Flight is a gripping suspense film, a friend says, about whether or not a fellow we don’t exactly admire but whom we nonetheless want to see saved or redeemed will do right by himself…or not. It’s entirely driven by character. In Leaving Las Vegas Nic Cage was fairly decisive about what he intended to do (i.e., drink himself to death), but in Flight Denzel Washington, portraying a self-destructive commercial airline pilot, teeters this way and that.

The suspense is such that my friend, who saw Flight a week and a half ago, still has scratch marks on his left arm made by his wife — her way of responding to Denzel’s predicament. Take that with a grain or not.

The KidRockVideos copy reads as follows: “The goal of [this] film is to tear down the one-dimensional political stereotypes…it reminds that what really matters is that we’re all Americans, with diverse thoughts, opinions and stances on issues. We are millions of unique, individual parts, the sum of which comprise a whole that is the shining beacon of freedom throughout the world. The film reminds us to be proud of our differences, and to never forget that we’re all in this together as Americans.”

HE response: I don’t want to know, much salute or embrace, a little less than half of the people in this country. The US of A is admired for its movies and music and wide-open landscapes and its great cities, but it’s also widely mocked and in many cases despised by millions worldwide for the bass-ackward, climate-change-denying attitudes that are largely due to American yokelism (religious, rightwing, racist, gay-hating, NASCAR, country music, etc.) and all the Tea Party nutters and conservative corporate toadies they’ve voted into office, particularly the House of Representatives.

A significant portion of this country has devolved into over-the-cliff lunacy and fact denial over the last decade, particularly since Obama’s election four years ago. Put them into green reeducation camps or convince them to secede from the union — seriously. They’re little more but stoppers and foot-draggers with unhealthy eating habits. They’re nice people when you visit (I had a really great time in Shreveport when I visited in late 2010) but later with the shitkicker music and pickup trucks and muscle cars and conservative flag-waving and all that other stuff.

MSN critic and HE gadfly Glenn Kenny will be tomorrow’s Oscar Poker guest. We’ll be chatting around 1:30 pm Eastern, by which point he’ll have seen Robert Zemeckis‘s Flight so we’ll get into that along with the awards-season razmatazz. I’d also like to set aside at least part of our discussion for an airing of classic Wells-Kenny grievances. One of them will be the Central Park Five dispute (link #1 and link #2). Please submit any suggestions for other topics of debate.

Jeffrey Wells to Mark Olsen, Manohla Dargis, Marina Bailey: “You guys should understand that last night’s presentation of Holy Motors at Raleigh Chaplin was unsatisfactory in terms of light levels. It often appeared muddy and inky in the darker scenes (which constitute a good half if not two-thirds of the film), and this was definitely not the case when I saw it on the Salle Debussy screen in Cannes. I would say without exaggeration that Leos Carax‘s vision was suppressed, diminished and underserved by a good 25% to 33%.

“SMPTE standards call for 14 foot lamberts or thereabouts. I don’t carry a professional light meter around but it looked like we were getting 10 foot lamberts, or possibly even 8. Which is par for the course for many commercial theatres, of course, but screening rooms are supposed to deliver higher industry standards.

“I was sitting there trying to feel the same voltage and engagement that I felt in Cannes and it just wouldn’t happen. Part of this was because the surprise element was gone, of course, but also because of the murk. The death-bed scene was particularly appalling. The black dog lying on the bed was a blobby indistinct ink spot. Why use a dog in a scene if you can’t see aspects of his physicality — eyes, paws, fur texture?

“One problem is that Raleigh’s Chaplin room has a silver screen for 3D presentations, and I know that silver screens have been associated with diminished foot-lambert levels in reports I’ve read about unsatisfactory 2D projection. I’ve had occasional issues with Raleigh before, so this was part of a pattern.”

Update: Thanks to Toronto Star critic Peter Howell for reminding me that the Cannes press screening of Holy Motors played at the Salle Debussy and not the Grand Lumiere. Yes, it also played at the latter but for the black-tie crowd a few hours later.

Sincere, knee-drop praise from Variety‘s Peter Debruge suggests that Skyfall may indeed be as good as all that. When, by the way, is Jay Penske going to take down the Variety firewall? He told staffers a couple of days ago it would soon be gone.

Debruge #1: “Putting the ‘intelligence’ in MI6, Skyfall reps a smart, savvy and incredibly satisfying addition to the 007 oeuvre. In Sam Mendes‘ hands, the franchise comes full circle, revealing the three-film Daniel Craig cycle to be both prelude and coda to the entire series via a foxy chess move that puts these pics on par with Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogy as best-case exemplars of what cinematic brands can achieve, resulting in a recipe for nothing short of world domination.”

