Dustin Lance Black‘s 8, a mostly court-transcript-based play, was performed the night before last (i.e., Saturday, 3.3) at the Wilshire Ebell theatre. It was live-streamed. The reading begins at the 30-minute mark. George Clooney, Martin Sheen. Brad Pitt, Jane Lynch, John C. Reilly, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christina Lahti and others costarred.

On January 1st I presented a list of the likeliest leading Best Picture contenders for 2012. Today Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet came up with a list of 25 potential Best Picture contenders. I’m using his list to refine mine and to separate the highly favored or half-likelies from the outright kills.

Art created by Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet.

Given the highly clubby, conservative and aesthetically myopic leanings of your typical Academy member, my suspicions are as follows. Kills listed first followed by HE’s Best Picture finalists (for now):

KILL LIST #1 FROM BREVET: 1. Ben Affleck‘s Argo, a “based on a true story” saga about the late ’70s Iran hostage crisis. Reason: If Affleck is the new Sydney Pollack (i.e., commercially-inclined but thorough and thoughtful, delivering good performances), he’ll need to grow older and refine his chops before he graduates into his Out of Africa phase. 2. Benh Zeitli‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Reason: Strictly Sundance, strictly Spirit Awards. Luscious, vibrant & imaginative as hell, but too much in the way of waist-deep mud, ooze, booze, flies, house fires, dead steers and slimy alligators. 3. Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman‘s Brave. Reason: Animation needs to stay on its own side of the Rio Grande….forget it. 4. The Wachowski Bros. and Tom Tykwer‘s Cloud Atlas. Reason: Probably fated to be too convoluted, too complex and too much of a “what-the-fuck?” for your typical 62 year-old, neck-waddly, liver-spotted Academy fart.

KILL LIST #2 FROM BREVET: 1. Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi. Reason: 3D family adventure genre belongs in its own box. Too commercial-looking, too many voice-cast members with funny-sounding Indian names, Tobey Maguire and Gerard Depardieu excepted. 2. Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises. Reason: Might be nominated as a payback gesture for the Dark Knight Best Picture snub, but I doubt it. Will be seen as too much of a genre exercise-slash-corporate cash-grab. Too Gothamesque, too Nolanesque, too Bane-y. 3. Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained. Reason: As stated on 2.28, Django Unchained will “just be another bullshit grindhouse B-movie wink-wanker — a neo-Italian spaghetti western (being shot in Lone Pine by way of Almeira, Spain) with everyone duded up in Sergio Leone ponchos and smoking smelly stogies and scratching matches on their six-shooters and wearing rotting-teeth dental implants and chicken-grease makeup,” etc. 4. Ruben Fleischer‘s The Gangster Squad. Reason: The director of Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less hasn’t the depth or the chops to even begin to deliver an Oscar-calibre film…pure genre, pure gunblast, purely commercial…might be entertaining but forget the Academy.

KILL LIST #3 FROM BREVET: 1. Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbitt: An Unexpected Journey. Reason: As stated on 2.28, “Jackson has already snagged a Best Picture Oscar for his Lord of the Rings finale and that, trust me, is the very last Oscar Jackson is going to get for any film having anything to do with Tolkien or Middle Earth or dwarves with huge ugly feet. Okay, The Hobbit may land a nomination, but it cannot, must not and will not win.” 2. Rian Johnson‘s Looper. Reason: Get outta here. 3. Woody Allen‘s Nero Fiddled. Reason: I haven’t read the script, of course, but this is some kind of socially satiric anthology film, as I understand it. And these things never seem to work all that well. Radio Days in Rome? 4. David Chase‘s Not Fade Away. Reason: I’ve heard it doesn’t really work. One reaction hardly closes the book but it does suggest that the response might not be universally or 90% ectstatic. 5. Oliver Stone‘s Savages. Reason: This might be a really gripping drug-dealing and Mexican gangster kidnapping flick, but this kind of thing almost never results in Best of the Year hosannahs. 6. Robert Lorenz‘s Trouble With The Curve. Reason: Clint Eastwood is starring but not directing. 7. Taylor Hackford‘s Parker. Reason: Hackford doing a Donald Westlake piece with Jason Statham? Might be cool on its own terms but forget any Best Picture action.

