A tech-savvy guy confides that “delicate bits of dirt” have been added to the 4K version of The Master — to the digital intermediate, I mean — in order to give the digital versions the look of film. Is that serious madman stuff or what? Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t want it to look too digitized so he gunked it up a wee little bit. This is from a knowledgable guy who knows knowledgable guys. I hope it turns out to be true.

One aspect of all that Argo love we’ve been hearing since Telluride has been a patriotic “yay team, good for us, we Americans did that!” sentiment. Because the movie, set in 1979 and ’80, says that the successful hoodwinking of the Islamic Iranian regime into thinking that six escaped American embassy workers were filmmakers was a CIA + Hollywood job. But now director-producer-star Ben Affleck has changed the postscript to say it was a Canadian job with CIA assistance.

Former Canadian ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor with Argo director Ben Affleck two days ago (i.e., Monday, 9.17) on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.

Liza Foreman‘s 9.19 Wrap story says Affleck “has made the change to appease Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who plays a key role in crisis depicted in the Affleck-directed movie, a Warner Bros. spokeswoman told TheWrap. The film was seen by associates of Taylor as falsely giving credit for the release of the hostages to a CIA agent and also suggesting that Canada and Taylor wrongly took credit.”

The new postscript reads as follows: “The involvement of the CIA complemented efforts of the Canadian embassy to free the six held in Tehran. To this day the story stands as an enduring model of international co-operation between governments.”

“I expressed my concern with certain details in the movie,” Taylor told the Toronto Star‘s Martin Knellman. “In reality, Canada was responsible for the six and the CIA was a junior partner. But I realize this is a movie and you have to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Ben was very gracious and we got along really well. There are a few points I want to address. Now Ben and I both feel free to talk about them.”

I was given freebies to see The Book of Mormon last night at the Pantages theatre. Other journalist freeloaders were there also. I haven’t seen a balls-out, world-class stage musical in years, and this was awfully good. The Pantages is too big — rear seating is just too far back. I was in the fifth row left. Two lady ushers told me I couldn’t snap photos of the magnificent interior design. I ignored them, of course. What was happening between me and the architecture was none of their damn business,

My concern is that Barack Obama, convinced as everyone else is by now that Mitt Romney is going to lose, is going to do his usual courtly, combat-averse, close-to-genuflecting routine when he debates Romney on 10.3, 10.16 and 10.22. He’s figuring Romney has already dug his own grave to why box a dead horse? Obama doesn’t like to scrap, much less take off the gloves. I’ve always seen that as a failing.

I also strongly disagree with Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet in his view of Anna Karenina. Joe Wright‘s film is a breath of fresh air in the historical-drama genre, and a knockout in terms of design, choreography, performances (especially Keira Knightley and Jude Law‘s) and general audacity. It’s a contact high. But in trashing one of the year’s finest Brevet at least uses moderate language, unlike N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis did the other day.

The best movies define their own realm. Most reflect or recreate “reality” as most of us know it, but not with absolute slavish adherence to every last detail. Like the speaking voices of the famous. Accuracy is welcome but sounding “right” is what counts. Listen to the real voice of George S. Patton. Imagine If Patton collaborators George C. Scott and director Franklin J. Schaffner had taken leave of their senses and decided to go the tonally correct route. No legendary reputation, no Best Actor Oscar, no home video sales…an anecdote.

The best way to see The Master in 70mm is on a fairly large and flat (or only slightly curved) screen. I saw it in 70mm at Toronto’s Bell Lightbox — perfect. The best way for New Yorkers was that 70mm special screening at the Zeigfeld eight days ago. I wouldn’t know how good it looks or sounds at the AMC Leows Lincoln Square, but I’ve had some bad experiences at that place.

In Los Angeles The Master playing in 70 mm in two theatres in the Arclight, and on a single screen in West L.A.’s Landmark. (A 35mm and digital version is also showing there.) The L.A. Weekly‘s Michael Nordine recently advised readers to “see it in the Dome.” No — don’t. The super-curved Dome screen distorts. The only way this venue would work would be if the Dome’s screen has been taken down (which happened when Alan Parker‘s Evita played there in ’96).