Debruge #2: “Whatever parallels it shares with the Bourne series or Nolan’s astonishingly realized Batman saga, Skyfall radically breaks from the Bond formula while still remaining true to its essential beats, presenting a rare case in which audiences can no longer anticipate each twist in advance. Without sacrificing action or overall energy, Mendes puts the actors at the forefront, exploring their marvelously complex emotional states in ways the franchise has never before dared.”

Argo was clearly the film to see yesterday for those with any appreciation at all for sharp, shrewd, crafty, etc. Naturally, young American audiences being young American audiences, Argo came in third behind Summit’s not great but allegedly passable Sinister and the decidedly low-grade Taken 2. Because young American audiences are, for the most part, obstinate, under-educated, slow-to-catch-on infants who want their pacifier.

Deadline‘s Nikki Finke is reporting that at least one exhibitor told her that Argo is playing “very old.” It’s primarily being seen, in other words, by people who were teenagers or young adults 30 years ago.

But Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino says that Argo‘s projected $18 million haul is more than what was initially foreseen (they used last year’s Ides of March numbers as a comparison). Given the quality and the Oscar buzz Contrino sees Argo as “a 3.5 to 4 multiplier,” meaning he expects it to earn $70 million domestic. He also says it will probably do very well in foreign territories (like Munich, which performed better overseas than here).

The Argo “cons” in Boxoffice’s weekend projection story noted that (a) “the ‘insider’ Hollywood plot has historically proven to be a hard sell to widespread audiences” (idiots!) and (b) “Social media buzz has been moderate, but not outstanding…this looks like a long-term performer more than a big opener.”

Apologies for not posting this Harris Savides tribute reel yesterday. Excellent work by Press Play‘s Nelson Carvajal. “In reality people aren’t lit…there’s no one walking around your house putting the light in the right place for you. My approach to lighting now is to light these spaces, light the rooms and let these people inhabit them, as they would in real life.”

After getting shot and falling off a moving train, Daniel Craig‘s James Bond falls a good six seconds before hitting the river below. I don’t precisely know how fast a falling human body travels, but I’m figuring at least 50 or 60 feet per second. Six seconds x 60 = 360 feet. Tony Scott died after jumping 365 feet off the Vincent Thomas Bridge so how dumb is this scene?

A 4.11 abcnews.com story about a girl who survived a leap from San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge reads as follows: “The Golden Gate Bridge has been a notorious place for suicides since it was built in 1937 and very few survive the 220 foot fall the middle of the span or the frigid, fast moving water below. A fall off the Golden is the equivalent of a four second 25-story fall and the human body is usually shattered when it strikes the water at 75 mph.”

If everyone thought like me the Bond producers would eventually say, “Wow, looks like the exaggerated bullshit cartoon CG action scenes that have been working their way into the Bond legend since the Roger Moore days aren’t playing anymore. I guess we’ll have to go back to lean and mean hardball realism. Wow, what a challenge in this day and age, eh? Let’s talk to the stunt guys and see what’s possible.”

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil went to last night’s Lincoln screening at the DGA (along with Steve Pond, David Poland, Pete Hammond and a few others), and he’s calling Daniel Day Lewis‘s performance as Abraham Lincoln a”shoo-in” for the Best Actor Oscar. Maybe…but why didn’t anyone else say this after catching Lincoln at the New York Film Festival last Monday night? DDL will probably be nominated, no doubt, but nobody (including Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg) was or is saying “guaranteed winner.”

“Personally, I was leery that Day-Lewis could pull off this role, which requires warmth, wit and subtly from an actor who usually slices through celluloid like Bill the Butcher,” O’Neil writes. “Recently, he ruined Nine by doing his usual big, brooding angst routine instead of laying on Guido’s impish charm. In Lincoln, however, he holds back. He’s still brooding, but only so far as to deliver Abe’s notorious melancholy, then adding the man’s heart, authority and devilish streak. He’s so damned good, it’s creepy — you really believe this is Abe. Honest.”

I’m getting a feeling (and it’s only that) that the DDL train will slow to a halt on Sunday. That’s when things will begin to surge for Denzel Washington‘s performance in Flight following the NY Film Festival press screening (and then the evening showing at Alice Tully Hall). I know someone who’s seen Flight and wrote me that Denzel’s a “lock” for a Best Actor nom, but a lot of sources have been saying this for a while now. Let’s just see what happens.

