Given the extraordinary acclaim that Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep and Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan found during last May’s Cannes Film Festival and particularly given the New York Film Festival’s long-established focus on the finest foreign-language films of the moment, it’s really quite strange that the 52nd NYFF has snubbed both. In the case of Leviathan a colleague has suggested this is “an even greater indignity than the treatment it received from Jane Campion‘s Cannes jury.” Obviously the selection committee didn’t care for either, but what could their justifications have been? If you look at things objectively, it’s incredibly perverse to have excluded both of those films when, regardless of what the selection committee may have felt, it’s a fair bet that the core NYFF audience would have loved to see these films, and may even have enjoyed them more than offerings like Jean-Luc Godard‘s Goodbye to Language, Abel Ferrara‘s Pasolini and Pedro Costa‘s Horse Money.

Birdman is all knockout camera work, whipsmart character conflict and dialogue that cuts right to the quick of things. Pretty much an embarassment of riches. So why not throw up a few scene excerpts instead of just another trailer?

Bertrand Bonello‘s Saint Laurent (Sony Pictures Classics), which screened this morning for NYFF press, is said to be the darker, sexier and druggier of the two YSL biopics. The other is Jalil Lespert‘s Yves St. Laurent, which the Weinstein Co. allegedly released last June. I haven’t seen the latter but Bonello’s film is initially appealing but then it becomes more and more boring, particularly during the second hour. Most of it is about YSL‘s debauched years, which apparently happened between the mid ’60s and mid ’70s. The 150-minute length is way too long. There are few things on the planet earth more boring that (a) watching club vampires lie around and giggle and snort cocaine and (b) watching gay guys eyeball each other at said clubs before hooking up. Saint Laurent drove me mad with such scenes. It’s generally understood that Bonello has delivered a more candid account of YSL’s life than what Lespert’s film offered, but I felt far more interested and emotionally fulfilled by L’Amour Fou, the 2010 YSL documentary.

I scanned the A.V. Club’s review of The Equalizer (written by A.A. Dowd) too quickly when it first popped about 20 days ago, but now that I’m in a calmer, more meditative frame of mind this assessment of director Antoine Fuqua strikes me as particularly spot-on: “An action-junk journeyman still dining out on the 13-year-old success of Training Day.”

If I were to run into a guy dressed like this on a Brooklyn street I would take a poke at him. No thought, pure instinct, general principle. What kind of sickening metrosexual beardo mixes a dark longsleeve button-down shirt with…yeesh!…rose-colored shorts and sandals? I realize that nobody in the real world would actually dress like this, but if somebody did I would drop him on the pavement like a bad habit. (Note: I found this ad on Deadline.)

As expected, Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young was the New York Film Festival’s “surprise” screening earlier this evening. It played just as well for me as it did the first time in Toronto. Here’s a recap of my 9.7 review: “This is Baumbach’s snappiest and most commercially appealing film yet. Not as darkly hilarious as Greenberg or as visually ravishing and mood-trippy as Frances Ha, but it’ll be well reviewed and catch on with most under-50 urban sophistos. It’s a nimble, fast-moving, culturally attuned relationship dramedy about a generational chasm (late 20somethings vs. 40somethings) or more precisely the vague sense of anxiety that somewhat older guys have about younger guys in their field or realm — a fear of being out-hustled or out-cultured and possibly even left behind if they’re not careful.

While We’re Young star Ben Stiller, director-writer Noah Baumbach during this evening’s post-screening q & a at Avery Fisher Hall.

COstars Adam Driver, Naomi Watts.

Whoa…Tass announced today that Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan, easily the strongest foreign-language drama I’ve seen this year, has been selected as Russia’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar at the 87th Academy Awards. Do I need to point out what a total shocker this is? Nobody expected this. Everyone was presuming that a film as critical of Putin-esque corruption as Leviathan would surely be denied Russia’s official stamp. This is glorious news. Leviathan should have won the Palme d’Or last May — shame on the Jane Campion-led jury for giving it a piddly-shit screenwriting award instead.

Forget the possible Thomas Pynchon cameo. The eyeball pop in Logan Hill‘s Sunday N.Y. Times piece about Paul Thomas Anderson and Inherent Vice (debuting next Saturday at the New York Film Festival) is a quote about tone. For the last few months I’ve been hanging on to a notion (passed along by a filmmaker acquaintance who saw it last April) that Vice would be “Lebowski-esque.” We all know what that means — a certain lazy-stoner vibe, not bright enough, shuffling along, etc. Anderson, however, tells Hill that he’s “going for something akin to Police Squad! and Top Secret!.” He says that “we tried hard to imitate or rip off the Zucker brothers’ style of gags so the film can feel like the book feels….just packed with stuff. And fun.”

Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice.

Let me explain something very carefully. Paul Thomas Anderson wanting to emulate the tone of Police Squad! and Top Secret! is like Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch saying they wanted to emulate the comic stylings of Arthur Lubin, director of the Abbott & Costello classics Buck Privates, Hold That Ghost and Keep ‘Em Flying. The concept is completely insane. PTA couldn’t make a ZAZ movie with a gun to his head. Remember also that before anyone saw Drive Nicholas Winding Refn told Cannes journalists at a press conference that it was infused with the spirit of John Hughes…complete bullshit.

Like Kristen Stewart, John Cusack got his groove on this year with two stand-up performances — as Dr. Stafford Weiss, an unctuous TV psychologist and father of the Bieber-esque Benjie, in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, and as the 40ish Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, which is apparently being shunted off to a 2015 release. But in the long run it’s possible Cusack will be even better remembered for a quote about aging that he gave a Guardian interviewer five days ago. “I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old,” Cusack said. “[But] for women it’s brutal. I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. [Zombie studio execs] just want to open up another can of hot 22. It’s becoming almost like kiddie porn. It’s fucking weird.” What Cusack is saying is that guys with LexG-like attitudes about women are more influential than we might think, at least within the big-studio culture.