Airport interiors are designed to convey a vague sense of serenity and security. Sometimes they do more than that. I’m sitting near a Starbucks alcove inside one of the San Francisco Int’l Airport terminals, and a few minutes ago I felt curiously soothed when I came upon this hanging angel sculpture. So I took a shot of it. And I’m virulently anti-religious. How’s that for a slice of essential 21st Century journalism?

Last week I said “sure, okay, fine” to a four-day visit to the 16th Sonoma International Film Festival. But now that it’s 8:48 am and I have to leave 40 minutes hence to catch an 11:30 am plane to San Francisco, I don’t feel so good. Part of me always rebels when it’s time to pack (and I haven’t even packed yet) and get going that says “God, why did I agree to this? It would be so much simpler and easier to just stay put.”

I was going to wake up at 5:30 am and write my review of Brian Helgeland‘s 42, which I saw last night. I started tapping out impressions late last night. And then I slept through the alarm and woke around 8 am.

I’ll say this much: 42 is okay if you like your entertainment simple and square and instructional, but it felt to me like a film aimed at 10 year-olds, like something the Disney people might have made in the 1950s between The Swamp Fox and The Life and Times of Elfego Baca. I was wondering if Helgeland intended 42 to evoke an old-time atmosphere (the story of Jackie Robinson‘s entry into big-league baseball happens between 1945 and ’47) by deliberately aping the style and mentality of mainstream ’40s and early ’50s films. I was thinking specifically of those three James Stewart-June Allyson flicks they made between ’49 and ’55 — The Stratton Story (another baseball yarn about overcoming adversity), The Glenn Miller Story and Strategic Air Command. Intentional or not, 42 is cut from the exact same cloth.

I also have another riff about To The Wonder in mind, but that’ll have to keep. I leave in 20 minutes. Nah, can’t happen. I’m shooting for a 9:45 am departure.

9:35 am update: I leave in ten. As I was packing the cats were giving me that hurt look — “You’re abandoning us?”

The second trailer for Louis Leterrier‘s trickster-caper-what-have-you. Here’s a 3.24 HE riff. Summit/Lionsgate is releasing Now You See Me on 5.31.

The interest that GenY and developmentally-stunted GenXers have in period westerns (along the semi-scrupulous lines of, say, The Wild Bunch, The Grey Fox, Days of Heaven, Heaven’s Gate and McCabe and Mrs. Miller) is apparently zilch. They don’t want to commune with bygone eras in any kind of realistic way — they only want digitally spritzed-up fantasies that all feel and look like the same 21st Century bullshit video game. Same formula, same attitude, same pacing and cutting.

Yes, Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger (Disney, 7.3) is a popcorn goof and hardly about “history.” But shouldn’t some form of believable yesteryear atmosphere be woven into it? If you ask me the to-hell-with-historical-realism aesthetic began 14 years ago with Barry Sonnenfeld‘s Wild Wild West (high-throttle FX and wowser technology in a steampunk style) and gained strength with the japey style of the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks.

Hollywood has always phonied up history in this and that way by kowtowing to contemporary fashions and mores. Errol Flynn‘s 1938 Robin Hood was pure fantasy-driven pop. William Holden‘s anti-war attitudes in The Bridge on the River Kwai were those of a mid ’50s sophisticate, and were unrealistically imposed upon the World War II setting. Biblical epics of the ’50s and ’60s were, of course, resplendently phony in various ways. So ignoring the way things were is not new. But will we ever see actual period films again, at least on an intermittent basis? The kind of period we saw in the two Godfather films, in Reds, in Ken Russell‘s Women in Love (which is to say not Mahler or Lisztomania), in Michael Mann‘s Last of the Mohicans, etc. John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven was very much of its time (i.e, 1960), but at least it was half-loyal to the trappings of the Old West. Even the Sergio Leone Almeria films of the ’60s were at least semi-credible. Is that kind of thing gone with the wind?

Seriously, how infantile and neurotic is it to say “I don’t want to know from historical realities — I just want my own kind of CG realm imposed upon everything that ever was. I want all of history revised so it feels like something I’d recognize and could slip right into with my hand-held devices”?

This “re-imagining of all creation in CG terms” aesthetic has migrated over to African-wildlife docs even. I’ve actually seen docs that use CG enhancements to zass things up so lions and tigers and crocs and wild dogs look even fiercer than they do in actuality.

I attended last night’s Los Angeles premiere of To The Wonder, and I had exactly the same reaction as I did last September in Toronto. It’s a beautifully shot object d’art, but it helps to know what it doesn’t do going in. Terrence Malick‘s decision to shoot a drama about things not working out between a couple with next to no dialogue certainly has integrity. I don’t know how many times Olga Kurylenko (who plays Ben Affleck‘s French wife who winds up stranded and gasping for air in Bartlesville, Oklahoma) twirls around in this film, but she does it a lot.

