Super-scale, CG onslaught, urban destruction, chunks of plaster, shards of glass, super-heroes with dry, flip attitudes…whoa. I’m not the only one getting a Transformers 3 vibe from this. And a distinct feeling that it contains no serious surprises.

I love the fact that only minutes after the Total Recall trailer appeared this afternoon on Apple.com, some guy uploaded it to YouTube and wham…Sony’s online attorneys ran in like linebackers and blocked it. Bullies. Jerks.

The 1080 version really dazzles, obviously, but I’m also feeling a little bit of that Len Wiseman B-movie cheapness. He’s the Underworld guy — never forget that. Colin Farrell in a hot-stud, high-anxiety lead role again after being a character actor for the last four or five years. Kate Beckinsale obviously has the Sharon Stone part. It looks kinda skin deep. Possibly less substantial than Minority Report. Pure popcorn. There are indications.

Total Recall opens on 8.3.

Blue collar clock-puncher Douglas Quaid (Farrell), married to hot wife (Beckinsale), takes memory vacation. But things turn suddenly weird and violent, and he’s soon on the run from the fuzz and Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), he hooks up with a hot rebel lady (Jessica Biel) and the head of underground resistance (Bill Nighy), blah dee blah.

Cranston is in every other film these days. He’s everywhere. Cranston, Cranston, Cranston, Cranston, Cranston, Cranston….”you love me in Breaking Bad and Drive…hire me for your film!”

The screenplay is by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback, based on a story by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Jon Povill. The producers are Neal H. Moritz — cause for concern? — and Toby Jaffe.

David Mackenzie‘s Spread convinced me that Ashton Kutcher‘s acting had the potential to be about more than just “amiable” and “frisky” and “good-looking”. If he does well in Jobs, a biopic about Apple’s Steve Jobs from director Joshua Michael Stern and screenwriter Matt Whiteley, he could enhance his rep a bit more.

The film will have to go into the dark places, of course. It’ll have to reflect the portrait in Walter Isaacson‘s Jobs — a brilliant, driven visionary who could be a demanding, abrasive fuck now and then. We’re going to want a little Social Network/Zuckerberg action, in other words.

Variety‘s Jeff Sneider is reporting that the film, which starts shooting in May, “will chronicle Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple.” Sneider has tweeted that “from what I’ve heard, Jobs will follows Steve from co-founding Apple and getting forced out to when he comes back…not the later years.”

Now that Bully has been playing for two days, did anyone hear the f-bombs? Six of them are in there, but not so you’d notice. Did anyone hear more than one or two? Indiewire‘s Tom Brueggemann wrote this morning that Bully‘s $115 thousand gross and its $25,000 average in five situations “seems impressive,” although his assertion that “the ratings controversy [was] legitimate in its aim and necessity” is open to question.

Michael Woods‘ London Review of Books piece on Vincente Minnelli‘s The Bad and the Beautiful led me to this clip. Woods describes it as “the one truly terrible moment” in the film, and he’s right. The scene is labored and campy (Elaine Stewart‘s acting as “that low woman Lila” is awful) but — but! — when Kirk Douglas says to Lana Turner, “You couldn’t enjoy what I made possible for you, no…you’d rather have this,” it’s great.

I’m speaking of the way Douglas’s voice breaks and slips into self-loathing. It was a trademark of his — confessing some primal emotion or expressing some deeply felt principle, and his voice cracking under the emotional strain. It was one of the behavioral mannerisms that made him “Kirk Douglas,” and therefore a star. He was so perversely good at being Kirk Douglas that it didn’t matter if he was a histrionic type — he was delivering the goods.

The good part starts at the 3:00 mark.