I do weights and stretching exercises daily and a couple of weekly power walks. I used to do the treadmill at 24 Hour Fitness but I grew to hate the monotony, and speed-marching around WeHo during lunch hour is unappealing due to a half-dozen factors, mostly the traffic noise and the godawful bleachy light and the moderately ugly architecture. If you’re going to walk around during daylight you have to do it in the affluent areas. And moonlight walks are best. Los Angeles will never hold a candle to the great walking cities of Europe (Paris, Prague, Rome, Munich) but something special happens after dark here. The hurlyburly feels absent or at least settled by way of the cool nighttime air and nectary aromas and general aura of moisture and quiet.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks canoe-ing around a swimming pool (?) at Pickfair back in the mid 1920s.

Last night a friend and I did a 3 1/2 hour round trip across and through Beverly Hills, starting at WeHo Pavillions and then west on Carmelita and Elevado for 30 or 35 blocks through the flats, Doheny to North Linden (gazed at the old Bugsy Siegel mansion for the first time in my life), and then across Sunset and up Whittier Drive and Carolwood Drive, and then down Angelo Drive and past David Geffen’s home at 1801 Angelo (i.e., the ten-acre Jack L. Warner estate, built in 1937) and then across Benedict Canyon and up Summit Drive, past the former homes of David O. Selznick, Charlie Chaplin, Tony Curtis, Ronald Colman and the former location of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford‘s “Pickfair” (1143 Summit Drive), which was torn down in 1990 or thereabouts by the loathsome Pia Zadora and her husband Meshulam Riklis.

Sometime during tonight’s Academy board of governors meeting a small cabal of old-fart conservatives will reportedly push for a return to only five Best Picture nominees, and it’s possible, I’m hearing, that this change might be adopted. (Last Thursday Variety‘s Tim Gray reported that “a faction will propose a return to five best-picture contenders and will push for an immediate vote,” even though “the topic is not on the agenda.”) This would be a titanically stupid decision, of course, as fewer Best Picture nominees would obviously mean a less diverse, less inclusive Best Picture tally. Presumably a portion of the 51 governors have sniffed the air over the last five or six years and realized that the culture wants more people and styles and viewpoints participating in the conversation, not fewer. Something tells me that Academy members who want to go “back to five” have limited their sniffing to the air in their own living rooms and kitchens.

Yes, it would seem more prestigious for a Best Picture nominee to be one of five films rather than eight or ten, but going back to five holds zero appeal for the broader spectrum of filmmakers and viewers that the Academy needs to attract and appeal to. Politically correct social-agenda films like Selma would have a tougher time making the cut with only five slots, that’s for sure. Not to mention indie favorites like Whiplash, which persuaded cinematically sophisticated under-30s to watch the Oscar telecast, or at least more of this crowd than would have watched if Whiplash hadn’t been nominated.

You can’t just have slickly crafted, emotionally moving “ooh, wow” movies nominated for Best Picture. You also have to nominate (if possible) a little indie-ish movie. And a politically correct one that African-Americans or transgenders or gays or multi-amputees or recovered alcoholics or muscular-distrophy sufferers want nominated. And a broad-based, not necessarily liberal-minded film that Joe and Jane Popcorn relate to, like The Blind Side or American Sniper, etc. And possibly a one-in-a-million, odds-defying CG fantasy film. You can’t just have nominees along the lines of Birdman or Steve Jobs– or Brooklyn or The Theory of Everything.

Six years ago the Academy boosted the Best Picture nominee list to ten, and then it modified that with the preferential ballot system allowing for up to (but not necessarily totalling) ten Best Picture nominees. Going back to five nominees would appease only one group — i.e., the all-but-comatose Academy members those who find the notion of keeping track of all the films that deserve Best Picture consideration (which usually total 15 to 20) tiring or too hard. Trust me — the people who want to go back to five are not those who are “busy being born.”

Early this morning “Actionman” passed along a review of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead‘s Spring, a genre-straddling thing (i.e., romance + horror) which popped last Friday and which he’s calling his favorite film of the year so far. “Action Man” will sometimes err on the side of enthusiasm, but Spring has an obviously respectable Rotten Tomato rating of 92 and a Metacritic tally of 68. I’m not exactly a fan of Lou Taylor Pucci (partly because of his name — explained below) but I’ll probably give this a whirl tonight.

“The less you know about Spring the better off you’ll be,” he begins. “This is an incredible, unnerving piece of romantic drama science-fiction, a film that’s as rich in atmosphere as it is in layered character development, with a dash of speculative fantasy, a ton of honest heart and emotion, and some truly icky and spectacular special effects.

“Spring feels like the trippy after-effects of Richard Linklater and H.P. Lovecraft getting together to combine talents and forces. Multi-hyphenate wonderboys Justin Benson (co-editor, co-producer, co-writer, co-director) and Aaron Moorhead (co-editor, cinematographer, co-producer, co-writer, co-director) borrow the walking and talking aesthetic from Richard Linklater‘s Before Trilogy, and fuse elements of psychological and physical horror that would make David Cronenberg proud; this film is as thought provoking as it is visually arresting, and it’s a piece of work that will likely hold up extremely well over multiple viewings.

James Corden is obviously a peppy, spirited fellow, but a good talk show host takes it easy with that. I respect the bravery Corden has shown by declining to sit behind the traditional desk. He’s banking that giving up that authority and protection will be read as “I’m more open than…well, Jimmy Kimmel anyway.” Chelsea Handler went this route. Ditto Bill Maher‘s old Politically Incorrect show and David Susskind’s talk show of the ’60s and ’70s. And of course the morning talk shows are wide open. But desk and tables are fairly ubiquitous in the evening.

