Some guy with a glass of wine said the other night that 2012 has been a weak year for movies. I stopped him right there and said “wait a minute” and got out the iPhone and read off the following titles: Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises, Magic Mike, Miss Bala, Haywire, Arbitrage, Bernie, Moonrise Kingdom, God Bless America, Side by Side, Trishna, The Three Stooges, The Sessions, Liberal Arts, Michael (Austrian child-molesting movie), Rampart, 21 Jump Street and The Grey. Okay, some of these aren’t out yet but that’s 18 movies. Add the films I liked or admired in Cannes — Holy Motors, On The Road, No, Killing Them Softly, Amour, Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir and Rust and Bone — and that’s a total of 25.

Terrence Malick: It’ll come out after I’ve tossed the lettuce leaves into the air for a period of 12 to 18 months, and after I’ve taken my shoes and socks off and sat in the lotus position and meditated it through and through, and then once it starts to take shape and we’ve shown it to distributors and freaked them out…then and only then will we start talking to film festival programmers. Figure two years from now.

Terrence Malick, Christian Bale during the filming of Knight of Cups.

Christian Bale: What about the other one?

Malick: Lawless. What about it?

Bale: You’re supposed to deliver that one first, right? Your process takes 18 months to two years on that so where does that leave Knight of Cups? Will we be out by 2015? 2016?

Malick: I have a process, Christian. You knew that when we agreed to make this film together.

Bale: Yeah, you have a process, all right. I just don’t want to look significantly older in real life when it comes out. I don’t want people saying, “Wow, when was this made? Bale looks two or three years younger.”

“The biggest story of the summer, though, has to be Magic Mike, which affirms that some like it hot and without any underwear, and also offers continuing proof of Steven Soderbergh‘s talent for making pleasurable, accessible entertainments no matter their scale.

“Magic Mike was independently produced and bought by Warner Brothers for something like $7 million. If I were running a studio (ha!), I would take the money that I’d set aside for the next bad idea (like a remake of Total Recall) and give a handful of directors, tested and less so — Todd Haynes, Barry Jenkins, Kelly Reichardt, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Aaron Katz, Benh Zeitlin, Damien Chazelle — $10 million apiece to make whatever they want, as long as the results come in with an R rating or below and don’t run over two hours.” — Manohla Dargis in an August 8th N.Y. Times piece about summer movies, co-authored by A.O. Scott.

Anyone with a drinking history who’s been to bars knows that sooner or later you’re going to be seized by the call as you’re walking home late at night, and when that happens it’s a matter of finding a nice alleyway or a hidden area next to a shady tree or a bush or whatever. It happens. I was seized in Munich one night last June and I took care of things in a dark garden area adjacent to a museum, and I don’t even drink. It’s just a matter of staying out of people’s sightline.

This is where the Penske brothers screwed up. They were too drunk or too arrogant to bother to find a nice dark place. On the other hand, what kind of woman goes over to a drunk taking a nocturnal leak and says, “Hey, dude…were you born in a barn? Hold still, I need to take your picture so I can report you to the police.” That’s just being confrontational and aggressive. If I see some guy taking a leak in the shadows I just look away. And if he’s relieving himself out in the open I just look away and mutter to myself, “Jesus Christ, what an asshole.” But I would NEVER get in his face and take a photo. A person who does that is just looking to get pissed on.

I would, however, report the drunk if he was dropping a deuce, but I don’t think the Penske brothers were doing that.

Incidentally: Jay Penske‘s ownership of Deadline stirs thoughts of Nikki Finke, of course. Here’s an 8.9 Columbia Journalism review piece about the fake Finke tweeter, and the real Finke’s response to same.