To The Wonder costars Olga Kurylenko, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams.

(l. tor.) McAdams, Affleck, Green, Kurylenko, Gonda.

Affleck (who’s put on a few pounds since the Oscar telecast) offered some pre-screening remarks alogn with producers Sarah Green and Nicholas Gonda, and got a laugh when he noted that what he’d just said amounted to more dialogue that he has in the film.

The screening and the after-party were held inside the Pacific Design Center. I said hello to James Woods, who’s crafty and convincing in Phillip Noyce‘s Mary and Martha, an HBO drama debuting on 4.20, and to Killing Them Softly director-writer Andrew Dominik.

On the way out I asked Green if the Malick film formerly known as Lawless has a new title. Not yet, she said. I told her I’d read a riff about Knight of Cups possibly going to Cannes based on an understanding that it’s closer to being completed than the film formerly known as Lawless. Green said she didn’t know and that the ball is in Terry’s court, etc. I’m presuming that sections of both will be shown to buyers, at least.

Most of To The Wonder was shot in Bartlesville, and I noticed for the first time last night that it contains two shots of a large, second-story-balcony home that looks a lot like the one bought and used for the forthcoming adaptation of August: Osage County, which was also shot in Bartlesville and nearby Pawhuska. For all I know the Bartlesville area has five or ten homes that look like this.

The event sponsors were Disaronno ( an Italian liqueur) and Fiji Water.

“Although Universal’s publicity department has asked that journalists refrain from spilling the secrets of Oblivion (Universal, 4.19), the major revelations, once they arrive, will hardly surprise anyone familiar with Total Recall, The Matrix and the countless other sci-fi touchstones hovering over this striking, visually resplendent adventure,” writes Variety‘s Justin Chang.

“Pitting the latest action-hero incarnation of Tom Cruise against an army of alien marauders, director Joseph Kosinski’s follow-up to Tron: Legacy is a moderately clever dystopian mindbender with a gratifying human pulse, despite some questionable narrative developments along the way.”

This plus Todd McCarthy’s half-approving review leaves you with an idea that while Oblivion may not be great or legendary, it isn’t half bad.

A.O. Scott, Dana Stevens and Werner Herzog talking about the departed Roger Ebert on Charlie Rose (Monday 4.8):

The easy-lay critics will give it a pass and general audiences rarely consider quality issues, but Brian Helgeland‘s 42 (Warner Bros., 4.12) is apparently in trouble with discerning types. The period baseball biopic has encountered two dismissive reviews out of the gate with Variety‘s Scott Foundas and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy calling it too self-consciously mythical by half.

“All that effort to get funding and then the rewrites and shooting hassles and post-production struggles and we’re finally about to open and wham…pans from Foundas and McCarthy! This fist is for them!”

McCarthy writes that 42 is guilty of “hyperbole and unnecessary inflation that infects the film as a whole. Rather than letting its hero’s accomplishments and behavior speak for themselves, Helgeland hammers home every achievement and then puts a halo around it, as if anyone won’t get it otherwise. [The film is] pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was.

“Whether in the deep South or the streets of Brooklyn, life here looks spiffy and well-scrubbed enough to appear in a department store window, while the soaring musical accompaniment seems to be stamping all the protagonists’ passports for immediate admission to that great ballpark in the sky.”

Foundas calls it “thick with canned inspirationalism and heroic platitudes, but only occasionally pushing past the iconic to grapple with the real human drama of Robinson’s life. 42 [is] a relentlessly formulaic biopic that succeeds at transforming one of the most compelling sports narratives of the 20th century into a home run of hagiography.

“[It] remains largely on the surface of things, pitting its Robinson (relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman) against a succession of cartoonish racists and Southern good-old-boys who are either softened by the first baseman’s towering nobility, or completely drowned out by composer Mark Isham’s incessant fanfares.”

Any actress can put on a spirited act on a talk show. The bottom line is that Lilo’s problem is two-pronged — the manic addictive behavior resulting in the refusal of grade-A directors, writers and producers to even consider offering her a decent part in a blue-chip feature or HBO film or whatever. So she’s a prisoner in a dungeon in which she can only perform in sketchy indies and bottom-of-the-barrel junk like Scary Movie 5.

