If you just sit there and watch John Carter without a bug up your ass, it isn’t that awful. It’s a bore and a wash, but it’s vigorous and persistent and reasonably well done. Lots of money blown, etc. But there’s no getting rid of that bug. There’s nothing fresh or vital or original about any of it. It doesn’t need to be seen because it’s all been done and seen before. But if you can lower your standards, it’s not that painful. It just lasts too long.

Taylor Kitsch in John Carter

“Slick,” “animated energy,” “playful,” “strangely compelling,” “very silly,” etc. As expected, 21 Jump Street (Sony, 3.16) is doing well by critics. But before this sank in I had a moment of…slight alarm when an invitation arrived yesterday to the 3.12 all-media screening in Manhattan. “Columbia Pictures Invites you and your family to a screening of 21 Jump Street,” it said. The invitation to the LA all-media didn’t use the “f” word so I figured the New York invitation was just an odd flourish.

I feel the same about Paramount Home Video’s To Catch A Thief Bluray as DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze and Bluray.com’s Martin Leibman. It’s luscious and lascivious, every shot a spoonful of exquisite French sorbet. Robert Burks‘ Oscar-winning cinematography has never delivered this much tonal pleasure.

But the disc I was given has a sound synch problem, I regret to say. I told the p.r. guys that there’s nothing wrong with my Bluray player or the sound synch on any of the other Blurays or DVDs I own — only this one. They said they’d send another one over but they didn’t, so I feel it’s only fair to point this out. And let’s face it — unsynched sound is a huge roadblock. You’ll notice the problem when the camera cuts to a CU of Cary Grant saying “something more formal.”

Sometime last night Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone riffed on Brad Brevet’s 2012 Best Picture spitball review on Rope of Silicon, which I also responded to yesterday. She threw out some agrees and disagrees, but mainly she lamented the tendency of “bloggers” (i.e., referring to me) to dumb down the list of possible Best Picture contenders.

I didn’t dumb anything down in yesterday’s article. I simply manned up and looked at the world we live in by (a) listing the ten most likely Best Picture defaults and (b) removing 14 or 15 possibilities from Brevet’s list because they all have insurmountable negatives as far as your generic 62 year-old white-guy Academy member is concerned.

Are we talking “best” here? Not necessarily. Are we talking quality or cult clamor or box-office? Maybe, maybe not. We’re talking about the 2012 films that seem to adhere to the rigidly codified standards of Best Picture-dom as defined by neck-waddle boomers.

What is an insurmountable negative as far as the 62 year-olds are concerned? The kind of flavorful, tangy, grindhouse-wank movie that Quentin Tarantino likes to make, for one. Movies that are always tasty and self-amused and always limited in scope because they’re relentlessly shallow without the slightest trace or echo of any natural fermentation in God’s universe that hasn’t been precisely pre-imagined and pre-digested by Tarantino in his living room, or, more accurately, by some ’70s or ’80s movie that he saw when he was younger.

Tarantino’s movies have always been and always will be a spiritual dead end. They’re always entirely about Tarantino — exclusively, totally, absolutely — and the sealed-vacuum, heroin-hit bubble of his yokel memories and references and private hard-on amusements. He makes movies for people who belong to his club and that’s all. Which, yes, is arguably the same thing that Jacques Tati, Samuel Fuller, Jean Luc Godard and John Ford did, fine. The difference is that Tarantino doesn’t live by an open window. He doesn’t know what an open window is. I know from Godhead consciousness, and it is impossible for him to see, know or touch the eternal. Especially within the confines of a western. He is spiritually incapable of doing anything but riffing on other movies.

“The bloggers and the critics will do all of the leg work for the Academy and the industry by testing the films to reduce them down to a manageable size,” Stone writes. “The bloggers will look at what they think is Oscar bait, and/or films they’re looking for to. We wait for those films to be seen by either said bloggers or film critics, who then write the reviews that (mostly) do the deciding for the Academy. They take maybe one hundred possible contenders and reduce them down to about ten or so viable contenders. Makes it a lot easier for them folks to sift through the screener pile, eh?

The problem, Stone concludes, is that “the bloggers and critics sometimes dumb it too far down so that what becomes a viable ‘Oscar contender’ is really, more or less, the least offensive of the bunch. Popular taste dictates this anyway, doesn’t it? The most vanilla usually woos the most folks.”