I’ve been told (and I’m not disputing) that the 62 year-old Academy schlongos are feeling a little distance from Joaquin Phoenix‘s Master performance because the film is too nebulous for them. (Joaquin is “a critics darling but an Academy one,” the explanation goes.) You also have John Hawkes in The Sessions, Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour and Richard Gere in Arbitrage.

I think it’ll boil down in the end to Denzel vs. Daniel Day Lewis vs. Joaquin. Pure intuition, pure conjecture. But just you wait.

I don’t trust any journalist who describes Daniel Craig as “the man with the golden hair” so I’m naturally suspicious of a just-posted review of Skyfall by the Mirror‘s David Edwards. He sounds too giddy. So his declaration that Skyfall “might be the best James Bond film ever” comes with a grain of salt.

“Enthralling, explosive and often very funny, Skyfall doesn’t just exceed expectations but shatters them like a bullet to the head,” Edwards writes. “Unfortunately, the very best thing about the 23rd 007 film has to remain top secret, in case it spoils the experience. Let’s just say that what starts as an action movie becomes a weepie in its final ten minutes.”

“After a cracking opening scene in Istanbul in which Bond is shot and left for dead, we travel to London where MI6 boss M (Judi Dench) is in hot water after a hard-drive containing her field operatives identities goes missing.

“It’s only with the reappearance of 007 that she learns the thief is a former agent, played by Javier Bardem, who plans to use the knowledge to bring down his former boss.

“While Skyfall looks and feels like a Bond film — the exotic locales, the memorable villain and an appearance from that iconic silver Aston Martin — director Sam Mendes hasn’t been afraid to play with the formula.

“The themes of cyber terrorism, including a bomb attack on a rush-hour London Tube train, bring the franchise bang up to date.

“And, believe it or not, there’s even some playful flirting between him and Bardem’s openly-gay villain.

“The gadget-loving Q also returns after a 10-year absence, this time played by Ben Whishaw, and gets the biggest laugh of the film when, after supplying Bond with a revolver, remarks, ‘Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go for that anymore.’

“Craig is as reliable as ever, portraying a spy as icy as his cobalt-blue eyes while Bardem’s character rivals the likes of Blofeld and Jaws as 007’s most transfixing bad guy.

“Prepare to be shaken, stirred… and amazed.”

This photo is three or four days old, and my first inclination was to ignore it because it’s a cheap shot in and of itself, even without the unfairly worded AP caption that they apologized for earlier today. But it’s been making me laugh for the last three days, and I think that’s worth mentioning. My favorite caption: “Just pull it out. It’s just a carrot. Just grab hold and pull it out. It wont hurt, it’s fine.”

It also reminded me of that moment in Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom when one of the middle-aged fascists pulls his pants down in front of several young lads and…I’d rather not describe it further but this is what came to mind.

Caption suggestions?

Two nights ago I attended a party at the Beverly Hilton for the forthcoming Baja Int’l Film Festival (Wednesday, 11.14 thru Saturday, 11.17), and while I was there I spoke with the co-directors, Scott and Sean Cross. They also co-direct the Vail Film Festival (which I attended in April 2004) and the Colorado Film Institute. The brothers were hired by some big-wheel Baja businessmen to put Cabo on the film festival map, and so they lined up name-value board members (including Edward Norton, Carlos Reygadas and filmmaker/journalist Godfrey Cheshire) and put it all together.

Scott and Sean Cross, co-directors of the Baja Int’l Film Festival — Beverly Hilton hote, . (No offense but I don’t know which one is which.)

The festival lineup won’t be announced for another few days, but I’m hoping to see some interesting new films along with current faves (No, Post Tenebras Lux, etc.)

I had two reasons for attending. One, because some kind of special light and verve has been coming out of films made by south-of-the-border filmmakers (Pablo Larrain, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Guillermo del Toro, Gerardo Naranjo) over the last several years, and I’d like to see a lot more films from this territory. And two, like any opportunistic freeloading journalist I’m always looking to prostitute my services cover any film festivals happening in any sort of exotic attractive location, and Cabo sounded like a good place to visit. They’re offering a festival pass and comped hotel rooms. Being a cheapskate I’m also looking for round-trip air fare, which runs about $350.

Here, again, is my mp3 with the Cross brothers. Best of luck to them and the festival, and I hope they meet and bond with Gerardo Naranjo, director of Miss Bala….with whom they haven’t yet had the pleasure.