The L.A. all-media screening for Daniel Espinosa‘s Safe House happens tonight at 7 pm. Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds bagging a paycheck for a standard action thriller — i.e, a variation of the Training Day formula set in South Africa, CIA operatives instead of L.A. cops, same old same old, blah, blah explosions, etc.

Many critics have already seen Safe House and reviewed it and, according to Rotten Tomatoes summary, given it a failing grade. Universal’s request that reviews be held until Friday seems….well, odd in light of this.

Is Reynolds ever going to star in a really good commercial film? Buried was riveting as far as it went, but it burned the audience at the finale. Adventureland was the only other pretty good film that Reynolds has costarred in. Otherwise the man has built a career out of starring in nothing but paycheck movies.

Daniel Espinosa, the new Tony Scott, is Swedish.

Vera Farmiga did the work and cashed her check and put some of the money in her kids’ college fund. Brendan Gleeson did the work and cashed his check and put some of the money into home renovation. Sam Shepard did the work and cashed his check and put some of the money into dental work. Ruben Blades did the work and cashed his check and put some of the money into building a music studio.

Here’s a reminder that Robert Weide‘s Woody Allen: A Documentary will begin streaming gratis starting tomorrow (i.e., Thursday, 2.9) “for a limited time,” whatever that means. There will also be an encore broadcast on PBS CoCal on Saturday, 2.18 at 9 p.m. Here’s my review from mid November 2011.

Tony Gilroy‘s The Bourne Legacy (8.3.12) got a boost from Jeremy Renner‘s standout performance in Mission Impossible 4. That movie explained to the primitives (i.e., those who couldn’t be bothered to see The Hurt Locker) that Renner is solid and cool. The second best thing is this trailer, which makes it clear that Legacy is a Renner-for-Matt Damon substitution thriller with many of the same players (Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Scott Glenn ) as before.

The only thing that gives me a moment of pause, frankly, is the August 3rd release date — obviously a hedging-our-bets-but-hoping-for-the-best strategy. To me it amounts to Universal saying the following: “Renner is not Damon, and so we can’t go up against the big fat whopper titles in May, June and July. It’s better and safer to go with early August, which isn’t really a dog-day opening like mid-August or late August. As far as we’re concerned, August 3rd is the same as late July. August is generally regarded as a dump month, okay, but not in our minds, and certainly not in the case of this film.”

A Better Life‘s Demian Bichir was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar due to quality of performance, word-of-mouth and pressing the flesh at industry events. When I returned from Santa Barbara last weekend I asked about running some FYC ads to help things along, but was told it was too late in the Phase Two cycle to construct ads because it would take too long. This didn’t seem to make sense as a full two weeks remain before the balloting dealdine.

So yesterday afternoon I turned to freelance art director Dylan Wells and asked if he could throw together some Bichir ads overnight. “No problem,” he said. Dylan worked on two variations (A Better Life Bichir, GQ Bichir) in four ad sizes until 2 am this morning, and when I woke up they were all in my inbox. Some minor changes were implemented today, and now they’re ready to go.

I know that in all my years of dealing with online ads I’ve never heard of any ad creator delivering two sets of ads in four sizes in a matter of hours. It always takes a few days.

“The title role in Albert Nobbs goes to Glenn Close, who played it Off Broadway thirty years ago and has striven ever since to bring it to the screen. She co-wrote and co-produced the film, and is seldom out of our sight. But what do we see? Albert is a woman dressed as a man, in the Ireland of the late eighteen-hundreds, yet what Close serves up is neither man nor woman, flesh nor fowl, but a strange hieratic hybrid of no discernible identity.

“She walks as though freshly risen from the dead, patrolling the streets and corridors in a stiffened glide, with those dark, deep-sunk eyes of hers staring hard ahead. Albert is a waiter in an upmarket Dublin hotel, and the uniform adds starch to her otherworldliness: grief-black suit and tie, snowy shirt, and, for outdoors, a rolled umbrella and an ill-fitting bowler hat. What you feel, watching Close, is not that you are watching gender being bent into new, absorbing shapes but that you might as well have stayed home and leafed through a book on Magritte.” — from Anthony Lane‘s 2.6 review in The New Yorker.

