Tales From The Golden Age, the Romanian omnibus film that dispenses heh-heh (as opposed to tee-hee or yaw-haw) humor, will screen at Lincoln Center on Saturday night. I was down with Tales when I saw it last May in Cannes, but I wasn’t exactly enthralled. The underpinnings of bureacratic torpor and enslavement keep it from being “funny.” It’s more in the realm of mild amusement.

4 Months, Three Weeks, 2 Days helmer Cristian Mungiu directed one of the segments. The whole thing runs 155 minutes.

Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez has written that Kawasaki’s Rose, the latest from prolific Czech director Jan Hrebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky, is “easily the best feature of the first few days of the Berlin Film Festival — the one undeniable find so far.”

“A story about an elderly ex-Communist whose misdeeds during the Dubcek era are slowly revealed, it slipps easily back and forth between various perspectives (and such is Jarchovsky’s skill, every character here was nuanced, contradictory, fully realized), and parceled out its revelations as deliberately and rigorously as a conspiracy thriller.” Kawasaki’s Rose “ranks among the writer and director’s very finest work to date.”

I wonder how Kawasaki’s Rose will play with the people who made Garry Marshall‘s Valentine’s Day the weekend’s #1 hit, pouring $52.4 million into Warner Bros. coffers? Is there a chance that a small fraction might pay to see it? What if paramilitary squads were to promise to destroy their homes with flame-throwers and grenades if they don’t see it? Is it possible some could be persuaded?

Copout director Kevin Smith tweeted last night that Southwest Airlines had bumped him off an Oakland-to-Burbank jet because he was “too wide for the sky.” The airline’s “customer of size” policy is that extra-large types have to buy two seats to contain their ampleness. If there are no twins available on a given flight, you’re bumped. Smith was reportedly given a $100 voucher and put on a subsequent Southwest flight.

Sample tweets: (a) “Hey @SouthwestAir! Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off!”; (b) “The @SouthwestAir Diet. How it works: you’re publicly shamed into a slimmer figure. Crying the weight right off has never been easier!”; (c) “Hey @SouthwestAir! I’ve landed in Burbank. Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised”; (d) “Last night the wife ALSO kicked me off for being too wide. And she wasn’t talking about the size of my stupid dick.”

Jesus, how insensitive can Smith get? Imagine how all those extra-large types out there who’ve endured similar indignities must be feeling right now. Why would Smith want to go there and be that guy who jokes about being overweight? I know that certain HE readers are very sensitive to this issue, and that they’ll want to lecture Smith for hurting the feelings of a lot of good people. Readers?

I’ve never sprinkled an exotic seasoning (jalapeno, sour cream and onion, caramel, white cheddar) on popcorn in my life, and I never would under any circumstance.

Roger Durling‘s on-stage interview last night with A Single Man star Colin Firth went on too long, but the conversational vibe was easy and unforced. And yet probing, amusing, revealing. I love the smile that always follows after Firth delivers one of those wry, self-deprecating comments. A very mellow fellow. The tribute reel reminded that he does anger quite well when a scene calls for it, but he has virtually none of it on his own, or so it seems.

I was convinced Firth was the leading Best Actor contender when I spoke with him in Manhattan a little more than two months ago, but now the apparent assumption is that Jeff Bridges has it in the bag for his Crazy Heart performance. Firth’s brand has nonetheless been upped. Everyone has come out ahead.

Firth’s classy gentleman aura — that sense of urbane reserve and sensitivity and aplomb– “is what everyone has been savoring since Firth broke through roughly 15 years ago,” I wrote in early December. “And now there’s widespread agreement that he delivers the finest variation of this very particular aura or attitude in Tom Ford‘s A Single Man.

“One of my questions began with a paraphrasing of John Ford’s quote about how directors make the same film over and over. Do actors do the same thing more or less? Firth didn’t disagree. His achievement in A Single Man is that he’s playing the deepest and most intriguing aspect of this patented thing. Because the role of George has found him in exactly at the right place and time, and vice versa.”

The after-party was held in an industrial park in eastern Carpinteria — a 15-minute drive. The SBIFF elite were cordoned off in two smallish, well-lit rooms that were protected by the usual goons in black suits.

