Their most striking similarity between Werner Herzog‘s about-to-open Bad Lieutenant and Abel Ferrara‘s 1992 original “is that each stars an actor whose performance is so intensely played and thoroughly inhabited, it can feel like psychosis, possession, a bit of both,” N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis wrote yesterday.

Lucius Baston, Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

“They’re performances that make you wonder where the character leaves off and the man playing him has taken hold, a slippage that can lead to greatness, but also to moments of such excess and even grotesque comedy that they leave you squirming. Nicolas Cage revels in that slippage, though it was only after seeing Bad Lieutenant that I was reminded of how freaky he can be — and how exhilarating it can be to watch an actor go far and then just a little too far.”

So is Dargis saying that Cage perhaps isn’t “acting” as much as you might think he is and therefore isn’t really delivering a performance as much as exploring a form of on-camera psychotherapy, which isn’t necessarily the sort of thing that might result in a Best Actor nomination? Or that Cage is venturing into new territory by giving a kind of performance that is more than just “acting” although he is, obviously, playing a New Orleans detective on the ragged edge?

Should Cage’s Bad behavior, in other words, be primarily processed by the fact that he’s not playing a character as much as being queerly and flamboyantly meta? Or should we all just kick back (Manohla included) and just say “whatever…he’s acting and he isn’t or he is and his therapist is in on it…don’t worry about the machinations.”

Today’s tracking has Summit’s New Moon (opening 11.20) with a 24 unaided awareness, an 84 total awareness, 46% of the totals definitely interested and a 26 first choice open & release. Somewhere between the high 50s and low 60s? [Note: I was way too low earlier — wasn’t thinking it through.] The numbers will bump up as the week progresses and Friday gets closer.

Warner Bros. The Blind Side (11.20), the John Lee Hancock-Sandra Bullock true-life drama, has a 68 total awareness, 48% of the totals definitely interested and a 13 first choice open & release — exactly half that of New Moon.

The third 11.20 opener, the animated Planet 51, has a 65 total awareness, 28% of the totals definitely interested and a 4 first choice open & release.

Every knows that New Moon is a romantic triangle piece focusing on the mortal Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a hottie werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

As I wrote during last summer’s ComicCon, “Lautner is clearly the most ambitiously press-friendly among the three. While Stewart and Pattinson did their usual usual — i.e., giving answers that suggested they’re a lot more complex and aloof and thoughtful than their participation in movies based on the Twilight series might suggest. It’s the age-old ‘I’ll do this but only if I can answer questions like Marlon Brando’ routine.

“But Lautner, who has a bee-stung Beagle Boy nose , exhibited the personality of a publicist or a glad-hander. He clearly enjoys smiling and wants everyone to like him. He could be the next Regis Philbin if he wanted to go there.”

Jokes are such delicate things. Frail, even, in the sense that they have to be written just so and delivered in exactly the right way or they’ll collapse into embarassment. One thing they have to do at the start is convey a sense of basic cultural normality — they can’t start out sounding too clever or dumb. I’m saying this to explain how the joke on page 53 in the current Esquire (whether or not it came from the mind or mouth of Gillian Jacobs) dies immediately, during the first sentence.

How dumb to you have to be to not know that La Jolla is pronounced with a soft j that sounds like an h? What kind of mongoloid wife or husband would argue on behalf of a hard j pronunciation? What kind of idiot would start a joke with a debate about how to pronounce La Jolla, which implies it’s not an entirely settled issue and that reasonable people might have differing opinions? How funny could a joke be if it starts with the following: “A tourist couple sharing a hamburger start arguing about whether McDonalds burgers are made from the meat of domestic house cats or rare tropical birds”? Or: “A tourist couple start arguing about whether Bono played bass or drums for the Rolling Stones”?

Christmas lights not adorning department stores and muncipal streets usually go up a week before Thanksgiving, and sometimes a tad earlier.

Southwest corner of Central Park, opposite the Pierre — Sunday, 11.15, 11:10 pm.

You really do have to be living in a monastic Criterion world to be damp with excitement over the chance to re-savor Steve McQueen‘s Hunger. This is a frank and unsparing chronicle of political torture of IRA combatants by the British, and particularly the plight of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), who died from a hunger strike in 1981 at age 27, by a first-rate visual artist, but…well, I put it like this on 9.8.08.

“You’re very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky.” — producer and former Warner Bros. honcho John Calley speaking two nights ago about the life of a typical Hollywood studio executive.

I’m constantly amazed at the frequency with which I hear people lament the fact that their lives aren’t (or haven’t been) happy enough. As if that “happiness” was some kind of central tenet of the quality of a life. There is certainly contentment and satisfaction, but “happiness,” as most people define it, is a periodic mood thing that tends to happen of its own volition, and when it does 90% of those experiencing it don’t realize it’s there — only years or decades later.

The only thing that matters is whether a man or woman has fulfilled the promise and potential of his/her genetic inheritance, and responded creatively and constructively to the opportunities and obstacles that have been put before them. If you’ve done this then you’ll probably feel generally happy most of the time and…whatever, feel little spurts or surges of joy from time to time. And if you’re really lucky you’ll feel a kind of ecstasy from time to time from doing the most routine or mundane things. But anyone who abandons their duty or calling in order to feel happier is a wastrel.

