This is bad. This is really bad. Variety‘s Jeff Sneider has reported what Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s role will be in The Dark Knight Rises as if the world gives a shit. All villains, quasi-villains and sons-of-villains in superhero franchise films are essentially the same — broad, perverse, self-amused or self-hating, corrupted, flamboyant, diseased. And it doesn’t matter what their names or backstories are. It’s all the same corporate crap. For what it’s worth, Levitt will play “Alberto Falcone, the son of Mafia chieftain Carmine Falcone, the character Tom Wilkinson played in Batman Begins.”

With The Lincoln Lawyer opening today, here’s my initial two-week-old response: “Lawyer is basically a high-intrigue investigation-and-trial drama with an unusual lead character — Matthew McConaughey‘s Mickey Haller, a bottom-feeding LA criminal attorney who operates out of his gas-guzzler. The story is about Haller being hired by an arrogant big-money client (Ryan Phillippe) and soon after finding himself in a difficult ethical spot.

“Lawyer doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It’s not quite as grave or surprising or jolting as Primal Fear, the 1996 Richard Gere-Edward Norton courtroom thriller that it resembles somewhat. So don’t go expecting a double-A powerhouse thing. But it moves along with good pace and purpose, and never bores and satisfies with the usual twists and turns and fake-outs and sharp dialogue.

“It almost feels like a two-hour pilot for an HBO series about Haller. Which I would watch, by the way.

For nearly 20 years McConaughey has under-achieved. The few good films he’s been in have been mostly ensembles (Dazed and Confused, U-571, We Are Marshall, Tropic Thunder) while many of his top-billed or costarring vehicles have been romantic dogshit, especially over the last decade. Lawyer is the first completely decent, above-average film McConaughey has carried all on his own. By his standards that’s close to a triumph.

The Lincoln Lawyer has been very ably directed by Brad Furman from a script by John Romano, based on Michael Connelly‘s novel of the same name. The costarring roles are well-written, and very persuasively performed by Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy, Michaela Conlin, Josh Lucas, Laurence Mason, Frances Fisher, John Leguizamo and Michael Pena.

I’m waiting on my 3:20 pm flight in a US Air/Continental cafe at Austin airport, and so far I’m the only person who hasn’t walked up and dropped money into the plastic tip jar for the guitar guy. He’s crooning country standards, of course, and I’m marvelling at the ironclad rule that states that all lounge/cafe performers have to use the same country-twangy singing voice with that little vowel cry from time to time. I don’t know enough about country music to cite an influence, but every one of these guys sounds the same.

And that’s why I have tipped yet, I suppose. And probably won’t when I leave for the gate. Because I vaguely hate this shit. He seems like a nice enough hombre, but sorry…no.

With my Austin-to-LA flight leaving today at 3 pm, yesterday was my only shot at enjoying one of those “bail on the film festival in order to absorb rural atmosphere and smell the grass” days. So I rented a Mazda and drove west on 290 out to the Texas hill country.

The True Grit courthouse in Blanco, Texas — Thursday, 3.17, 7:05 pm.

I first visited Johnson City, and then the Lyndon B. Johnson ranch, just east of Stonewall, for 90 minutes or so. (Those who haven’t yet seen David Grubin‘s LBJ, a 1991 American Experience doc, need to do so.) I then visited and got the hell out of Fredericksburg — a grotesque, tourist-choked Disneyland town — as fast as I could. And finally I checked into a nice little motel in Blanco, where Joel and Ethan Coen shot a portion of True Grit.

Snapped in one of about 200 tourist shops lining Main Street in Fredericksburg.

A five-day-old Hereford calf on the LBJ ranch. Wow, here I am, gaining two pounds a day. And when I get big and heavy enough they’ll take me and my pallies off to the slaughterhouse!

Gravestone of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States and one of the great tragic figures of American history.

Before I took this the guy sitting at the table had apparently never even looked at the menu painting.

