I was a huge fan of the Movieline Oscar Index chart that Stu VanAirsdale created, maintained and constantly updated during the 2010 and 2011 Oscar season. (Stu left Movieline in July 2012.) I recently wrote Stu and asked if he’d mind if I launched a tribute/ripoff version of Oscar Index. His response: “I can’t really stop anyone from launching a variation on it, and I wish anyone who does the best of luck.”

I realize that the below image is a bit small so please click on the large version of the chart. And please be patient with my crude Photoshop skills at this early stage.

Thanks to Brooklyn-based web designer Sean Grip for doing the initial heavy lifting and to HE’s Jett Wells for helping me learn enough of Photoshop to size the heads and titles properly and make sure the graph lines are the right colors, etc. The intention, God help me, is to eventually post freshly considered Oscar Balloon charts three times weekly — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor. It’s going to be hugely time-consuming on top of everything else, but I’ll give it a shot. First pair on Monday, the second on Wednesday, the third on Friday or Saturday…something like that. Maybe I’ll post an occasional Best Documentary and Best Foreign Language Feature chart…maybe.

The Top 11 Best Picture Contenders (as of Sunday, 10.26): 1. Birdman; 2. Boyhood; 3. The Imitation Game; 4. The Theory of Everything; 5. Gone Girl; 6. Unbroken; 7. Interstellar; 8. Whiplash; 9. Foxcatcher; 10. A Most Violent Year; 11. American Sniper.

Jim Carrey has a point. Doing Lincoln car commercials in the wake of an Oscar win suggests a certain degree of self-absorption. And taking your eyes off the freeway for six or seven seconds in order to stare at your fingers…not cool either. But the dark philosophical ruminations have a ring.

This Nightcrawler redband trailer is inspired — it nails the sensibility and the coolness factor to a T. Serious congratulations to the Open Road marketing ace who cut it together and decided on the tone. On the other end of the spectrum, TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider needs to apologize for not even mentioning that Nightcrawler (opening on the evening of 10.30) is the only new film to see that weekend. Sneider urges viewers to catch some classic horror films (Candy Man tops the list) but…well, this is a portrait of typical genre hounds, I suppose. They want what they want when they want it, and they don’t want to know from intelligent counter-programming.

During yesterday’s drive into Savannah from the airport I told a senior Los Angeles-based exhibition executive (i.e., a guy who doesn’t want to be quoted) about the over-cranked, super-bassy sound inside the TCL Chinese that made dialogue hard to understand at times during Thursday night’s Interstellar screening. He said he knows all about that. He said that union guys who were calibrating the sound at a West L.A. theatre plex constructed two or three years ago wanted to heighten the bassy “thromp” levels, and that he and his associates told them “nope, nope…no way.” He knows exactly what bass-thromp does to dialogue. And he made the right call. The plex in question delivers excellent sound. Hearing dialogue is never an issue when I see a film there. I can always hear every last vowel and consonant.

Interior of refurbished TCL Chinese. The muddled, super-bassy, over-cranked sound delivery in this theatre has probably harmed…okay, influenced the critical opinion of Interstellar among L.A. journos who attended Thursday night’s screening. I have already pledged to see Chris Nolan’s film again in a theatre with better calibrated sound.

I’ve also heard from a journalist friend who saw Interstellar Wednesday night at the California Science Center IMAX theatre, and he says the sound there “was exquisite…you could hear absolutely everything perfectly.” He also dropped by Thursday night’s TCL Chinese showing, or actually “bits and pieces of the last 25 minutes of the film and the sound was way overpumped. In fact standing in the lobby we thought the theatre was going to collapse, and I heard complaints from a couple of SAG voters that they couldn’t understand the dialogue, which always used to be the case at the Chinese pre-IMAX.”

I’m waiting to speak soon to Chapin Cutler, the projection and sound guru from Boston Light & Sound who handles projection standards at the Telluride Film Festival, the TCM Classic Film Festival and is now preparing projection for the upcoming AFI Fest. I’m not going to assume anything but Cutler knows his realm cold, and I can guess what he’ll tell me about bass-thromp.

From a 10.24 Guardian story by Alex Hern: “Tim Berners-Lee has expressed sadness that the web has mirrored the dark side of humanity, as well as enabling its ‘wonderful side’ to flourish.”

Hollywood Elsewhere to Tim Berners-Lee: “I hear you, man. I know exactly what you’re talking about and then some. But I fear your assessment of human nature is a touch on the Pollyannic side. If nothing else comment threads on the web have revealed who and what some of us really are. The more vocal sector, I mean.”

A little less than 150 years ago, or in late December of 1864, the city of Savannah surrendered to Union troops led by General William Tecumseh Sherman. Here is the message sent by Sherman to Confederate General William J. Hardee on 12.17.64:

Gen. Sherman and troops entering Savannah just before Christmas 1864.

