morning's screening of Rory Kennedy's Ethel, an HBO-funded doc about her famous and revered mom, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy who became known as a force of nature in he own right beginning in the 1950s, and certainly since the '60s. I was wondering what could be historically new in this, and whether it might feel a little too tidy and boilerplatey.

Rory, Ethel Kennedy and grandkids somewhere in Park City with the last 24 hours.

Ethel director Rory Kennedy during this morning's post-screening q...

I've been up since 6 am. It's 7:22 am right now. I have an 8:30 am screening of Ethel, an HBO doc about Ethel Kennedy, at the Library, and then a noon press conference for West of Memphis (moderated by David Poland!) followed by 28 Hotel Rooms (I think) at the Yarrow at 3pm and then Nicholas Jarecki's Abitrage at 6:30 pm, and then an Aribtrage after-party with the usual filings in-between and whenever.

Rodrigo Cortes' Red Lights, which screened at 10 pm last night, plays differently than you might expect -- I'll give it that. But in my view it suffers from a silly and confusing second half or, in the view of others, a terrible ending. Either way this faux-spooker didn't go down all that well with the crowd. They were being polite, but they were somewhat confused and hadn't really bought it.

Cillian Murphy, Elisabeth Olsen, Sigourney Weaver during last night's post-screening q & a.

Rodrigo Cortes

It's about a pair of investigators, Margaret Matheson...Read More

Just to recap the day so far: West of Memphis (excellent, highly absorbing...best film with Peter Jackson's name on it since Heavenly Creatures), I'm Not A Hipster (slightly downish but smartly written, emotionally affecting with intriguing breakout performance by Dominic Bogart), and Simon Killer (a disaster film). Next is a West of Memphis party and then Rodrigo Cortes' Red Lights at 10 pm.

Late this afternoon I suffered through Antonio Campos' Simon Killer at the Eccles. It's an empty, meandering audience-torture film about sex and nihilism and stupidity in Paris. Brady Corbet (the slightly dopey-looking guy who briefly boffed Kirsten Dunst on the golf course in Melancholia) plays a grungy-looking dork who seems "normal" at first but then things turn dark and deranged as he morphs into a psychopathic asshole.

Approaching Park City shuttle outside the Eccles following this afternoon's screening of Simon Killer.

There are no resonating echoes or metaphors that add up in this bleak nihilistic film. Corbet...Read More

A 123-minute crowd-sourced Star Wars -- a feature-length pic "that contains hand-picked scenes from the entire StarWarsUncut.com collection." Uploaded two days ago and edited by Aaron Valdez and Bryan Pugh.

It's getting so crazy now that I barely have time to file about the Sundance films I've seen and make the next film I want/need to see. It's 2:45 pm and I have a 3:30 pm screening of Simon Killer at the Eccles...which gives me 15 minutes to wrap things up.

This morning I caught the 8:30 am screening of Amy Berg and Peter Jackson's West of Memphis -- a completely solid and compelling doc about the West Memphis 3 that never drags and feels vital and necessary every step of the way. I...Jesus, 12 minutes to go! Homina, homina, homina. I agree...Read More

Lauren Greenfield's The Queen of Versailles, an oddly spelllbinding, must-see documentary that screened last night, is fundamentally about how the vacation-timeshare empire of former billionaire David Siegel started to collapse after the financial meltdown of 2008. But the focus is about how his marriage to 40something Jackie, a clueless, fake-boobed 40something bimbo, began to rot around the edges when the money began to evaporate and budgetary restraint became necessary.

Jackie Siegel and Sundance Film Festival honcho John Cooper at the Eccles theatre last night.

Jackie Siegel is truly appalling -- a metaphor for a kind of...Read More

Kieran Darcy-Smith's Sydney-based Wish You Were Here, which I saw this evening, is about the fallout from a tragic Cambodian vacation that married expecting parents Dave and Alice (Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price) have recently shared with Alice's younger sister (Teresa Palmer) and her new boyfriend, Jeremy (Antony Star).

(l.) Wish You Were Here co-writer Felicity Price as Alice; (r.) Teresa Palmer as Steph.

Jeremy vanished at the end of the getaway and nobody seems to know (or be able to admit) what happened, although it's obvious that Dave knows and will eventually spill the beans by Act...Read More

In this corner, wearing white trunks, industry pulse-taker and award-ranker extraordinaire Tom O'Neil of Gold Derby! And this corner, wearing dark blue trunks, the leading divining rod of conventional emotional-default thinking among award-season pundits..."Safe Dave" Karger! (The mis-synched sound courtesy of Blip TV.)

HE's first two Sundance 2012 films will be Kieran Darcy-Smith and Felicity Price's Wish You Were Here, which a buyer friend calls "a neat little Australian noir," tonight at 6:30 pm, and then a p & i screening of Lauren Greenfield's The Queen of Versailles, a documentary about tasteless grandiosity by nouveau-riche types who, one gathers, have embraced a totally anti-Zen approach to life.

Amy Berg and Peter Jackson's West of Memphis has its first Sundance press screening tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. There's been friction and contention, of course, between Berg-Jackson and Joe Berlinger-Bruce Sinofsky, makers of three docs about the Memphis 3 including the short-listed Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. And it's worth recalling a fact contained in Jason Guerrasio's 1.19 Indiewire article, which is that Berg-Jackson drew first blood.

"In 2009, Jackson called on Berg to begin work on a documentary that would reveal...new findings and hopefully exonerate the WM3 (Jackson is a producer on the film). Friction between Berg and Berlinger/Sinofsky built after...Read More

I've written about this before, but anyone staying in a middle- or lower-cost Park City condo is always reminded how second- and third-rate the construction materials are. Plugs fit too loosely in the wall outlets and sometimes fall out. The shower controls are a pain in the ass (i.e., turn the plastic knob to the right or left and nothing happens). The sheetrock walls feel a tiny bit flimsy. A general cheap-ass (i.e, "it doesn't have to that good, people won't notice or complain," etc.) aesthetic. I don't really care as long as the heater works.

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has reported that Newt Gingrich probably won't benefit much from Rick Perry's endorsement. Mitt Romney is locked in like The Artist. Nobody is really elated by him and everyone has a beef or two, but no matter how badly things go perception-wise from now through summer he's still going to be the Republican nominee.

Ry Russo Young's Nobody Walks (Eccles on Sunday, 12:15 pm) is about a 23 year-old New York artist (Olivia Thirlby) crashing with a Silver Lake family (John Krasinski, Olivia Thirlby, Rosemarie DeWitt, Justin Kirk, India Ennenga) and stirring the sexual pot all around. The script is by Russo-Young and Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture), which indicates a tone of middle-class lethargy.

I haven't the first clue what the plot is, but it would be fascinating and daring if Thirlby's character is more centered and powerful than anyone else, and winds up seducing all four family members. The...Read More

I took a shared shuttle into Park City from Salt Lake City airport last night. Myself and two women, two guys. Steady rain in SLC became moderately heavy snow once we got into the Wasatch mountains. We dropped the women off in Kimball Junction (five miles from Park City) and then one of the guys near the main Park City ski resort. The last guy had to get dropped off on Lowell Avenue, a small, hilly street with a view of the city.

The driver, an older guy with no GPS, was cruising along looking for the number, which was 190 or...Read More

The morning after a snowfall is always peaceful, especially around 7 or 7:30 am. Nothing doing today during daylight. Two...make that four or five screenings tonight. Poking around the Park City Marriott right now. Filing, taking snaps, social stuff.

N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes has reviewed the Sundance 2012 offerings and concluded (as I did before posting a summary on 12.29) that many of the narratives (including those contained in the docs) are about meandering, vaguely gloomy dysfunctional situations of one kind or another....the Tiny Furniture syndrome writ small, medium, large and extra-large.

"Many [Sundance] movies, about 25, look at 30-somethings whose lives have come apart for one reason or another -- divorce, drugs, depression -- and who are trying to get back on track," Barnes reports. "At least eight fall squarely into the category of 'America is broken.'...Read More

A restored version of William Wellman's silent, Oscar-winning Wings (1927) was screened last night at the Academy. Free copies of the new Wings Bluray were handed out. A friend says the black-and-white film had some color tinting, but the overall film was not, he reports, sepia-toned, as DVD Beaver's screen captures plainly indicate. The audience clapped when 25 year-old Gary Cooper did his one scene cameo as Cadet White.

Gary Cooper in William Wellman's Wings (1927).

Seth Grahame-Smith's historical mashup genre meets Troma attitude and expertise in Garrett Brawith's FDR: American Badass -- ostensibly a feature looking for a distributor but you never know. It could just be a glorified trailer. Clearly funded with a debit card, this is going to make Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer (20th Century Fox, 6.22, budgeted at $70 million) look masterful, and Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson...forget it.

