“If an actor gets so much plastic surgery that they’re not quite the same person, they have to change their name so it’s not quite the same name. Example: ‘Did you see Lindsey Lowland on SNL last night?’ ‘No, I was watching an Arthur Schwarzegger movie.’ ‘Which one was that?’ ‘You know, that one with Dickie Rourke and Sylvester Scallion.'” — Rule #1 from Bill Maher’s New Rules for Hollywood (posted today on the Hollywood Reporter website at 4:45 pm).

Of course the MPAA should allow kids under 17 to see Lee Hirsch‘s Bully (Weinstein Co., 3.30) by downgrading the R rating to a PG-13. And it’s a good thing, of course, that Katy Butler has gathered over 200,00 signatures protesting the MPAA rating as it can’t be shown in schools without a PG-13 rating. But really…all this over Hirsch’s insistence that a few f-bombs be kept on the soundtrack?

The MPAA’s CARA ratings board is enforcing a system designed to appeal to the Rick Santorum-minded parents of the world. Parents who fear f-bombs and depictions of sexual activity more than depictions of violence represent a kind of neurotic constipation, and MPAA is endorsing a form of bureaucratic idiocy by catering to these people.

But as Ellen DeGenereres says in the clip above, most kids are quite familiar with f-bombs so what’s the difference? Just create a bleeped version of Bully so schools can show it and put the f-bomb R version in theatres. Or…what the hell, remove the f-bombs altogether. Who cares if we hear bullies in the film using f-bombs or not? The idea is to make the film viewable to kids so why not? How many tens of thousands of times have we heard f-bombs in other films? What difference can it make? The basic essential goal is to forcefully persuade that bullying in schools is horrific. What are five f-bombs compared to that?

Sidenote: It was announced today that a ratings (or film censoring) board in British Columbia, apparently called Consumer Protection B.C., has given a PG rating to Bully.

Sarah Palin did us all a favor during the 2008 Presidential campaign by revealing her stunning ignorance of nearly everything essential for a Vice-Presidential candidate to know. Her name is now and forever synonymous with the term “rural rightwing cluelessness,” and thank God for that clarity. Not that this matters to the righties in the bubble. They can shut out anything. They’re Jedi Masters at that.

If you’ve read John Heilemann and Mark Halperin ‘s “Game Change,” a well-vetted history of the ’08 campaign on both sides, the content of Jay Roach‘s Game Change, which focuses only on the McCain-Palin side of things, will add nothing to your knowledge of Palin’s antics. The film does, however, make clear how thick she really was, and it does, in my view, seal her political tomb with fresh warm cement.

Game Change (HBO, debuting Saturday) is absolutely vital viewing, and not just because it’s great truth candy. It also delivers two superb performances — Woody Harrelson‘s as McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt and Julianne Moore as Palin. Both will be up for Emmy’s later this year, trust me.

There are two phases in both performances. For the first 30 or 35 minutes Schmidt and Palin are about ambition, anticipation and excitement. And when it starts to becomes clear what a myopic boob Palin is and how little she knows (and what great fodder this is becoming for the liberal media), they’re both enveloped by increasing levels of shock.

Harrelson is especially effective at conveying a sense of steadily building alarm that gradually morphs into something close to terror. Moore is playing the source of that, of course, so I didn’t feel the same empathy, but she’s awfully good at portraying a woman under the influence of all sorts of horrible denials and suppressions.

On top of which Game Change is a fascinating political drama that just tells what happened (everything has been vetted and verified), and yet is not really about “what happened” as much as a portrait of how the political arena changed four years ago — how an insubstantial woman and a very substantial man both ascended to great political heights on the strength of their personal metaphors and natural charismatic appeal. Barack Obama had the smarts and the patter and political background and Palin didn’t…but they were both manifestations of the same cloth.

I was also moved and persuaded by Ed Harris‘s portrayal of John McCain and especiallly Sarah Paulson‘s as Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain campaign adviser who was charged with trying to prepare Palin for her various press encounters. In fact, this is the first performance Paulson has given that has prompted me to stand back and go “whoa.”

Because it’s an accurate retelling Game Change is not on Palin’s side. It couldn’t be. It’s mainly Schmidt’s story with a seasoning of Wallace for added pathos. They both suffered greatly, but it was Schmidt who urged McCain to pick Palin as his running mate so he’s got the python wrapped around his neck. I’ve been there. I’ve made mistakes that won’t go away, and I know what kind of hell that can be. This is one of Harrelson’s best-ever performances. I liked it better than his work in Rampart, and that’s saying something.

I’m kicking around five reactions to John Carter, which I saw last night and which will surely die this weekend in relation to cost. (A three-day haul of $25 million may result in a $75 million domestic total vs. $250 production costs plus marketing…forget it.) I was in a kind of neutered middle zone about this Disney-financed, Andrew Stanton behemoth. I wasn’t succumbing to hate convulsions but I was somewhat bored at every turn.

