Variety‘s Michael Sullivan is reporting that the $3.5 million earned yesterday by Cloud Atlas “must be something of a disappointment for the bow of a film that cost more than $100 million to produce.” Yeah, that’s one way to put it, especially when you add on marketing and p & a.

If things go well Atlas will probably end up tripling its $10 million first weekend gross for a total of $30 million. Then again many bright and passionate people are in love with this extremely difficult-to-get-through film so it all balances out in the end.

Ben Affleck‘s Argo was in first place yesterday with $4 million, and is expected to bring in about $13 million by Sunday night. That’s a mere 22% drop from last weekend, and that weekend had dropped only 15.5% from the opener. The word-of-mouth is obviously quite strong.

Before last night I had John Goodman pegged for an almost certain Best Supporting Actor nomination because of two highly likable, big-sell performances — a swaggering, self-amused drug dealer in Flight (his second entrance has audiences cheering) and as amiable makeup artist John Chambers (a real guy who died in ’01) in Argo. Plus he plays a highly sympathetic Atlanta Braves front-office guy who cares a good deal for Clint Eastwood‘s aging scout in Trouble With The Curve. Plus he’s lost all that weight. At least a nomination, right?

John Goodman

Then I read a 10.26 interview with Goodman by The Guardian‘s Xan Brooks, and it persuaded me that while Goodman might get nominated because he’s always been a gifted actor and the industry knows this, he won’t take the prize. Because as Brooks’ piece indicates, he doesn’t have the temperament to play the chit-chat bullshit interview games you have to submit to in order to win. He doesn’t have that politician gene.

This isn’t to suggest in the least that Brooks is a bullshit chit-chat interviewer. He’s not. He’s one of the more thoughtful and intelligent guys out there, or so it seems to me, but the aloof and somber-toned Goodman couldn’t be bothered to get the conversational ball rolling with Brooks, and if he can’t relax and schmooze a bit with one of the good guys how is Goodman going to fare with all the shallow Ryan Seacrest guys? As well as schmooze and joke with the Academy rank and filers? That’s why I think he’s done.

Brooks vs. Goodman excerpt #1: “It is perhaps unfair to expect an actor to put on a show when the cameras aren’t rolling. But after barely five minutes, I’m floundering, rattling through the questions, desperately attempting to snag his interest. Forgive the preconceptions: I walked in to meet a warm, funny, abundantly gifted actor whose work I’ve loved for years. Instead, this feels like dinner with Grendel.”

Brooks vs. Goodman excerpt #2: “But that’s the thing about this business, [Goodman] shrugs. You can never predict which film will take off and which one will bomb. ‘If I could do that, I wouldn’t be sitting in this room,” he says. ‘I’d be at a desk the size of a football pitch. Barking orders, or having someone else bark ’em for me. One thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, my friend.'”

Brooks vs. Goodman excerpt #2: “‘[Drinking] was getting to be too much,’ he tells me. ‘It was 30 years of a disease that was taking its toll on everyone around me and it had got to the point where, every time I did it, it was becoming more and more debilitating. It was life or death. It was time to stop.’

“Was the alcohol affecting his work? ‘Yes, it certainly was.’

“In what respect? ‘Erm,’ he says. ‘Temperament. Memory. Depression.’

“All at once [Goodman] swivels on the couch and stares off at the wall. He is silent for the longest time. His jaw is set, his colour is rising. Finally, he speaks: ‘This is not something I want to chat about to sell a fucking movie. You understand? I don’t know what you do. I’m sorry, I’m very tired. It seems a little cheap to me.’

“OK, I say. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s the process,’ he says. ‘I can’t just waltz in here and talk about the movie, I have to dredge up some very unpleasant things and it’s just not worth it. What’s the fucking point?'”

Wells Commentary: Goodman’s comments about “the process” and the vague humiliation in which a non-drinking actor is urged to talk about his failings when he was drinking are sympathetic and spot-on, but Brooks is only asking Goodman to discuss matters that he would normally bring up if he was speaking in front of an AA meeting. And the line about how discussing alcoholic dependency “seems a little cheap to me” implies that Brooks is being cheap by asking him about the ravages of booze. That’s not a fair or accurate thing to say.

