A message from the gang at Rebellious Pixels: “This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed from dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.

“This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. ‘Right Wing Radio Duck’ by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License – permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.”

Reactions assembled by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond to Saturday night’s Social Network Academy screening were basically enthusiastic and respectful but — let’s face it — a bit cool at the same time. A portion of the over-55s didn’t think it was emotional or cuddly-bear enough so they’re holding out for a movie that will make them cry. Who’s surprised?

“Reaction very good,” one witness tells Hammond. “Big applause at the end and good applause when the credits were over, though I have to say that I have seen what I think are beloved reactions and this was not one of those. Those are few indeed, but I think Sony should be very happy with the turnout.”

Another reaction: “I liked it, thought it was well-written, [but] I got bored and hated everyone two thirds of the way through, even the hot chicks, so I think it won’t win Best Picture….nothing warm about it. The applause at the end was good and one-third stayed through the credits and applauded a little bit again. But nothing through the credits. But that may be the way they roll. All in all sort of like The Town reaction, but more people.”

Can anyone who’s seen The Social Network imagine anyone complaining that there’s “nothing warm about it”? That’s like someone coming out of the original King Kong and saying, “Why didn’t it have a few songs and dance numbers?” We’re talking about people with very skewed perceptions, and in some cases diminished ones.

A “dedicated” Academy member says he “just loved this movie, particularly the portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg and his lack of social skills.” He also characterizes last night’s Academy theatre as “really hopping.”

Scott Feinberg has tapped out a fairly comprehensive list of Twitter links to many of the filmmakers behind 2010’s award-calibre contenders as well as virtually every Oscar columnist and handicapper in the game.

In Secretariat (Disney, 10.8), Diane Lane gives an earnest, steady-as-she-goes performance as Penny Chenery Tweedy, the conservative housewife who risked financial ruin and defied her husband (Dylan Walsh) and brother (Dylan Baker), who wanted to sell their inherited horse farm for a quick profit, in order to nurture, train and place into competition one of the most celebrated racehorses in history.

The horse was initially named Big Red but eventually became Secretariat — legendary winner of the 1973 Triple Crown. And it’s a thrill to watch (and hear) him run. The film gives you that amazing charge with exceptional you-are-there photography and sound. But Secretariat is as rote and regimented and corny as Kansas in August, and I don’t see it selling many tickets beyond its base constituency — squares, tourists and hardcore horse-racing fans.

In short, I loved the story of Secretariat more than the movie. Actually, not the story so much as the horse-racing footage. The problem (and the movie has more than one) is that director Randall Wallace uses every trick in the book to make it seem touching, suspenseful, a cliffhanger…a story that massages your heart. Every. Trick. In. The. Book. And you’re not “in” the groove of Secretariat as much as fully aware of everything he’s trying to do to crank you up. You never forget you’re watching a Randall Wallace family-values movie for the schmoes — i.e., white people who stroll around in plaid shorts and white socks and La Crosse golf shirts, and who have an allegiance for old-fashioned Wonder Bread conservatism.

Everything is so right down the middle. And for me, Wallace’s directing style is too tight and straight-laced. There’s a little cut-loose dance sequence when Lane and her team are shown bopping and grooving to a ’70s soul tune, but Wallace doesn’t know how to cut and bump to this kind of thing, or at least not very well. Nor is he especially good at depicting early ’70s counter-culture kids and their behavior. It feels fake, “performed” — like some 1971 Methodist minister’s view of how hippie kids dressed and spoke and acted.

Lane has three moments that play exceptionally — (a) an argument/firing scene with a horse-farm manager in the first act, (b) a moment when she looks into the eyes of Secretariat to see if he’s ready to run, and (c) a financial face-off scene between she, Walsh and Baker. Except the latter scene is brought home by the housekeeper (Margo Martindale) when she spells out the specifics of their father’s will. A solid award-worthy performance needs three powerful moments, not two and a half. Lane’s performance wants to be as good as Sandra Bullock‘s in The Blind Side, but doesn’t quite get there. Sorry.

And Mike Rich‘s script doesn’t really give her any huge killer moments. Solid moments, but not great ones. The staring-at-Secretariat moment might be the best of all. Lane has a hold on the heart and spirit and determination that surely drove her character forward. Nice lady and mildly hot under the circumstances. But why did that wig she was wearing have to look so much like a wig? Don’t hairdressers know how to make wigs a little mussy and more natural-looking?

I quickly lost patience with Scott Glenn, who plays Lane’s ailing dad. Alzheimer’s, a stroke….die, you fucking boring actor!

Walsh’s conservative hubby is a total drag to be around. Over and over he’s saying to Lane, “You’re supposed to be my wife and take care of me and the kids rather than go galavanting around the country with a race horse.” I was sitting there muttering, “Get a clue, you Republican asshole. Your wife is doing something really remarkable and ballsy. Be a real man and support her!” He comes around at the very end, but when it’s easy to come around (i.e., when Secretariat is winning races), and so it doesn’t mean as much. So he’s a washout and a putz.

And I really, really didn’t relate to the old-fashioned, come-back-to-Denver, family values element that Walsh (and the movie) is constantly bringing up or our consideration. I hate Republicans and all their creepy family-values hypocrisy.

I just wish that Rich’s dialogue wasn’t so cliched-sounding. I wish it had more of a poetic curve-ball quality. The writing feels like it comes out of the Reader’s Digest Words of Wisdom and Charity or something. It feels too pat, too Christian, too right down the middle. Time and again I was guessing the dialogue before a character would say it, and then he/she would say it!