Keira Knightley in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina.

HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE 2012 BEST PICTURE FINALISTS (for now):

1. Lincoln (mid to late December), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones. Why: The usual Spielberg-kowtow instinct (i.e., to show obeisance before power) plus the impact of Daniel Day Lewis’s lead performance plus the instinct to show respect and allegiance for the legend of Abraham Lincoln. Classic historical chops. Will Spielberg try to hold back on his usual instincts? He may, I think, because of the Lewis influence.

2. The Master, d: Paul Thomas Anderson; cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern. Why: This project has felt chilly from the get-go, but if it’s halfway focused and well-shaped it’ll offer a chance for Hollywood to deliver a big “eff you” to Scientology, which, we’ve all been told, The Master is absolutely not about. Plus it’s hard to imagine Hoffman’s L. Ron…sorry, charismatic leader performance not emerging as a Best Actor standout.

3. The Great Gatsby (12.25), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher. Why: The usual instinct to honor an adaptation of a classic novel. As long as Luhrman doesn’t screw it up, that is, by going all crazy and wackjobby like he did on Australia.

4. This is Forty (12.21), d: Judd Apatow. Why: Apatow has been getting better and better. One of these years he;s going to hit a long triple or a homer. Cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy, Albert Brooks, Ryan Lee, John Lithgow and Charlyne Yi.

5. The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles. Why: No clue, but Russell always delivers so I’m guessing/presuming here.

Jusitn Timerblake in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis.

6. Gravity (11.21), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. Why: The technical audacity of this film alone, described by Clooney as sort of 2001-ish, will surely attract respect and huzzahs.

7. Les Miserables (12.7), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway. Why: Classic musical in grand sweeping historical tradition plus direction by Hooper (The King’s Speech) plus Crowe, Jackman, etc. And Hathaway finally sings.

8. Anna Karenina (November/early December), d: Joe Wright., w: Tom Stoppard. Cast: Keira Knightley.

9. Zero Dark Thirty (12.14), d: Kathryn Bigelow. Why: This may just be a good, solid action film without any Oscar play, but respect will initially be paid to the director of the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. To some pic may provide or represent a form of 9/11 closure.

10. Hyde Park on Hudson, d: Roger Michell, cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams. Why: Michell is a classy, proficient director of midsize dramas and light comedies, and the plot — centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York, and focusing in particular on love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley — suggests a King Speech-y vibe. But how will Murray fare with FDR?

Wild Card: Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis. Will this Greenwich Village-in-the-early-’60s drama, which just began shooting, even be done in time for release by year’s end? If it makes the deadline it’s almost a sentimental lock with the 62 year olds because it recalls the glory days of the folk music movement, which is near and dear to boomers who got A’s in high school and college. Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Justin Timberlake.

Bill Murray as FDR in Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson.

Sasha Stone, Phil Contrino and I kicked a few topics around yesterday morning as we recorded Oscar Poker #71. One of the subjects is a reported lack of interest by a guy who allegedly works as a documentarian in seeing any of 2011’s Best Picture contenders. Some come by shallowness naturally and effortlessly — others work hard at it. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Picking up where Cineuropa.org’s Fabien Lemercier left off on 2.16, several Indiewire contributors (Austin Dale, Peter Kneght, Eric Kohn, Bryce J. Renninger, Nigel Smith) have assembled a Cannes 2012 wish-list of 30 titles.

Terrence Malick, Ben Affleck during film of Oklahoma-based love story once known as The Burial.

If nothing else the piece reminded that Andrew Dominik‘s Cogan’s Trade, which Lemercier mentioned also, is now being called Killing Them Softly. I somehow missed the initial announcement about this.