There's probably not much difference, tonally-speaking, between Barry Bostwick's Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds. Flagrant caricature can work...Read More

It's entirely fair to say that Peter Schade, vp Universal Studios Technical Services, gets the Hollywood Elsewhere viewpoint on film grain. "Now that we're scanning off the original negative at very, very high resolution and creating very high resolution digital images," Schade says, "it does...make grain more apparent." Wow...somebody who knows the realm finally repeats what I've been saying for years!

"Film grain is one of the things that makes film look like it does," Schade continues. "We certain don't want grain to be nonexistent and make everything look flat, but where it causes an objectionable or...Read More

Easily the best of behance.net's Alternate Universe posters. John Ford would've never even flirted with anything like this, of course. But it would have been the perfect Rebel Without A Cause followup for Nicholas Ray. (On top of which he couldn't gotten out of directing Bigger Than Life.) And forget Clark Gable as Shanon -- try Mickey Shaughnessy or Mickey Rooney.

In a 1.22 New York Times Sunday Magazine piece, Bryan Curtis reports in an apparently sincere, un-ironic tone that Red Tails director George Lucas "has decided to devote the rest of his life to what cineastes in the 1970s used to call personal films.

George Lucas, Robert Duvall during shooting of THX 1138.

"They'll be small in scope, esoteric in subject and screened mostly in art houses," Curtis explains. "They'll be like the experimental movies Lucas made in the 1960s, around the time he was at U.S.C. film school, when he recorded clouds moving over the desert and...Read More

I'm expecting to hear tomorrow which foreign-language films are on the Oscar shortlist, but in the meantime TheWrap's Steve Pond has predicted that my two biggest favorites after A Separation -- Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala and Jose Padilha's Elite Squad: The Enemy Within -- will not make the initial list of six.

Is Pond envisioning a scenario in which even the executive committee won't step up and include them? I can't imagine Mark Johnson and pallies, who have the power to add three extra titles for a total of nine, not putting Miss Bala on the list...c'mon.

All of the films...Read More

I posted this scene from Robert Altman's California Split three years ago, but this is the first time I've seen/discovered/posted a YouTube version.

I'm always hoping for snow during the Sundance Film Festival, and it usually happens. The forecast is for modest snow between now and Saturday with a major northwest snow storm brewing. Every year I have to remind myself that I'm not going to be joining Jack London for a snowshoe hike across frozen Alaskan tundra. At most you're walking from a theatre to a bus stop and occasionally trekking up and down Park Avenue or Kearns Blvd. Ear muffs, long underwear, layers, black cowboy hat, gloves, comfort boots.

Fair warning: If I see any 20somethings walking...Read More

I meant to post this footage of the Fox Searchlight Golden Globes after-party yesterday morning. It's noteworthy for (a) the reaction of In Contention's Kris Tapley as I begin my roam-around and (b) the ecstatic "hiya!" from The Descendants costar Judy Greer (glimpsed on the left side for an instant). She's the one I'm going "hey!" to at the end of the clip. Why post something this anecdotal on the site? Because it conveys emotional color, and it does no harm.

I once quoted Sir Thomas More to David Poland during a debate a few years...Read More

Variety's Steven Gaydos, In Contention's Kris Tapley and I shared a brief chat with Rise of the Planet of the Apes star Andy Serkis the other night at the Paramount Golden Globes party. The SAG members who voted against or failed to nominate Serkis for Best Supporting Actor are pathetic little squirrels.

Marty Augustine: "I used to dread gym class. Absolutely dread it. You know why?" Phillip Marlowe: "No...why?" Augustine: "Because I didn't have any pubic hair until I was 15 years old." Marlowe: "Oh, yeah? You musta looked like one of the three little pigs."

Notice the moustache on the former (at the time future) Governor of California.

There are two things that have made the BAFTA nominations (announced late last night while I was sleeping fully dressed on the floor with all the lights on) instantly dismissable in my book. One, they've handed 12 nominations to The Artist...c'mon! And two, they didn't give a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Drive's Albert Brooks.

This is more easy emotional default old-fart consensus thinking. To hell with them. If I was living in London and I had an invitation to the BAFTA award ceremony (a.k.a., the Orange British Academy Film Awards) on Sunday, 2.12 at the Royal Opera House in Covent...Read More

If the Best Actress Oscar race was more of a free-for-all (i.e., if it wasn't a Meryl Streep vs. Viola Davis eyeball-to-eyeball), Michelle Williams would be surging right now in the minds of those Academy geezers that Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil is always talking about. O'Neil has posted stats indicating that younger, hotter actresses tend to win Oscars more than older actresses (unless we're talking about exceptions-to-the-rule like Helen Mirren).

Williams' publicist has obviously bought into O'Neil's opinions on the subject, and so has Williams, I'm presuming. But this is a one-shot deal -- magazine tokenism. On...Read More

Arrow Academy is issuing a Bluray/DVD of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist on 2.27. Obviously a slam-dunker, except that Arrow Films, The Associates and Amazon.uk all decline to specify on their websites if it's all-region or just Region 2. Why do British Bluray distributors make this information so obscure? Why don't they just say it plain and simple?

From the press release: "HD restoration supervised by director of photography Vittorio Storaro in the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio." I'll bet that a lot of the 1.85 fascists reading this experienced a very slight twitch in their...Read More

I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in which cats used to roam around. Ever since I've had this idea that cats should be allowed outside if the immediate environment is at least somewhat safe -- no fast cars, relative peace and quiet, nice homes with lawns, trees and bushes, squirrels scampering up trees, etc. Which is why I decided after moving back to West Hollywood last February that Mouse, my three-year-old Siamese, should be let out in the evenings. My other feline, a white munchkin named Aura, is afraid of the outdoors, but Mouse wants to feel the air and look up...Read More

Joe Carnahan's The Grey doesn't open for another 12 days, but I'll be up to my ears in Sundance starting on Wednesday...okay, it actually begins Thursday...and I'm figuring it can't hurt to say a few things, at least, because it's quite a surprise for a Carnahan film. I had him pegged as "over" after the one-two punch of Smokin' Aces and The A-Team. But The Grey is a complete departure. It's a good tough film that's going to sell tickets, I'm guessing, but it's almost too pure and unsparing to be a big hit.

Read More

Deadline's Pete Hammond reminds that next Saturday's Producers's Guild Awards -- the first 2011-2012 awards ceremony that isn't press-and-media-driven (including the Golden Globes) -- is the last chance to stop The Artist . "If someone -- anyone -- can stop The Artist we have a race," he wrote this morning at 2:14 am. "But if the latter sails to a win among those all-important and predictive guild's members, it could be all over even before Oscar nominations are announced January 24."

I think it's been over since early December. As sold as many of us are on The Descendants, it has...Read More

The snaps I took on 2.5.09 of the Lorraine Motel, site of the April 4, 1968 murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, speak for themselves. "The strongest impression I got was that it's quiet -- dead quiet," I wrote during my Memphis visit three years ago. "The Lorraine stopped being a working motel in '82 and was soon after bought by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation and eventually became part of a small network of buildings called the National Civil Rights Museum.

"It's a queer sensation to suddenly...Read More

I feel, in a sense, like a West Virginia coal miner trying to fend off black lung disease. For the last two or three years my left eye has been suffering from computer glare -- redness, puffiness, watering, pink eye -- due to prolonged computer-screen exposure. I'm in front of screens for a good 10 hours a day, and that's a lot of eye-blasting -- 70 hours a week, 280 to 300 hours each month.

My initial remedy was to (a) turn down the brightness levels to one-third and (b) wear sunglasses while working, but it's hard...Read More

I wholeheartedly agree that the best CG fakery is the modest, non-showy kind that you never notice until you see it pointed out in a piece like this. But c'mon...two minutes devoted to how CG bookshelves and other architectural archive elements were created? Plus some train tracks and a slit throat and one or two other bits? The work was done by Stockholm's The Chimney Pot.

Yesterday's Oscar Poker was a four-way between Awards Daily's Sasha Stone, Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil, Coming Soon's Ed Douglas and myself. We recorded on an outdoor balcony on the third floor of Barnes and Noble at The Grove, with planes droning overhead and three or four kids chattering nearby. It happened about four hours before the Golden Globes began.

The energy never flagged, and a good scuffle between Ed and Sasha materialized about halfway through. Ed was predicting a Meryl Streep Best Actress win and Sasha was pooh-poohing this and saying it was Viola...Read More

There was probably no way, I suppose, for Ricky Gervais to aggressively lambast and offend the way he did during his 2011 Golden Globes hosting gig. Last night's opening monologue plays slightly better than the second time, for whatever that's worth. It seemed to me that people laughed a bit more last night -- in 2011 a lot of them scowled or looked a bit stunned. The only person Gervais seemed to really piss off was Elton John.