John Malkovich gives a colorful and eccentric turn as Lucien Laurin, Secretariat’s trainer, but it’s kind of a rote role. He’s fine, but they don’t give him enough to do. Entourage‘s Kevin Connolly and some other guy play racetrack reporters whose sole function is to comment on the action like a Greek chorus, rotely and tediously. Nestor Sorrano plays the owner of Sham, Secretariat’s chief competitor in the last two Triple Crown races, by way of The Sopranos…boast and bluster, open-collared shirts, gimme a break.

And what’s with using “O Happy Day” twice? Is there supposed to be some kind of spiritual God component in the story of Secretariat? That’s what the music seems to be implying…except it’s not there. The movie is about a straight-laced lady who stood by a beautiful horse that wound up winning big…and that’s it.

I loved the racing footage so much that I went right home and watched the original races on You Tube. I’ve watched the Belmont Stakes race four or five times since.

Bottom line: A so-so to mildly decent film with a great horse story, but not written well enough or directed by someone good enough to really lift it off the ground. And with a first-rate, very admirable Diane Lane performance with two and half strong moments but lacking those serious killer ones.

Update: Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone and I just finished the second “Oscar Poker” podcast. Today’s topics included (a) locked vs. maybe Best Picture calls, (b) Secretariat, (c) What happened this weekend at the box-office with Social Network and Let Me In? (c) Client 9, Alex Gibney and a discussion about what constitutes serious relationship betrayal — seeing someone on the side or seeing a pro?, (d) award-class filmmakers with personality problems, and (e) why the five-hour Carlos is easily one of the year’s finest.

Cinemablend‘s Eric Eisenberg has caught a little Social Network joke that I missed. That midpoint scene in which Jesse Eisenberg Mark Zuckerberg tells Andrew Garfield‘s Eduardo Saverin that he’s created a fake Facebook page so he can cheat on an Art History assignment? There’s a quick shot of the fake Facebook page, and the name Zuckerberg has used is Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt‘s character from David Fincher‘s Fight Club.

Underlining a long-held view of mine that the Regal Union Square plex is one of the worst places you can see a film (partly for the cruddy projection, partly because of the popcorn-and-licorice-gorging, Converse-wearing loudmouth animals who always attend evening showings), Bonnie Fuller tweeted last night from a Regal Union Square showing of The Social Network that “disaster” had struck….”A BULB BLOWS! Movie theater can’t FIX! Packed theater GROANS! Lucky there’s no full-on mutiny over cancelled screening.”

Warner Home Video’s new The Maltese Falcon Bluray is quite nice as far as it goes — slightly sharper than the most recent DVD, inkier blacks, more of a true-celluloid look — but it’s not as drop-dead beautiful as their Treasure of Sierra Madre Bluray, which I went apeshit over a few days ago. I guess I was expecting a new dimensional creamo experience, and this didn’t quite happen when I popped the disc in.

For whatever reason (i.e., the quality of the photographic elements in 1941 as opposed to 1948?) aren’t as finely tuned as those for Sierra Madre, and watching this new Falcon is just not a levitational thing. It doesn’t have that “oh, my God, look at those values and that razor-sharp quality” feeling. I’m not panning it. The Warner Home Video guys did a solid job and made a fine-looking version that slightly tops the DVD, but I knew 20 seconds after the film began that that “wow” quality we all know and love — call it exceptional silver schwing — just wasn’t happening.

Sony is projecting a $23 million haul for The Social Network‘s opening weekend, according to Box Office.com’s Phil Contrino. $8 million on Friday, $8.9 million on Saturday and a projected $6.1 million for Sunday.

That’s okay because The Social Network will hang in there for the long run. But it’s not the balls-out opening I was looking for. No way it’s the movie’s fault or that of the marketing. It’s simply the failure of a good portion of the American public to come out of their gopher holes and breathe in the cultural air and smell the fresh-brewed coffee. It’s all those 20something slackers thinking they’ve got enough Facebook in their lives without absorbing a movie version plus Average Joes wondering if it’s absolutely essential to see theatrically plus the slouchy mentality and class resentments of Joe Hinterland Popcorn.

Learning Italian, the fourth Kevin Costner-Kevin Reynolds collaboration, is now in pre-production and set to shoot in Sicily and Germany sometime soon, or at least in time for a 2011 release. An apparent period “comedy” (set in the mid to late ’80s?), plot is about some kind of low-key CIA agent (Costner) stationed in an Italian coastal town who’s assigned to monitor a KGB agent. “When both are called back to their respective countries,” the boilerplate synopsis reads, “they decide to concoct a fake threat so they can continue to live in Italy.”

It doesn’t sound, in other words, like a coiled-spring hijinks comedy as much as a laid-back, quality-of-life mood piece with heh-heh laughs, possibly in the vein of Local Hero or Billy Wilder‘s Avanti or that line of country. The education alluded to in the title refers, I’m guessing, to a laughing Mediterranean way of life more than language.

What’s the difference between “heh-heh” laughter and “no-laugh funny”? I don’t know. Maybe no difference. You tell me. The definitions have to be sorted out.

The KGB agent part is apparently uncast but HE is respectfully begging Costner to not choose an actor who will torture the audience to death with a thick Russian accent. That means don’t hire Mickey Rourke. Not after that tearful “I remember a Bosnian woman I didn’t save” scene in The Expendables. In my view that one scene wiped out all the good will Rourke built up during his entire “Rourke is back and he’s sorry for being a dick in the ’80s and early ’90s” Wrestler campaign.

When Learning Italian was first announced last February everyone recalled the stormy relationship between Costner and Reynolds, particularly their arguments and editing-room lockouts during the making of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and especially Waterworld, which Reynolds left towards the end of filming. And yet, according to Deadline, the two have remained friendly. I’m predicting they’ll come to physical blows during the editing of Learning Italian.