I’m a big Martin McDonagh fan (particularly his direction and writing of In Bruges and his B’way-produced A Behanding in Spokane), and so I was more than a little disappointed to read that Seven Psychopaths, a oddball noir-comedy of some kind with Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Zeljko Ivanek, won’t have a regular berth at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival but will be screened under Midnight Madness.

This ghetto-izes it, of course. At least to some extent. The suggestion is that Psychopaths is too manic or extreme to play along with the stolid mainstreamers, and that it might even be some kind of problem within its own realm and terms. If I was McDonagh I’d be pissed. (I meant to post this earlier but the dog ate my notes.)

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is reporting that Fox Searchlight is thinking about playing it safe with the release date of Sacha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock, a mild-mannered drama (I read the script eons ago) about the making of Psycho. It looks and sounds like a perfect end-of-the-year film aimed at educated adults and a likely slamdunk for acting awards, but FS isn’t so sure, Hammond hears.

(l.) Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock in Sasha Gervasi’s Hitchcock; (r.) Toby Jones as Mr. Hitchcock in HBO’s The Girl.

The natural thing, of course, would be to release Hitchcock by the end of the year and thereby put Anthony Hopkins‘ portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock into possible Best Actor contention. A late 2012 release would also instill a healthy competitive spirit between Hitchcock and HBO’s The Girl, the “other” Hitchcock drama that will focus on the director’s lewd intentions toward Tippi Hedren during the making of The Birds and Marnie.

And yet Hitchcock editor Pamela Martin (The Fighter, Little Miss Sunshine) told Hammond a couple of days ago that “it is currently undetermined whether Searchlight will try for a late 2012 Oscar-qualifying release of Hitchcock…she says they are still doing the director’s cut and if they decide to get it out this year it will mean a big rush to get it ready in time.” Ahem….Hitchcock wrapped in June and it’ll be a “big rush” to get it out by late December? Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder began shooting on 3.23.59, wrapped on 5.15.59 and opened on 7.2.59. So don’t even go there. Don’t use the word “big” and don’t use the word “rush.” Turning a film around in five months is nothing.

Martin, says Hammond, “has nothing but praise for the performances” and “singled out” Scarlet Johansson‘s performance as Janet Leigh, who played Marion Crane in Psycho. I’m sorry but I explained a little more than five months ago why Johansson is a bad casting choice to play Leigh, and I see no reason to change my mind.

You can tell that The Girl won’t be as good as Hitchcock because a set still shows Toby Jones‘ Hitchcock wearing an English bowler, and Hitchcock almost never wore a bowler, certainly not after he moved to California in 1939. The one exception (and correct me if I’m wrong) is a bowler-hatted appearance he made in a trailer for Frenzy (’72). That bowler is the blade of grass that tells you almost everything you need to know about The Girl. Mark my words.

Sienna Miller is playing Hedren in The Girl, by the way.

Fox Searchlight needs to man up and put Hitchcock into theatres before 12.31.12. And then release it more widely sometime in late January or February. Simple.

If there’d only been a couple of NRA members hanging around with handguns or rifles slung over their shoulders, they could have quick-drawed and gone into a bent-knee crouch and shot the shooter like Dirty Harry….blam! blam! blam! So what was the shooter’s deal? “There is something inherently disgusting about the media ‘clarifying’ that Sikhs are not Muslims. — Jeremy Cahill on Twitter, re-tweeted by Ray Pride.

“No force from outside, nor any pain, has finally proved stronger than her power to weigh down upon herself. If she has possibly been strangled once, then suffocated again in the life of the orphanage, and lived to be stifled by the studio and choked by the rages of marriage, she has kept in reaction a total control over her life, which is perhaps to say that she chooses to be in control of her death.

“And out there somewhere in the attractions of that eternity she has heard singing in her ears from childhood, she takes the leap to leave the pain of one deadened soul for the hope of life in another, she says good-bye to that world she conquered and could not use.” — excerpted from Norman Mailer‘s Marilyn Monroe biography, which originally hit stores in 1973 and has been republished a few times (and in two or three different forms) since.

It’s a good bet that today the Lookee-lous are going to be all over Monroe’s home (i.e., where she died, and the only place she ever owned) at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood.

Yesterday’s Clint Eastwood-endorses-Mitt Romney announcement led to an intense Twitter debate between Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci and Hitfix‘s Drew McWeeeny. It quickly devolved evolved into a discussion of the how to deal with the loony-tune right. I don’t want to over-simplify, but it seemed that Drew was basically mouthing a “let’s be civil and show respect” line and Faraci was basically saying “eff that noise.” Here’s some of what Faraci said:

“I don’t have to be tolerant of intolerance, and fuck elevating the conversation. This isn’t a conversation. It’s a war for the future of the world. Period. To pretend that this is about people having disagreements is INSANE at this point. They don’t believe in SCIENCE. You don’t win wars by being nice. You win wars by destroying the enemy. You lose wars by appeasing.

