“Presumably out of ideas for the time being, Jeffrey Wells goes seeking advanced word on The Road at…IMDb,” snickered In Contention‘s Kris Tapley earlier today.

Well, there was a heavy-hitter screening of John Hillcoat‘s much-awaited film in Los Angeles a few days ago. I was told about it myself and had it confirmed by a Weinstein Co. spokesperson. The attendees were said to include Josh Brolin, Ethan Coen, Oliver Stone, David Fincher and a guy named McCarthy — probably original The Road author Cormac McCarthy, possibly The Visitor director Tom McCarthy. I contacted every one of these guys today except Coen and Cormac McCarthy to try and get reactions, willing to run their views non-attrib if they so requested. Only one replied, and not substantively.

The original tipster said “find out what they thought — don’t trust me — and you’ll have what you wrote tonight confirmed [by serious people].”

Playwright Tony Kushner, who’s been laboring on a script for Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln movie for a very long time, is right now taking part in a discussion at a Harvard University Institute of Politics forum panel discussion called “Looking For Lincoln: In His Time and Ours — A Conversation on the Meaning of Abraham Lincoln.” It began at 6 pm at the John F. Kennedy Forum.

In any event, a longtime HE reader in attendance informs by cell-phone e-mail that Kushner has said “the decision will be made on Lincoln next week” and that if the green light is given the film will be “out by Christmas.” That’s pretty fast work for a expensive period film that’ll use a lot of CG, no? Even if Spielberg passes on Civil War battle scenes.

Kushner also said that Lincoln “only covers two months of his life,” my guy says, and that “the first draft covered four months and [was] 500 pages.”

Kushner also said that the 13th amendment — the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude — “is a big thing in the movie.”

One presumes that Kushner meant that the film will cover the last two months of Lincoln’s life, or roughly February 15th to April 15th, 1865 — the day of his death. The 13th amendment was enacted on December 6, 1865, so there’ll apparently be a little skipping around, event- and chronology-wise.

If any attention is to be paid to the Civil War during the last 60 days of Lincoln’s term, possible inclusions would be (a) the Union victory at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1st, which forced Gen. Robert E. Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond, the Confederate capital, (b) a subsequent rebel loss at Sayler’s Creek, and (c) Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, in the village of Appomattox Court House.

When I spoke to Liam Neeson (who will most likely play Lincoln) in the summer of ’05, he said he understood that the film would span the full arc of Lincoln’s time in the White House, beginning in March 1861.

“All [last] week writers were talking about how chick flicks are regressive and are setting women back, and many (mostly guys) have asked why women would be interested in these types of films,” Melissa Silverstein wrote today on Women & Hollywood. “I’ve been quoted in a bunch of pieces talking about the lack of women writers and directors and my desire to see different types of movies with stronger female characters.

“I really don’t see these early 2009 films on the same continuum with Sex and the City and Mamma Mia. I just don’t. Sex and the City had romance and a wedding, but to me, the film was about the friendship between the women. Mamma Mia also had romance and a wedding but, to me, it was a mother-daughter love story. What’s different about Mamma Mia and Sex is that the women are seen from a place of strength, not a place of weakness. Maybe it’s the age of the women that gives them more substance.

“I remember that both Sex and the City and Mamma Mia got a bunch of pretty shitty reviews too. I remember when Sex opened that people were making fun of Sarah Jessica Parker‘s face. I remember people writing that Meryl Streep has ruined her career for appearing in Mamma Mia.

“But I don’t remember people saying that women were stupid for going to see these movies. They called us shallow and materialistic but I don’t remember being called stupid. While I don’t have any interest in seeing Bride Wars and He’s Not Into You, I don’t agree with the name calling and think it needs to stop.

“Just because you see a stupid movie doesn’t make you stupid. Did anyone call the people (both men and women) who went to see Paul Blart Mall Cop stupid? That movies got pretty bad reviews too. It’s not my type of movie but it seems that it’s OK for guys to act stupid, yet, there is this accepted, nasty misogynistic tone that pervades the criticism of movies targeted at women. Long time movie critic Peter Travers puts it this way in Rolling Stone: “Are women desperate or just desperately stupid? This is the misogynist question at the core of He’s Just Not That Into You, a women-bashing tract disguised as a chick flick.”

“The facts are clear. Women do direct less than 6% of the films and write only 10%. But I’m not letting women off the hook. We (me too) are complicit in this problem. When we go and see these films and make them successes that means that Hollywood will make more of them. That’s law #1 of Hollywood.

