Jack Black doesn’t look like a Mexican national in Richard Linklater‘s Bernie, which I saw at last summer’s L.A. Film Festival, but he does in the one-sheet. In that poster his eyes resemble those of Pedro Armendariz, and to some extent the eyes of Cantinflas. Yeah, I know — who’s Cantinflas?

Sasha Stone and I knocked off a pretty good Oscar Poker on Tuesday. The usual Oscar round-up stuff. Sasha put it up last night and forgot to tell me. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

I’m fairly certain this Bodyguard Bluray wasn’t rushed out in the wake of Whitney Houston‘s death. These things are planned months in advance. I saw this Warner Bros. release a little more than 19 years ago, and I remember almost nothing about it. (I had to read the Wiki synopsis to catch up.) All I remember is that Costner took some heat for wearing an unflattering Steve McQueen haircut. Mick Jackson, the director, has done L.A. Story before The Bodyguard, he made Clean Slate (’94) and Volcano (’97) after it…and that was it.

There are those few, those enlightened few, who understood the rhyme and the purity of Haywire, and there are those who will always kowtow to Asian martial-arts machismo-fantasy bullshit — easily the most lethally boring and spiritually depleting genre on the planet. The place where the latter group is hanging out is a place I’ll never want to visit.

I’ver been so bummed by the whole Oscar situation that I didn’t update my Gold Derby predictions until last night, and that was mainly because Tom O’Neil kicked my ass and told me I hadn’t updated “since the Coolidge administration.” All I can say is God help the Academy (i.e., the Oscar telecast) if they have another lineup like this next year. The lack of fire and suspense and just plain interest is breathtaking. Harvey’s win (and no slam on the guy — he’s just doing what he does and God love him) is the film community’s loss.

Then again this is funny:

Sean Baker‘s Starlet, which will premiere at South by Southwest, takes its title from the name of a Chihuahua owned by the lead character, Jane (Dree Hemingway), an aimless San Fernando Valley youth. This indicates, of course, that the film is committed to an oblique strategy of sorts as it conveys…how do I know what it conveys? It’s about Jane and her no-account doper friends and an 85 year-old woman (Besedka Johnson) and a stash of cash.

In real life the only people who smoke are the really young, the lower-middle and lower classes, the anxiety-ridden, the self-destructives, the jerkoffs, losers and wipeouts. But in filmed dramas (i.e., definitely not comedies), almost all young actors smoke. Constantly. Because it gives them something to do with their hands, and because directors want them to feel steady and confident as they’re delivering lines. In short, smoking by actors is a mark of creative insecurity and weakness. The more people smoke in a film, the less I’m inclined to go with it.

It is obligatory, of course, that all publicity efforts and promotional materials must not only ignore but flirt with suppressing the facts about a young actress’s lineage, if she happens to have one of any note. Because the idea of a young person born with a silver spoon always stirs resentment. Ms. Hemingway, as you might have guessed, is a great-granddaughter of Papa, and the daughter of Mariel Hemingway. She’s 24, 5’9″ tall, and a beneficiary of classical Shakespearean acting training at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Perhaps in some way this background has foritified her portrayal of a white-trash girl in Starlet, but not likely.

An orally suggestive poster for Goon, the violent and presumably vulgar hockey comedy that Alliance is opening tomorrow in Canada, has been 86’ed at various Toronto transit shelters due to complaints, etc. The poster shows Canadian hyphenate Jay Baruchel, who co-wrote (with Evan Goldberg) and costars, making a gesture with his fingers and tongue that seems to suggest…what, analingus?

The film costars Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber and Baruchel.

As I said on 2.8, “I’m sorry but I’m not getting the same sense of ironic hooligan satire from Goon that I did from the Hanson Brothers drawing blood in George Roy Hill‘s Slap Shot. But I’ll bet that the Goon guys (director Michael Dowse, screenwriters Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg) took their inspiration from the Hanson Brothers.

Magnet is releasing the film stateside on VOD starting tomorrow, and in theatres on 3.30. Nobody has told me dick about any LA press screenings.