Awards Daily ‘s Sasha Stone and myself all alone this time, talking about Limitless, The Beaver, Sucker Punch, France, beaters, the shortfalling of The Lincoln Lawyer and so on. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link. (Sorry for the underlying feedback hum sound.)

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As I understand it, The Lincoln Lawyer came in fourth this weekend, earning $13,400,000 in 2707 theatres, for two Matthew McConaughey reasons. One, he sells tickets only to female fans of his crappy romcom movies. And two, he has zero cred with those who like semi-serious, relatively well-made films. The second group may have known about Lawyer‘s good reviews, but they probably said, “Yeah, okay….Netflix.”

Two days ago Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan asked some people if McConaughey can make the transition from romantic-comedy and Surfer Dude crap to more substantial films.

The Lincoln Lawyer is “pulp, for sure, but it’s the most compelling McConaughey has been in years,” he wrote. “[So] it’s possible, with Lincoln Lawyer, Dallas Buyer’s Club, and a reunion with his Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater (in the dark comedy Bernie) on the way, that Hollywood’s most famous beach bum has finally put on a suit and grown up.”

You need to wait until 2:30 for the good stuff: “One of the reasons nothing gets done is that one of the political parties puts much more into fantasy problems that real ones.”

I finally sat down and watched the Almost Famous Bootleg Bluray, and it hasn’t diminished a bit since I last caught it on DVD. What a seriously great (and unfortunately unseen, for the most part) rock ‘n’ roll heart movie. Chock-full of sly, luscious, lived-in performances, led by Phillip Seymour Hoffman‘s great Lester Bangs and, on the sub-supporting level, Jimmy Fallon‘s road manager.

And I’d completely forgotten that Rainn Wilson (33 when it was shot in ’99) and Jay Baruchel (17 during filming) had significant small roles. And I was reminded once again by Kate Hudson’s just-about-perfect performance as Penny Lane career what a quarter-inc-deep tragedy her career has been since.

Fallon: “‘Cause if you think Mick Jagger is still gonna be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, you’re sadly, sadly mistaken.”

Here’s hoping again that We Bought A Zoo, the currently rolling feature from Almost Famous director-writer Cameron Crowe, pans out.

Jennifer Lawrence will play the feisty and combative Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games! Which will be directed by Gary Ross! Every last site, it seems, has been reporting, repeating and re-phrasing this announcement as if it…meant something. Why is always left to me to call a spade a spade with these things, or least throw in some perspective?

Hunger Games: The Movie will almost certainly be an acceptably mid-level romantic dystopian Rollerball action melodrama by way of Death Race 2000, Logan’s Run, The Running Man, Battle Royale and The Long Walk. It’ll be the same ritualistic, hazily-motivated crap, tailor-made for young sensation junkies and the don’t-know-any-betters. It’ll be nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing…nothing.

Yes, it’ll probably make good money and might even become a three-picture franchise, but when have those things ever mattered in the great scheme? It shoots in the spring and comes out on 3.23.12.