Grantland‘s Mark Harris admires Meryl Streep‘s “old Maggie” acting in The Iron Lady, but he has difficulty with the other two-thirds of the film because it “lets its subject down by insisting that the most — no, the only — interesting thing about Prime Minister Thatcher is that she was a woman in a world of male power.

“There’s a campy scene in Mommie Dearest when the widowed Joan Crawford tells off an all-male Mad Men-era boardroom by bellowing, ‘Don’t fuck with me, fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo!’ That’s a fun idea for a moment, but not for a whole movie. And for a subject as complex as Thatcher, it’s fatal.”

God, I love this moment. Faye Dunaway tapped into being fearsome in a ferocious, bigger-than-life way when she made Network, but this style of acting, for her, reached its ultimate manifestation in this scene.

I was one of the first to see Mommie Dearest in the late summer of 1981. It was an evening showing in Manhattan — at the Paramount headquarters screening room above Columbus Circle — and afterwards I remember sharing an elevator down to the lobby with four or five gay journalists, and how tickled they were by Dunaway’s butch-boss scenes (the afore-mentioned Pepsi Cola boardroom scene plus “no wire hangers EVER!”) Being kinda youngish, I remember putting it together around that time why gay guys feel an affinity with tough women. I also remember realizing that I never wanted to get into any kind of dispute with an angry gay guy…ever.

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, etc. I would rather face a pack of drunken rednecks with baseball bats. Gay guys are wolverines when they get mad. Don’t even think about it.

Last night I didn’t attend Film Independent at LACMA’s screening of Moneyball at the Bing Theatre at LACMA. (I’ve seen Bennett Miller‘s film five or six times.) But I did attend a pre-screening q & a with star-producer Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane. Thanks to FIND’s Elise Freimuth and LACMA host, curator and gadfly Elvis Mitchell, I mean. Without their help I would have been out on the pavement.

Moneyball‘s Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill during last night’s q & a at LACMA’s Bing Theatre.

It must be said that Freimuth’s assistance aside, LACMA/FIND rules regarding press coverage are a pain in the rear. No photography or recording of any kind, they say (largely due to a fear of flash photography), plus the constant eyeballing of possible violations by hawk-eyed LACMA ushers. Sony, Pitt and Hill are looking for favorable coverage and attention, of course. And I was naturally looking to provide that (being a Moneyball supporter from way back), but LACMA/FIND regulations blocked and delayed this to some extent. I certainly didn’t feel free to audio record last night’s event. On the other hand Freimuth was gracious enough to provide the two Pitt-Hill shots on this page, so thanks much.

It must also be reported that LACMA/FIND (or Sony, perhaps) made a very strange call by deciding to include Moneyball‘s Oscar-nominated editor Christopher Tellefson and sound mixer Deb Adair in the pre-screening q & a. The place was packed to the rafters with hoi polloi and invited guests, and nobody wanted to hear them speak. The always-gracious Mitchell asked them three or four questions, of course, and Tellefson at one point offered a long, sprawling answer. And I swear to God you could hear the exact same response coming from every silent audience member in the room: “Why are these two sharing the stage with Brad Pitt? No offense and due respect but we didn’t wait in line for an hour or more to listen to these two…c’mon! Whose idea was this?”

It was fun to listen to the deep-voiced Beane, whom Pitt portrays in the film, and to savor his sense of humor and candor, and his observations and anecdotes. And Pitt and Hill’s commentary, etc. All to the good.

Here’s a video interview that Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson did with Pitt and Beane following the q & a:

The first in a series of This Is War billboard capturings in West Hollywood. The images are artful, I feel, when you consider the elements (billboard + neighborhood + natural light + cars) as a single integrated statement. Something very subtle but in some way measurable has happened due to the presence of these posters over the last few days. I can say no more.

Last weekend I finally bought Lorber Films’ Bluray of Bertrand Blier‘s Going Places. What a pleasure in every department. This is one of the great anarchic comedies of any culture or era, and the film-like Bluray made me feel like I was watching it fresh and new. With the exception of a 40-second passage of dupey, sepia-colored footage, the transfer is clean and robust from top to bottom.