7:54: All hail The Descendants for winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama-yamma-mamma! The cheer inside the Fox Searchlight party was deafening. Good thing for FS, for HE and for all Hawaiians, honorary and otherwise. A counter-surge against The Artist or just a good night in and of itself? Hugged Judy Greer, who was of course delighted.

The Fox Searchlight Golden Globes after-party adjacent to the Beverly Hilton -- Sunday, 1.15, 8:50 pm.

7:47 pm: The Descendants' George Clooney wins for Best Dramatic Actor. Good one! Gracious speech, kudos to Pitt, Fassbender, etc. Classy guy, as always.

The day has so far included a little writing and researching, and then a four hour hang-out at West Hollywood's The Grove with Awards Daily's Sasha Stone , Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil and Coming Soon's Ed Douglas (including a recording of a one-hour Oscar Poker), and then back to the pad to bang out two articles before preparing to hit the Fox Searchlight Golden Globes viewing party at the Beverly Hilton.

Except now it's 4:29 pm and the show starts at 5 pm so maybe I'll hang here and watch Ricky Gervais's opening monologue and then head over to the party. Everything always...Read More

Frank S. Nugent was the reigning New York Times film critic from 1936 to 1940, and a fairly young one -- 28 when he landed the job and 32 when he left it. He gradually segued into screenwriting and wrote 21 film scripts until his death in 1965 at age 57. (Obviously something befell him.) 11 of those scripts were for director John Ford, including The Quiet Man, Mister Roberts and, most notably, The Searchers.

I couldn't help but chuckle at Gary W. Tooze's just-posted DVD Beaver review of MGM's Rebecca Bluray (out 1.24). I respect and value the capability of Bluray to capture and deliver celluloid texture, and I know that grain is a natural component of this. But you'd have to search far and wide to find a more obsessed grain fetishist than Tooze. You can almost feel a certain erotic tumescence as he writes about grain, grain, glorious grain.

Judith Anderson, Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.

I don't want to see Rebecca DNR'ed, Gor forbid, but I'm...Read More

If either Woody Allen or Sony Classics co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard are reading this, please do the right thing and get Midnight in Paris costar Corey Stoll a seat at tomorrow night's Golden Globes awards. At today's Spirit Awards luncheon Stoll told N.Y. Times "Carpetbagger" columnist Melena Ryzik that he's been excluded from the Sony Classics table inside the Beverly Hilton ballroom.

Midnight in Paris costar and Ernest Hemingway inhabitor par excellence at today's Spirit Awards luncheon at BOA Steakhouse. I interviewed Stoll in Manhattan a little more than three months ago.

Guys...really? Stoll...Read More

I happened to glance earlier today at a blowup of jacket art for Paramount Home Video's forthcoming Chinatown Bluray, and for the first time in my life I noticed that the artist gave Jack Nicholson's J.J. Gittes the face of a zombie. Look at those ice-cold cat eyes. He could be an alien looking to feast on flesh. All the artist had to do was insert dark green where Nicholson's pupils are, but he deliberately went for a night-vision predator look. I'll never be able to look at this famous image the same way again.

The Bluray's...Read More

Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced the winners of its four Spirit Awards filmmaker grants earlier today at its annual Spirit Awards Nominee Brunch held at BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood. What does BOA stand for? Nobody knows. Best guesses: "Best of Argentina" or the initials of the restaurant chain's secret owner whose name could be "Benicio Oscar Alvarez."

Focus Features' James Schamus, who at this very moment was reminding myself, Deadline's Pete Hammond and In Contention's Kris Tapley that there's a major romantic triangle at the core...

I was hoping to get Paramount chairman and CEO Brad Grey's attention at last night's Golden Globes party on the Paramount lot. I wanted to shake his hand and say "thanks" for approving funding for the Shane Bluray, which, as I reported the other day, is about two-thirds of the way through to completion. But I wasn't aggressive enough. It's a push-push-push world out there, and you can't just enjoy the vibe and talk to friends if you want to get things done. You have to be Johnny-on-the-spot.

The best line of the evening was from...Read More

So my 12.23 post about the Weinstein Co.'s planned adaptation of Tracy Letts'August Osage County possibly being in limbo with presumed costars Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts having flown the coop does not reflect how things really are, I'm pleased to report.

Deadline's Pete Hammond wrote a day or so ago that "the Weinstein Company's David Glasser [says that] the long-awaited screen version of August, Osage County should be getting underway around September as both Streep's and Roberts' schedules seem to be clearing for then. John Wells is going to direct and Glasser said the script by playwright Tracy Letts...Read More

What's the M for? The middle initial has always been H. I hope he (or should I say He?) continues to post on a wide array of topics. I'm thinking, of course, of Max Von Sydow's line in Hannah and Her Sisters...you know the one I mean.

I've never forgotten a quote that Moneyball star Brad Pitt gave to the L.A. Times last May (and which reporter Steven Zeitchik referenced in a 9.9.11 article), to wit: "I think the making of [Moneyball] is just as interesting as the movie itself."

He was referring to the project's prolonged and at times traumatic development, beginning with the purchasing of the rights to Michael Lewis's book in 2003 by producer Rachael Horovitz to the shooting that finally happened seven years later under director Bennett Miller. But Pitt was mainly alluding, surely, to Sony's June 2009...Read More

When Movieline's Stu VanAirsdale explained last night that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is doing fairly well commercially, the David Fincher film was at $79 million and change after three weeks in theatres. Right now it's at $81,180,000, according to Box Office Mojo.

From an 8.18.11 post: "Truly primal laughter is never about any one event or mishap or whatever. It's usually about the release of tension and frustration, and it's completely unsuppressable if you feel you're exposing some careless, thoughtless or callous part of yourself."

This out-take is from the Moneyball Bluray, which I received a couple of days ago.

My first impression from this trailer is that Peter Jackson and director Amy Berg's West of Memphis, a doc that will screen at Sundance 2012, is slicker and artier looking than Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's three docs on the exact same Arkansas-murder-case subject. Which indicates than West of Memphis has more money behind it. Which isn't surprising with Jackson producing.

Berlinger and Sinofsky docs are titled Paradise Lost: The Murders at Robin Hood Hills ('96), Paradise Lost 2: Revelations ('00) and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (playing this month on HBO). They're all about the wrongly...Read More

In France it was once called MS ONE: Maximum Security. It was also called Lockout at one time or another. But now this Luc Besson-y sci-fi machismo thriller is called Escape From M.S. One...I guess. Does anyone have a favorite? Open Road is releasing it stateside in mid-April. "A man (Guy Pearce) wrongly convicted of espionage is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates"...thud.

You can sense the less-than-full-throttle energy levels in the opening moments of Kris Tapley and Anne Thompson's latest Oscar Talk podcast. It's the faint aroma of lethargy and "the fix is in" boredom of the Oscar season made vocal. Don't we all feel this? "The favorite is clearly The Artist...I don't even remember what the nominees for the Golden Globes are"...zzzz.

Tapley says he hears that A Separation "might not even get nominated" by the Oscar committee. WHAT?

I was in Telluride four and a half months ago, and here's what I wrote: "Rank-and-file festivalgoers are creaming over The Artist...every Telluride viewer I've spoken to loves it...and I think it's just a clever, assured, highly diverting curio -- a tribute to the lore of black-and-white silent cinema and the divergent-Hollywood-career plot used by Singin' in the Rain and A Star Is Born.

"And women of all shapes and sizes and social classes love The Help, and we all know the name of that tune.

"So what am I to do? Do a flip-flop and say I was wrong but...Read More

Earlier today Deadline's Michael Fleming posted an interview with producer Scott Rudin (Moneyball, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and to judge from the attention paid so far, Rudin's remark about The King's Speech being "a less complex film" than The Social Network is the money quote.

But why? What is so startling about anyone, even a homeless guy standing around on Ninth Avenue, observing this? Who in the world thinks that The King's Speech is more complex than The Social Network? Ridiculous.

More Rudin: "The Social Network was probably one of the two or three things I've...Read More

Kevin MacDonald's Marley, a doc about the legendary Jamaican raggae star (and the Wailers, of course), will screen next month at the Berlin Film Festival. McDonald (Touching The Void, Life In A Day) spoke about the film last summer during a junket. He claims that Marley was "the most influential musician of the 20th century by far." Really? More so than Elvis, Dylan and the Beatles? What under-30 music lover can name more than a couple of Marley tunes, if that?