LBJ ranch main residence — Thursday, 3.17, 3:05 pm.

Darren Aronofsky‘s stated reason for deciding not to direct 20th Century Fox’s The Wolverine, which would have required working in Japan for over a year, is that he “was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time.”

Honestly? My first reaction was that Richard Nixon‘s attorney general John Mitchell offered roughly the same reason when he resigned from the Committee to Re-Elect the President on 7.1.72, saying that “he’d been spending too much time away from his wife and daughter.”

An industry friend explains: “Aronofsky was ambivalent about doing this project from the get-go, not EVER liking Chris McQuarrie‘s script, which he was reworking. So the success of Black Swan gave him enough clout to finally leave it without repercussions from Fox. Deadline Hollywood is feeding readers some company line that McQuarrie’s script is not to blame, but it’s one of the reasons [Aronofsky] is taking a walk.”

The cost of the just-announced N.Y. Times digital subscription plan, which kicks in as of 3.28, seems a wee bit high. We’re looking at three different kinds of flat-fee buys. Access to NYTimes.com on smartphones will cost $15 per four-week month, access to the same on phones and the iPad2 and other tablets will cost $20 every four weeks, and an “all device” access will cost $35 bills per month. In other words, if I want full access on my laptop I’ll be getting the $35 plan…right? I don’t know, man. I’d go $25 to $30 bucks a month, or roughly a dollar per daily issue, but $35 leaves a bad taste.

Summit Distribution has acquired a rep for timidity in the matter of The Beaver. So it’s likely that even if star Mel Gibson didn’t have an appointment last night to be booked and then released for misdemeanor battery at L.A.’s El Segundo police station (which he kept), Summit marketers would have advised him not to join Beaver director-costar Jodie Foster, costar Anton Yelchin and screenwriter Kyle Killen for last night’s SXSW premiere showing in Austin.

But what’s the point of hiding at this stage? If you ask me there’s only one thing to do — man up, face the press, point to Charlie Sheen and say, “Look at that guy and then look at me and tell the truth — am I not looking a little better since he took the stage and sucked all the crazy out of the room?

“I’m a non-drinking alcoholic and a racist arch-Catholic nutbag loon, okay, but grossly offensive antisocial behavior…call it madness if you want, I don’t care…can be gauged in degrees, and…c’mon, listen to that fucker. Admit it, guys — I don’t seem as gnarly to you right now. Britney Spears put it succinctly: I’ve been working on myself and I’m not that bad.

“Plus I’m a better filmmaker than Sheen, a better actor, a lot of good people have stood by me, I’ve struggled with alcohol and humiliated myself beyond all measure, and I’m trying to rid myself of my demons just like Walter in The Beaver, and you definitely have to give me points for not having revolting homie suck-ups in pork-pie hats hanging around downstairs in my home.”

If I were Gibson, I’d ask for a meeting with Summit staffers and say the following:

“Okay, so the South by Southwest screening….that went okay, right? It didn’t? What did Eric Kohn say? What about Variety? And Wells? But the people in the audience were down with it, no? That’s what I read. And even the critics who beat up Jody and the film in general have been saying good things about my performance.

“But let’s face facts besides. The Beaver, good as it is in many respects, is simply too sad and morose to make a lot of money. Jodie emphasized the heartstrings and suppressed the crazy. I would have gone there if she’d wanted to, believe me, but she didn’t and that’s that — fine, I love her, she knows what she’s doing, no worries. But the movie isn’t funny or crazy enough. It’s not a comedy or even a half a comedy, and when people figure that out, it’s going to sputter and stall and make a beeline for the DVD bin. You know it. I know it.

“The thing we need to do is not act like we’re scared of our own shadow, and so far…well, no offense, but no one had done that better than you guys. But you know as well as I do that chickenshit is not a marketing strategy.