Obviously Russell Crowe‘s Noah has to look old-world rugged so he can see to the construction of that huge Ark and round up all the animals besides, and he sure as shit can’t be a stooped-over old man with a white beard. But what he looks like here more than anything else, largely due to the medieval garment he’s wearing, is an older Robin Hood with longer hair and a slightly grayer beard

Dear Valentine: “The other day my girlfriend (let’s call her Sandy) and I were sitting in this nothing-special restaurant, and after the food came and we talked a bit I got out the Macbook Pro to answer some mail. And after about ten minutes I noticed this weird inertia, this anti-matter vibe from across the table. Because while I was working and concentrating, Sandy was just sitting there doing nothing. Really….absolutely dead fucking nothing. I’m a live-and-let-live type, but it started to bother me on some level. Who sits in a chair like a piece of cheese and just plotzes? You have to check emails or write notes to yourself or read a newspaper article or a book or take pictures or talk to the waitress or something…right? You can’t just fucking sit there. Anyway, I started thinking about breaking up with her after I noticed that. Is it me?” — Mark Bledsoe, Akron, Ohio.

Valentine to Mark: We park our cars in the same garage. You can’t just sit in a chair and do nothing, ever. It’s okay, I guess, if you’re sitting on the beach, let’s say, or on a hillside overlooking the north of London…that’s different because you’ve got something to look at. But not in a restaurant. The two golden rules are (a) life is short and then you die, and (b) he who is not busy being born is busy dying. And what Sandy was doing while you were answering emails, to hear it from you, was waiting to die. She might have been thinking serene thoughts but that’s not enough, not in the tap-tap-tap world of 2012. But let’s turn the other cheek and be open-minded and hypothesize that she wasn’t just sitting in her chair and that she was maybe…meditating? Was she doing some kind of breathing thing while she sat there? Were her eyes closed? If she wasn’t meditating then I think your instinct was right. I would dump her.

Since Aurora the National Rifle Association has been looking around for something that will get the public back into a gun-toting mood. Dan Bradley‘s Red Dawn (MGM, 11.21), a remake of John Milius‘s 1984 original, might be just what they need. If you can get past the North Koreans being brain-dead enough to attempt a Jack Webb-styled invasion of the US, it’ll remind that we all need to be armed just in case, and not just with pistols and laser-scoped deer rifles but AK-47s….yeah!

Anecdote #1: Red Dawn was slated for release on 11.24.10, but was shelved due to MGM’s financial woes. Anecdote #2: The elegant Tony Gilroy, of all people, has a co-screenwriting credit on this puppy. Tony Gilroy contributing to a right-wing movie!

Does the fact that Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom is (a) the best Anderson film since The Royal Tenenbaums, (b) an agreeably tidy, very handsomely composed, Jacques Tati-like thing and (c) a box-office success with $40 millon in the till mean it’s a Best Picture contender? Apparently so. Or it is, at least, if you buy what Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone wrote on 8.8 and TheWrap‘s Todd Cunningham wrote on August 9th.

Guys, it’s okay with me. Go to town. I don’t think Moonrise Kingdom works on the level of Rushmore, my all-time Anderson favorite, or first-runner-up Bottle Rocket, so I can’t quite get behind the Best Picture thing. Not at this stage. But it’s a fine, above-average film about young love, and one I wouldn’t mind seeing again on Bluray. Anderson is, of course, perhaps the leading GenX auteur of our time, and respect should be paid, etc.

Co-written by Anderson and Roman Coppola and set late in the summer of 1965 on a small New England island called Penzance, Moonrise Kingdom is about two 12-year-olds, Sam and Suzy, who fall in love and take off together.

My only problem with Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson’s refusal to use any tracks from Rubber Soul, which would have been a perfect choice, time-wise.

Once again, my Cannes Moonlight Kingdom tweets:

Tweet #1: “Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is a typical Anderson thing — an exactingly composed, super-dollhouse movie about perfect compositions.”

Tweet #2: “It’s a Little Romance about Sam and Suzy, each 12 years old with eyes only for each other. But cavorting behind a quirky, ultra-dry filter.”

Tweet #3: “But the real Moonrise romance is between Wes and his ultra-exacting, needle-precise compositions — sets, costumes & shots refined to a T.”

Tweet #4: “Very fairy-tale-ish, very precisely composed, kind of masterful. And emotional as far as it goes. But all within a vacuum.”

Tweet #5: “Are there genuine emotional currents running through (or under) Moonrise? Yeah…but mainly in the last third.”

Tweet #6: “Wes is kinda Jacques Tati, whose films are also about Tati and his style and mood strokes. Enjoy the film & story but mainly ‘look at me.'”