Goodman’s a cool guy, but he just doesn’t get it. He’s a world-class actor who has many more mountains to climb, but he’s not cut out for the awards circuit. And that’s fine. The Best Supporting Actor Oscar will probably go to Silver Linings Playbook‘s Robert De Niro. Why? Because Lincoln‘s Tommy Lee Jones or The Master‘s Phillip Seymour Hoffman also don’t have the temperament for an Oscar campaign.

The biggest wrongo of George Carlin‘s entire career was his position about not voting, but if you ignore or cut that part out I’m totally with him until 1:12.

Bleak House is “here to try and provoke sort of a shock to the system, to be stimulated not just by high art or fine art but powerful images of pop art or op art or [those of] a vivid imagination…the lifeblood of the imagination is curiosity [and] when we lose curiosity I think we lose, entirely, inventiveness, and we start becoming old….[so this is] a house that is perhaps not suitable for everyone, but which is perfectly suitable for me.” — Guillermo del Toro.

I haven’t posted this clip from Robert Altman‘s California Split since February 2009. This is the single best scene from that under-appreciated film. I’m trying to think of any comic routine from any 2012 film that has a vibe that’s even close to this. I’ve watched it many times and have never failed to at least break out in a big grin. Which makes it more than just just “funny.” Obviously George Segal‘s laugh is what sells it.

There are reasons why Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky‘s Francine only managed a 63% positive on Rotten Tomatoes and a 62% on Metacritic. 62% or 63% means “not bad but with problems.” Francine is an austere study of a recently released ex-con (the great Melissa Leo) who’s unable to bond with humans and who turns to animals (cats, dogs, hamsters) for intimacy and affection. That’s all it is really. But Leo so disappears into the role that Francine is at least absorbing and at times a little more so.

Melissa Leo — Monday, 5.22, 5:50 pm in third-floor suite within Beverly Hills Montage hotel.

There’s a brief but rather ballsy nude scene at the very beginning that tells you straight off, “This is not going to be a portrait of a character who will eventually find redemption and happiness.”

I met Leo the other day at the Beverly Hills Montage and spoke with her for 10 or 15 minutes. I’m a longtime fan so it was easy. Everyone is acknowledging that she owns the last few minutes of Flight. She portrays a National Transportation and Safety Board official who cross-examines Denzel Washington‘s secretly alcoholic pilot, and the drip-drip tension is so thick you can cut it with a blade of grass.

I didn’t ask Leo about all the upcoming indie films she’s acted in, and which are now in post-production. She works like there’s no tomorrow. The newbies reportedly include Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion, A Single Shot, The Butler (in which she’ll play Mamie Eisenhower to Robin Williams‘ Dwight D. Eisenhower), The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman and Something in the Water. She’s also slated to costar in Prisoners, I Fought the Law and Over the Wall.

Leo looks and sounds terrific in person — a polar opposite from the sad, congealed person she plays in Francine.

A single eight-day film festival (11.1 through 11.8) showing 16 choice films (among many others) is offering one hell of a feast: A Royal Affair, Beyond The Hills, Central Park Five, Holy Motors, Hitchcock, The Hunt, The Impossible, Kon Tiki, Life of Pi, Post Tenebras Lux, Rise of the Guardians, Reality, Room 237, Rust and Bone, Silver Linings Playbook and West of Memphis. These are the ones I know are worth seeing.

Buzzfeed posted this about seven or eight hours ago, or very early in the morning. The synopsis was written by the late Lee Winfrey, former TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Winfrey’s flaw, of course, is that Dorothy never “meets” the Wicked Witch of the East. Dropping a house on a witch doesn’t constitute a meeting. If you hit and kill a homeless guy with your Lexus while driving on the 405, you haven’t “met” him before taking his life. You’ve simply killed him. To meet him and then kill him you’d have to pull alongside him, roll down your window and shake his hand and say, “I’m going to back up about 300 yards now and then accelerate and run you over — nice to have met you!”

Correctly written: “Transported by cyclone to a surreal landscape, a young girl accidentally kills a female practitioner of black arts and then teams up with three strangers to steal a prized possession from her sister. In so doing they accidentally kill her.”