I tried to write something a couple of days ago about the passing of director Ronald Neame, but it wouldn’t come. Not with the right tone of respect and regret, I mean. Because, frankly, his films persuaded me long ago that Neame was at best a mediocre talent. I hear his name and I think “middling,” “congenial,” “status-quo lazy.”

And yet he nearly lived to be 100 while at the same time drinking like a fish, and for that he has my respect. Not that I’d consider following in his footsteps.

I’m referring to a 2006 interview in which Neame said that the secret to his longevity is “two large vodkas at lunchtime and three large scotches in the evening. All my doctors have said to me, ‘Ronnie, if you would drink less, you’d live a lot longer.’ But they’re all dead, and I’m still here at 95.”

Neame’s favorable rep rests upon his having made two moderately respectable films with Alec Guiness, The Horse’s Mouth and Tunes of Glory, along with the likably so-so-ish The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Maggie Smith .

In my view those films were negatively counter-balanced and then some by The Poseidon Adventure — a rank whore job — as well as Gambit, Mr. Moses, Meteor, Prudence and Pill, Hopscotch, First Monday in October and all the rest.

Why did Jonah Hex die such a humiliating death this weekend? My guess is that nobody wanted to hang for 100 minutes with a hero whose face has been torn up this badly. It wasn’t the lousy reviews — people pay to see crappy movies all the time. And you can’t blame Josh Brolin — he just showed up and did the work.

How bad was the Hex debut? Opening yesterday on 2825 screens, it took in a lousy $1,955,000 for a per-screen average of $692. If it makes it to $5.5 million by Sunday night it will have an average of about $1982. That’s bad, but many other films (as this chart shows) have performed much worse.

Was this the worst opening ever for a film based on a comic book?

Noting that Ryan Murphy‘s Eat Pray Love is based on the chick-lit memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, Awards Daily‘s Ryan Adams advised yesterday that “it doesn’t make you a girl if you think it looks charming as hell.” Well, it actually kinda does. If you’re panting to see this you’re female, a travel nut (like myself) or a guy who relates to female perspectives in this or that way.

I’ll be seeing Eat, Pray, Love for the exquisite scenery and the back-up performances (from James Franco, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins and Javier Bardem). But few real men will pay to see it on their own — let’s be honest.

Plus I wonder why it’s opening on 8.13. I suppose it dates me to say that a mid-August opening feels like a little bit of an “uh-oh.” But it’s not. I should wake up and get with the new thinking about August. What is that, by the way? In the ’90s mid-to-late August was seen as a dumping ground, and opening a major film on 8.13 or 8.20 was like throwing in the towel. It was like saying “we’re dead and we know it.” No longer!

Yesterday Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone riffed on Gregg Kilday‘s 5.18 Hollywood Reporter piece about how the 2010 Oscar field is shaping up at the half-year mark. So premise- and structure-wise I’m going to tee off on them , but with thoughts and suggestions of my own. I can pretty much do anything I want within the bounds of reason and rationality.

The best 2010 films I’ve seen thus far for their own merits (i.e., forget the awards race) are Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful (Cannes), Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (Cannes), Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos (Cannes), Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low, Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer and Philipp Stolzl‘s North Face.

The best documentaries I’ve seen so far are Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job (Cannes); Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington‘s Restrepo; and Don Argott‘s Art of the Steal.

The leading Best Picture Oscar candidates at this stage appear to be Inception, Toy Story 3, Fair Game, Tree of Life, Biutiful, The Social Network, Get Low, Hereafter, True Grit and maybe London Boulevard. If there was justice and fairness in the universe Greenberg and The Ghost Writer would be likely nominees also, but of course they won’t be.

Stone put her Best Picture contenders into certain categories that I’ll adhere to also.

