“Is there a secret language school where they teach under-35 women to converse in mallspeak with the exact same reedy, mincing, me-me tones?” — tweeted from JFK before my Virgin America LA flight took off.

“I disliked Prometheus intensely,” writes “Subashini” in a 6.23 post on the Blog of Disquiet. “I do think that having acrimonious feelings towards the film is the actual point — the film seems to be a stand-in for a certain segment of humanity and its imperialist, ruinous ambitions, though like most films coming out of Hollywood this seems to coexist with its appreciation of capital, technology, and involuntary/reproductive labour.

“That in itself doesn’t make it inherently unlikeable, not at all. But as Susan Sontag wrote in ‘The Imagination of Disaster,’ ‘Science fiction films invite a dispassionate, aesthetic view of destruction and violence — a technological view,” and perhaps it’s the nihilist technological determinism of Prometheus that is inherently unsettling. Perhaps it’s this utter lack of meaning in the movie that is its meaning, and consequently the source of my loathing. Maybe a part of me just wants machines and people to get along? I’m not sure.”

I know this for sure: I will never, ever watch this movie again. They can send me a free Bluray and I’ll give it to someone who might appreciate it.

As I wrote on 6.1.12: “Prometheus is impressively composed and colder than a witch’s boob in Siberia — a forbidding gray film about howling winds and chilly people. It’s visually striking, spiritually frigid, emotionally unengaging, at times intriguing but never fascinating. It’s technically impressive, of course — what else would you expect from an expensive Scott sci-fier? And the scary stuff takes hold in the final third. But it delivers an unsatisfying story that leaves you…uhm, cold.”

Also: “What kind of space-voyage movie has on-board officers walking around in flip-flops and sandals? All space travellers in all the space-travel movies going back to George Melies‘ A Trip to the Moon have worn boots or lace-ups or anti-gravitational grip shoes or whatever. Sandals! My heart sank when Michael Fassbender made his entrance with his milky Irish man-toes…don’t get me started.”

I apologize for omitting Ben Lewin‘s The Sessions (i.e., formerly Six Sessions, and before that The Surrogate) in my initial posting of my best-of-2012 piece, which I called “Half-Time.” I’ve since corrected the error. Fox Searchlight will release this highly praised acquisition (for which they paid $6 million) on 10.26.12.

“I saw Ben Lewin‘s The Surrogate this morning,” I wrote on 1.24.12, “and yes, it’s a touching, thoughtful and comforting film about touching, needing, being open and the finding of fulfillment. It’s an emotional, erotic variation on the themes in My Left Foot, The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with a little sprinkling of Who’s Life Is It Anyway?.

“And John Hawkes, as a quadriplegic invalid who hires a sex therapist to cure his virginity, will almost certainly get some awa

Tom Berenger has been jogging around the track for 35-plus years. He broke into features in the mid ’70s and had a great 16-year run — Looking for Mr. Goodbar (’77), In Praise of Older Women (’78), The Dogs of War (’81), The Big Chill (’84), Platoon (’86), Someone to Watch Over Me (’87), Major League (’89), Born on the Fourth of July (’89), The Field (’90), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (’91), Sliver (’93) and Gettysburg (’93). And then he seemed to slip into B-level genre stuff, but he came back two years ago with a significant role in Chris Nolan‘s Inception.

The man is a veteran who’s paid his dues several times over and is now into his seventh decade of life on the planet…and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has only just granted him membership? I understand that you have to apply and that you need a sponsor or two. Maybe Berenger never applied, but why wouldn’t he have? He knows this town and that membership couldn’t hurt and could possibly help his career, so what kind of moron do you have to be to say “naaahh, I don’t want to join”? So if he did apply before, why would Academy gate-keepers turn him down? It just seems weird. The overwhelming majority of those recently granted membership are people who broke through within the last ten years or less.

Wait…is it because he’s politically conservative or something? I don’t know anything but that kind of thing can be a stopper.

The odd thing about Berenger is that he’s allegedly declared that his favorite feature of those he’s starred in was Gettysburg, in which he played Gen. James Longstreet. That movie has stayed in my mind for one reason only — bad beards. I would say that the beards in that film were ludicrous — they looked woven out of yak hair.

Magic Mike did around $18 million on Friday, and is forecasting $47 million by Sunday night — much higher than expected. And Seth McFarlane‘s Ted, the Mark Wahlberg teddy-bear movie which I saw tonight and was more or less okay with, is expected to do a little over $50 million by Sunday night. All the hot-dog-eating, ESPN-watching guys who wouldn’t be caught dead seeing Mike went to Ted — it’s that simple.

Mike got a B from CinemaScore respondents — i.e., it didn’t get an A because some felt that it would’ve been a little better if it had less character stuff and was glossier-looking (“What was up with the orange-y color?”) and cheaper and sillier with dumb jokes.