This morning I asked a Variety guy who recently attended the Hamptons Film Festival and Mill Valley Film Festival what film seemed to really hit the bullseye. They didn’t show everything and he hasn’t seen everything, but in the context of these gatherings The Imitation Game is “the one that really went over, like gangbusters,” he said. “No head-scratching at the end of it…you come out knowing that you’ve seen a really solid movie about a guy who triumphs despite having been victimized. It works way better than The King’s Speech, and it doesn’t throw you a hook or a curve…it operates within a classic traditional form.”

This, then, is what “they” want. No hooks, no tricks, no curve balls…nothing too unusual or challenging…just something straight and true, a nice 40 mph pitch across the plate that they can connect with. In other words, if Interstellar is clean and conservative and not too weird or curious…if it’s engaging enough without making people feel unsure of themselves…if it melts them down in just the right way and gives them the “big thing”…that good old lump in the throat that delivers some profound bedrock truth about our common experience, that makes you want to hug your father or your daughter…that comfort, that assurance, that touch of a high…if it gives this particular crowd what they want or need, it’ll be Oscar time on top of being a big box-office champ, which everyone believes is 100% guaranteed.

Today I received a cooler-than-cool Birdman action figure — relatively rare (one of only 1500), hand-crafted in London, hand-painted, mounted on a stand. It only made me want more, of course. A Michael Keaton-as-Riggan Thomson figure with a little digital player that says some of his lines. Or an Edward Norton-as-Mike Shiner action figure. Not economically practical, of course. Thanks to Fox Searchlight.

I’m not an audiophile. I’ll probably never own an upscale turntable system. I’ve been listening to nothing but mp3 music for years, and before that music on CDs and cassette players. But I’m considering plunking down $400 bills for one of Neil Young‘s Pono players (which won’t be shipping until January or February) and then forking over even more so I can download Pono versions of all the great albums, past and future. Because it’s supposed to be like vinyl. Because while mp3s offer roughly 5% of the dynamic range of what was originally recorded, Pono music will deliver more than 90% of that. So I’m really thinking about this. Anyone else?

The well-paid cyborg known as Warner Bros. studio chief Kevin Tsujihara has announced an intention to anesthetize if not suffocate U.S. movie culture with 10 superhero flicks over the next six years — Zack Snyder‘s already-rolling Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, David Ayer‘s Suicide Squad (2016…what a whore!), Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot (2017), Justice League, Part One (2017), The Flash with demon-eyed Ezra Miller, an Aquaman movie (2018), a fucking Shazam flick, Zack Snyder‘s Justice League, Part Two (2019), Cyborg (2020), a new Green Lantern movie (2020). Plus another stand-alone Superman film starring Henry “Ernest Borgnine” Cavill and a stand-alone Batman flick with Ben Affleck. There’s also a Sandman movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt plus Guillermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark. I hope that the scraggly-bearded, overweight, ugly-T-shirt-and-flip-flop-wearing cretins who live for this CG flotsam will be happy.

With Christian Bale now locked to play Steve Jobs in an Aaron Sorkin-written, three-chapter film about the late Apple honcho with Danny Boyle directing, the rumored plan is to shoot in the spring. Which means it might be released in late 2015. Or not — you never know. But if it happens Jobs will almost certainly become one of next year’s Best Picture contenders. This is the same Scott Rudin-produced film that David Fincher was going to direct until he walked over a compensation dispute with Sony. Leonardo DiCaprio was interested in the Jobs role but “passed to take time off from acting,” according to Variety‘s Justin Kroll. Except DiCaprio is now shooting Alejando G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant under miserable northwestern conditions so what kind of a “time-out” was that?

When I say I can’t stand Asian action cinema? This. Even when presented in ironic meta terms, it’s unfuckingwatchable.

Oscar telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have hired veteran award-show emcee Neil Patrick Harris (the Tonys and this year’s Emmy awards) to host the 87th Oscar show, which will happen on Sunday, February 22nd. The Gone Girl costar has won Four Emmys and earlier this year snagged a Tony for his musical lead performance in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

One of the first results of Quentin Tarantino‘s hostile takeover of the New Beverly Cinema, which Deadline‘s Jen Yamato reported about on 9.7, was, of course, getting rid of that damn digital projector and committing to an all-35mm, all-the-time policy. It also resulted in the respectful removal of Michael Torgan (son of the late honcho/founder of the New Beverly) who had managed the cinema for many years. (I posted a recap and reaction on 9.17.) And now recently appointed co-manager Julia Marchese, who’s also been with the New Beverly for years, serving as the face and the personality of that down-at-the-heels establishment, has revealed that QT’s personal assistant and NB superior Julie Mclean has told her she’s “not manager material” and that she’s perfectly free to leave the New Beverly if she wants. This action apparently had something to do with Marchese balking at an order from Tarantino that no one can talk about the new operation on social media. What has happened to Marchese is standard African wildlife behavior. When a new lion takes over the pride, all the cubs sired by the previous lion have to be killed. “It absolutely breaks my heart to say this, but the New Beverly Cinema that have I loved and stood so ardently for — and that I believe so many of you out there love and stand up for — is gone,” Marchese has written on her site.

I generally regard Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as a rightwing harridan and a cold-hearted, logic-defying ideologue, but not this time. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden is obviously too moderate, too mellow, too laissez-faire. He needs to be whacked and I mean right now. Frieden obviously hasn’t taken the lessons of Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion (’11) or Wolfgang Peterson’s Outbreak (’95) to heart. President Obama needs to man up and get someone with the temperament of Dustin Hoffman‘s Colonel Sam Daniels to take Frieden’s place. Two Dallas-based infected hospital workers now — how many more have been exposed? Mild-mannered bureaucrats don’t cut the mustard in situations like this. The CDC needs a strong decider who isn’t afraid of pissing people off or being…you know, “brutally efficient.”

Jimmy Fallon goes to all this trouble to film a Goodfellas-tribute promo (the restaurant, lighting, camerawork and Hawaiian-style waiter clothing are perfect), and then blows it with the dialogue snips. Stevie The Sidekick: “Hey, howz it goin’, bada bing bada boom” or whatever…awful. And Hashtag, the Dancing Panda? There’s no sincerity. That’s the beauty of the Scorsese original — “Como sa va?,” “Whassap guy?,” “Took care of that thing for ya,” “I saw that guy, yeah, wenna see him.” You sensed that Henry’s pals, sociopaths and criminals all, really looked out for each other. And Fallon allows for just a little too much lag time between spotting the player and the dialogue. Scorsese got the choreography and the timing just so, and you know how? I’m guessing it’s because he did it over and over and over and over again, and I mean until the actors and the crew were begging to go home.