ALREADY SEEN:

Toy Story 3: I don’t care how good it is or how much money it makes or how many people say it deserves to be Best Picture nominated. (Which it may well be.) In the final analysis it’s a “Mexican” animated feature that needs to stay on its side of the Rio Grande, and there’s nothing the least bit wrong with that. Actual Mexican films and filmmakers (Bunuel, Inarritu, Cuaron, Del Toro) are as good as cinema gets, in my view, and animated features, in turn, also have their own distinctions and their own realm to maintain.

Shutter Island: Forget it.

Winter’s Bone: The award potential here is for Jennifer Lawrence in the Best Actress category.

Fair Game: “A stirring, suspenseful and immensely satisfying adult drama, brilliantly directed by Doug Liman and acted by Sean Penn and Naomi Watts,” I wrote in Cannes. “The complexity and intelligence brought to bear upon the story of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame vs. the Bush administration — a tale of courage, cowardice, betrayal and bureaucratic denial all wrapped up into one — still came as a surprise. I really and truly wasn’t expecting it to be quite this deft and assured. It seems to me like a revival of the spirit of the paranoid Alan Pukula of the ’70s with governmental-spook flavorings that harken back to Costa-Gavras and John LeCarre (or, more particularly, the British TV adaptation of Smiley’s People). This is Liman’s best film by far, and a Best Picture nomination waiting to happen.”

Wall Street 2: Not a chance. The Fox guys themselves will tell you it’s just a movie and not an awards contender. No shame in that. (Opening 9.24)

Blue Valentine: Deserves a Best Hairdressing Oscar for the way it simulates baldness in Ryan Gosling‘s character when he’s “older.” Acting-class acting by Gosling and Michelle Williams will gather support. It’s a very cool Cassevetes-type personal pic, well directed by Derek Cianfrance, that drove me up the wall when I saw it in Sundance. (Weinstein Co., 12.31.)

Another Year: Missed Mike Leigh‘s film in Cannes. Heard it was good but a bit slow and boring, even. But Leigh always knows what he’s doing. No comment beyond that.

The Kids Are All Right: Stone says it’s a “maybe” in terms of Best Picture contention. I’m here to tell you this film has no chance in that regard. I know what Best Picture contenders walk and talk and sound like, and I’m sorry but this one, as well-liked as it is, just doesn’t have it. (Opening 7.7.)

Biutiful: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s film “is a sad and deeply touching hard-knocks, lower-depths drama in the tradition (or along the lines, even) of Roberto Rosselini‘s Open City or Vittorio DeSica‘s The Bicycle Thief,” I wrote in Cannes. “It’s about love and caring and continuity and carrying on among those who have it toughest, and dealing with guilt and tradition and the approaching of death and all the rest of the stuff that we all carry on our backs. Every actor is exactly right and spot-on in this film, but Javier Bardem gives a truly magnificent performance in the title role of an illegal migrant labor and street-vendor manager-facilitator.”

PICS WITH MOST PROMISE, SIGHT UNSEEN:

Inception: Definitely Best Picture material, partly for what it may be and partly as a payback for the Dark Knight Best Picture snub. (Opening 7.16)

The Social Network: Definite Best Picture possibility….maybe. Or not. You can obviously only tell so much from a script. But the theme is strong, and the pedigree of everyone involved is top-of-the-line. (Opening 10.1)

Secretariat: Period horse-racing drama starring Diane Lane from director Randall Wallace. Could be fine on its own terms, but no chance on awards circuit. (Opening 10.8)

Hereafter: Word around Peter Morgan‘s script, which deals with after-vibes and possible communions with death, has been a bit soft. Clint Eastwood directing, Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard costarring. Nobody knows anything. (Opening 10.22)

Morning Glory: I don’t know anything. (Opening 11.12)

Love and Other Drugs: Definite likelihood for a Best Actress nomination for Anne Hathaway as a Parkinson’s disease sufferer. She and Jake Gyllenhaal play lovers in this Pittsburgh-set period drama (set in the ’90s) about the pharmaceutical industry. (Opening 11.14)

