Universal will open Michael Mann’s cyber-thriller on 1.16.15. Deadline‘s Michael Fleming briefly reported last July that the film “may” get an awards-qualifying late December platform opening, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Everything looks good. I’m still slightly bothered by the fact that Chris Hemsworth is too brawny and studly to be a hacker, but I guess I can roll with the fantasy. This is Mannworld, all right.

My Virgin America flight touched down at JFK just before 8 am. Rainy, windy…I’m already on my second umbrella. (The first one, a $5 cheapie, was destroyed by a gust of wind.) Sitting in the lobby of the Walter Reade theatre, tapping it out and waiting for New York Film Festival press screening of Oren Moverman‘s Time Out Of Mind to end at 1:45 pm so I can attend the press conference. (I saw the film in Toronto and that was enough — raw realism, honestly acted, all-but-absent narrative, meandering, “non- judgmental.”)

Thursday, 9.25 — Broadway Junction, Manhattan-bound L train approaching.

If I was a name-brand actor I would delight in giving shit to any journalist who asks me “so how much pressure was it to nail this role given expectations” or any such question? I hate pressure questions, and I really hate journalists who ask them. For openers I would deny any awareness of pressure in any aspect of my life, my performance or the film. I would look the journalist in the eye and say “what do you mean…I really don’t know what pressure is…can you tell me?” Or “what I’m lucky enough to do for a living is not about your idea of ‘pressure’…that’s a press junket question, okay, and I’m not playing your game. Do you live with pressure? Maybe you do and maybe it’s hard, but keep it to yourself…y’know? I live in a canoe on a swift river. Every day I can’t wait to get going. Just find the current and paddle well and find your balance…nothin’ to it.”

I don’t mean to sound like a wingnut obsessive but the slightly wider dimensions of Chris Pratt‘s face tells us that it’s eatin’ time again. That’s his pattern. He slims down for a film (the most recent being Jurassic World) and when principal photography is done…carbs!

If nothing else, Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy has made it clear that a 1:1 “pure box” aspect ratio doesn’t look perfectly square. It looks a wee bit higher than it is wide. Which was my very first thought when I saw it last May in Cannes. The next time an enterprising director shoots a film this way, he/she would be wise to deliver an aspect ratio of, say, 1.1:1 or 1.15:1. Then it’ll look right.

A good 70% to 80% of Lena Dunham‘s statements in this video are delivered in standard female uptalk style. As a longtime Girls watcher, I can say with rock-solid assurance that nobody uptalks more than Dunham. Honestly? I’m unable to listen to the substance of any person’s thoughts when this vocal tick interferes. By the way: Dunham is wrong about death-contemplation being a somewhat healthy thing, at least in a spiritual sense. All living is obviously and necessarily about the adamant denial of death, and anyone who spends even five minutes a day going “wow, I’m going to die” is succumbing to one of the lamest impulses in the history of our species.

“The Little Death does have one terrific ace up its sleeve: a fifth story, almost completely unconnected to the others, featuring Monica (Erin James, a bit of a Sally Hawkins lookalike), who works at a Skype-like video service translating phone calls for the deaf. On a slow night, she winds up on a call with Sam (T.J. Power), only to find that he wants her to mediate his conversation with a phone-sex operator (Genevieve Hegney). What ensues is a perfectly timed, beautifully structured verbal and gestural farce that manages to be at once raucously funny, sweetly touching and genuinely romantic. Rife with awkwardness and miscommunication, and keenly attuned to the reality of what a mixed blessing technology can be, the story would work well as a stand-enough short; as such, it’s easily the most promising evidence here that Lawson the writer-director may yet have bigger and better things ahead of him.” — from Justin Chang‘s 9.11.14 Toronto Film Festival review.

I saw Birdman again last night. The two-hour masterpiece screened at the Little Theatre on the Fox lot at 7:45 pm. An outdoor reception followed with Michael Keaton and producer John Lesher. The silver-haired Keaton has shaved that scraggly goatee he wears in the film; plus he looks thinner, sleeker, healthier. Lesher looks a little silvery himself these days. I asked him about Glenn Zoller‘s Telluride gondola story (“I financed Birdman“) but he said he wasn’t the guy. Nice vibe, good food, cool nighttime air.

