I still don’t understand why Ami Canaan Mann‘s forthcoming Texas Killing Fields (Anchor Bay Films, 10.7), which will play the Venice Film Festival later this month (or in very early September), doesn’t have a website up. Or why Anchor Bay doesn’t at least include basic information and promotional art for the film on its website. They need to get on the stick.

For whatever reason Texas Killing Fields won’t be playing the Toronto Film Festival or any other festival besides Venice. Don’t dark policiers of this sort need the critics to rally round?

I reported a while back that it’s about the Texas I-45 Murders, a series of unsolved killings of prostitutes and lonely girls in the ’80s, probably by more than one assailant, in a blighted area south of Houston near Interstate I-45, which runs from Dallas down to Galveston Bay.

Mann, director of an earlier feature called Morning, is the daughter of Michael Mann, who produced this Zodiac-resembling crime drama. Texas Killing Fields costars Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chloe Moretz, Stephen Graham, Jessica Chastain and Annabeth Gish.

Two years ago Danny Boyle was planning to direct it before he bailed in fall ’09 to make 127 Hours, but not before calling the script “almost too dark to get made.”

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming reported on 2.7.10 that Don Ferrarone‘s script is “a true story of a pair of detectives investigating [the] murders in a stretch of bayous near the oil refineries in coastal Texas where as many as 70 bodies have turned up over the past 30 years.”

Could there be anything more desperate-sounding than a director announcing an intention to direct some kind of sequel or companion piece to a cult film he made decades earlier? The presumption is that Ridley Scott‘s Son of Blade Runner will probably get made because the money is there, and not because anyone has a super-brilliant idea for a sequel.

The story’s been told and there’s nowhere to go with it. Nobody cares about Decker or the unicorn or Roy or Douglas Trumbull‘s steamy been-there, done-that Los Angeles or Sean Young‘s replicant any more. All the various cuts of this film have so saturated film-bum fanboy culture that nobody has any room for a newbie. The past is the past. Leave it there.

I know — a rebellion of the replicants. A big gang of them get together and form ranks and get their hands on guns. We want to live and somehow we’re going to find the technology that will prolong our lives! And Deckard, having accepted who and what he is, is a mole inside the system, acting like a double agent, feeding information to the rebels, etc.

Magnolia is releasing Anne Sewitsky‘s Happy Happy in New York and Los Angeles on 9.16, and it’s now starting to be shown to journalists. But there’s no subtitled trailer to be found on YouTube, the film isn’t listed on ComingSoon.net, and it can’t be found on Wikipedia. So here’s the 2010 Norweigan trailer. It’s pretty easy to tell what the film’s about, and the tone of it.

Happy Happy is a sexual comedy of sorts, but not in the American sense. It’s a frank, plain-spoken, curiously skewed film. It’s “funny” but not silly or scatterbrained. It is not devoid of drama. It contains real people and hard confrontations, etc. It should be remembered that it won the Narrative World Cinema Jury Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

I saw and quite enjoyed Happy Happy at Sundance 2011. It’s not fluffy but it’s not too heavy either. It’s about a mad intoxicating affair (is there any other kind?) between a lovely, optimistic-minded housewife (Agnes Kittelsen) and a recently arrived married neighbor (Henrik Rafaelsen). There’s a certain humorous emphasis in the film, it must be said, on oral sex. A somewhat brazen emphasis, I should add. There’s no seeing this film and not remembering this aspect.

The affair is eventually found out, of course, as all affairs are. Particularly those taking place in a small town. The trick for any infidel is to be as covert and CIA-like as possible. I know — I was the other man in an extra-marital affair that lasted more than two and a half years. It was painful and glorious while it lasted. No regrets at all. The heart wants and needs what it wants and needs.

“Kittelsen’s performance is the linchpin of the film — her open, emotive face reveals as much about her thoughts as her poor impulse control,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter‘s Justin Lowe. “Whether cavorting with her new lover or probing her husband to share his emotions, her expressive performance easily draws the audience in.

“Sewitsky directs the performances and camera with confidence and flair, although the succession of Christmastime interiors is rather repetitive, in contrast to the exterior scenes, which breathe fresh dynamism into the pacing.”

Joachim Rafaelsen plays Kittelsen’s taciturn husband; Maibritt Saerens plays Rafaelsen’s attorney wife.

Happy Happy director Anne Sewitsky (l.), star Agnes Kittelsen (r.) at a January 2011 Park City party for Norweigan entries.

I’ve seen this film so many times I can say almost all the dialogue in synch with the actors, Rocky Horror-style. But nobody is more queer for high-end black-and-white Blurays than myself, and so I have no choice. None whatsover. I won’t even bitch if it’s grainy, which it probably will be to some extent. It’s the old thready textures of the 1950s clothing that I’m looking forward to. That and being able to study the sweat beads and beard follicles of the twelve-man cast.