Next Three Days: Doesn’t appear to be an award-calibre thing — seems like a straight “movie.” Paul Haggis wrote and directed this remake of a 2008 French film called Pour Elle, about a husband trying to free his wife who’s been jailed on a bum rap. Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks costar. (Opening 11.19)

The Extra Man: Barring a miracle, Kevin Kline is out, over, not in the room. (Opening 7.30)

Middle Men: Forget it. (Opening 8.6)

Eat, Pray, Love: Too chick-flicky, too gay, too escapist, too travelogue-y. Big box-office but forget the awards circuit. (Opening 8.13)

The American: A possibly first-rate genre thriller from the esteemed director of Control, Anton Corbijn. If it was seen as awards quality it wouldn’t be opening on September 1st.

The King’s Speech: Directed by Tom Hooper, costarring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter. Weinstein Co. is distributing. No comment but feels a bit minor. A speech impediment? (Opening 11.26)

The Fighter: directed by David O’Russell, Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale costarring. Know nothing, no comment. Paramount. (Opening 11.26)

The Tree of Life: Does Terrence Malick do Oscar movies? Maybe, maybe not. But you damn sure know he won’t campaign. The film is said to be quite good, possibly Malick’s best since Badlands. Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, dinosaurs. (Opening in November)

Everything You’ve Got: James L. Brooks directing; Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson costarring. Read half of Brooks’ script & stopped. No comment. (Opening 12.17)

Somewhere: Sofia Coppola apparently delivering an Antonioni-esque mood piece about a jaded actor (Stephen Dorff) and a daughter he’s just getting to know (Elle Fanning) within the sundry realms of West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont and…uhm, northern Italy. Reserving comment. (Opening 12.22).

True Grit: A rich and savory western stew, to go by the script. No telling anything. Blank slate, no judgment except for the always assured stamp of the Coen brothers. (Opening 12.25)

The Conspirator: “A shooting draft of James Solomon‘s The Conspirator, the Robert Redford-directed drama about Surratt’s trial, [is] obviously a sturdily-written, high-calibre thing. And there’s no missing the grace and gravitas woven into Surratt’s character, which represents a fine acting opportunity for Robin Wright Penn.”

The Way Back: Is Paramount going to release this Peter Weir film in ’10 or ’11? I talked to a guy who saw a research screening three months ago, as I recall.

London Boulevard: William Monahan‘s London-based crime pic reads very nicely. Really nicely. That’s all I know — the rest is air.

The Descendants: Will this Alexander Payne-directed, Hawaiian-set drama come out before 12.31.10?

Conviction: The Betty Anne Waters go-to-law-school, get-your-brother-out-of-jail drama with Hillary Swank.

There’s usually one Best Actress Oscar nominee every year who receives attention as the token newcomer — someone relatively fresh and young like last year’s Gabourey Sidibe or Carey Mulligan. 2010 has another six months to go (duhhh), but there’s a feeling right now that Jennifer Lawrence‘s performance as a determined Ozark teenager in Winter’s Bone — a young woman of exceptional steel — has a better-than-reasonable shot at landing a Best Actress nomination seven months hence.

Applauding acting talent is the basic criterion, of course, but nominating young actresses for an Oscar tends to be about values — about the Academy’s approval and respect for the characters they play. Mulligan’s Jenny, the lead in An Education, was celebrated for being plucky, spirited and eager for cultivated experience; Sidibe’s performance in Precious was embraced because she played such a hopeless, put-upon sad sack — obese, AIDS-afflicted, Downs Syndrome baby — that everyone (except Mo’Nique‘s Mary) wanted to comfort her.

Lawrence’s character, a 17 year-old named Ree Dolly, is about intestinal fortitude . Her goal in Winter’s Bone is to find her character-deficient criminal dad who put the family’s backwood home up for his bail bond and then skipped. If he stays gone Ree and her family will be homeless. The film is basically about Ree asking questions of several grungy Ozarkians — where is he?, you know anything?, just trying to care for my family. They all lie, glare, threaten, stare her down and dance around the truth, but she won’t back off. Ree is strong and unafraid, which you can’t help but admire.

