So this Owen Wilson dialogue-refrain trailer is a kind of backhanded tribute to the star of No Escape, a butterscotch-dad-protects-family-from-Asian-chaos exploitation flick? Pic finally opens on 8.26 after six months of trailers. Observation #1: All movie stars play the same character (i.e., themselves) and therefore say similar things and behave in similar ways in film after film. That’s why they’re stars…people like their dependability. Observation #2: Wilson can play leading men but he’s not a natural at it — he is best when playing clever, witty, conspiratorial best friends who like to riff about all kinds of things but mostly relationships with women. Observation #3: I don’t like films about average American families having to deal with scary predatory people in a foreign country. The underlying message is ‘you don’t want to venture outside the safety of your American shopping-mall lifestyle…you’re just asking for trouble if you go overseas and particularly to unstable Asian or third-world countries…stay home, go to the mall, enjoy a backyard barbecue or watch a movie from the safety of your basement den.'”

This is an appealing start-up teaser for Todd Haynes‘ Carol (Weinstein Co., 11.27), but can I say something? Margaret Whiting’s version of “My Foolish Heart” obviously indicates that Carol is a period piece (which it is) but it also suggests that Carol‘s romantic current is a dated, musty thing, and it’s definitely not. Carol is an emotionally alive and immediate experience that lets you remember how it feels to fall for someone, and how you can succumb to less-than-rational impulses when you’re under that spell. The song I was thinking of after I saw it in Cannes was Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Hello, Young Lovers.” The lyric I had in mind was “I know how it feels to have wings on your heels.”

Two days ago I left my primary debit card (I proudly don’t have a credit card) at a combination restaurant and jazz club in Seal Beach called Spaghettini’s. I called yesterday and they said right away, “Yup, we have it.” I could ask them to send it overnight via FedEx but I don’t want to wait so screw it — I’m driving down to pick it up now. Down that awful stretch of road called the 405. It’ll take me just under three hours to get down and back. Google Maps says it’ll take me 59 minutes to get down there. I hate doing this but it’s better to get it over with.

If this happened in a Hangover movie I would reject it as way too stupid to be funny. “Nobody drives down a highway with the truck bed raised,” I would write. “Nobody is that stupid.” But because this clip is real (only a day old) and because it happened in Saudi Arabia, I think it’s hilarious. I’m presuming that the Saudi driver was (a) oblivious to the bed being elevated and (b) was talking to his 16 year-old Saudi girlfriend when the collision happened. Trust me — I was completely capable of doing something like this when I was in my late teens. I was that spacey and distracted. A YouTube guy wrote, “I don’t know who’s dumber — the guy driving the big truck or the guy right behind him in a white pickup truck.”

Twelve years ago I wrote a little Reel.com piece about the death of a black cocker spaniel puppy in my neighborhood. It happened when I was three years old, and it’s like it happened two days ago. A moving truck had backed up and flattened the little guy, and all that was left was a black dog-shaped pancake with the arms and legs and ears all spread out, and most gruesomely with the puppy’s red tongue sticking out from what used to be his head and snout. All the kids in the neighborhood were standing around and looking at this grotesque sight and going “jeez…jeez!” while the puppy’s owner, a little girl I was friendly with named Sue Ellen, was bawling inside her nearby home. The puppy’s name was Blackjack.

When I described this event in ’03 I wrote, “I can still see that little black pancake on the pavement with the tongue sticking out.” And then one of those online object d’art creations happened. Somebody I didn’t know created a piece of photographic art to accompany the piece. A perfect black-and-white shot of a suburban New Jersey neighborhood with a splotch of red at the bottom of the frame. It finally turned up.

After last Friday’s SLS hotel phone-interview blowoff episode with Peter Bogdanovich, I felt curiously compelled to rent Bogdanovich’s Targets (’68), which I haven’t seen in decades. Directed and co-written by Bogdanovich, produced by Roger Corman and with uncredited screenplay assistance from Samuel Fuller, Targets was a way-above-average first film. It’s a modest psychological thriller about the clash of old-school values (refinement, gentility and sophistication as represented by Boris Karloff‘s Byron Orlok) and the mid ’60s values of alienation, rage and random brutality as represented by a young Charles Whitman-like killer (Tom O’Kelly). The portions about the mayhem caused by Kelly’s Bobby Thompson are nothing much, but I loved the kindly, respectful vibes between Orlok and director Sammy Michaels (who was played by Bogdanovich) and the film’s gentle attitude toward Karloff. Targets was basically Bogdanovich saying to the film community of the late ’60s, “Here is this wonderful old gentleman, a gray-haired fellow of polish and cultural refinement who carries the wisdom of the ages, and all you can do is put him in cheesy low-budget horror films.”

Notice how the jacket cover of the Mad Max: Fury Road Bluray (due on 9.1) indicates that Charlize Theron‘s performance dominates Tom Hardy‘s. As I said yesterday, I’m completely down with a Charlize-for-Best-Actress scenario — she’s earned it but she needs to campaign. The three deleted scenes are reminders (as if we needed reminding) of the extraordinary craft levels (particularly the cinematography) in this George Miller film, which I’ve seen three times in a theatre. I’m not persuaded that I need to own the Bluray. If I’m not mistaken an HD version is purchasable on Amazon right now.