“I blame the system for these films. Women writers have credits on all these films (and Drew Barrymore produced He’s Just Not That Into You) including the upcoming Confessions of a Shopaholic. Everyone needs a job and if the only movies that get made in Hollywood that you can make any money on are chick flicks you’re going to take the gig. Let me tell you, principles don’t pay the rent or mortgage even if we wish they would.

“I blame the system for these films. I blame a system that perpetuates stereotypes on a regular basis. I wish that a film like Frozen River could get on 3,000 screen but struggles to keep 100. I wish that women would have other choices in their multiplexes beyond He’s Just Not That Into You. I wish that people would stop calling women stupid for going to a movie.”

HE comment #1: I for one declared a little while ago that a significant portion of the fans of Paul Blart, Mall Cop came from the lower end of the gene pool. HE comment #2: Silverstein is more or less saying that female moviegoers flock to insipid chick flicks because they haven’t much of a choice if they want to see a film with a semblance of a female stamp or sensibility. That’s fair, but if she were really honest with herself (and us) she would acknowledge the quarter-of-an-inch-deep vibe that groups of women give off when they go to see these films in groups at the local plex. And when they sit around at a bar afterwards and talk it over. Especially after they’ve had a couple of glasses of wine. The ghosts of Gertude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker would weep from shame.

Shame on the mtvu.com voters who didn’t support the obviously hipper, cooler and far superior candidate, David Distenfeld, in the competition that will send a college-age interviewer to the Oscar red-carpet. They voted instead for three standard-issue clones — Fordham University’s Justin Shackil, Rice University’s Fateem Ahmed, and San Diego State University’s Megan Telles — as finalists. A winner will chosen from these three.

As I wrote on 2.1, “Every one of these kids is trying their best to act like an E! or Access Hollywood interviewer. And they have it down pretty well. They all have that empty, fluffy, celebrity-worshipping, bullshit ice-cream attitude that every executive producer of every TV entertainment show tends to like and hire. They all suffer from Ben Lyons disease (which, trust me, will probably lead to high-paying gigs for most of them when they get out of school).

“Please help stamp out the Stepford virus,” I futilely pleaded, “and vote for Distenfeld. You’ll be helping to shape the tone of future TV entertainment coverage if you do.” The voters have done that, all right.

This is the single best scene in Robert Altman‘s California Split. The funniest, I mean. The most intoxicating, the most mirthful. I’ve watched it many, many times and have never failed to laugh, or at least break out in a big grin. Which makes it more than just just “funny.” The only unfortunate aspect is this crummy looking cropped video, which I copied from chicago.zenzulu.com. If anyone has a decent embed code of this scene (i.e., preserving the original 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio), please send along.

Last Friday night at ComicCon MTV.com announced the top ten Greatest Movie Badasses of All Time, and the biggest coolest badass of all was….Clint Eastwood. As MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz observes, “It’s probably safe to say it’s the only panel featuring both James Toback and Method Man.”

Included are acceptance speeches from Eastwood and Sigourney Weaver.

All due respect for Clint’s “do ya feel lucky, punk?” speech in Dirty Harry, but his sidewalk scene opposite those two big Afro boys in Gran Torino is badder, I think.

Forget the Best Actor win odds of the moment, which probably still favor Sean Penn winning for Milk. Mickey Rourke‘s BAFTA win the other night awoke me to the late-blooming realization that his winning the Oscar for his Wrestler performance will deliver an emotional payoff like no other, and that’s what matters to most of us.

I’m guessing that others are thinking the same thing right now, and that this may prod those who haven’t yet voted (the ballot deadline being a little more than a week away) into voting for the guy. Despite all the political missteps he’s made since the campaign began last fall. Or possibly because of them, in a way. Because everyone is relating right now to hard times for obvious reasons, and Rourke, symbolically, is an emblem — the emblem — of error and faux pas and past political misjudgment, and people are sensing that what we all need in our lives is a little charity, a little kindness, a little bit of a helping hand to those who need it, even if they made their own bed and should’ve known better at the time.

Voting for Rourke allows people to feel extra-generous because he hasn’t quite played the game in the carefully orchestrated way that Russell Crowe, another bad boy, did when he campaigned for his work in Gladiator. And compassion and generosity in the face of economic terror, I sense, has become a stronger current out there than the safely liberal human-rights/remember the scourge of Prop 8/salute-a-noble-martyr message that voting for Gus Van Sant‘s Milk would be, Penn’s excellent performance notwithstanding.