On the 40th anniversary of Easy Rider (which I personally commemorated with a purchase of the recently released Bluray, which makes the film seem vibrant and highly attuned and freshly found), Slate‘s Keith Phipps went on a journey that followed Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper‘s original path, and has written an essay about the movie, its legacy, and how the places it visited have changed.

LACMA’s Michael Govan

There are two kinds of Edward Woodward fans — the kind that automatically say “Equalizer!” when they hear his name and the kind that speak in respectful hushed tones of his performances in Breaker Morant (my personal favorite) and the original The Wicker Man. Woodward died today in London at age 79. Smart salute.

Here’s another expression — written by the THR/Reuters’ Alex Dobuzinskis — of the current Hollywood thinking that stars matter less and less these days.

Due, just to repeat, to the successes of the star-less Twilight/New Moon, Paranormal Activity, The Hangover and District 9. And, of course, to underwhelming returns from big-star vehicles like A Christmas Carol (the sunset-ing of Jim Carrey?), Duplicity (a too-smart chess-game movie or the near-fatal wounding of the Julia Roberts legend due to passage of time?), Surrogates (Bruce who?), Funny People (serious Adam Sandler doesn’t sell like the Eloi-friendly version), Land of the Lost (the spearing of Will Ferrell), and Imagine That (further decline of Eddie Murphy).

GenX, it seems, is easily the most frustrated, pissed-off generation of all, hands down. But the math in this article threw me. For a couple of decades I’ve had it fixed in my head that boomers were born from 1946 to 1964, GenXers were born from ’64 to somewhere in the late ’70 to early ’80s, and that GenYers (i.e., digitally conversant, less-pissed-off children of boomers) began popping out in the mid ’80s. (Kids born in the early ’80s have no tag — they’re wanderers.) And that GenD — kids born into wifi, Playstation3, iPhones, big-screen plasmas and LCDs — began appearing in the late ’90s or post-9/11.

Yesterday Envelope /Gold Derby guy Tom O’Neil posted his choice for Best Actor front-runners at this stage of the game. I feel torn, as always, between pushing those performances in this category which I know are the “best” (i.e., the most striking, affecting, powerhouse-y, likely to be fondly remembered 20 years hence) and those that the Zelig crowd either thinks will win or needs to see win due to genetic tribal-current issues.

Right now HE’s most worthy contenders — comfort-seekers be damned — are, in this order, Colin Firth in A Single Man, Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man, Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant and a tie between Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart and Hal Holbrook in That Evening Sun (i.e., two gray-haired guys facing last-act issues). Every one of these performances is a major eye-opener and head-turner. On top of which Renner and Stuhlbarg are fashion models in the new Esquire (i.e., the one with the guaranteed-not-to-be-nominated-for-anything Robert Downey, Jr. on the cover).

But then basic human instinct (particularly the primal need to show obeisance before power) has to be factored in, which of course means stars (or bigger names) in this equation. I’m presuming that the Up In The Air current will carry George Clooney (who’s quite affecting as a sad flyaway guy) into contention, and that Morgan Freeman‘s Nelson Mandela in Invictus is almost certainly a nommie waiting to happen. Anyone who sees Nine will find themselves curiously drawn to Daniel Day Lewis‘s spell-like performance, so there’s a good to pretty good chance he’ll snag a nomination as well.

So blend these two together, think it all through and let the natural selection process manifest and you’re left with the following five contenders: Colin Firth in A Single Man, Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man, Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant and Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Big names don’t get a pass ’round these parts just because they’re big names. When Invictus starts to be shown this week and the calls start coming in about Freeman, we’ll see. I’d like to figure some way to wedge Holbrook in but I can’t figure a way.

Matt Damon‘s The Informant! character finally feels like more a sociopathic riddle or curiosity than a guy I understood and felt in a deep-down way. I haven’t seen Everybody’s Fine but my sense is that as touching and soulful as Robert De Niro may be in it, the film itself may be too much of a problem. Like others I respected but was never truly knocked down by Viggo Mortensen‘s performance in The Road.

Now I have to see Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans again just to re-absorb this little snippet straight. It passed right over (or through) me during my first viewing in Toronto. I watched about 40 minutes of The Rock last night. It was vaguely startling to see Cage (a) looking so young and (b) playing a more or less normal person.

Cage was 32 at the time. The Rock was his first move — a cash-in — after the acclaim of that Mike Figgis‘ Leaving Las Vegas (’95). He mainly starred in a series of crazy-kat super-salaried extreme action thrillers for the next four or five years (Con Air, Face/Off, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Snake Eyes) with the curious or slight or “meh” punctuations of Bringing Out The Dead, 8MM, and City of Angels.

Then came the disappointing, doleful and disorienting Family Man, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Windtalkers, followed by two master-stroke performances in Spike Jonze‘s Adaptation and Ridley Scott‘s Matchstick Men — Cage’s last artistic glory period (’02 to ’03). Because two or three years after this began Cage’s full wackazoid streak (broken up only by the National Treasure movies) that continues to this day — The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider, that Fu-Manchu Grindhouse walk-on, Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing and Bad Lieutenant.