Mercier didn’t speculate about David Siegel & Scott McGehee‘s What Maisie Knew, so that’s a newbie.

For a reason that makes no logistical sense to me whatsoever, the Indiewire guys are fantasizing about Terrence Malick‘s Oklahoma-shot love story with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and Rachel Weisz making a possible appearance in Cannes.

Malick wrapped this film in late 2010, and if you know anything about Malick’s legendary editing-room dilly-dallying you know that the strongest likelihood is an appearance by the end of this year, but more likely sometime in 2013. The man apparently needs something close to two years in post to complete a film. 13 or 14 months ago I wrote that the drama, once titled The Burial, “is expected sometime in 2013. Okay, I’m kidding but anyone who expects to see this puppy before fall 2012 is probably dreaming.” I was slightly exaggerating at the time, but right now 2013 no longer feel like a joke. Especially with Malick currently occupied with shooting Lawless and Knight of Cups.

The dull horror of a $200 million dollar 3D sequel (Sony, 5.25) using a 1969 time travel plot. Rote cartoon CG in the service of cheap, lowest-common-denominator laughs. The creative imaginings of Will Smith, director Barry Sonnenfeld and producer Walter Parkes funnelled through screenwriter Etan Cohen and two or three others. Kim Masters‘ 3.9.11 production story. And the likelihood of great financial success.

Consolation: All-media screenings will happen in mid-to-late May, at which point I’ll be in France and far, far away from the MIB effect in all senses of the term.

Last night Walter Hill‘s Streets of Fire had its most recent midnight showing at the New Beverly. It’s been 28 years since I’ve seen it. The only thing I remember apart from the ’50s/’80s dichotomy and how Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe looked is the slogan. Not because it’s catchy, but because of how producer Joel Silver spun it when Streets bombed on opening weekend: “Tonight is what it means to be dead.”

That is arguably one of the greatest lines ever spoken by a Hollywood producer about anything, ever. When they write Silver’s obit it will definitely be included within the first five or six graphs.

Streets of Fire‘s budget of $14,500,000 was fairly sizable back then. The rule of tripling your opening weekend gross to break even meant it had to make at least $5 million over its first three days. It made about half that ($2,426,000), and ended up with a grand domestic total of just over $8 million. Obviously a failure but not exactly a staggering or historic one. Nonetheless, Silver’s line (which was reported by John Richardson in a Premiere profile called “The Selznick of Schlock” that ran in the early ’90s) stuck.

This color short of the Three Stooges, uploaded on 2.24.12, was shot by vaudevillian and photographer George Mann at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier in the summer of 1938. The routine instantly dies, of course, when the hot girl (Mann’s wife Barbara) fails to slap Moe and Larry with any real pizazz. The Stooges were the original “no laugh funny” guys if you were older than ten.

It always helps to be reminded that life actually manifested in color in the 1930s. It’s easy to let yourself believe that everybody and everything existed in black and white back then.

Why isn’t there 16mm color film of Howard Hawks directing Cary Grant and Jean Arthur during the making of Only Angels Have Wings (which was underway right around this time)? Or any other big-studio filmmakers working on any noteworthy films? Why do we have to settle for the Stooges?

This is one of the greatest “no laugh funny” films ever made. I can watch it over and over and never make a sound, and discover something fresh about it every time. I actually laughed out loud three or four times when I first saw it 12 and 1/2 years ago, but only at the odd stuff like (a) Orson Bean‘s scenes, (b) John Cusack slowly tongue-mouthing his way toward guessing Catherine Keener‘s name and (c) Mary Kay Place mis-hearing things.

Charlie Kaufman will never write anything like Being John Malkovich ever again. He was at a very particular place in the mid ’90s that led him to the sucking-mud-tunnel concept and being coughed out on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike and all that, but he’ll never, ever find that particular kind of inspiration ever again. He’s creatively moved on and become a hot-shot director, the culture has moved on, we’ve all moved on…nevermore.