I intend to see it again on Friday or Saturday. My money is on the other Arclight screen or the Landmark.

Ted Kotcheff‘s Wake In Fright, which opens theatrically in New York’s Film Forum on 10.5 and then 10.19 at L.A.’s Nuart, actually opened in October 1971, so it’s now enjoying its 41st anniversary. Just saying.

Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln (Disney, 11.9) won’t screen for critics until next week, but already there is a certain pushback in the form of concern about Daniel Day Lewis‘s Lincoln voice. It ain’t right. In the 1920s Robert Todd Lincoln visited Raymond Massey backstage and told him how much his voice reminded him of his father’s. And if Massey’s Lincoln doesn’t work for you, try Sam Waterston’s.

A director-writer who knows people and gets around says he’s heard that “DDL’s Lincoln voice tries to be consistent with what the actual man’s sounded like, but aside from an impassioned, impressive performance the film is another Amistad with good intentions outweighing a good film.”

I can’t over-emphasize how enraged I am about N.Y Times critic Manohla Dargis having called Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina “a travesty with a miscast Keira Knightley” that is “tragic only in its conception and execution”…God! This is an outrageously stingy and dismissive and short-sighted thing to say, and to call Knightley miscast when she in fact has given one of her most flat-on exhilarating performances (and I’m saying this having been bothered by her acting in years past) is…is…I feel like slamming my fist into a refrigerator.

(l. to r.) Manohla Dargis, Joe Wright, Keira Knightley

Dargis is basically saying that Wright’s decision to present Leo Tolstoy‘s 19th Century tragedy as a “play”, initially set inside a theatre but opening up into sound-stage sets and outdoor backdrops, was a huge mistake. In fact Wright’s decision to pull the plug on historical realism was an act of major artistic courage, especially since he didn’t choose this mad-Stravinski approach until Karenina was a couple of weeks into pre-production. Wright could have done the usual-usual and that Karenina would have gotten the usual-usual reactions, but he manned up and decided to go all Powell-Pressburger and Ken Russell and then Dargis comes along and calls his film an effing “travesty”?

That really and truly stinks. I’ve admired Manohla for many years, and I just feel appalled.

Sasha Stone is fond of saying that online columnists and critics aren’t the real deal, and that the real brahmins and gurus are the critics working for major established print orgs. To hell with that. Manohla Dargis is a heavyweight, agreed, but she doesn’t “know” any more than I do. She doesn’t have some kind of elite N.Y. Times enzyme in her bloodstream that gives her special eyes. She’s just a critic who knows what she knows, and who writes like a champ. I’ve been around as long as she has and then some, and I’m saying here and now that her opinion doesn’t count any more than mine or Sasha’s or Kris Tapley‘s or Eric Kohn‘s or anyone else with any hard-won, day-to-day cred.

And in the case of Anna Karenina, she’s hit a “wrong” gusher that compares to the one that James Dean lucked into in Giant. What she wrote is needlessly cruel and brash and lacking the compassion and respect that any fair-minded critic should bring to any act of creative daring. There is no such thing as a film critic being “right” or “wrong”, of course, but Manohla’s Karenina comments come awfully damn close.

Yesterday morning Sasha Stone and I recorded a special post-Toronto, where-is-the-Oscar-race-now? Oscar Poker with Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. Apologies to Tom for our dominating the conversation in the early stages, but we got into everything and particularly The Silver Linings Playbook, what do “real” critics like Manohla Dargis know that we don’t? and beware-of-Lincoln. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Here’s O’Neil talking to Pete Hammond about the same. Key Hammond quote: “I wouldn’t bet the farm” on Beasts of the Southern Wild getting a Best Picture nomination.

Universal has bumped the opening of Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables — one of the five presumed Best Picture contenders that haven’t been seen — from 12.14 to 12.25. The other Four Big Unseens are Robert Zemeckis‘s Flight (11.2), Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty (12.14), Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi (11.21) and Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln…but I wouldn’t bank on Lincoln if I were you.