There is nobody in the online-film column universe who’s more receptive to clear light nirvana revelation than yours truly. I have experiencned LSD in solemn, semi-spiritual environments and I know about all about the concept of satori. I’ve not only “been there” but am openly seeking spiritual deliverance at all times. If there is one thing my life has been about so far, it is “where is the light? where is the window that looks at the open blue sky?” I therefore often instinctually reject the default Academy member definition of what constitutes an exceptional, award-worthy film.

But we’re all swimming in the same lake, and it can’t hurt for conversation’s sake to hold our nose and…okay, cynically identify those films that are likely to become Best Picture nominees. What are we supposed to do ? Close our eyes and clasp our hands over our ears and go “blah, blah, blah…we don’t want to know…blah, blah, blah…there is no Lincoln, no Les Miserables, no Anna Karenina?”

“Can we all try a little harder not to dumb the vetting process down to what we think the Academy will like and instead focus on great films no matter where they hail from?,” Stone asks. Absolutely damn straight. I do that every weekday, 7:30 to 12 midnight, and doubly on weekends.

Stone’s kicker: “Raise your hand if you think Attack the Block should have gotten more attention?” It’s raised, it’s raised!

I have a date with John Carter tonight. I will ease myself into an Arclight seat (as opposed to flopping down like a six-year-old, like so many people do) and sit through it, and what will be, will be. But right now I know one thing. The only reviews you can trust are those written by half-grumpy, “I’m from Missouri” critics like myself. Anyone who’s even slightly invested in geekdom (and that means just about anyone who’s ever enjoyed a comic book) is utterly disqualified.

Who’s dispassionate enough to assess John Carter without any geek agenda sentiments? Not JoBlo‘s Chris Bumbray, for one. He’s exactly the kind of guy I’m not talking about. He says in his review that he “had a terrific time” with John Carter and that “I truly think the majority of you will too…ignore the buzz, and make up your own minds.”

Bumbray’s review is like an op-ed piece written by a member of of the Iranian government about the nuclear reactor face-off issue. John Carter has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65%. “Earth to Edgar Rice Burroughs buffs: John Carter is a dog,” writes Variety‘s Peter Debruge.

No, what we need is more of a Marshall Fine type of guy. In fact, Fine himself will do.

“The bones of a workable story are here but the way they’ve been fleshed out leaves something to be desired,” Fine writes. “Despite the millions of bytes of information at work in the visuals, Mars ends up looking alternately like the American southwest and sketches from H.R. Giger‘s discard pile.

“Tayor Kitsch is not just flat; he’s practically flat-lining as Carter, so uninvolved does he seem. Lynn Collins exerts effort but, opposite Kitsch, it’s like acting next to a black hole that absorbs but does not reflect her energy. Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West and the rest of the humanoids act as though they’d wandered in from an old ‘Flash Gordon’ serial; the voice actors who speak for the computer-generated Tharks (including Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church and Samantha Morton) should be thankful no one will associate them with this film.

“Burroughs’ original was no great shakes as literature, but it did manage to gin up the tension on a regular basis. The only tension in John Carter comes from the headache caused by the 3D glasses.”

If it’s a Joss Whedon thing (and this definitely is that, Whedon having produced and co-written), it has to be problematic on some level. I’m aware that Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci is calling it “the best horror movie in years.” That doesn’t negate the fact that Whedon– Whedon! — has his DNA woven into this thing, so effing entwined.

What tells me it’s probably shit? The old snarly unshaven coot who greets the four young visitors with veiled hostility, etc. That guy plus the line about the baah-ing lambs on the killing floor tells me almost everything.

Brian Savelson‘s In Our Nature will screen three times at South by Southwest — on Saturday, 3.10, Sunday, 3.11 and Monday, 3.12. An awkward vacation-home-sharing situation between an estranged father and son (John Slattery, Zach Gilford) and their girlfriends (Gabrielle Union, Jena Malone), etc.

The trailer tells you almost everything. You just know. Imagine you’re in Austin this weekend and standing in a long line to see this. This is exactly and precisely why I respectfully chose not to attend this year, no offense.