Last night Warner Bros. publicity made a spirited, gung-ho attempt to re-launch Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion among award-season cognoscenti and to put it into “the conversation,” so to speak. They invited journos like myself to a pleasant, talent-populated soiree (Soderbergh, Benicio del Toro, Gary Shandling, Contagion producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, screenwriter Scott Burns) inside the Clarity lobby-rotunda, and followed this with a screening of the film.

Steven Soderbergh prior to last night’s screening of Contagion.

Benicio del Toro, Contagion producer Stacey Sher.

Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns.

The pitch was basically “this is an undeniably gripping, highly intelligent, superbly-made socio-political-scientific thriller“” — no argument from me — “so why isn’t it being mentioned a bit more in terms of awards chatter, best-of-the-year lists and so on?”

The best response I can think of is that Contagion is going on a best-of-2011 list…mine, I mean. My second response is that with Contagion having made about $75 million domestic, what’s the beef? And my third response is that it’s about a subject — social devastation caused by a pathogen — that unsettles people on a very deep level, perhaps more than they know going in, and so I’m guessing they’d rather just leave it at that and not revisit the Contagion reality any more, thanks.

I mean, I was scratching my face all through last night’s screening, and half-wondering if there was something wrong with me because of this, absurd as that sounds. I don’t mind seeing Gwynneth Paltrow die horribly, but I don’t want to go the same way…please.

On top of which Warner Bros. decided to open Contagion in early September. This conveyed to all that (a) they were going for the money (and a $75 million haul is nothing to sneeze at) and (b) the studio felt it was good enough to release in a quality-friendly portion of the calendar but that it wasn’t necessarily an awards contender or they would have opened it in late October or November or December.

There are three other factors: (1) Contagion is an intellectual-technical chiller (as opposed to an emotional drama of some kind) and is therefore regarded as a kind of “genre” film, and that kind of distinction rarely leads to awards chatter; (2) To some extent Contagion is, let’s face it, emotionally dry or reserved, like many of Soderbergh’s films (a quality I’ve always rather enjoyed and in fact praised); and (3) It doesn’t contain one of those thematic echoes or undercurrents that Oscar-season films tend to have, nor does it deliver some basic recognizable truth.

Yes, it says that “it’s entirely possible that millions of us might suddenly die some day due to a runaway virus” but that’s not a basic recognizable truth. If it happens, that would be an anecdotal fact.

Here’s my early September review. I love Contagion. It’s going on my best-of-the-year list, no question. And I especially loved the performances by Jennifer Ehle (her bedside scene with her ailing dad is one of the few genuinely affecting emotional moments), Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould and Laurence Fisburne. And I can’t wait for the Bluray, and I wish it would be longer when it comes out in that format.

Most urban film wolves have by now seen Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants. It’s been playing for three nights now so it’s time for some reactions. I already know what’s going to happen. 75%…no, 65% are going to fall into line with the majority of the critics (it has a 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating) and the rest are gonna trash it, or at least take potshots or say stuff like “aahh, for the days of Citizen Ruth and Election!”

Even before Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, a 20-year-old Egyptian college student, posted nude photos of herself on her blog as a protest against the country’s conservative culture, I would have described Egypt as a horridly uptight, erotically repressed country that believes in subjugating and objectifying women. Remember what happened to CBS reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square last February, and that the Egyptian men who assaulted her were the alleged good guys — i.e., pro-freedom, pro-Arab Spring, anti-Mubarak.

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy

Since Elmahdy posted the photos earlier this week I’ve been having these thoughts all over again, that Egypt is a sexually constipated hellhole on almost all levels of society, considering all the people who are enraged at Elmahdy and calling for her blood. Egyptian liberals, even, are angry at her because they’re afraid the domestic response to the posting “will hurt them during the country’s parliamentary election next week, the first since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted,” as an 11.17 N.Y. Times story states.

The spirit of Isadora Duncan and Anais Nin and Patti Smith lives within Elmahdy, and all power to her. She’s after my own heart.

The Times‘ Liam Stack and David D. Kirkpatrick wrote that “it is hard to overstate the shock at an Egyptian woman’s posting nude photographs of herself online in a conservative religious country where a vast majority of Muslim women are veiled and even men seldom bare their knees in public. In Egypt, even kissing in public is taboo.”

Another report stated that “in Egypt most Muslim women wear veils, and even if they don’t, it’s rare to see uncovered arms and legs in public. Many Egyptians say they’re deeply offended by what Elmahdy has done, and yet somehow” — this is key to the discussion — “her NSFW blog ‘A Rebel’s Diary‘ has been viewed 1.5 million times since she published the post earlier this week.”

Elmahdy has written the following explanation/response:

“Try nude models who worked in Fine Art Faculties in the early 1970s, hide all art books and smash naked archaeological statues. Then take off your clothes and look at yourselves in the mirror, then burn your body that you so despise to get rid of your sexual complexes forever, before subjecting me to your bigoted insults or denying my freedom of expression.”