“Again, you’re treating this like it’s a gentleman’s disagreement. This is [about] hard-right hate groups taking over the nation. People are going to look back at what went down in this political period and refuse to believe [that this] shit ever got this out of hand. [And] you’re going to lose. You’re going to quietly allow these people to not only destroy this country but actually, and, this is not hyperbole, destroy life on this planet as they continue to ignore global warming. No, the problem is hard right anti-science hate mongers who have co-opted the GOP, and we all pretend like it’s not a big deal.

“I’m not interested in making people on the other side listen. I’m interested in defeating them thoroughly. I don’t care about changing their minds anymore. I care only about mitigating the harm they do. The problem is the idea that these people can be dealt with using some Marquess of Queensbury rules. They are not interested n reason or debate or discussion. They cannot be treated like equals or people who will be persuaded. They must be only beaten down. Just like nobody bothered trying to give Bull Connors a good talking to, these people must be legislated to the margins. Forever.

“So I’m okay with turning up the rancor. We should all be really rancorous that a GOP rep compared women’s health care to 9/11. If you’re trying to handle it ‘quietly’ and without rancor you’re pretending we’re past the point of no return. I’ve learned that you can’t have rational discussions with irrational people.”

In a “Thompson on Hollywood”/Indiewire review of The Master, Beth Hanna (who caught Paul Thomas Anderson‘s film last night at the Aero) writes that while “much attention will be rightly paid to Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams,” portraying the charismatic Hoffman’s wife, “may [be] the most revelatory character.”

Amy Adams sharing a scene with Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.

Editor’s note: I fiddled with Hanna’s wording but the sentence still didn’t come out right. But you get the gist. Adams pops through because she does well by an interesting character.

The film is set in the 1950s “when wives must stand dutifully beside their husbands,” and yet “something rather different is going on behind the scenes,” Hanna notes. “Adams’ quiet strength works beautifully” as it apparently “causes the viewer to re-think the power structures in Master’s universe.” Or something like that.

In his just-up review of Jay Roach‘s The Campaign (Warner Bros., 8.10), Variety‘s Peter Debruge calls it “an all-around tight and polished package” that “vigorously swoops in to satirize how low things can go between a pair of rival Congressional candidates” — Will Ferrell‘s sleazy Cam Brady and Zach Galifianakis‘ idealistic Marty Huggins. Typically for an American political comedy, The Campaign (with a script by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell) “doesn’t go near the issues” and “steers clear of partisan concerns,” Debruge says.

And yet the villains of the piece (or “the guys to watch out for,” as Debruge puts it) are the Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd, John Lithgow), “a pair of powerful millionaires looking to rig the election so they can ‘insource’ cheap Chinese labor to the district.” Obviously the Motches are based on David and Charles Koch, the right-wing scumbag billionaires who are funding the Tea Party and any anti-Obama candidate who will step up to the plate. How can a film that portrays these guys in some kind of satirically negative light be regarded as taking a generic take-no-sides position? How are you not partisan if you think the Koch brothers are bad news?

If I could somehow meet and get acquainted with every large-bellied, T-shirted, sandal-wearing American vacationer or weekender, I would have a different view to share. But every time I stroll through Las Vegas’s McCarran airport, I see the Tele-tubbies from Andrew Stanton‘s WALL-E. Stanton claimed during interviews that the Tele-tubbies weren’t metaphors…sure thing. Ask George Carlin in heaven — he won’t mince words.

I’ve been an admirer…hell, a worshipper of you, your acting style and most many most of your films for decades, starting with Play Misty For Me and the under-seen, under-appreciated Breezy. I reallly loved Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino. (I ran a series of quote-excerpt pieces called “Friends of Torino.”) You gave me a phoner for a 1994 Los Angeles magazine piece I wrote called “Right Face,” about the career pressures faced by conservative-minded filmmakers, and you’ve been ultra-gracious and gentlemanly the three times we’ve spoken, and you were also very cool on the phone…’nuff said.

And I got and respected what I thought you were saying when you once called yourself an “Eisenhower Republican.” I’ve always respected genuine conservatives. I became an admirer of the late Barry Goldwater after catching that HBO doc, Mr. Conservative, that his granddaughter, CC Goldwater, directed. I’ve come to realize that the once-reviled Richard Nixon wasn’t so bad after all, and would be defined by today’s nutter righties as an Obama-like centrist, given his views on healthcare. John McCain isn’t such a bad guy, I’m told, and I admired that he at least tried to contain the Palin craziness during the ’08 campaign. But you’ve just endorsed Mitt Romney, Clint, and I feel truly sad and disappointed and turned around by this.

If Trouble With The Curve is a good or great film then that’s what it is, and I will describe it as such. I will never let my political feelings interfere with my ability to recognize and champion quality work. So this is not about Trouble With The Effing Curve.

This is about a presumption that a guy born in the 1930s who’s earned considerable success in a tough industry and who’s won the respect of people across the spectrum is supposed to be a little bit wiser and perhaps even more perceptive than many if not most of us. You’ve been a rightie since the ’60s — I get that. But by endorsing Romney you’re…I don’t know what you’re doing but I feel crestfallen.