Which is why she’s looking good for a nomination. We all want our kids to be tough and determined, and celebrating such a character will be a way of saying “see? This is what we’re talking about…life isn’t easy and you have to show a little mettle.”

On top of which Lawrence is damn good in the role — clearly, obviously. There’s also the fact that Lawrence is (please forgive) hot stuff, and voting for her will be a way for Academy geezer types (i.e., the Lorenzo Semple, Jr. types) to keep their hand in, so to speak.

I’ve been asked by two publicists why I haven’t posted an mp3 of my Lawrence interview. It’s because I made the mistake of recording it with an iPhone app called iRecorder, which is a huge pain in the ass in terms of uploading sound files onto my hard drive, and which rebuffs all attempts by Wavepad, my audio-manipulation software, to permit the files to be converted into mp3. I just gave up after an hour or so of messing with it, and for whatever reason I didn’t record my Lawrence chart on video.

Winter’s Bone is straight, sturdy, “real.” But my primary thought after catching it at last January’s Sundance Film Festival was that I’m glad I wasn’t born to poor white Ozark trash — a fate equal to the one that befell poor Precious, or worse? — and that I’d be grateful if the Emperor of the Universe told me I’ll never visit this region ever again for the rest of my life. In actuality, I mean.

I spoke to a 20-something lady at a recent Knight and Day screening who’d seen Winter’s Bone and didn’t like it because of the cruelty shown to Lawrence’s character, and because of the general Ozarkian scuzziness. I said “okay, I hear you, but Jennifer Lawrence…” And she finished my sentence before I got the words out: “Oh, I know, she’s great! Totally.”

It’s not a rumor — twentysomething women really do have a thing for the word “totally.” They use it a lot.

On 6.5.10 I reported that The Cove, winner of the Best Feature Doc Oscar, has had difficulty finding Japanese theatres to play in “due to organized agitation, mostly likely due to fishing-industry interests paying goons to stir up trouble.” A 6.18 N.Y. Times story by Hiroko Tabuchi explains that the most virulent opponent of The Cove is Shuhei Nishimura, a right-wing firebrand who heads a group called the Society for the Restoration of Sovereignty.

With “just a handful of core members,” the group has recently committed “to countering international criticism of practices like whaling and dolphin hunting,” Tabuchi reports. “In countless rallies, the society’s members have argued that the hunts are time-honored Japanese traditions that must be protected from Western condemnation, and The Cove is now their No. 1 target.”

The anti-Cove demonstrations, he explains, are “a stark example as well of how public debate on topics deemed delicate here can be easily muffled by a small minority, the most vocal of whom are the country’s estimated 10,000 rightists who espouse hard-line stances in disputes against Tokyo’s neighbors.”

There are few things in life more soul-deadening than the watching of feature-length porn. I haven’t gone there in decades, and proudly. I’m therefore ashamed to admit a faint interest in watching at least a portion of This Ain’t Avatar XXX, a Hustler-produced feature. Porn filmmakers are expert at smothering the human intrigue in any story, premise or milieu, so it’ll be a quick sampling.

The new one-sheet for David Fincher‘s The Social Network (Columbia, 10.1). Since reading Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay about the rough-and-tumble beginnings of Facebook, I’ve been calling the film a cyber version of Treasure of Sierra Madre. The poster’s basic conveyance is that Jesse Eisenberg portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will not be endearing.

In a 2009 interview with the Baltimore Sun (which I can’t find the link to), Eisenberg allegedly said that Zuckerberg “seems so much more overtly insensitive in so many ways that seem more real to me in the best way…I don’t often get cast as insensitive people so it feels very comfortable, fresh and exciting. The Social Network is the biggest relief I’ve ever had in a movie.”

Pic costars Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara and Armie Hammer. Sorkin’s script was adapted from Ben Mezrich‘s “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal,” published in 2009.