Contraband (Universal, 1.13) is a low-rent action programmer that thousands of people will presumably pay to see this weekend and then say shit to each other on the way out. "Aaahh, it was all right...it had some okay stuff...sure. Who am I kidding? We all just sat there....waste of time...whose idea was it to see this? Mark Wahlberg...guy's an actor, can't win 'em all, right? Who's the guy who played the younger brother of Kate Beckinsale? Caleb Landry Jones? Guy's an asshole. Wahlberg saying 'he's family, he's my brother in law, I gotta help him out, make it right.' Guy's a waste...Read More

7:02 pm: Best Picture: The Artist. Wells comment: Easily one of the slightest, least substantial and least interesting Best Picture favorites in the history of the motion picture industry. People who voted for this film are emotional-default chumps and should really be ashamed of themselves. The Artist is a nice, likable, light-hearted film -- neat concept, nothing wrong with it. But I spit on those who are calling it the best of the best." (Lumenick: "The cameraman got Harvey Weinstein on the first try this time! Bravo!.") Indiewire's list of all the CCMA winners.

6:53 pm: Best Actor: George Clooney, The...Read More

Earlier this afternoon a person of accomplishment and respect informed me that the way to pronounce the last name of Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, is first of all to drop the "h" and say "azah-nava-shoosh ." That didn't sound right. All along I've been saying "Hahznahvicious," as in Sid Vicious, and I've been to France eight or nine times so I know a little something about the tongue.

So I double-checked with a couple of Weinstein Co. publicists, and one of them said you need to pronounce it (this is how she wrote it in the email) "Ahzahnavishus." Another vote...Read More

What's with the female narrator? I've been to this realm before, and I'm not sure there's anything very special to be had except for Eva Green's nudity. Perfect Sense (IFC Flms, 2.10) played at Sundance a year ago and then opened in England last October. Director David McKenzie's last half-decent effort was Young Adam ('03), another film with Ewan McGregor dropping trou.

One of the great things about Wes Anderson's Rushmore, for me, was that you had teens and tweeners dealing in a calm, matter-of-act way with a sexual affair between a guy in his early '50s and a teacher in her mid '30s, and a story that involved obsession, betrayal, jealousy, big-time finance, erotic hunger, cigarette-smoking and revenge. This trailer for Moonrise Kingdom, Wes's latest, feels less adult and a little more tweeny. But you can't go by a trailer.

"A Best Picture Oscar is a kind of significant statue, a stamp, the chiselling of a thought, a moment in time carved on a Thai mahogany bedpost that will be looked at and contemplated for decades to come." -- posted on 2.5.11.

I'm obviously not posting anything new here, but for all the loathing that is thrown each year at Academy voters and Oscar tradition tendencies, you can't really say the same thing about most of the other awards. You sure as shit can't say this about the Golden Globes, although the show itself (happening this Sunday) is arguably just...Read More

L.A. Weekly critic Karina Longworth has announced that Cinefamily (611 No,. Fairfax, just south of Beverly) has booked Kenneth Lonergan's worth-seeing but really-hard-to-see Margaret for a one-week run starting on 1.27. Let no one doubt that Hollywood Elsewhere is just as much of a friend of Margaret as anyone else. This movie can best be appreciated if seen with a hip responsive crowd.

Lonergan, a reclusive, highly sensitive man who for the most part has been too much of an Ivory Tower resident to go out and talk to people who admire his film,...

Last night Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger admitted that the string has run out on War Horse. He didn't say that Steven Spielberg's World War I cornball-and-treacle drama was Oscar toast -- that would have been too declarative. But his 1.11 piece is titled "War Horse: Are Its Oscar Hopes Fading?" And in the world of Karger-speak you know what that means.

The gist of the article was basically "wait...whoa...what happened?"

It's one thing when a Spielberg-hater like myself says War Horse's Oscar hopes are all but dashed, or when measured, dispassionate...Read More

Why did LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy decide to disband "one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity"? I've never understood this kind of thing. Break up a band to start another, possibly better one...fine. But why commit ritual seppuku in front of thousands of worshipping fans? You can't just "quit." You have to soldier on.

I'm seeing this Sundance 2012 doc for the music, and because the trailer tells me that Reed Morano's cinematography is mesmerizing. But God...Murphy looks like a wreck, like an Irish...Read More

"I recently watched There's Something About Mary, and I found that the shock of that movie's laughs had worn off -- they'd stopped being funny. This only clarified a suspicion I've held for years. While ordinary comedies lose their appeal once you know the laughs are coming, the truly great ones only get funnier. It's almost like I can make myself laugh by remembering the joke that's coming, then laugh again when the joke actually plays out onscreen, and finally laugh a third time out of relief that it played as well as I'd remembered." -- written over two years ago by...

I'm sorry but since that West Side Story overture screwup I've come to regard MGM Home Video as a Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson & Storm Door video distributor. They've shown they don't know much about older films, so what will their next screwup be? Will their Spellbound Bluray include the red barrel flash when Leo. G. Carroll shoots himself? Will their Annie Hall Bluray have the correct subtitles in that Alvy-and-Annie flirtation scene?

The Hostess corporation has been making crappy, bad-for-you snack food since 1930, and after 81 years they're going under? I'm ashamed to admit that I've been eating those rotgut chocolate cupcakes (my favorite are the kind with the chocolate icing on top of the vanilla-biege cake) since I was eight years old, and I can't be the only one who succumbs. Wonder Bread is a joke, but people are still eating it.

"On January 10, 2012 Hostess Brands filed For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for the second time. In a statement during its filing the company said it "is not competitive,...Read More

I was wrong the other day when I said "as far as I know Paramount is still refusing to create a Bluray for George Stevens' Shane." Dead wrong. Because I've been told by a guy who knows stuff that Paramount has spent serious money on George Stevens' 1953 classic, specifically on scanning and combining the three-strip Technicolor film, and that the remaining work yet to be done -- dirt removal, color correction, fix sound, create protection elements -- could be completed by the end of the year, or certainly by early 2013.

So there you have it...Read More

Yesterday's sitdown with Jose Pedilha, director of Elite Squad: The Enemy Within and the forthcoming MGM Robocop remake, was easy and agreeable. Michael Fassbender's name didn't come up as a possible candidate to star as Murphy (i.e., the role played by Peter Weller in the 1985 Paul Verhoeven original), but he did say casting has to be happen by July. The film will be released in 2013, presumably in the summer.

Elite Squad 2 is the official Brazilian entry for the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar. Last Sunday, or the day after I saw at...Read More

The first time I heard the term "stopper" was in 1986 or thereabouts. A friend was describing the personality tendency of a guy we both knew and had worked with. He was inclined to not feed the fire or keep the ball in the air but to say "wait, I don't know...does this work? I'm not convinced." There's a specific type of energy that you need to have in a room when you're talking about stories or a screenplay, and "stoppers" always get in the way of that. You need stoppers at the table when you're figuring out finance or budgets or physical...Read More

From the get-go my feelings about David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo were positive but qualified. But one thing I was 100% about was the main-title credit sequence, which appeared yesterday on YouTube. It was a cocreation between Fincher and Blur Studio's Tim Miller, whom I spoke to briefly around noon today.

Blur, which Miller co-founded in 1996, specializes in animation and VFX, and Miller himself is into comic-booky fanboy stuff. He appears ready to graduate into feature film directing, as he plans to direct that Deadpool movie for...Read More

Well, not really. "Hitting people" is not a door that any reasonable person wants to unlock and walk through. But on this, my second day of Time-Warner wifi constipation, I'm feeling an urge to at least punch my refrigerator. I lost an entire story this morning when it wouldn't save...phffft. Right now, after three modem shutdowns and reboots, the wifi is working in a sluggish, covered-in-molasses 1998 way. A Time Warner tech guy was supposed to be here a half-hour ago to install a new modem and increase my download speed to 50 mpbs. Nothing puts me into a darker, snarlier mood pocket...Read More

With great effort, director-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski has found an Australian print of Frank Perry's Last Summer, and will be screening it on 1.19 at the Egyptian Theater. Star Barbara Hershey, who was so influenced by the film that she changed her name to Barbara Seagull for several years based on a scene in Last Summer, will join Karaszewski for a post-screening q & a.

Here's a Last Summer trailer that Karazszewki cut together,

Also coming up on February 4th is a screening of The Loved One plus a reunion of the cast and crew...

I should have linked earlier today to a 1.10 Guardian piece by Joe Uitichi about Artist blowback. Key graph: "Empire's Damon Wise believes that most mainstream criticism is nowadays based around finance and marketing rather than the real worth of a film. 'Is the film commercial, is it awards-friendly, or is it both? Contrarian reviewers imagine themselves to be somehow part of that process, and a film like The Artist is complete bait for that kind of reporter."

The Salt Lake Tribune's Sean Means interviewed me a lonnng time ago about Sundance 2012, and now here it finally is. The piece, I mean. Myself and a few others (David Poland, Jen Yamato, Omar Moore, Peter Knegt, Ray Pride) listing the films they're most looking forward to when the festival kicks off. Only nine days from now.