One of the security guys — young and muscular with marble-black eyes — came up to me early on and asked to see my wrist band. I said I hadn’t been given one, but that SBIFF publicist Carol Marshall had walked me in. I assured him in any case that he wasn’t going to throw me out. He gave me one of those cock-eyed glares. He wanted to demonstrate his alpha-male capabilities, but Carol chilled him down. I’ve said this before but I were to run a security company I would (a) call it Cool Goons and (b) make a point of not hiring guys who stroll around parties looking for trouble.

During an interview inside Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre yesterday afternoon, director Oliver Stone (Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps) spoke about South of the Border, his still-unreleased documentary about a political sea-change brought about by a group of nativist, left-leaning South American leaders over the last few years.

Early in the discussion Stone riffed on the U.S. government’s constant investment in creating, agitating and maintaining enemies, which is primarily fueled by perceptions that their values aren’t sufficiently supportive of U.S. financial interests. He was primarily alluding to hostile attitudes and policies directed at Chavez by the Bush administration, but more generally to the agitated, five-alarm-fire mentality — paranoid, us.-vs.-them, line in the sand — of the military-industrial complex.

“[Beginning with] the Russian revolution, and then terrorists, this and this and this, drugs — I mean, it just goes on and on and on,” Stone said. “Since 1946 we’ve obviously been under the influence of something. Perhaps our water. Do you have to lose your mind in order to be initiated into the American political system? I’m not the only one [to feel this way]. But the level of debate is just astounding. It makes me long for…it makes me long for civilization.”

Growing disappointment with President Barack Obama was an underlying current in his remarks. Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Stone believes, were the only two 20th Century presidents who tried to seriously re-order and shake things up in this country. Roosevelt especially, he said, who went in strong with no half measures — “If you’re going to change things you have to do it all the way.”

Stone was interviewed by MCN’s David Poland, who had also arranged to speak to Stone after the show for one of his DP/30 video pieces. I was going to congratulate Poland on the recent birth of his son, Cameron, but his condescending “I see you and ‘hello Jeffrey’ but that’s as far as I’d like to take it” attitude quashed this notion in seconds.

Oliver Stone with copy of “Responses to Oliver Stone’s Alexander: Film, History and Cultural Studies,” a compilation of essays about Stone’s 214-minute epic (i.e., the length of the “final cut” version on DVD/Blu-ray).

I reviewed South of the Border after seeing it at a special Lincoln Center screening last September. Here’s a portion of it:

“Is Stone’s documentary a hard-hitting portrait of South American political realities and particularly the reign of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez? No, but it’s a perfectly reasonable and welcome counter- view to the U.S. mainstream-media Kool-Aid version, which has always been reactionary and rightist-supporting and hostile to nativist movements.

The doc “is a good deal more than just a friendly (i.e., non-condemning) portrait of Chavez. It’s actually a group portrait of all the left-leaning South American heads of state whose views represent a political sea change.

“All my life (or at least until recently) the leaders of South American countries have been largely run by right-leaning frontmen for the oligarchs (i.e., the upper-crust elite), which have always been in league with U.S. interests and the coldly capitalist, market-driven finaglings of the International Monetary Fund. And the lower classes have always had to eat bean dip.

“But since the turn of the century a turnabout has begun to happen with the arrival of a generation of Bolivarian (i.e., nativist, anti-outsider) leaders with skeptical or contrarian attitudes about US manipulations — Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner (along with her husband and ex-President Nestor Kirchner), Paraguay’s Fernando Lug, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa.

“So now there are six Latin American presidents of a similar mindset, and seven if you add Cuba’s Raul Castro. That’s pretty significant considering that much of South and Central America had been under the control of a series of U.S.-supporting, IMF-funded rightist governments for most of the 20th Century.”

SBIFF publicist Carol Marshall, Oliver Stone backstage at the Lobero — Saturday, 2.13, 4:25 pm.

In the view of Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, Martin Scorsese‘s Shutter Island is “expert, screw-turning narrative filmmaking put at the service of old-dark-madhouse claptrap.”

I’ve seen Shutter Island myself and wholeheartedly agree about the last four words.

The film “arguably occupies a similar place in Scorsese’s filmography as The Shining does in Stanley Kubrick‘s,” McCarthy goes on. “Protean skill and unsurpassed knowledge of Hollywood genres [are used to] create a dark, intense thriller involving insanity, ghastly memories, mind-alteration and violence, all wrapped in a story about the search for a missing patient at an island asylum.”