These “forever” one-sheets for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (Lionsgate, 11.16) began appearing in theatres sometime in mid-May…fine. But two or three nights ago I noticed the KStew version hanging in the upstairs Arclight lobby. Of all the words in the English language to put on a Breaking Dawn poster right now, “forever” is either (a) the dumbest (certainly on the part of Lionsgate ad buyers), (b) the most mock-ironic or (c) the biggest imaginable “fuck you” to the clueless-girlie fan base.

I’ve seen Tay Garnett‘s version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (46) two or three times, and I’ve never believed that Lana Turner‘s Nora would have married a flabby old dog like Cecil Kellaway‘s Nick. She was trash, but a woman with her looks could’ve done better. That was a problem. And I was never all that taken with the Bob Rafelson’s 1981 version. Jack Nicholson was too old and bulky looking, and the sex scenes he performed with Jessica Lange…meh.

“In its surface aspects, The Postman Always Rings Twice appears no more than a melodramatic tale, another involved demonstration (two hours in length) that crime does not pay. But the artistry of writers and actors have made it much more than that; it is, indeed, a sincere comprehension of an American tragedy. For the yearning of weak and clumsy people for something better than the stagnant lives they live is revealed as the core of the dilemma, and sin is shown to be no way to happiness.” — from Bosley Crowther‘s 5.3.46 review in The New York Times.

11 years and three months ago ago I attended the Honolulu press junket for Michael Bay‘s Pearl Harbor, and right after that I visited the Hawaiian island of Molokai. I was struck by the sandy, reddish-brown, Mars-like soil there, and I took a sample with me. I’ve kept it ever since. Last week I took another soil sample from Monument Valley — very fine clay, half-powdery, half-sandy. A lighter, more reddish color than Molokai soil. Both visually attractive, agriculturally worthless.

(l.) Monument Valley soil; (r.) from island of Molokai.

For a comedy to be funny, it has to reflect real recognizable life. There has to be at least an attempt to represent the world as most of us perceive it, and the behavior of humans as most of us understand that. Most of us know that if you pick up a bucket filled with horse urine and dog feces and throw it in the face of a Catholic priest, he will not smile and say, “Aahh, thanks…I needed that!” If you make a comedy in which this happens, people are going to wonder why and go “wuh-wuh-wuh.”

Jay Roach‘s The Campaign (Warner Bros., 8.10) has a tough row to hoe. It has to jump on a trampoline and leap madly beyond the typical lying, insincerity and general horseshit that constitutes a political campaign these days, and make it “funny” in a clowning, lampoonish, rube-level way. But in so doing Roach and his screenwriters, Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell, apparently said to themselves “Okay, we have to create a comedic political realm that only slightly resembles the one outside the multiplex — vaguely, superficially, faintly — but also one in which characters throw 550 or 600 paper cups of horse urine and dog feces into each other’s faces and have them go ‘aaah, thanks…I needed that!'”

That’s why The Campaign is not funny. Because it aims low, by which I mean it’s aimed at idiots or rather a simple boob’s understanding of the world of politics. I sat there like a granite tombstone, staring at the screen, waiting for it to be over and wiping off drops of horse urine as they came flying off the screen.

The Campaign is about a North Carolina Congressional race between Will Ferrell’s Cam Brady, a randy Blue Dog Democrat asshole, and Zach Galifianakis‘s Marty Huggins, a nerd-dweeb type with a terrible moustache. At the halfway point Brady decides he wants to humiliate Huggins, and so he goes over to his house and puts the moves on Marty’s shrewish little Munchkin wife (Sarah Baker). And because Marty hasn’t been paying attention to their marriage in the heat of the campaign, she succumbs to Cam’s overtures. In front of his recording iPhone camera. And she takes it up the ass.

This scene isn’t the least bit funny because not even a donkey or a sheep would do that. They would have more sense. A sheep would realize that Cam’s attentions are politically motivated, and she would say no. But Marty’s little wife doesn’t, and we’re supposed to laugh. I didn’t. I couldn’t. It was impossible. Most of the film’s jokes are on this level.