I walked by one of these little Fiat 500s (possibly the Abarth model) in Paris last May. It was painted bright red, and for the first time in many years I started fantasizing about dumping the beater (even though it runs fine and is 100% owned) and buying one of these. I’m kind of a MiniCooper type of guy so this was right up my alley.

But then I saw this Jennifer Lopez spot about the Fiat-Gucci 500, and the fantasy keeled right over and died. To me Lopez is a headstrong, chirpy-voiced, Bronx-born, girly-girl opportunist looking to hustle whatever she can, whenever she can. Whatever she’s selling, I’ll never buy…ever.

Wanna see a great Fiat commercial? One that totally reverses the Lopez effect? Here we go:

Kenyon Hopkins‘ delicate musical score for 12 Angry Men creates a counterpoint mood to the film’s heated and acrimonious jury deliberations. It could be a score for a film about an elderly woman living in a musty old house with eight or nine cats and too much clutter. Stillness, solitude, lament. A portrait of who the jurors are within themselves, before and after the shouting.

Hopkins (1912 -1983) composed in a moody jazzy vein. His music didn’t surge or cascade — it sprinkled as if from a garden hose. He also created the scores for Baby Doll, The Strange One, The Fugitive Kind (directed by 12 Angry Men‘s Sidney Lumet), Wild in the Country (the final half-serious Elvis Presley film), The Hustler (Hopkins’ jazziest and most downbeat Manhattan-ish score), Lilith, Mister Buddwing and This Property Is Condemned.

I felt a curiously powerful synchronicity the first time I saw Wim Wenders‘ The American Friend at the 1977 NY Film Festival). I’m not fatally ill and I’ve never performed a contract killing, but otherwise I’ve long felt a kind of dark harmony between that Hamburg waterfront, cowboy-hatted, existential noir vibe and my own moods, fears and free-floating anxieties. You know…that more-corrupted-than-you-realize Highsmith thing.

I had a delightful lunch with Tyrannosaur star (and Iron Lady costar) Olivia Colman from 12:45 to 1:45 pm at the Standard. We both ordered Ceasar salad with chicken, and the time just flew. I’ll run the piece tonight or tomorrow morning, but I was so taken by Colman’s robust complexion, auburn hair and gleaming white teeth against the light robin’s egg blue of the Standard’s ’50s-kitsch restaurant, etc. Had to run these right away.

Olivia Colman at Standard Hotel diner — 11.18, 1:55 pm.

Orlando Sentinel critic Roger Moore, a “name” and a good, clever fellow, has been shown the door. Another vital, widely-read critic gone with the wind. I know because a publicist friend told me that Moore emailed a colleague today confirming he’s been shitcanned. Hugs, chin-ups, condolences.

Four significant, critically hailed 2011 documentaries — Errol Morris‘s Tabloid, Werner Herzog‘s Into The Abyss, Andrew Rossi‘s Page One: Inside The N.Y. Times and Asif Kapadia‘s Senna — didn’t make the Academy’s shortlist, per today’s announcement. 124 docs had originally qualified, and 15 made the final cut.

A half-hour ago a publicist pal and I discussed why this or that film doesn’t make the cut, and he agreed with my observation that the doc committee often ignores docs made by big-name directors like Morris or Herzog. The committee presumes that the big-name docs “are getting or going to get a lot of attention or box-office anyway so what do they need us for?,” the publicist said.

Poor John Sloss must be really pissed heartbroken about Senna, which he’s been pushing hard for many months.

The 15 shortlisted docs, in alphabetical order:

Battle for Brooklyn (RUMER Inc.); Bill Cunningham New York (First Thought Films); Buck? (Cedar Creek Productions); Hell and Back Again (Roast Beef Productions Limited); If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Marshall Curry Productions, LLC); Jane’s Journey (NEOS Film GmbH & Co. KG); The Loving Story (Augusta Films); Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (@radical.media); Pina (Neue Road Movies GmbH); Project Nim (a.k.a. “the monkey movie” — Red Box Films); Semper Fi: Always Faithful (Tied to the Tracks Films, Inc.); Sing Your Song (S2BN Belafonte Productions, LLC); Undefeated (Spitfire Pictures); Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (JUF Pictures, Inc.); We Were Here (Weissman Projects, LLC)

Doc committee apparatchiks will eventually select the five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist.

Generic: The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, 1.24.12, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2011 will be presented on Sunday, 2.26.12, at the Kodak Theatre.

A New York-based critic friend just wrote me the following: “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Sony can’t screen The Girl With Dragon Tattoo until 11.28, and so New York Film Critics Circle chief John Anderson has moved the voting date to 11.29,” or one day later than previously announced. Anderson informed the NYFCC membership yesterday by email, my source says. Anderson decided not to directly confirm (or deny) the change when I wrote him this morning.