Two days after the Depardieu plane-urination incident, a Bluray of the original “pee on the rug” movie is in video stores and purchasable on Amazon. Excellent timing. My copy is being messengered over as we speak. Word is that the bowling-alley scenes have that extra-shimmering Bluray pop-through quality, and that the rest of of the film…let’s wait.

Reports indicate that the suicide of Russell Armstrong was prompted by terrible financial despair. He apparently spent himself into debt in order to keep his Real Housewives of Beverly Hills wife Taylor Armstrong in clover (or the appearance of same), and eventually found himself in neck-deep quicksand and more or less said to himself, “I can’t stand this any more….I’m outta here.”

This sadly exposes the kind of pathetic relationships that are rife in this community — the wife is a total money-and-attention whore and the guy, usually older and not her physical-attraction equal, understands that the only way to keep her is to shower her with this and that luxury. There’s a rumor about a book that was going to float rumors about the guy being bi or whatever. He should have just gone gay and walked away and rented a nice little West Hollywood condo and chilled out. Life is very short. You have to choose happiness, but the “happy” you choose has to be grounded in something more nourishing than just having a lot of dough and thereby satisfying the shallow whims of a vacuous nobody.

Yesterday CNN’s Anderson Cooper got the giggles at the end of a segment about the Gerard Depardieu peeing-on-a-plane incident. It starts around the 2:40 mark. It’s funny and infectious but (a) the reason Cooper is laughing this hard is not really about Depardieu but something cathartic that only Cooper understands, (b) his laughter has this fluttery falsetto (amost eunuch-y) sound, and (c) the last syllable of Depardieu’s name is pronounced “dyeuh,” not “doo.”

Cooper’s breakdown reminded me, of course, of a similar scene in Michael Ritchie ‘s The Candididate (’72). I prefer Redford’s laugh to Cooper’s — no offense.

Truly primal laughter is never about any one event or mishap or whatever. It’s usually about the release of tension and frustration, and it’s completely unsuppressable if you feel you’re exposing some careless, thoughtless or callous part of yourself by laughing. I once wrote about a tree-surgeon boss I didn’t like and how he broke down in tears after a gas cap popped off a huge chain saw he had lifted above his head, and gas splashed all over his chest and stomach and lower flank. He was so angry and frustrated that he openly wept — literally going “whoa-hoo-hoo!” — and I started giggling at the whole spectacle. I had to suppress it, of course, or he would have killed me. But I couldn’t stop.

The mileage estimate websites claim that the drive from Albuquerque to Telluride is 207 miles. Yeah…as the crow flies. But if you’re driving it’s more like 310 or 320 miles. The more scenic eastern route (Albuqerque, Santa Fe, Chama, Durango, Dolores, Telluride) is 309 miles; the western route (Albuquerque, Gallup, Dolores, Telluride) is 320, but the roads are a bit flatter and faster.

Scenic route (heading to Telluride Film Festival, beginning on 8.31): Albuquerque to Santa Fe: 54 miles. Santa Fe to Chama: 92 miles. TOTAL: 146 miles (or 2 1/2 hrs.). Chama to Durango, CO: 76 miles. Durango to Dolores: 37 miles. Dolores to Telluride: 50 miles

TOTAL: 163 miles (or 3.5 hours). Grand Total: 309 miles = 6 hours.

GOING THERE: Lap #1 — Wednesday, 8.31, starting at 6 pm. Albuquerque to Santa Fe = 54 miles, or maybe 60 minutes. Take 25 east from ALB to Santa Fe. Go NORTH on 84 to Chama. Lap #2: Santa Fe to Chama = 92 miles, or maybe 90 minutes. North on 84, then take 17 north to Chama.

Lap #3 — Thursday, 9.1, starting at 9 am: Chama to Durango, CO = 76 miles or about 75 to 90 minutes. West on 84/64, then due north on 84 to Pagosa Springs, CO, then West on 160 to Durango (47 miles from Pagosa Springs). Lap #4: Durango to Dolores = 37 miles. West on 160 to Mancos (about 24 miles), then NORTH on 184 to Dolores (about 15 miles from Mancos). Then NE on 145. Lap #5: Dolores to Telluride, or 50 miles. NE on 145, maybe an hour.

RETURNING: Lap #1 — Monday, 9.1., starting around noon: Telluride to Dolores, or 50 miles. SW on 145, maybe an hour. Lap #2: Dolores to Gallup, or about 129 miles or two hours. Due south on 491. Lap #3: Gallup to Albuquerque, or about 140 miles east on Interstate 40. Or roughly another two hours. TOTAL: 320 miles, or about 5 hours. Averaging 70 mph would make it a four and 1/2 hour trip…we’ll see.