That’s all well and good, but without story tension — which Shutter Island utterly lacks — the viewer is stuck in a theatrical asylum watching masterful Marty technique, masterful Marty technique and more masterful Marty technique.

You may think you’ve absorbed all you can of the appalling Sarah Palin, but John Heilemann and Mark Halperin‘s Game Change manages to up the ante. Their account of her behavior during the ’08 campaign is — no exaggeration whatsoever — mind-blowing. Particularly their reporting in the chapter called “Seconds in Command,” which starts on page 395. Palin is portrayed — quite convincingly — as an astonishingly arrogant cretin.

Realizing she urgently needed to prepare big-time for upcoming press interviews, McCain campaign staffers Randy Scheuneman and Steve Biegun “sat Palin down, spread out a map of the world, and proceeded to give her a potted history of foreign policy,” it says on page 360. “They started with the Spanish Civil War, then moved on to World War I, World War II, the cold war and what Scheuneman liked to call ‘the three wars’ of today — Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terror.

“The tutorial took up most of Monday, starting early and going late. When the teachers suggested breaking for lunch or dinner, the student resisted. ‘No, no, no, no…let’s keep going,’ Palin said. ‘This is awesome.'”

On May 25th Criterion is bringing out a remastered DVD and a Bluray of John Ford‘s legendary Stagecoach (1939). I’ve never thought of Bert Glennon‘s black-and-white capturing of this classic western as exceptional or stunning or anything in that realm, but maybe I’ve never really “seen” Stagecoach.

Cover of Criterion’s Stagecoach Blu-ray, due May 3rd; John Wayne as the Ringo Kid.

I know it’s an iconic film and all, but somehow it’s never quite rung my cowbell. I love that famous rapid dolly-forward shot of John Wayne as much as the next guy, but I’ve never really fallen for the thing as a whole. Among Ford’s 1930s films I’ve always ranked it below The Informer and Drums Along the Mohawk, and it’s way below The Grapes of Wrath, Young Mr. Lincoln and How Green Was My Valley.

Stagecoach‘s biggest accomplishment is that it made Wayne a star. It also won Ford a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for costar Thomas Mitchell.

I can’t for the life of me understand what Orson Welles was referring to when he called it “a perfect textbook of film making” and “claimed to have watched it more than 40 times during the making of Citizen Kane.” C’mon…

Why do I feel slightly conflicted about this musical Haiti heart video? It’s well shot, well cut, well performed, etc. And everyone is coming from the right place. Except a voice is telling me it’s an advertisement for the performers first and a plea for donations second. (Or third.) I guess it’s also the sight of Jackostein at the original 1985 “We Are The World” recording. I was sorta with it until he showed. A bad taste.

Last night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute was a presentation of Cinema Vanguard awards to Up In The Air‘s Vera Farmiga, An Education‘s Peter Sarsgaard, Inglourious Basterds costar Christoph Waltz and Precious star Gabby Sidibe. (Lovely Bones costar Stanley Tucci was also honored but in absentia — he’s directing a play in New York.)

At Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre during last night’s Cinema Vanguard tribute: (l. to r.) Christoph Waltz, Vera Farmiga, Roger Durling, Peter Sarsgaard, Gabby Sidibe.

Festival chief Roger Durling handled the introductions, patter and chit-chat with smoothitude and high intelligence. It was all to the good.

Sarsgaard was the wittiest, I thought — he always is. Razor sharp, fast on his feet, straight-shooting, resistant to gushy platitudes, etc. I admired Waltz for his no b.s. answers and his general reluctance to grin too broadly. Farmiga’s plain-spokenness was equally appealing. And Sidibe was cool — she’s very bright, confident, likable.

Durling declined to ask Sarsgaard why he had a Bruce Willis shaved-head cut. That would have been the first question out of my mouth. He’s playing Hector Hammond in The Green Lantern — maybe he had to go tennis-ball because he’s wearing a wig or something.

It would have been cruel to ask Sidibe — by all indications an emotionally vibrant woman with a healthy outlook on everything — why she’s so excessively obese, but that, honestly, was all I could think of as I sat there (second row, right in front of Sharon Waxman ) last night.