“I have already received guns that can cast heavy and destructive shot as far as the heart of your city. Also, I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied, and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah, and its dependent forts, and shall wait a reasonable time for your answer, before opening with heavy ordnance. Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army — burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.”

After Thursday night’s Interstellar screening I was heading down the escalator inside the Chinese/Dolby complex, heading for the orange level in the parking garage. On the up escalator I noticed this shapely ginger-haired girl with really tight jeans, maybe 23 or 24, with some big-shouldered, dark-haired guy standing behind her. There was another girl with them, I think. Then I realized the guy, who was wearing a powder-blue shirt of some kind, was Miles Teller….”yo, Whiplash!” I naturally started eyeballing him instead of ginger girl. Then ginger girl dropped something and bent over to pick it up just as she and Teller were passing me, and I couldn’t resist checking out the cheeks. Hey, anybody would have…c’mon. She wasn’t looking so what the hell…right? Except Teller was looking at me. And then the humiliation: “Don’t be a pervert, man.” And he kind of bellowed it. Shamed, I tried a little “oh, no, no, man…I was just…you know, you and Damien Chazelle, man…I’m on the team!” But he kept looking at me like I was scum. The irony is that I never gape at women shamelessly. I’ll sneak looks, sure, but covertly. But Teller, man…he wouldn’t back off. Typical guy thing: “Hey man, she might be hot but I’m with her so avert your fucking eyes, and keep them averted!”

Two days ago (Wednesday, 10.22) I ran a quickie about Renee Zellweger’s surgical face-change and noted that she’ll be attending the Savannah Film Festival. (A 10.18 JustJared piece was one of the articles that reported this.) But Zellweger, it turns out, cancelled her Savannah plans on or before 10.17, per Do Savannah‘s Linda Sickler. The story said that Zellweger’s withdrawal was due to her having “signed to appear in a film and [having to be] on set during the film festival.” Maybe, but I think she didn’t want to be near any out-of-town press people who might ask about her new appearance. Who would hire Zellweger to be in a film? The Oscar-winning actress she used to be, facially-speaking, no longer exists.

Hollywood Elsewhere touched down at Savannah Airport today around 5:35 pm. I got to the Marshall House on Broughton Street around 6:45 pm. Sure enough, just like the last time I visited, the festival tried to palm me off with a dinky broom-closet-sized room. (Journalists never get the class-A treatment — I totally understand that — but I won’t be humiliated.) And just like the last time I had to stamp my feet and throw a hissy fit and tell them that a broom-closet room wouldn’t do, etc. I was ready to go right back to the airport and fly back to Los Angeles…I really was. They finally put me into a decent-sized room — not a suite or a grand movie-star room by any standard…just a nice, simple, modest-sized room with a king-sized bed and a TV and a bathroom…big deal.

In this featurette for Rob Marshall‘s Into The Woods (12.25), Disney marketers have actually decided to use a little sliver of Stephen Sondheim‘s score and thereby admit it’s a musical. Encouraging! They’ve been keeping this little aspect under wraps, you see. Last July’s trailer contained no music at all. Now they’re leaking it out, note by note.

The sound at the TCL Chinese during last night’s Interstellar screening was so bassy and woofer-throbby and aimed at my rib cage that I couldn’t hear half the dialogue. My ears felt left out, not to mention the part of my brain that enjoys hearing words and sentences and…you know, understanding what’s up and putting it all together. And don’t say it’s just me because five or six others were saying the same thing in the lobby after the show. I for one was particularly flummmoxed by Matthew McConaughey‘s dialogue due to his shitkicker accent on top of everything else. I’d hear a word or sometimes a phrase now and then, and sometimes an actual whole sentence or two. But there was no winning. I realized that early on. The atmospheric rumbles and impact sounds and vibrating whomps are top-of-the-line, but too many sound systems in too many state-of-the-art theatres are calibrated so that the shake-rattle-and-roll stuff rules above all. This is the way it unfortunately is today, and for me is frankly another reason to think twice about going to the megaplex. People expect to hear sound so strong and pulverizing that their bones vibrate and their inner organs detach and collapse in a heap. Has anyone in the Los Angeles area been to that 4D Motion FX theatre in Oxnard? This is what a lot of people want these days. The problem is that vibrating rib cages are at war with being able to hear simple speech. I could hear a lot of what’s being said last night — don’t get me wrong. But enough dialogue was obscured or murky enough for the experience to be a general pain in the ass. You know when I’ll be able to understand all of Interstellar? Without having to lean forward and cup my ears or make faces? When I watch it next summer on Bluray with my own home system with my personally calibrated sound bar and woofer.