All but buried on Deadline is Pete Hammond's 7.10 story about the thirteen classic films being restored by Universal to honor its 100th anniversary, and slated for Bluray release between now and the end of the year. Hooray for Universal and shame on those studios who've failed to honor their classic films in a similar fashion. Like Paramount, for example, which as far as I know is still refusing to create a Bluray for George Stevens' Shane. Dilletantes!

The Bluray kickoffs are Robert Mulligan and Alan Pakula's To Kill A Mockingbird (1.31), and Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western...Read More

I've been led to believe (perhaps unwisely) that this is the new official Iron Lady one-sheet. For what it's worth I think it's okay. Any one-sheet that eschews the obvious in favor of a metaphor gets my vote. It's obviously pitching to independent-minded women. (I think.) Thatcher might have been an elite-favoring conservative, but she stuck to her guns. The blue Asprey bag was some kind of signature thing.

My wifi has all but totally collapsed due to a barely functioning modem. (A replacement will arrive tomorrow morning.) After 45 minutes of swearing and re-booting and calling the Time Warner autobots here are the first five minutes of Steven Soderbergh's Haywire.

I did a Movieline sitdown with Leonardo DiCaprio at The Grill in Beverly Hills about two years prior to his April 1995 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. Razor sharp, he was. Crackling energy. And trusting (as many younger guys tend to be.) It's a little hard to absorb or accept that this happened almost 20 years....whoa. Time moves relentlesly, and does not suffer fools.

Here's my 1993 Moveline piece. (Thanks to Stu Van Airsdale.)

Ignore George Lucas's Daily Show comment (delivered last night) that Red Tails (20th Century Fox, 1.20) is as close as he'll ever come to making a sequel to Star Wars. The thing to focus on is his claim that Red Tails is essentially a 1942 movie (like the 1951 Flying Leathernecks, Lucas said). The heavily CG'ed look argues with that notion up and down. If it looked and felt like a real 1942 film, I'd be the first one there on opening day.

I wrote the following in a July 2011 piece called "World...Read More

Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and I finally got around to last weekend's podcast last night. The obvious big topics were (a) the surprise inclusion of Dragon Tattoo's David Fincher among the five DGA nominees, (b) the surprising DGA shutout of Steven Spielberg and the all-but-certain Oscar demise of War Horse, and (c) Sasha's feelings about A Separation. Here's a stand-alone mp3.

War Horse is far from a dead animal. It may be "on its way to the Oscar glue factory", as an Oscar wag remarked earlier today. But it's a solid commercial hit with the middle-American family crowd (almost $56 million after two weeks in theatres) and it's even possible that it'll land a Best Picture nomination, and that director Steven Spielberg might pull off a Best Director Oscar nomination, despite his having been excluded from the DGA's list of Best Director nominees.

But given this morning's DGA announcement and other recent indicators listed today by Hollywood...Read More

12 days after Huffington Post contributor Robert Reich suggested an Obama-Clinton ticket with Joe Biden taking over as Secretary of State. N.Y. Times editor-contributor Bill Keller has advocated the same.

"It's time to take it seriously," Keller writes.

"I know the arguments against this scenario, and we'll get to those. But the arguments in favor are as simple as one-two-three. One: it does more to guarantee Obama's re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with...Read More

Rotten Tomatoes' Matt Atchity sounds right on the money to me about the big award contenders, and in particular about The Artist. He kinda thinks it's fading, or starting to fade, and his Best Picture money is on The Descendants. The basic idea that Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil was looking to explore was whether or not Rotten Tomatoes' critics scores help to predict winners.

The only regrettable thing about this video is that it's out of focus. What the eff, Tom?

War Horse is all but finished as a Best Picture contender. This was confirmed this morning, I believe, when the Directors Guild of America stood up like persons of principle and backbone and declined to nominate Steven Spielberg for Best Director. That's it, game over, throw in the towel.

"The biggest snub on today's list has to be Steven Spielberg who was overlooked for Dreamworks' War Horse, an expected Oscar power player that may be slipping back in the pack a bit during the crucial stretch run," Deadline's Pete Hammond wrote a few minutes ago. "Spielberg's ommission...Read More

Kim Novak's complaint about The Artist having used a long segment of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score in its final act is understandable, but she's not saying anything startling. The basic strategy of The Artist is "sampling" elements from the past -- primarily the aura of silent black-and-white cinema, and plots from A Star Is Born and Singin' in the Rain -- and re-packaging them. So using Herrmann's Vertigo score falls right into line.

Mike Fleming's Deadline story quotes Novak's manager Sue Cameron as follows: "[Kim] was sitting in her living room, she put the DVD in,...Read More

A pro-Newt Gingrich but more precisely anti-Mitt Romney attack infomercial called King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came To Town will be shown to South Carolina voters this week. Producer Barry Bennett has told N.Y. Times reporters Trip Gabriel and Nicholas Confessorre that the Obama campaign "is going to have a heyday with this, and Republicans need to know this story before we nominate [Romney]."

The doc was funded by Sheldon Adelson, "a billionaire casino owner in Las Vegas who has long supported Mr. Gingrich." The operational engine is a Gingrich-supporting Super PAC called Winning Our...Read More

I can say definitively that Pabst Blue Ribbon is a big favorite among 20something Brooklyn hipsters (my son Jett included) because it's cheap. You see it everywhere in Williamsburg bars. "PBR, PBR, PBR..." When I first heard the acronym I thought it was a reference to "PBR street gang," a code term for Martin Sheen's watercraft heading upriver in Apocalypse Now.

An all-region British Bluray of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's tediously talky Cleopatra ('63) will be available in three weeks. The 20th Century Fox release opened in June '63 so where do they get off calling it a 50th anniversary edition?

I hate to admit it but I'll be buying this damn thing because it was shot by Leon Shamroy in 70mm Todd-AO and will therefore almost certainly look immaculate on Bluray. I can watch stodgy big-studio films if they were shot by seasoned pros on expensive large-format stock. I have that skill, that knack. I shut my...Read More

After watching and really enjoying Jose Padilha's Elite Squad: The Enemy Within last night at the Palm Springs Film Festival, I'm convinced that (a) it should definitely be considered as one of the top Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees because good is good regardless of genre, and (b) Padilha's U.S.-funded Robocop remake, which he's now working on in Los Angeles, has an excellent shot at being fantastic.

I don't have any excuse for ignoring this exceptional socio-political action thriller when it opened in the U.S. last November. No excuse whatsoever. I apologize. It was lazy...Read More

N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has broken the news that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' documentary branch members are basically looking to cut down the number of films they'll have to watch in a given year, and so they're about to announce a rule that a doc has to be reviewed by The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times to qualify for a Best Feature-Length Doc Oscar.

When the new rule goes into effect the non-theatrical riff-raff can be ignored like Semper Fi and the doc committee guys won't have to watch as many films. Which...Read More

Will SAG members understand and perhaps be swayed by James Franco's plea for respect and recognition (i.e., a Best Supporting Actor nomination) for Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Andy Serkis? Franco's thoughts appeared earlier this afternoon on Deadline.com, and they're very well-composed. Franco sounds like an actor talking straight to other actors, explaining the technological facts without any b.s.

Andy Serkis, James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

"I, as much as anyone, can get anxious when I think about the future of movies and the possibility of the obsolescence of actors, or...Read More

I've already said if I was a Republican (which will never ever happen) I'd be for John Huntsman, whose disdain for the nutbag Tea Party right makes him a kind of 21st Century Nelson Rockefeller. But he really distinguished himself last night by slapping down Mitt Romney during the New Hampshire Republican debate. Big money: "This country is divided because of attitudes like that."

I'm being kicked out of the hotel so I have to pack the bags and then file a bit more from a Starbucks or someplace before driving back to Los Angeles. This day is a mess.

I've been living an almost spartan life lately. By my standards at least. Nocturnally speaking. The no-hard-stuff rule (in force since the mid '90s) plus mostly abstaining from wine, but when I'm so inclined I'll have no more than two glasses. But it feels better the next morning when I don't go there at all. Plus I'm riding my bike again and feeling better. But last night that all went south.

I was feeling sharp and attuned and really excited about having seen Jose Padilha's Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within. So I went to the Read More

Surely some HE regulars have gone to Devil Inside shows yesterday or today. Has anyone thrown up on the lobby carpet in response to the shitty ending? Or pissed on it? Has anyone pulled out a knife and slashed the screen from end to end? Has anyone thrown giant-size drinks at the screen? Has anyone seen any ushers get beaten up?

I tried to visit Frank Sinatra's grave at Desert Memorial Park in Rancho Mirage or Cathedral City or wherever. The address is 31-705 Da Vall Drive. I found the cemetery but not Frank. I searched and searched but couldn't find plot B-8, #151. I'm sure that if I'd succeeded and taken a snap with my iPhone 4S, the photo would look something like this.