Yes, Academy voters (most of whom have allegedly already voted) may have decided that Rourke has already benefitted tremendously from his Wrestler restoration and that’s enough. Maybe. But something tells me he might take it all the same. Because no other win would provide a stronger emotional meltdown on Oscar night.

To Max Evry‘s list of the best misanthropic comedies of the modern era [see below], I would add Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s Despair (’78), which you can’t get, by the way, on DVD. Despair isn’t particularly “funny,” but it’s amusingly and relentlessly pessimistic about everyone and everything. My favorite moment is when Dirk Bogarde looks right at the camera and gestures as if to say, “See? Do you see how predictable and utterly banal the people closest to me are?”

The Facebook link doesn’t work so here’s Evry’s piece, pasted:

“In honor of the excellent (and lovably nasty) trailer for April’s Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report, I thought I’d make a list of the most misanthropic movie comedies of the modern era. When I say ‘misanthropic I don’t mean like As Good As It Gets where the main character is hateful in his distrust of mankind but is ultimately redeemed by pills and the love of a pretty Helen Hunt. I’m talking about the DARKEST, CYNICAL-TO-THE-BONE films that do not wimp out when it comes to portraying humanity at its most despicably irredeemable.

“Not surprisingly, many of these filmmakers have made similarly-themed dark comedies that wouldn’t qualify for one reason or another, and they get runner-up status!

1. Ware of the Roses / (runner-up: Death to Smoochy)

“God bless Danny DeVito for making what is probably the darkest major studio comedy of all time. If you thought Revolutionary Road was cynical about marriage…

2. Bad Santa / (runner-up: Art School Confidential, Ghost World)

“Billy Bob’s title character is the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth, a foul-mouthed fornicating thieving mall santa… and he may also be the most redeemable character in the film. Terry Zwigoff has built a career on making movies that are abrasive, harsh, and funny, but the fact that this one was a bonafide box-office smash is still jaw-dropping.

3. Death Becomes Her / (runner-up: Used Cars)

“I personally find the characters in this movie too deeply unlikeable to get much enjoyment, but that’s also part of the fun of Robert Zemeckis’ last real throwback to his early dark comedies. Used Cars is an infinitely better movie, but the characters are too darn sweet despite their sleazy antics to fit this criteria.

4. Happiness / (runner-up: Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling)

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw this, how in simultaneous shock and awe I was at Todd Solondz’s fearlessness in making comedy out of some of the most deeply flawed people ever committed to film. Dylan Baker’s character is truly sick, but somehow never becomes the full-on monster we all wish he was. He remains, tragically, human.”

5. Barton Fink / (runner-up: Burn After Reading)

“You could easily argue that the Coen’s movie is more of a Kafka-esque nightmare than a comedy, but this take on the moral wasteland that is Hollywood features a title character of relentless egotism and repugnance, surrounded by a literal circus of idiots.”

6. Crimes and Misdemeanors / (runner-up: Deconstructing Harry)

“According to Woody Allen, if you’re not famous you’re nobody and if you can get away with murder and not be bothered by it, it’s all good!”

7. The Player / (runner-up: California Split)

“It feels like Altman was sharpening his knives for a long time before he dug them right into the heart of Hollywood with this film.”

8. Dr. Strangelove / (runner-up: Lolita)

“This film is just as potent and ballsy as it was 45 years ago. Almost all of humanity is destroyed to the tune of big band music… how much more gleefully misanthropic can you get?

More great misanthropic comedies: American Psycho, Heathers,To Die For, Network.

Was Armed and Dangerous a mall-cop movie? No, but it was close enough. Can we go so far as to call mall-cop movies a comedic genre ? And does the curious success of Paul Blart, Mall Cop mean that audiences will feel just a little mall-copped out when Observe and Report opens wide in April? However you slice it, this Seth Rogen-Anna Faris comedy looks triple-quadruple coarse.

Rogen doesn’t have to be Green Hornet thin (a physical state that he’s probably trashing with a high-caloric vengeance now that that Hornet has gone south) but I do have a slight problem with the guy when he’s too fat, as he clearly is in this red-band trailer. And I know mall cops are supposed to look dorky, but I don’t care for that Curly-in-the-Three Stooges tennis-ball haircut either. That Pineapple Express/Knocked Up look is what works.