The Criterion Bluray is out May 15th. Meaning that I’ll be begging Criterion to slip me a review copy before I leave for Cannes, etc.

Safe House, Phantom Menace 3D, The Vow, Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, Act of Valor, Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. Take Safe House off the list and none of these films are worth writing home about, and yet they’ve all made exceptional coin. There’s always been an aesthetic disconnect between Joe Popcorn and people like myself, but it seems much more pronounced recently. These are the February-March doldrums. I’m levitating with pride over my complete disinterest in The Lorax, which made $70 million this weekend.

I rarely make a sound when something is funny. I laugh inwardly for the most part, and I’m fine with that. I’ve sincerely praised many films (i.e., Greenberg) for being “no laugh funny.” But Saturday Night Live‘s humor is rarely even that. I don’t even titter inwardly. The writers are obviously sharp and clever and attuned to the culture but all the performers do in these skits is portray smug, clueless and/or arrogant assholes by way of tabloid fixtures and cultural stereotypes.

Here’s how I put in September 2009: “I almost prefer the kind of comedy that is clearly coming from a place of modest merriment (perverse or otherwise) but which you don’t really laugh at. Call them smirkers or half-chortlers or simply no-laugh comedies. Films that seem to float along on a charged-attitude high — a frame of mind that’s clearly dispensing amusement but not quite to the point of inspiring audible reactions. (Except from those awful people in theatres who laugh too loudly and too often.)

“And I’m not talking about flagantly and painfully unfunny films like The Year One, any of the Rush Hour movies, any of the ‘comedies’ by the Wayans brothers, anything starring Anna Faris or Will Ferrell or anything like Duplex or Rumor Has It or Gigli or what-have-you. I’m talking about movies that know what they’re doing and have a fine sense of dry humor but aren’t actually ‘funny.'”

Having read and seriously pondered the thoughts of Rush Limbaugh and particularly HE commenters “Moo Type” and “Duluoz Gray” in response to yesterday’s “First Draft,” I’ve come to realize that perhaps lefty liberals do look the other way while wanton sluts disrobe and hyperventilate and moan with pleasure as they writhe on top of men they’re not married to. But deep down what angers the right is that the p.c. left has condoned slutty behavior to the extent that it’s not slutty anymore.

“Is sex dirty?” Woody Allen was once asked. “It is if you do it right,” he replied. This, I suspect, is what the right longs for more than anything else. They miss having genuinely dirty sex, which can only be enjoyed with an actual slut (as opposed to, say, your wife pretending to be a loose woman as part of a role-playing thing that some couples do to spice things up). They miss the scent of sordid atmospheres and the taste of forbidden pleasures. They want their sex lives to resemble a 1958 Samuel Fuller film.

As Limbaugh indicated when he said Sandra Fluke should provide video sex tapes if her contraception is going to be paid for by the government and/or taxpayers, what these righties are really saying is that they miss the time when sluts actually walked the streets in see-through blouses and gave them hard-ons like they’ve never known since, before liberals spoiled everything by giving sluts a hug and telling them there’s no such thing as slutty behavior and “you go, girl…have a contraceptive.”

Righties are always…okay, often about “golly gee gosh” and pretending to follow Christian white-bread tradition on the surface (i.e., offering lip-surface loyalty to same), but indulging in dark, creepy, cum-stainy behavior in back alleys and cheap motels when no one’s looking. They can’t get themselves off in an open-hearted liberal way — they need to feel guilty about it or it’s no good. The righties long for the days when sluts were sluts and guys like Dulouz Gray and Moo Type occasionally knew the foul, perverted pleasure of coveting sluts and sometimes flirting with them and taking them out to dinner and then taking them back to their rundown apartments and doing things that their straightlaced, God-fearing wives would never consider, much less condone.

Righty males are too screwed up and twisted around to admit it (or even realize it) but that’s what they really want. They want sluts back to be part of the culture again (along with Confidential and Police Gazette magazine) and they hate the left for taking sluttiness away.