In a 1.4 posting, New Yorker critic-columnist Richard Brody has written that the vision of marital love in Judd Apatow‘s This Is 40 is “far more complex” than the vision of same presented in Michael Haneke‘s Amour. And he more or less calls Haneke a kind of death-savoring fiend.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece [SPOILER WARNING]:

“[Haneke] films his elderly couple (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva) with a superficial simulacrum of wisdom and experience, strips them of traits in order to reduce them to the function of the film to render the appalling act [i.e., a mercy killing] justifiable, to strip out the appearance of mixed emotions. And yet, what comes through is that Haneke likes filming a killing, takes a smirkingly ghoulish look at the act, and takes unconscious pleasure in the unconscionable.

“As Georges smothers the incapacitated Anne under a pillow, her legs kick in resistance: she may be willing to die, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to stop living. Nothing in Georges’s demeanor suggests anything but the desire to end Anne’s misery, in defiance of any objection the world might make. How he faces that opprobrium, or the force of law, we can only imagine.

“Haneke either knows and doesn’t show it, or doesn’t bother to imagine it; but, for him, it doesn’t matter. He has had his fun. He has shown murder and made his viewers love it, has brought them into complicity with his smirkingly ghoulish pleasure. The hollowness of the contrivance conceals the grotesquerie of the sacralized Grand Guignol.

“Where Django Unchained suggests Quentin Tarantino’s unconscious delight in the unconscionable Amour reflects Haneke’s calculated desire to stir up a reaction by way of a cynical ambiguity, to recalibrate a moral shock with an overwhelming preponderance of mitigations.

“Would the ostensible mercy killing appear less justified if the couple were longtime fans of yé-yé or Plastic Bertrand rather than Schubert, if they casually flung political opinions of any stripe, if they confided in friends, if their discussions with doctors were observed — in short, if they seemed to live anything other than a life of hermetic perfection? The vision of marital love in This Is 40 is vastly more complex.”

Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus has been so widely trash-canned that this piece seemed redundant when I first saw it…what was it, 10 days ago? On top of which it didn’t engage because the narration was so rushed. But it works now with subtitles. Can Scott ever be “Ridley Scott” again after this debacle? Has his rep been permanently sullied?

“How many times…did I view the trailer for Prometheus? How many man-hours did devotees of Alien and Aliens give to the scrutiny of each mini-scene and to every nook of the teaser’s frame, wondering what Ridley Scott might supply to feed our craving? And how could the eventual film, bursting from the chest cavity of that promise, do anything other than disappoint?” — New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, posting on 12.12.

Michael Haneke‘s Amour is going to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar on February 26th — locked, done, sealed. Anyone who writes “whoa, not so fast…the winner might be Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano‘s The Intouchables!” is just wanking the pot. Yes, some prefer this film’s emotional clam-broth to Haneke’s icy austerity, but their numbers are relatively few.

If I was a behind-the-scenes godfather-poobah who could just point and dictate the winner, I would give the Best Foreign Language Oscar to Pablo Larrain‘s brilliant and mesmerizing No. Amour, which I’ve been completely turned around on (respectful repulsion in Cannes morphing into hardcore admiration after watching it three more times in LA), has been feted enough. But that’s me. And if I couldn’t order a win for No, I’d give the Oscar to Christian Petzold‘s Barbara, which won me over in Telluride.

Is there anything valid to say about the general Academy situation facing foreign-language contenders? Yes, says L.A. Times reporter Mark Olsen in a 1.6 article. Kill the rule that allows the country of origin to determine the nominee — a process that inevitably makes this selection almost entirely about local back-scratching.

“Some see the [Best Foreign Language selection] process as perennially flawed until the academy reconsiders the one-film-per-country rule,” Olsen writes. “At the Golden Globes, for example, where no such rule exists, the official French Oscar submission of The Intouchables and another well-regarded French film, Rust and Bone were both nominated.”

Four of the Oscar shortlisted films are in French, he notes, but Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard‘s meditative relationship drama that everyone was approving in Cannes, couldn’t be nominated by the Academy because The Intouchables had the favor of the French film establishment because it made a lot of money.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spoke this morning on with Oliver Stone (Showtime’s “The Untold History of the United States”) for a 30-minute discussion of cinematic impressions, revisions, re-tellings and interpretations of history.

I loathe and despise the MSNBC embed codes because they always fail to render a 460-pixel width, even though I’ve proportionately changed all the width and height dimensions in the right way.

How does that Randy Newman song go? “I just want you to hate like I do…” Seriously, if you’ve kept your passion burning and you’ve done your homework all along, you really do get to a point where you just know. I don’t think or feel a film is good or bad — I know it is like I know an apple is red or a dog has fleas.

I know when a film is good even when I don’t like it. Saying “I almost hated it but it’s obviously very well made” — that’s what separates the men from the boys. (This is what I said about Amour after my first viewing in Cannes. And then I came around.) Not everything is subjective and “to each his own” and blah-dee-blah. There really is such a thing as taste, and it comes “from a thousand distastes,” as Francois Truffaut once said.

When I use the term “hater,” I’m speaking of someone who is apparently reacting adversely to a film for reasons that are all pushed and mashed down in his or her psyche, and he/she hasn’t copped to it. And I know what it is to be an “apologist.” That’s when you like something even though you know it has problems, but you can’t help yourself because it’s gotten to you. As long as you cop that helplessness, you’re fine.