From my September 2011 riff called “Going Places Forever”:

“Going Places (’74) is one of the most curiously seductive films ever made about loutish, anarchic, groin-driven swagger. Gerard Depardieu and the late Patrick Dewaere are a pair of easygoing counter-culture brutes who fall into a series of sloppy impulsive adventures, and yet never act in what you’d call an especially harsh or cruel manner. They’re dopey animals in a sense, and in another a couple of social adventurers looking to see what they can get away with.

“Let’s steal this or fuck that…anything we want. We’re young and brash and can always get it up, etc. What else matters? We’re bulletproof. What does her underwear smell like? Aaahh…she’s very young! Well, 16 or so. It’s like she just took them off!

“They steal scooters or cars or food or money, and are constantly on the hunt for poon. They’re careless cads and improvisational jerkoffs, kicking around to kick around and see where whim takes them. And yet they’re boyishly innocent on some level, and are nowhere near smart or mean or ambitious enough to become serious criminals. They’re just playing it by ear. They love sex and chasing after women, but they don’t have the first clue what women are really about or what they want. And, being boobs, everything these guys get into either backfires or turns out unexpectedly or delivers some kind or fake-out surprise.

“The film itself is like Depardieu and Dewaere, ambling along without seeming to have any particular plan, and in so doing it gradually charms you into taking their side or least not wanting to see them get caught. It gives you an idea of what a hooligan high can feel like, to break the law and laugh and not give a damn. It’s quite a trick. I don’t think any American film about small-time bad guys has ever managed the same kind of mood or chemistry.”

In posting this new English-subtitled trailer for The Kid With The Bike (IFC Films, now available), it’s only fair that I include an excerpt from my 5.14.11 Cannes Film Festival review.

“Directors Jean Pierre and Luc Dardennes are first-rate scenarists and straight shooters. Their work is assured — they know exactly what they’re doing every time. And their film ends well. But Cannes critics are, I feel, kneeling forward and kissing the proverbial ring. There’s nothing wrong with that in a general sense as long as there’s perspective.

“Yes, I took an instant dislike to Thomas Doret, the red-haired lead character called Cyrill, when I first saw the trailer. This feeling deepened when I saw the film. I disliked his obstinate-woodpecker personality and the dogged, loon-like tone in his voice. If I ran into a kid like this in real life I would excuse myself fairly quickly, you bet.

“Honestly? While the decision of his youngish kitchen-chef dad to abandon Cyrill and go his own way because he has very little money is reprehensible and pathetic, on a certain level I sympathized. Some men are just weak or selfish or naturally un-gifted at parenting (like my own dad), and some kids are just irksome. My heart goes out to any kid dealing with parental neglect and/or abuse, but on the other hand life is hard and sometimes cruel. Some of us are dealt shitty cards, but we have to play them as best we can.

“Cyrill, it’s clear, is emotionally damaged and heading for some kind of downward swirl, perhaps into crime or becoming an abuser on his own. So on one level it’s admirable when a kind-hearted, fair-minded hairdresser named Samantha (Cecile de France) agrees to become Cyrill’s weekend care-giver, but on another level it’s a bit…puzzling?

“She’s expressing a standard maternal instinct, but I found it curious that a youngish, attractive woman’s life would be so otherwise bereft of passion and commitment that she would leap into this kind of relationship. And I found her willingness to suddenly dump her somewhat selfish-minded, not-especially-bright boyfriend when he says ‘it’s him or me’ too abrupt.

“I felt that the whole film was a bit too simplistic and on-the-nose. I went with it, but I also felt that I was being fed a plate of honest but under-cooked contrivances by a couple of talented but (this time around) under-inspired chefs.”

“Let’s have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors,” Glenn Kenny tweeted a little while ago. “Pray for @DavidPoland @kristapley @GuyLodge and @AwardsDaily, that they may not be crushed by the inevitable world-weariness. God grant them the serenity to accept the awards results they cannot change, and the temerity to tell the rest of us to shut up about it. And a special prayer for @wellshwood, that he may not be afflicted by spontaneous combustion.”