Cheers and earnest respect for the National Society of Film Critics for handing Best Picture to Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Best Director to Tree of Life's Terrence Malick, Best Actress to Melancholia's Kirsten Dunst, Best Actor to Moneyball's Brad Pitt, Best Supporting Actor to Drive's Albert Brooks, Best Supporting Actress to Jessica Chastain for all of her 2011 roles, and their Best Supporting Actress runner-up distinction to Margaret's Jeannie Berlin.

These, at least, are interesting, commendable choices.

HE to Variety's Jeff Sneider: The Artist's Jean Dujardin still has the Best Actor Oscar in the bag, right? He's a cinch!

If anyone is still scrambling for a reasonably-priced Sundance Film Festival rental I can steer you toward two deals at the Park Regency, where I'm staying from 1.18 through 1.27. There's a one-bedroom condo available from 1.14 to 1.21 for just $600, and another one-bedroom unit from 1.21 through 1.28 for $950. Both units have fold-out couches in the living room.

Blu-ray.com staff reviewer Jeffrey Kauffman has received Fox Home Video's West Side Story replacement disc and has personally confirmed that the fade-to-black at the end of the overture problem has been removed in a new printing. Fox is exchanging bad discs via a toll free number (1.877.369.7867) or by emailing their customer service department (support@foxcustomercare.com). I wonder if I can exchange my British Bluray version?

Remember that the bad guys in this episode appear to have been (a) HTV Illuminate CEO Jim Hardy, who may have inserted the fade-to-black problem during the high-def scanning phase,...Read More

The Devil Inside "wildly overperformed on Friday, taking $16.9 million and knocking Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol out of the top spot at the box office," reports TheWrap's Joshua Weinstein.

"Considering the movie had a budget of less than $1 million, the number is stunning. Paramount had expected Devil would gross $8 million for the entire weekend. Outside box-office watchers put that figure at $12 million to $14 million. And BoxOffice.com predicted $23 million.

"The scary movie is on track to exceed even that, possibly closing the weekend with nearly $40 million."

So a movie that...Read More

The fundamental reason that many critics and critics groups have taken leave of their senses and praised (and in some cases awarded) lightweight mediocrities like The Artist, War Horse, The Help (along with Woody Allen's fine, lightly amusingMidnight in Paris) is the financial collapse of 2008. So it's not Harvey Weinstein's marketing swagger that has led to The Artist dominating the 2011-2012 awards season. You actually need to blame John Paulson, Henry Paulson and fucking Lehman Brothers for that.

Or so says Deadline's Pete Hammond in a just-posted analysis:

"Recent Best Picture winners like...Read More

I decided to see 45 minutes' worth of SuperClasico at the Palm Springs High School, and then walk to the Camelot plex across the street to catch an 8 pm showing Turn Me On, Dammit! (I'll see the remainder of SuperClasico today at 3 pm.) And I have to say, regretfully, that Turn Me On, Dammit! is slow-moving and interminable -- one of the dullest sex comedy-teenage ennui films I've ever seen in my life. And I can't say I was levitated by SuperClasico either, although it started to improve just as I was leaving.

A nice but dull Reid...

After the deflation of Zhang Zimou's The Flowers of War (and writing the review) I saw portions of two more films -- Ole Christian Madsen's Superclasico and Jannicke Systad Jacobsen's Turn Me On, Dammit!. And then I attended a party in honor of French-language cinema at "the Lucy house" -- i.e., the Spanish adobe home once owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

Friday, 1.6, 10:10 pm.

Fomer home of Frank Sinatra, 1148 Alejo, Palm Springs. Completely restored "by a couple of gay guys" with original '50s furnishings and '50s...

Today's first Palm Springs Film Festival screening was Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War -- a mistake all around. Set amid the chaos and brutality of the 1937 "Nanking massacre" by Japanese troops, it's mostly a schmaltzy cornball thing with leaden dialogue and a truly atrocious performance by Christian Bale, who was apparently in some kind of leftover "Dickie" mood from The Fighter during filming.

Flowers of War director Zhang Yimou, Christan Bale during filming.

Bale plays an asshole, you see. A bearded alcoholic low-life who's somehow landed work as a funeral director in Nanking despite speaking...Read More

"Moneyball's 1080p transfer is another brilliant effort from Sony -- flawless from top to bottom," writes Bluray.com's Martin Liebman. "The transfer delivers fantastic, deep blacks that remain true but abstain from crush, and colors are phenomenal and very well balanced. An opening scene of Beane sitting alone in a darkened stadium with the only light reflecting off the glossy stadium seats is marvelous.

"Whether the green grasses; the yellow and green A's color scheme; or the many less brilliant but no less accomplished shades in every day objects around the office, in the clubhouse, or present...Read More

In a forcefully written, well-researched piece about "How Two Oscar Op-Eds Rocked the Academy Years Ago and Still Impact Campaigning Today," Hollywood Reporter Oscar columnist Scott Feinberg argues that negative campaigning (whispered or otherwise) has no place, but personal endorsement campaigning is way too common to put a lid on.

"Why shouldn't an Academy member be able to publicly express his or her affection for a film or performance like anyone else can?," Feinberg asks. "And why shouldn't a studio be permitted to quote them if they wish to?

"While endorsements might sometimes be used to call attention to...Read More

In Drew McWeeny's 1.6 review of The Devil Inside, an early paragraph reads as follows:

"In the car, on the 101, all the way to Coldwater and then straight up. No traffic. The theater is a madhouse when I arrive at 11:30. People everywhere. And there was a definite demographic being served, too. I was the 1% tonight. Pretty much every other patron I saw in the eventually-sold-out auditorium tonight was Los Angeles Latino, and if nothing else, at least I saw the movie with a crowd that came ready to enjoy it."

This is just straight reporting. McWeeny came, he saw,...Read More

I was so rushed and scattered as I left yesterday for Palm Springs that I forgot to take my Canon Powershot. I take it with me when I go to the market so this makes no sense. The iPhone 4S has an excellent camera, at least, so that'll have to do.

From the balcony outside room #275 at the Palm Springs Travelodge on East Palm Canyon Drive -- Friday, 1.6, 6:25 am.

I sighed this morning as I scanned the BAFTA longlist. I don't want to do this any more, I muttered. I understand and respect the award-season process, but I'm feeling dismayed and uninspired. I don't want it to end -- I can roll with it, and am fine with seeing it to the end -- but I'd much rather jump into 2012 and experience the new. I thought 2011 was a stirring year for the most part, but I'm mainly feeling like a sore loser because the "wrong" films are at the top of too many lists.

Yes, I say...Read More

"I saw both Haywire and The Grey yesterday," a New York-based critic wrote this morning. "Haywire (1.20) knocked me out -- lean, stripped-down, intelligent and exciting. And The Grey (1.27) surprised me for being as harrowing as a Jack London story. There's a formula at work, for sure, but there's also surprising depth to the characters. If you think this is another paycheck movie for Liam Neeson, think again -- if only because the conditions look so brutal."

Republican bigot Rick Santorum spoke last night to youthful pro-gay questioners in New Hampshire about "decent rational thought" in regard to differing notions of personal domestic happiness, but he was essentially talking about his own fundamental repulsion regarding gay relationships.

The universal consensus is that William Brent Bell's The Devil Inside (Paramount, opening today) not only stinks, but delivers one of the most contemptibly awful endings of all time -- cheap, stupid, audience-insulting.

"I can't remember any time in my career as a movie critic when the crowd around me, winners of free tickets to see the movie before it was released, all started to boo," writes Willie Waffle. "The ending for The Devil Inside was so bad and people were jeering so loudly you would have thought Mel Gibson just walked into the...Read More

I'm sitting at a table in a Palm Springs Carrows, which is the same deal as an IHOP. And of course, a giggling woman is sitting one table over with her boyfriend. Giggling constantly and almost hysterically. And she refuses to tire or ease up. And is utterly indifferent to the possibility that others in the restaurant might not want to share in her merriment.

You can't order people not to be gauche, and there's really no point in asking them. They've either been taught the meaning of the word by their parents at a young age and have been mindful of it...Read More

Tonight's screening of Lasse Hallstrom's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen at the Palm Springs Int'l Film Festival didn't work out. I left at the one-hour mark, but it wasn't the film's fault. It was mine, or rather the fault of the circumstances.

Amr Waked, Ewan McGregor in Lasse Hallstrom's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

One, the drive from L.A. to Palm Springs took three hours rather than the usual two, and two of those hours were stop-and-go hell. So I was stressed and frazzled. Two, the sound in the Palm Springs High School auditorium echoed and bounced all...Read More

21 and 1/2 months ago I saw Richard Press's Bill Cunningham New York, a likable, open-hearted, intensely New Yorkish doc about the legendary N.Y. Times "On The Street" fashion photographer. (The MOMA showing was the opening-night attraction for 2010's "New Directors New Films.") But it's eligible for 2011's Best Feature Doc Oscar so I'm revisiting.