The respected but not-terribly-influential National Society of Film Critics, which is made up of 60 high-minded film critics, voted their top prizes today, and the majority basically went apeshit for Amour and The Master. You could strap Joe Popcorn into a theatre seat with Clockwork Orange eyelid devices and force him to watch these two films, and he’d…I don’t know what he’d do but he wouldn’t be that happy about it. I’m just saying that the NSFC lives in one realm, and Mr. Slovenly Popcorn lives in his.

The NSFC gave Michael Hanake‘s Amour its Best Picture prize with 28 votes. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master got 25 votes and Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty snagged 18 votes. Thank God they didn’t go for Lincoln.

Haneke won the Best Director prize with 27 votes. Bigelow took second place with 24 votes and PTA came in third with 24 votes.

Lincoln‘s Daniel Day-Lewis took the Best Actor trophy with Holy Motors‘ Denis Lavant (a real dweeb vote) tied for second place with The Master‘s Joaquin Phoenix. Amour‘s Emmanuelle Riva took the Best Actress prize with Silver Linings Playbook‘s Jennifer Lawrence second and Zero Dark Thirty‘s Jessica Chastain third.

Magic Mike‘s Mathew McConaughey took Best Supporting Actor with Lincoln‘s Tommy Lee Jones and The Master‘s Phillip Seymour Hoffman in second and third place. The Master‘s Amy Adams won Best Supporting Actress, beating out the second- and third-ranked Sally Field (Lincoln) and Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables).

Oh, and Drer Moreh‘s The Gatekeepers (Sony Pictures Classics) won for Best Documentary. Excellent call.

I talked to an insider last night about Sundance 2013, and he shared some interesting things. Park Chan-Wook‘s Stoker is “probably more of a genre movie than anything else.” The word is “pretty good” on Ann Fontaine‘s Two Mothers, about moms (Naomi Watts, Robin Wright) having affairs with each other’s sons. “There are a lot of reasons to like” Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight. [Wells interjection: Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy‘s characters are in their early 40s and they’re still circling each other and wondering if they’re a good fit? Are they going to keeping doing this until their 50s or their 60s?]

David Gordon Green‘s Prince Avalanche is based on a 2011 film by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson called Either Way, which is “a tiny film…three characters…fairly slow and experimental.” There is apparent cause for caution with Joshua Michael Stern‘s jOBS, which has been given the festival’s closing-night slot, which can sometimes be interpreted as a sop. “Everyone seems to like” Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s Don Jon’s Addiction, which is “very good but all about pornography…and yet stylish and sweet rather than creepy.” Michael Winterbottom‘s The Look of Love “is all about Steve Coogan‘s performance” as British adult magazine publisher and entrepreneur Paul Raymond. “It’ll put him in in play as a dramatic actor” in a film that is “playful but also serious.” (Or did he mean the performance is “playful but serious”?)

Word around the campfire is that Naomi Foner‘s Very Good Girls will “play best with a younger teen audience.” Jill Soloway‘s Afternoon Delight…”good. Hannah Fidell‘s The Teacher…”pretty good.” With Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Sam Rockwell and Maya Rudolph costarring, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s Way Way Back is obviously aiming for a big commercial sale.

The general, semi-informed view is that Sundance 2013 is looking like a mildly good one and perhaps even a tiny bit underwhelming. But nobody knows everything.

Obviously this trailer for Michael Polish‘s Big Sur, a Sundance 2013 Premiere, works. Definitely gets your attention, draws you in, makes you swoon. The reasons are M. David Mullen‘s cinematography, and the Flamingos’ 1959 version of “I Only Have Eyes For You” (“kuhluck-kuhluck”). The rants of Jack Kerouac (Jean Marc Barr) are well-written and fiercely performed, but I know all about this. Creation enters when it wants to and leaves when it wants to. The artist is only a conduit.

Glenn Campbell‘s “Hey Little One” also helps out.

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.” — a quote from Roman court-philosopher Seneca, and passed along in a 1.4 N.Y. Times article by 77 year-old Uruguyan president Jose Mujica, who has shunned the trappings of power to live an austere, bare-bones life in a run-down home in the outskirts of Montevideo.

Mujica’s net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage,” writes Times correspondent Simon Romero. “He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.

“His current brand of low-key radicalism — a marked shift from his days wielding weapons in an effort to overthrow the government — exemplifies Uruguay’s emergence as arguably Latin America’s most socially liberal country.

“Under Mr. Mujica, who took office in 2010, Uruguay has drawn attention for seeking to legalize marijuana and same-sex marriage, while also enacting one of the region’s most sweeping abortion rights laws and sharply boosting the use of renewable energy sources like wind and biomass.”

The 1926 lost version of The Great Gatsby, directed by Herbert Brenon an starring Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby, had a running time of 80 minutes. It looks like torture. The 1949 Elliott Nugent verison with Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Shelley Winters ran 91 minutes. The 1974 Jack Clayton version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow ran 144 minutes. Baz Luhrman‘s upcoming 3D version reportedly runs 72 minutes…kidding!

The Wiki page says the 1926 film “was designed as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby’s mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements.” No telling if Luhrman’s version will emphasize the same, but I can guess. They’re definitely emphasized in the trailer.

After watching Josh Olson‘s “Trailers From Hell” tribute to Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time (’78), listen to my mp3 recording of the Straight Time gang — Dustin Hoffman, director Ulu Grosbard, Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, cinematographer Owen Roizman — chatting with Scott Foundas at L.A.’s Billy Wilder theatre on 6.23.07.