The 2015 Cannes Film Festival poster was revealed today — acres of infinite whiteness surrounding a somewhat opaque black-and-white snap of a short-haired Ingrid Bergman (probably taken in the early to mid ’50s) and accented by subtle publisher’s-blue lettering. I realize that Cannes posters have to be simple and elegant, but this is surely one of the blandest and least engaging in the festival’s nearly 70-year history. The poster was conceived by Magnum Agency’s Hervé Chigioni and graphic designer Gilles Frappier. Bergman and Notorious costar Cary Grant graced the 1993 Cannes poster. [After the jump.] Consider the posters for Bergman’s Stromboli and Journey to Italy [ditto] — visually “busy” but a helluva lot more interesting, no offense, than the Chigioni-Frappier.

I didn’t see Everardo Gout‘s Days Of Grace, a 12-year saga set in Mexico City, at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Boilerplate: “Three disparate lives intersect as they are impacted by violence and abduction. Lupe, an idealistic cop, is tasked to investigate a crime ring. When a woman’s businessman husband is kidnapped, she must go outside the law to fight for his release. And a would-be boxer is drawn into a lifestyle that finds him guarding a kidnap while facing down a criminal mastermind.” Grace will debut on HBO on 5.1 with DVD/Blu-ray and On Demand starting five days later.

Two days ago Hitfix TV guy Daniel Fienberg actually wrote that “for many viewers, Ben Mendelsohn will probably be the surprise breakout star of Netflix’s Bloodline.” Really. Feinberg meant it. I was appalled. Mendelsohn’s Danny character, the oldest and surliest son of Robert and Sally Rayburn (Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek), is a really bad package — a malignant, sandal-wearing, cigarette-smoking scumbag. Danny’s death was blessedly promised in a flash-forward excerpt in episode #1, but here I am on episode #4 and the fucker is still hanging around. God, I hate the way Mendelsohn is always sucking on cigarettes! And his toes sticking out all the time. Just finished episode #5 (or was it #6?): Okay, I feel a little sorry for him but let’s not get carried away.

Sweaty, nicotine-stained Ben Mendelsohn in Bloodline

Today Variety‘s “staff” ran a wrap-up piece about “13 break-out movies” that played at 2015 South by Southwest. Three days ago a similar N.Y. Times piece, written by Mekado Murphy, highlighted the “South by” films that were “the talk of the festival.” There were some overlaps but well over 20 films are included in the two articles, and yet neither mentions Ondi Timoner‘s BRAND: A Second Coming, a nearly two-hour doc about the transformation of Russell Brand from hyper libertine to social revolutionary.

This despite Timoner’s film having (a) opened SXSW to the usual hoopla, (b) won thoughtful praise from nearly every critic who reviewed it and (c) reportedly played to more than the usual rousing receptions at three separate showings. Several strong films played at “South by” and everyone, of course, has their special favorites, but how did these articles manage to completely ignore one of the festival’s most invigorating crowd-pleasers? Not to mention one of the most politically pointed films of that Austin gathering, and one that will likely cause a stir when it opens commercially later this year.

I don’t follow the career paths of each and every noteworthy online film critic, and I’m certainly not in the habit of monitoring press releases from the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office. But something mind-blowing was announced and reported last Tuesday about a film writer I slightly “know” — i.e., Gabe Toro. His posts and reviews evaporated last August and some (LexG among them) have wondered what happened. He was arrested, is what happened. On 8.19.14. Last Tuesday’s press release plus two news accounts state that Toro, a 31-year-old resident of the Bronx, has pled guilty to online enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual conduct, and that he’ll face at least ten years in the slam when he’s sentenced on 6.25, and that he’ll have to register as a sex offender when he gets out.

Everyone has been “ooh-ing and “aah”-ing the new trailer for Chris McQuarrie‘s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (Paramount, 7.31). I’m not immune to the excitement but there’s a slight blemish on the franchise. I’m referring to the fact that right now the Tom Cruise brand is undergoing yet another denigration due to Alex Gibney‘s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Relatively few have seen Gibney’s doc (it pops on HBO on 3.29) but I have, and I’m telling you once again, as I wrote in my Sundance review, that Cruise comes off as a “coddled loon” and an enabler of a decidedly venal organization.

In this light (and I really don’t see how anyone can argue that this “light” doesn’t exist) it’s hard to relax with Cruise in this M:I5 context as the brave and daring Ethan. It’s a stone fact that Cruise is a seriously tainted guy off-screen — a possibly oblivious benefactor who’s supported and promoted a gang of vicious hombres who behave like a kind of evil “syndicate” while Cruise looks the other way. Watch Gibney’s film and tell me you don’t care at all, that the disparity between Cruise’s on-screen superhero and the unsavory real-life propagandist he’s more or less become in actuality doesn’t bother you in the least.

“The first thing I’d say [is that] online we’ve got to embrace nuance over outrage. We’ve got to get past an outrage culture of reading things simply and making really broad conclusions about them, and instead ask questions and try to listen to each other better. Generally, we just aren’t doing a great job of listening to each other online. I don’t think in the end it’s very helpful for the overall quality of discourse.” — YA superstar John Green (Paper Towns, The Fault In Our Stars) talking to Refinery 29’s Sabrina Rojas Weiss about YA headliner Andrew Smith getting beaten up on Twitter for stating that his novels aren’t that invested in female characters because he “was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all.”