The DVD came out last September. I was recently sent a copy by Karen Fried, the film's publicist, and I watched it again last night. It's likable, clean, sturdy, straight.

The 82 year-old, Manhattan-residing Cunningham has been...Read More

On Saturday, January 7th, Regen Projects is having an opening reception for "Daniel Richter: A Concert of Purpose and Action." No, not "my" Dan Richter, the former mime and still-kickin' businessman who played Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (and whom I interviewed 19-plus years ago for the L.A. Times) but a German artist named Daniel Richter. Just sayin'.

With scripts for The Artist, Shame, Beginners, Drive, Martha Marcy May Marlene, My Week With Marilyn, The Iron Lady, Like Crazy, Margin Call, Take Shelter and Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy out of the running due to rules and regulations, the Writers Guild has announced five nominations each for their Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay award...congrats to all. On the other hand the disqualifications are excessive so it's not exactly a bellwether of anything else.

Original Screenplay: 50/50, w: Will Reiser; Bridesmaids, w: Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig; Midnight in Paris, w: Woody Allen; Win Win, w: Tom McCarthy; Story by McCarthy &...Read More

I've often referred to Palm Springs as a place where actors and filmmakers go to hide out when their movie has bombed big-time or has otherwise proven an embarassment. They usually do so while wearing Ray-ban shades and a fishing hat with the brim pulled down. But I'm heading out there today (expected departure around 1 or 1:30 pm) to spend four days at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Salmon Fishing in Yemen, Super Classico, Elite Squad, Turn Me On Dammit, etc. Plus parties and dryness and gekkos and brunches.

I'll be staying at the...Read More

If you want to feel safe and secure and totally soothed and welcomed by a large friendly crowd of really, really nice people, read Dave Karger's Oscar predictions in the latest Entertainment Weekly in order to know which likely Oscar winners to see and vote for. Because whatever the safe default favorite of the moment may be (like The Artist or The Help or War Horse or whatever), "Safe Dave" is the man to listen to.

If you're looking for trouble, throw down several drinks and then hang out at a bar at 4:30 am. Only the wildest and most nihilistic life forms are roaming around at that hour, so if you're looking to get into something the odds are favoring. Either Jeremy Renner knew that and was saying "bring it on!" while sitting at the bar at the Rachada Pub in Phuket, Thailand, or he didn't know or give a damn or whatever. But now he knows. Life has wised him up.

The rotor axe allegedly used on Jeremy Renner's drinking buddy.

According to...Read More

Fandango is reporting that Paramount's The Devil Inside, a found-footage horror flick in the Paranormal Activity vein, is the top ticket-seller right now, representing 31% of all daily sales.

Dread Central's William Brent Bell says the film is "not perfect" but "[it] hits way more than it misses. The Devil Inside has moments that will shock, scare, disturb, and leave you gasping. It's a trip to the dark side that's well worth taking. No matter what you believe in...say your prayers."

How many HE readers are willing to take Bell's word on this thing?

I really adore Judy Greer's voice. And her work in The Descendants, of course. (It would be so great if she could be the female Demian Bichir.) I've enjoyed pretty much everything she's ever said or done, really.

Longtime Village Voice film critic Jim Hoberman has been cut loose. Hoberman had been a Voice critic since 1983 1978, a staffer since '83 and the paper's senior critic since '88. The news was initially posted at 5:37 pm eastern, and then New York/"Daily Intel"'s Joe Coscarelli posted it at 6:08 pm. This makes Karina Longworth the only noteworthy V.V./L.A. Weekly film critic left on the payroll.

"To celebrate his 30th anniversary as a film critic at The Village Voice, on 1.5.08 the Museum of the Moving Image presented a conversation with Hoberman moderated by...

Last night I bought and watched the Criterion Bluray of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes ('38). I realize that it's one of Hitch's best known and most respected British-period films (along with The 39 Steps) and that the mystery-on-the-train portion is expertly done. But I didn't realize until last night that the first 26 minutes or so -- over 25% of the running time -- are quite boring and mostly superfluous.

The film begins with several British train-travellers stuck in an Eastern European ski lodge while the tracks are being cleared following an avalanche. And for...Read More

I typed some rambling reactions the day after seeing Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close on the night of December 8th. I had to wait for the embargo date to run my review, but I didn't post several thoughts because I didn't want to spoil. But the film has been out for almost two weeks now so here are portions that I wrote on 12.9. I'm not going to review the basics so there's no point reading this if you haven't seen the film. Those who haven't are advised that SPOILERS are contained herein:

Reaction #1: "I loved...Read More

I decided that Take Shelter's Michael Shannon was a cool guy a little more than three years ago. The decision happened during a Manhattan q & a for Revolutionary Road with Glenn Kenny moderating and Shannon and costar Kate Winslet answering questions. I asked a mildly off-the-charts question, and I was impressed by how Shannon answered it.

Since Revolutionary Road happens in 1955, I asked why Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio's characters were so depressed about their suburban lives when all they had to do was get on a train and go to Manhattan...Read More

It suddenly hit me this morning that I'm getting a little bit tired of Martin Scorsese being tributed all the time. The guy spends one-third of his life accepting awards and tributes, one-third doing what he can to raise consciousness about classic films and film preservation (and hail to him for that), and one third making docs and features. I love Marty as much as anyone in the dweeb fraternity, but something snapped when I saw this headline. I said to myself, "Jesus Christ...again?"

Scorsese accepted an award at the Marrakech Film Festival last year, which...Read More

Today's news about Hugh Jackman signing to star in an Aaron Sorkin-scripted Broadway Houdini musical is an opportunity to re-run last year's piece about the dramatic weakness of the life of Harry Houdini. The only way to make any Houdini piece work is to abandon his actual history and make something up.

In the late '80s and early '90s the late Stuart Byron and I had a small business called re:visions that sold analyses of stalled or otherwise troubled film projects. 23 years ago we co-researched and co-wrote an exhaustive 36-page analysis about why...Read More

A Vanity Fair excerpt from "The Real Romney", a forthcoming book by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, contains an intriguing story about likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. It happened during a family road trip 28 and 1/2 years ago, when Romney was 36.

"The destination of this journey, in the summer of 1983, was [Romney's] parents' cottage, on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron. The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt climbed behind the wheel to begin the 12-hour...Read More

Most of us understand what the terms "suspended animation" and "suspended sentence" mean, but a Presidential candidate announcing that he/she is "suspending" their campaign implies they're putting it on hold as opposed to shutting it down. They're not turning off the DVD player and heading out for a bike ride -- they're hitting freeze-frame and keeping the TV on in case an unforeseen opportunity presents itself down the road.

Which in the case of Michelle Bachmann's over-and-done-with campaign is a chickenshit dodge.

If you're having relationship problems, your girlfriend might say "so you wanna break up or what?" And you...Read More

Awards Daily's Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino and I pondered the imponderables this afternoon. Actually, we didn't. We talked about box-office tallies for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and especially The Artist, and then (after Sasha insisted) the Producer's Guild nominations, and thent I went into one of my laments about the direction of action films. Here's a stand-alone mp3.

This reminds me of the opening scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with the client (William Windom) staring at ad concepts while Steve Martin and Lyman Ward wait wordlessly for some hint. Margin Call director-writer J.C. Chandor is accepting the Best First Film award from the NYFCC on Monday, and on Tuesday will pick up the NBR's award for Best Debut Director. Margin Call has also been named of the NBR's top 10 Independent Films.

Bluray jacket art is routinely viewable weeks and sometimes even months ahead of street dates. For whatever reason these MGM Home Video titles, streeting on 1.24 and released through 20th Century Fox, haven't been viewable on Amazon and other major Bluray sites. A Fox Home Video publicist provided them today.

Right now obviously isn't Matt Damon's time with a realization of the insignificance of We Bought A Zoo ricocheting everywhere, and Daniel Craig isn't exactly the revving engine behind the success of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo -- Rooney Mara and David Fincher are. The Descendants' George Clooney, one of the two most likely Best Actor winners (along with Moneyball's Brad Pitt), is the only guy on top as we speak.

Whether or not Chris Nolan has decided to remix Tom Hardy's Dark Knight Rises dialogue, was anyone honestly able to understand what Bane was saying in the DKR IMAX prologue?

All right, Twitter followers...if anyone can come up with a question about 2 Fast 2 Furious, Catch That Kid, 3:10 to Yuma, Wanted, The Double and the forthcoming Overdrive, I'm yours for the next...it took three minutes to compose this...57 minutes!