In a November 2009 set-visit article, Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow noted that Zuckerberg “was a controversial figure even before Mezrich’s book came out, accused of hogging credit for Facebook and manipulating other people’s ideas.”

One result of Zuckerberg having never told Mezrich his side of the story, Sragow writes, is that he’s portrayed in the book “as at worst a heartless user, at best a ruthless genius so divorced from normal human discourse he doesn’t even know he’s ruthless.”

“[David] Fincher laughs quietly when asked if Zuckerberg will seem more sympathetic in the movie. ‘I’m not the one to talk about the need for ‘likable’ or ‘sympathetic’ characters,” he said.”

Anecdotal: BBC Urdu is reporting (according to a Google Translation) that Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against Zuckerberg and others “in response to Facebook hosting a ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest on its site late last month.” No charges have been filed, but the Pakistani law (Section 295-C of the penal code) that the contest may have temporarily violated (as Facebook removed the contest from its site last month) calls for a punishment of death or imprisonment for life.

Not half bad in the usual no-laugh-funny way. I was moderately amused, I mean. It’s cool that it’s performed by “real” WME agents. Who’s the adrenaline guy playing the young Ari Gold?

The frame captures in Gary Tooze‘s review of the WHV Bluray of George Cukor‘s A Star Is Born (1954) underline what I said a couple of months ago, which is that the film doesn’t really work because Judy Garland looked way too old to play an ingenue, even a late-blooming one.

In the pic above the 31 or 32 year-old Garland arguably looks a bit older (and certainly no younger) than costar James Mason, who was born in May 1909 and was 43 or 44 during shooting. Look at her! She could be 45 or 46, certainly by today’s standards. And it’s the Bluray detail, I gather, that’s exposing this for the first time.

As I noted in April, Garland’s Esther Blodgett “looks stressed, worn down and plain with a too-short haircut and her chin starting to disappear — there’s a straight line between the tip of her chin and the base of her neck. Garland herself was clearly a wreck at a relatively young age. She’d lived a tough life up that point, and it didn’t get any more peaceful. She died in 1969 at age 47 — barely into middle age.”

I said before that Garland’s Blodgett “looks like a 39 year-old New Jersey housewife who’s taken too much speed and sipped too many Manhattans.” I misspoke. The women on Real Housewives of New Jersey, most of whom are in their early to late ’40s, look younger, hotter, spunkier. Don’t agree? It’s at least a debatable point.

Below is a slightly more flattering frame capture. Garland had perhaps gotten some extra sleep the night before or had been cutting down on the pills. But by today’s standards she could be 38 or 39. (Aging doesn’t happen today like it used to.) There’s certainly no way you can buy her as a 25 year-old, which I think is what Blodgett was supposed to be. Not fresh out of high school but not that far along either.

And look, by the way, at that 1954 WarnerColor widescreen texture. Almost a Georges Seurrat pointillist painting. Tooze says “the new transfer shows grain…film textures exist in some scenes more than others.” Naturally. I’m not hating on the prospect at all. 1950s color is what it is, or was — but this still does seem to give you an idea of what this forthcoming Bluray (due on 6.22) might be like.

I saw and reviewed Animal Kingdom (Sony Classics, 8.10) at Sundance 2010, except I can’t find the link. The first reports about it being an Australian At Close Range were partly right, but it has its own kind of malice, easy and neighborly-like. The Codys, a drug-dealing crime family, don’t act or look the “part” but you can’t help but believe — trust — that they’re quite dangerous when push comes to shove, or when they slip into a foul mood.

Two characters are especially chilling — Ben Mendelsohn‘s “Pope” Cody and Jacki Weaver‘s Janine Cody — a Lady Macbeth to be watched very carefully. The only soft spot in the film is the young lead, James Frecheville, who has a way of convincing you that his character, Josh Cody, is on the slow side. He just has that “duhhhh” look in his eyes.