I spoke to Keaton a bit about Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight, a Catholic Church child-molestation drama that he’ll begin shooting in Boston in a few days. Keaton’s last foray into movie journalism with in Ron Howard‘s The Paper. Participant is producing with DreamWorks having turned tail. The script has been cowritten by McCarthy and Josh Singer (The West Wing). It’s about a team of Boston Globe journalists who exposed a long-covered-up history of Catholic priest diddling of choir boys. Keaton’s costars reportedly include Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci and Rachel McAdams. Pic will almost certainly be part of next year’s Oscar conversation.

I’m updating HE’s Oscar Balloon this morning with the following. As always, disputes, corrections and beyond-the-ballpark suggestions are welcome. “HE approved” obviously means favored status, rooting factor, etc.

Best Picture Likelies (in this order, right now): 1. Birdman (HE approved); 2. Boyhood; 3. The Theory of Everything; 4. The Imitation Game; 5. Foxcatcher; 6. The Grand Budapest Hotel. Unseen Best Picture Spitballs: 1. Interstellar; 2. A Most Violent Year; 3. Gone Girl; 4. American Sniper; 5. The Gambler; 6. Into The Woods; 7. Selma; 8. Inherent Vice; 9. Unbroken; 10. Big Eyes; 11. Mr. Turner; 12. Fury.

Most Visually Ravishing, “Painterly” Best Picture Contender: Mr. Turner, although I’d like to see it with subtitles sometime down the road.

Best Director: Alejandro González Inarritu, Birdman (HE approved); 2. Richard Linklater, Boyhood; 3. James Marsh, The Theory of Everything; 4. Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game; 5. Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher; 6. Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Best Director Maybes: Christopher Nolan, Interstellar; JC Chandor, A Most Violent Year; Angelina Jolie, Unbroken; David Ayer, Fury; Clint Eastwood, American Sniper; David Fincher, Gone Girl.

Best Actor: 1. Michael Keaton, Birdman (HE approved); 2. Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything; 3. Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game; 4. Steve Carell, Foxcatcher; 5. Tom Hardy, The Drop/Locke. 6. Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner (despite my inability to hear half of Spall’s dialogue due to his all-but-indecipherable British working-class accent); 7. Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler; 8. Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice; 9. Ben Affleck, Gone Girl; 10. Bill Hader, The Skeleton Twins.

Tragic Absence of Sublime, World-Class Lead Performance due to (no offense to Roadside) an overly cautious release strategy: Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy.

After praising John Ridley‘s Jimi: All Is By My Side (XLrator Media, 9.26) during the 2013 Toronto Film Festival, it’s gratifying to note that most critics seem to agree. It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92% so far; the Metacritic score would be nearly as good if it weren’t for The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth. “Andre Benjamin‘s performance as the late Jimi Hendrix is one of the year’s stand-outs,” I wrote some time ago. “The role is more about layers than revelations. The film doesn’t deliver conventional dramatic moments as much as a low-key immersion into a guy who lived deep within his soul but wildly and exuberantly transformed when he performed. Benjamin (i.e., Andrew 3000) totally captures Hendrix’s manner, vibe, voice…that gentleness, that ambivalent but spiritually directed mood-trip thing.”

Last night I went to the Grove Apple store and held the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. They didn’t seem to weigh enough, and I’m sorry but that disappointed me. My iPhone 5S with the Mophie juice pack weighs a bit more than either phone. If I’m going to spend several hundred bills on a new device I want it to feel dense and solid and substantial. I don’t need it to feel “heavy” exactly but all my life I’ve associated quality-level electronics with a certain gold-bar feeling. The iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus almost feel like they’re made of dense balsa wood inside a light plastic case. If I was running Apple I would tell my engineers to add lead to the casing just to give people like me a feeling of heft.

“My filmmaking education consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, and then seeing those films. I learned the technical stuff from books and magazines, and with the new technology you can watch entire movies accompanied by commentary from the director. You can learn more from John Sturges‘ audio track on the Bad Day at Black Rock laser disc than you can in four years of film school. Film school is a complete con because the information is there if you want it.” — Paul Thomas Anderson, obviously speaking some time during the mid ’90s.