I sat there with my legs sprawled and my lids at half-mast and muttered snark to myself: “A worm hole, right, and a blue-light medalllion…wow, he can leap distances at a single bound…big deal… yup, saw that cliche coming…that one too…what kind of natural selection process poduces a species with four arms?…a flying fortress a la Return of the Jedi?…nice production design but who cares?…wait, isn’t that the same narrow rock canyon they used in The Professionals?…Mars looks like effing Utah…Jesus, another hour to go,” etc.

Impression #1 is that it contains one too many warring Martian species. You’ve got your tall, green, four-armed Tharks, which I kept calling Tar-Tars because on some level they reminded me of a race of spear-chucking Jar-Jars. You’ve also got your henna-skinned, English-speaking Red Martians and a strong, intellectual, take-charge princess (Lynn Collins) and her politically powerful dad (Ciaran Hinds). There are also the Red adversaries, the sorcerer-like Therns, and the corruption of a power-seeking Red Martian called Sab Than (Dominic West) by a senior Thern villain (Mark Strong). And then you’ve got John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) in the middle of all this, basically playing another generic, ripped, long-haired Clint Eastwood type — a gruff-spoken humanoid of few words and some difficulty voicing anything more than the simplest of sentences (“Get outta here!,” “You’re speaking English!,” “My name is John Carter…I’m from Virginia”).

Impression #2 (which I conveyed in last night’s Carter post) is that Kitsch kept reminding me of a blend of Jim Morrison and Jeffrey Hunter in King of Kings. I also kept thinking that the 5’11” Kitsch doesn’t seem tall or broad-shouldered enough to meet the macho requirement. A third-act dialogue scene shows him to be at least two inches shorter than the 6’1″ Strong, and this not-tall-enough feeling is underlined by his being surrounded by nine-foot-tall Tar-Tars…I mean Tharks…during the first two-thirds.

Impression #3 is that Collins is a first-rate actress who conveys a solid inner life, but she isn’t fetching enough for my taste. Especially after catching a shot of her at the recent John Carter Moscow premiere. Sorry but why was she chosen again? This is a fanboy movie. We all know what the game is, and if LexG were still around he’d be saying “why didn’t they cast someone actually hot?”

Impression #4 is that Carter is similar in some ways to Richard Fleischer‘s The Vikings (’58). Collins’ princess being forced by her father (Hinds) to agree to a political marriage to the detestable West = Janet Leigh‘s Princess Morgana being promised in marriage to the loathsome King Aella (Frank Thring) by her father. And at the same West resembles Kirk Douglas‘s Einar, a brute who sexually desires Leigh’s princess but can never have her emotionally as Morgana has fallen for Tony Curtis‘s Erik. Who is almost as primitive and monosyllabic as Kitsch’s Carter, who has won Collins’ heart in Carter. It all ties together, see?

Impression #5 is that I, sitting there all bored and distracted and slumping in my seat, would have much preferred to see a remake of The Vikings rather than John Carter. The Vikings story is more politically complex and yet less confusing, and better motivated and easier to follow, and I would have had no trouble buying Kitsch, Collins and West in the Curtis, Leigh and Douglas roles.

As I thought about this last night I was reminded that there’s nothing in John Carter that matches a certain emotional moment at the end of The Vikings — a moment that I described some six years ago in the wake of Fleischer’s death.

“The other thing that still works is the film’s refusal to make much of the fact that Douglas and Curtis, mortal enemies throughout the film, are in fact brothers, having both been half-sired by Ernest Borgnine‘s Ragnar,” I wrote. “Leigh begs Douglas to consider this ten minutes from the finale, and Douglas angrily brushes her off. But when his sword is raised above a defenseless Curtis at the very end and he’s about to strike, Douglas suddenly hesitates…and we know why.

“And then Curtis stabs Douglas in the stomach with a shard of a broken sword, and Douglas is finished. The way he leans back, screams ‘Odin!’ and then rolls over dead is pretty hammy, but that earlier moment of hesitation is spellbinding — one of the most touching pieces of acting Douglas ever delivered.”

I’m not trying to build The Vikings up beyond what it was — a primitive sex-and-swordfight film for Eisenhower-era Eloi. But it did invest in that unacknowledged through-line of “brothers not realizing they’re brothers while despising each other,” and this does pay off. It is one measure of John Carter that it doesn’t invest in anything that pays off and sticks to the ribs…nothing. It’s all about concept and production design and adherence to the original Edgar Rice Burroughs serial and all the other blah-dee-blahs. This is one of the things that really stinks about big movies today. They don’t invest in compelling story threads that build into emotional hooks.

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.