I hate the way L.A. drivers always stop dead when they see someone on foot. They’ve been over-trained by the DMV and it vaguely pisses me off. If I’m standing on a street corner, just looking at the traffic and not even stepping off the curb, some L.A. driver will come along and stop and wait for me to cross. Putz. If I’m standing in a parking structure — not walking down a ramp but just standing five or ten feet from my parked car — an L.A. driver heading out of the structure will hit the brake and wait for me to do something.

Drivers in New York or Paris or London or Rome or Portland are much less considerate, and that’s the way I like it.

It’s recently gotten to the point of impish obstinacy on my part. Now when an L.A. driver stops and waits for me to cross a street or walk down a parking structure ramp, I’ll just freeze and stare back at them. When I do this it’s like I’m saying, “Yes, you’re a very courteous driver but I’d rather live in a world of shit in which I take my chances, a world like Manhattan or Boston or Chicago, and so no offense but I’m going to politely decline your courteous gesture by staring at you until you give up and keep moving. I’m not trying to be hostile but I don’t like to be stopped for. So we’re going to play this game in which you’ll sit there and stare at me and I’ll stand here and stare back at you. It might take five or ten seconds but eventually you’ll give up and move on.”

I’ve been around the track a few times and have learned that if you go out with any slightly past-her-prime actress (and I’m defining that term as any woman in her 30s or 40s who sees herself as an actress by way of ambition or temperament, whether or not she’s won an Oscar or acted in any professional capacity or has wanted to do so but never made it due to a lack of talent or drive or just luck) you’re going to discover or uncover a certain strain of me-me-me-me-me. You have to accept that if you’re seeing an actress it’s always going to be about her. And if you’re not ready and willing to “provide” on a scale that will leave her all but gasping for breath (and even if you’re Charles Foster Kane going out with Susan Alexander or Rita Hayworth), things probably won’t work out. Just prepare for that.

Because a relationship with an actress of any kind (professional, top of the class, imagined, failed, striving, budding) will thrive or deflate or go south or be wonderful or awful depending upon one thing and one thing only — i.e., where she’s at in her head. You have to be considerate and steady and as tender-hearted and unblocked and as St. Francis of Assisi as possible, but none of that will matter if she’s not in the mood to make it work. Forget any of that “little bit me, little bit you, let’s meet each other halfway” stuff. Things will pan out or not based upon whether she feels she’s getting the right kind of deal — a deal that she wants or needs or feels she damn well deserves. Or…you know, if she thinks she can do better.

I’ve been in relationships in which I was the selfish jerk (i.e., it was more or less about me and where my head was at and whether I felt I was getting what I wanted) so I know whereof I speak. Relationships succeed or fail based upon whether the person with the power (i.e., he/she who cares less about the person who loves more) wants it to work, and actresses almost always have the power. Because they’re the ones who are looking to sell their specialness once and for all, who are living large in their hearts and spirits, the ones who are dreaming the dream and are so close to making it happen. Or who made it happen 10 or 15 or 25 years ago and are deeply distressed about the big moment having slipped through their fingers.

Sometimes a thing with an actress can work for five or ten years. Or a year. Or a lifetime. But you have to be bigger or stronger or on some level more gifted than they. And blessed with the patience of Job. Not for nothing do most actresses end up with sugar-daddies when they get a bit older. Not for nothing did Mort Sahl coin the term “actresses and other female impersonators.” Just be rich — that’s all I’m saying. Or be Mel Brooks as you’re about to have your first meeting with Anne Bancroft.

I’ve been on a strict eat-almost-nothing diet for two or three months. I began the regimen by accepting the idea that everything I used to love (breads, pastas, sandwiches of all kinds, hamburgers, chicken salad, gelato, pizza, shrimp fried rice, dumplings, spicy hot dogs, richly sauced Chinese food, deviled eggs, all kinds of potatoes including baked, mashed and scalloped, steak, cupcakes, ice cream and eggs over, bacon/sausage and hash browns for breakfast) was the enemy. Now I’ve gone so deep into that foxhole that I don’t even want to look at that stuff any more, and all I want to eat are fruit and vegetables and yogurt and salads. And an occasional plate of salmon or chicken.

And it’s a good thing. Now I actually feel a bit poisoned if I fall off the wagon and eat something “bad.” The only indulgences are sugarless ice pops and non-alcoholic beer and the occasional chocolate bar and whipped cream on the coffee. Okay, if someone puts a nice tasty steak or a really delicious plate of seafood in front of me I’ll eat it, but that’s a very rare thing. My son Dylan tells me that if I’m serious about dropping pounds I need to manage a 500 calorie deficit per day. Jesus God. But I honestly feel good about abandoning all alcohol. 13 months and counting. For much of my adult life I drank and smoked occasionally (i.e., whenever I was in Europe) and ate mostly fattening food. Now I’m in another realm and I like it better.