The nominees for the 2011 Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures were announced two hours ago: The Artist -- Producer: Thomas Langmann; Bridesmaids - Producers: Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, Clayton Townsend; The Descendants -- Producers: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- Producers: Cean Chaffin, Scott Rudin; The Help -- Producers: Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus, Brunson Green; Hugo -- Producers: Graham King, Martin Scorsese; The Ides of March -- Producers: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Brian Oliver; Midnight in Paris -- Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum; Moneyball --Producers: Michael De Luca, Rachael...Read More

No matters what happens with this morning's Producer's Guild nominations, the 2011 awards well has been poisoned by the persistent default prominence of The Artist as the reigning Best Picture favorite.

The rising of The Artist to the top of the flagpole is a reminder to one and all that 2011 wasn't a very strong year, although any fair-minded observer would at least call it an unusually spirited, original-thinking year if -- if! -- films like A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Tyrannosaur, Take Shelter, The Tree of Life and The Descendants are factored in.

The problem or wrinkle is that too many...Read More

Marshall Fine has more or less dismissed It's All About You (NY 1.4, LA 1.6), a doc about John Mellencamp by Kurt and Ian Markus. I did the same during last March's South by Southwest in a review called "Need Mellancamp Doc That Won't Drive Me Crazy."

I was told four years ago about an HE quote used in German-language posters and trailers for Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage; never saw the trailer until this morning. Very cool font, brown-parchment backdrop.

The Upside Down Wiki page says this French-produced sci-fi romance, written and directed by Juan Diego Solanas for $50 millon with Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst, began principal photography in Montreal in February 2010 (!). Hollywood finance partner[s] declined due to "cultural differences." Opening later this year.

That kid singing the national anthem again...

I saw A Separation for the third time this evening. A hefty crowd attended the 7 pm show at West LA's Royal. Word-of-mouth has obviously gotten around. I could feel the concentration in the room, and they applauded the closing credits. I felt just as riveted as I did my first time four months ago.

Anyone attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for the first time is advised to avoid a restaurant called 350 Main. Here's how I put it last year in a piece called "Butch Boss": "What defines a must-to-avoid 'townie' restaurant in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival? The host has a suspicious, guard-at-the-gate attitude when you walk in and say you'd like to hang at the bar, as I did last night at 350 Main.

"No well-mannered restaurant host in Manhattan would dare adopt a look of faint alarm and a confrontational tone and...Read More

January is mostly about dumps. Which is why the Palm Springs and Sundance film festivals are welcome diversions. Commercially there are four standouts: Miss Bala (1.12, limited, highly recommended), Coriolanus (1.20, limited), Haywire (1.20, highly recommended), and Declaration of War (good, honest true-life French-made film about parenting and illness). I can't honestly recommend We Need to Talk About Kevin (1.20, NY& LA). I haven't seen Contraband, The Grey or Man on a Ledge.

The implication in this tweet is that Rupert Murdoch got around to seeing The Descendants, a film funded and distributed by a division of Newscorp and which was viewable by all senior Fox execs many months ago, only recently. Or is he just throwing this out there for something to say or to up the stock value? I love his statement about Alexander Payne's film "maybe" being Oscar-worthy.

N.Y. Times guy Brian Stelter reports that "Murdoch IS tweeting himself, according to News Corp's top spokeswoman, Teri Everett. When I asked if it's really him, she wrote,...

With no screenings happening this week (which only lasts three days since I'm heading out to Palm Springs on Thursday), I'll be settling in and watching tomorrow night's Iowa caucus returns. Whatever happens, we all know Romney more or less has the nomination in the bag. (Here's Nate Silver.) If I was a Republican I'd be voting for Huntsman.

"This is the first year that I think my productivity has dropped because [of my media consumption]. I'm looking at the coming year and thinking, what am I going to give up? Am I going to give up following the NFL? Am I going to give up listening to music and going out and seeing it? Am I going to give up riding my bike? Or am I going to cut back on some of these digital habits I have that are eating me alive?" -- from a 10.27.11 NPR "Fresh Air" interview with N.Y. Times reporter David Carr(i.e., "A Media...Read More

The guy who made The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino and even The Age of Innocence would've never even toyed with the idea of making something as theme-parky and kid-friendly as Hugo. His decision to "go guerilla" with After Hours is what saved him 27 years ago, and it's what he needs to do again, right now.

Early '80s to early '90s Scorsese -- doesn't get much better than that. Better than his '70s period and way, way better than the aughts.

When Daniel Craig first visits Rooney Mara at her apartment in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, she turns around and we see she's wearing this T-shirt. Sony has been sending this shirt to certain journalists. They don't think highly enough of me to send it my way, but I wish they would.

"There is always a new generation of kids who don't know and who are interested in movies but who have no idea who Lubitsch or Hawks or Satyajit Ray are. And each new generation is a little more distant from the beginnings of cinema, from the heyday of the Hollywood studios, from Italian neorealism and the French new wave, and now from the '90s, when the consciousness of film preservation had really taken hold." -- Martin Scorsese speaking to Variety's Christy Grosz in a 1.1.12 posting.

At this stage of the game a very small slice of humanity is aware of Lubitsch,...Read More

What kind of dimwit would be thoughtless enough to marry this stooge in the first place? How many 20something guys out there think like Humphries? He really is that guy who slams an ice cream cone into his forehead.

"I strongly prefer films that observe stories as opposed to telling stories. The cinematography, the score...they need to conspire to create a perspective through which you experience the unfolding of a story, as opposed to a more oppressive, pedantic way of doing things." -- Moneyball director Bennett Miller to Hollywoodnews.com's Sean O'Connell in a 1.2.12 post.

For the first thinking-cap exercise of 2012, perhaps HE readers could share views about which highly-touted Best Picture finalists have used "oppressive" and "pedantic" story-telling strategies? Does anything come to mind? All right, I'll say it. I was thinking of...Read More

In a piece called "Narratives and Precedents," Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg explains how various thematic narratives have sold a nominated performance to Academy voters. It's a sharply observed piece, but he errs in describing George C. Scott's swaggering titular character in Patton as "a man who gains great power but loses his sense of perspective."

Scott's war-loving general goes through a bad career stretch after he slaps that soldier in Italy, but his perspective is firm and rooted from start to finish. He gets disciplined by Gen. Eisenhower in Act Two and he has to...Read More

If you're going to post a shot of a 2011 Oscar ballot (as Gold Derby did earlier today), you need to have an image in focus. And if you're going to re-post this shot, you need to sharpen and clarify it, which Awards Daily failed to do (left). Notice the improvement in HE's version (right). It's not rocket science.

The Oscar-ballot instructions read as follows:

"When you have reviewed the Reminder List, please write the title of your first choice on the first line of this ballot and list your alternate choices...Read More

Last night's angry tweets from Ellen Barkin and Sam Levinson about the New York police arresting several OWS people in midtown Manhattan were written for the right reasons and entirely understandable. I've been in the vicinity of coordinated police violence during political demonstrations, and it's not a pretty thing to witness or feel. It's upsetting and makes you want to retreat, but that's how the cops want you to feel, of course.

"Get your motherfucking hands offa me!" are words to live and stand by when it comes to any law-abiding person's clash...Read More

Toronto Star critic Peter Howell has tweeted notification of a 5.23.12 European theatrical debut of Walter Salles' On The Road, obviously indicating a Cannes Film Festival debut.

"Haywire is lovingly lighted and filmed, its action as sparingly edited as old Hollywood musicals, so that the painstaking fight choreography can be appreciated," writes N.Y. Times contributor Margy Rochlin in a Gina Carano interview piece. "As the double-crossed freelance agent Mallory Kane, Ms. Carano gives Haywire jolts of energy with her arsenal of explosive moves: pushing off walls, slinging sheet pans, twisting arms until they break.

Haywire star Gina Carano. (N.Y. Times photo by Misha Erwitt.)

Rochlin quotes Haywire director Steven Soderbergh as follows: "Why are action films so ugly? Why can't there be action,...Read More

The following are the official HE guesstimates of the Ten Likeliest 2012 Best Picture Nominees, favored in front and less favored in the rear. Along with some very loosely-spitballed reasons why:

Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt in Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson

Lincoln (mid to late December), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones. Why: The usual Spielberg-kowtow instinct (i.e., to show obeisance before power) plus the impact of Daniel Day Lewis's lead performance plus the instinct to show respect and allegiance for the legend of Abraham Lincoln. Classic historical...Read More

Here's a refreshed, add-on revision of a previously posted fall-holiday lineup piece that I ran on 12.25. The 2012 total is now 39 or 40, depending upon whether the Coen Bros.' Inside Llewyn Davis opens this year or not. 2012 Sundance entries are sure to produce another four or five. Thanks to HE readers for input. HE conveys special interest.

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams in Terrence Malick's The Burial, expected to be finished and released sometime between now and fall 2014.

Winter Kickoff: Haywire (HE), d: Steven Soderbergh, w: Lem Dobbs, cast: Gina Carano, Channing Tatum,...Read More