You don’t care what I think about Romney, but just as surely as you are a good guy, he is a bad one. You must know this. He’s not a genuine heartland conservative as much as a corporate finagler and appeaser of the the ongoing corporate criminality that’s gotten us into such trouble, starting with Reagan. He’s an embodiment of 1% elitism and tax havens and flim-flammery, pricey show horses (okay, his wife’s), wheeler-dealer indifference to working schlubs, colossal cluelessness (“corporations are people too”), political awkwardness and lack of diplomacy (did you catch his European-tour act?), health-care hypocrisy (you know there was never a dime’s worth of difference between Romney’s Massachusetts health-care plan and Obama’s), garage elevators, etc. You don’t want to hear this any more than I want to write it but God, man….why? WTF?

A big scolding happened in response to yesterday’s Jaws riff. You’d have thought from the comments that I trashed it. I didn’t. I said that Steven Spielberg‘s 1975 blockbuster is “a decent-enough thing,” and it is. I’ve seen it maybe six or seven times. But like almost all Spielberg films “it has no undercurrents so it hasn’t aged all that well,” I said. And I was bitchslapped all around the room.

I’m not calling Jaws a problem film. It obviously isn’t and never has been. But it’s the movie equivalent of a lightweight beach read. Engrossing, highly accessible, fun to follow, entertaining. It’s like a great dinner — zesty, well prepared, exhilarating in a sense — but like all great dishes it fades upon reflection. And it may not even be that. It’s actually more like a great dessert. Made with confidence bordering on swagger (young Spielberg was as good as it got in this realm) and summer-movie attitude, but all you remember at the end of the day are the bits, the tricks, the cherry and the whipped cream.

Add up all the parts and you’re left with a collection of parts. There’s no real muscle tissue, no wholeness, no gravitas, no “things that are not said” and no metaphor other than “uh-oh, life can be occasionally scary or threatening because of the existence of predators…wooooh.” It has several great bits (the severed leg, the fake-looking dead guy’s head, the chumming and the Bruce pop-out, “you’re gonna need a bigger boat”) and that one great moment when Robert Shaw‘s Quint talks about being in the sea with the survivors of the sunken U.S.S. Indianapolis.

It’s just a summer movie that made a lot of money and played a seminal role in the ruining of the great era of Hollywood achievement that began in the late ’60s and ended in the early ’80s. (It took a while.) If you want to buy the Jaws Bluray to have and hold, fine. If it still works for you, fine. I just don’t hold with calling it a great or even an especially sturdy film. It’s merely an effective one.

I never believed the opening scene. I’ve always been impressed by it, but only as a movie bit. I never believed that a shark would pull a naked girl back and forth across the water’s surface so she can shriek and scream for our delectation. (I suspect that shark death is probably much worse and a good deal less cinematic than this.) Again — I’m not putting it down. I’m just saying that like almost everything Spielberg does, it’s jizz whizz.

I always thought that Murray Hamilton‘s mayor character was a little too lazy, exuding a tedious form of small-town corruption. There’s a scene in which he complains to his friends that no one is swimming, and he goads an older couple (both of whom are aware of the young girl’s recent shark death) into wading in. I didn’t believe that for a second.

The scene in which Roy Scheider‘s Chief Brody is keeping an eye on the swimmers is one of the best scenes. And like I said yesterday, the surreal visual effect (track back & zoom in or whatever) is superb — I’lll give Spielberg that.

The woman who lays into Brody for knowing about a shark threat and not closing the beaches is supposed to be the mother of the twelve-year old kid who was eaten by the shark. But she’s dressed like a Midwestern schoolmarm out of a John Ford film, and appears to be in her ’50s.

The scene in which the two guys standing on a pier are dragged out to sea when the pier is pulled from its moorings by the shark — another entertaining scene that is essentially cheap, teasing and absurd.

Ditto the ability of Bruce the shark to pull Quint’s yellow barrels under the surface of the water and to chomp through the cable lines. It’s all to support an idea than Bruce isn’t a shark — he’s a reasoning, calculating, diabolical super-leviathan who’s out to murder and devour with relish because that’s the stuff that the popcorn munchers eat up and talk to their friends about. Again — amusing movie bullshit.

I could go on and on and on and on.

I’m not sure that any Spielberg films have aged very well. He’s the most successful hack who ever came down the pike. I’m almost afraid to look at E.T. and Schindler’s List for fear they they, too, might seem like less.

This morning I had a meditative sink-in outside my Mexican Hat motel room. It was akin to the opening credits of Mike Nichols‘ Catch 22 (’70). It began around 4:30 am — pretty much pitch black. I heard the occasional howl of a coyote, faint but definitely no dog. And then a couple of yelping dogs, and ever so gradually, like it’s done for a hundred million mornings since before the dinosaurs, the light began to creep in by slight undetectable increments, and again the dogs, the coyote and the sinking of the moon.

I waited too long to take this. The Canon always adds light that isn’t there.