“Do you guys want to…what, hide me forever? Don’t want to let me talk or get out at all or sit down with any interviewers at all? I want to ask you a question, and I want you to try and answer me honestly. Are we men or are we mice?

“The Beaver will hit the beach in less than two months, and it’s obviously not a bad film and I give one of my better performances in it so let’s just stop trembling in our boots and deal with it, man up and tell the truth. I’ve got issues….duhhh….but the movie is about a guy with issues besides, and in the end it’s about love and family and not hiding from ourselves and owning up to our frailties and vulnerabilities. So let’s stop with the trembling and embrace what the film is saying, and embrace who and what we are and stop all the terrified shilly-shallying. The movie’s going to be gone in two or three weeks anyway so what do we have to lose?”

Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, which showed to a packed house tonight at Austin’s Paramount theatre, is occasionally amusing but is mostly a sad and red-eyed and rather distressed family drama. Everyone thought early on that the basic story (i.e., a man surrenders his life and personality to a Beaver hand puppet) would be at least half-comedic, but it’s not. Everyone thought that the hand-puppet schtick would give Mel Gibson the freedom to go really manic and nutso, but he doesn’t. Because Foster doesn’t want that.

The Beaver is more of “heart” thing about healing and family and forgiving. And it uses lots and lots of closeups of Gibson’s lined and weathered face and his graying, thinning hair. What he does about 70% of the time is look forlorn and gloomy and guilty about his shortcomings. Foster is making a film, after all, about putting demons to bed and climbing out of our personal foxholes. So at the end of the day The Beaver, which is essentially a chick flick, guides Mel’s Walter character, who goes through major hell in this film, back to health and vibrancy.

So it’s a nice soulful movie, a film that cares and gives hugs and feels sad for poor Mel during his aberration period when he goes absolutely everywhere with that brown hand puppet and acts peppy and talks like an Australian Ray Winstone. But the Beaver scenes, unhealthy as they may be for Mel’s Walter character, give the film its sass and vigor, and when the Beaver goes away near the end, the movie loses its fuel and loses its raison d’etre.

As everyone knows, The Beaver is about Gibson’s Walker being depressed and on the verge of suicide, but then snapping back to life when he surrenders his identity and personality to the Beaver puppet. The Beaver takes over and Walter is alive again — his wife (Foster) falls in love with him again, his toy business becomes revitalized, he and The Beaver go on a lot of talk shows and appear on magazine covers, his younger son loves his aliveness….although his older son (Anton Yelchin) hates the whole Beaver routine and thinks his dad is an asshole.

I took Gibson’s decision to hide behind the hand puppet as a metaphor for the way all of us hide the weaker, softer, more vulnerable aspects of our personality from society and the business world especially. Gibson isn’t “himself” during his Beaver phase, but his Beaver personality is alert and creative and crackling, and he’s walking around all day with a spring in his step and paying his employees and steering a winning ship, etc. What’s so bad about that?

I’ll tell you what’s so bad about that. The real Gibson isn’t “there” for his family. He insists on bringing the Beaver into everything, including family dinners and his intimate moments with Foster in their conjugal bed, and that’s not good….or so the movie tells us. But what about people who are into being furries?

There’s a subplot about a relationship between Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence that involves Yelchin being a paid term-paper and speechwriter for Lawrence and a few classmates — an extension of the idea of the real person hiding behind a “front.”

The Beaver is all right, not bad, a decent film, a respectable film…but nobody’s going to do cartwheels over it. Gibson deserves points and respect for nailing the Walter role and giving it hell in both senses of the term. Foster, Yelchin and Lawrence are fine.

The Beaver director Jodie Foster during the post-screening q & a.

Beaver costar Anton Yelchin.

Life is worship, celebration, current, ecstasy…all in this together. Wearing Adidas sneakers. Doing Katy Perry. Listening to “Civilization,” the new single from Justice’s second album, out April 4th. Under the visual guidance of Romain (son of Costa) Gavras.