For those who unthinkingly skipped today’s HE Sink-In piece (“Birdman‘s Inarritu and The Soul Cages“) on the suspicion that it’s just another Birdman suck-up piece…well, it’s not. It’s a pretty decent piece of writing if I do say so myself. But for those who blew it off, check out a video clip from the jump page and a corresponding explanation:

“Before Inarritu was honored at the gala for the recent Palm Springs Film Festival, they showed a video clip of him leading the cast and crew of Birdman in a kind of prayer on the first day of shooting. It involved the throwing of rose petals and shouting ‘Abba, Eli,’ which is basically a chant of praise to God or fate or whatever luck can be found.

This morning Deadline‘s Mike Fleming reported that Gone Girl trio David Fincher, Ben Affleck and Gillian Flynn are re-teaming at Warner Bros. for a Strangers On A Train remake. Affleck would play the Guy Haines role, except in Flynn’s 21st Century version of Patricia Highsmith‘s tale, Affleck won’t be a tennis pro but “a movie star in the middle of an Oscar campaign during awards season” — hilarious! — and when Affleck’s private plane breaks down a wealthy stranger (i.e., the Bruno Antony character) offers him a lift back to Los Angeles, and then it’s off to the races.

Wells to Fincher: Please don’t cast a boilerplate psycho type as Bruno. Please don’t cast James Franco or Jude Law, and put any notions of Christoph Waltz out of your head this instant. You know who’d be good as Bruno? Matt Damon. Or tap into the dark corners of some funny guy. Go with Seth Rogen or Jack Black or Jason Segel (as long as he’s not in a fat cycle). And speaking of fat, Chris Pratt wouldn’t be a bad choice either. Just don’t go generic.

The five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2014: Wes Anderson {The Grand Budapest Hotel}; Clint Eastwood {American Sniper}; Alejandro G. Iñárritu {Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)}; Richard Linklater {Boyhood}, and Morten Tyldum {The Imitation Game}. Another indication of a male-dominated industry, right? That’s really, really it for Selma, I’m afraid — shut-out every which way. We all suspected for the last six weeks that Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken wasn’t acquiring any traction, but the DGA guys have made this clear. If it had been me I would have nominated Whiplash‘s Damien Chazelle instead of Eastwood, no offense. That obviously mechanical baby that Bradley Cooper was holding in Sniper should have disqualified him. That creepy little arm took me right out of the film. And if not Chazelle then Gone Girl‘s David Fincher or Nightcrawler‘s Dan Gilroy….c’mon.

Paul Feig‘s Spy appears to be boilerplate Melissa McCarthy material splattered upon an old-fashioned espionage canvas. The Heat minus sisterhood element with perhaps a tiny bit more smarts and sophistication than Tammy, let’s say. The bit where McCarthy can’t handle the scooter with a roof and falls over…nothing. I really don’t want to see McCarthy wearing that awful older Midwestern woman curly-haired wig in too many scenes…please. The presence of Jude Law and especially Jason Statham = upgrade. Costarring Rose Byrne and Allison Janey. Directed and written by Feig. 20th Century Fox — opening 5.22.15.

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A couple of nights ago a journalist friend told me that the late, great Billy Wilder would have admired the hell out of Birdman. Because in a sense Wilder made a somewhat similar kind of comedy in One, Two, Three (’61), an acrid, fast-paced, crackerjack farce — faster than anything Wilder had ever done — that depended upon sustained manic energy start to finish, and at just the right pitch. It’s a widely admired film today (everyone loves James Cagney‘s spunky, self-satirizing performance) but critical reactions were mixed when it opened on 12.15.61, and One, Two, Three actually lost money. So risks don’t always pan out. Then again if you don’t take risks you’re not much of a director.

If you ask me Alejandro G. Inarritu is every bit as ballsy a filmmaker as Billy Wilder was. He surely knew that his ass was on the line when he began to shoot Birdman — another sustained high-wire act that had to come off just so. And if he didn’t know it, he had the late Mike Nichols to remind him. Inarritu had lunch with the legendary director a week before Birdman began filming, and when Inarritu told him about the no-cut visual strategy, Nichols said, “Alejandro, you are running to disaster…you should stop now.”

“Nichols was a wise guy and a [expletive] to tell me that one week before,” Inarritu told N.Y. Times reporter Melena Ryzik. “But I hugged him and said thank you. The best thing he told me was, ‘Alejandro, once you have it, do it faster.’ And he was right.”

Birdman has found more success than One, Two, Three, of course — high praise, Oscar contention, a decent box-office return. Sometimes risks pay off. And sometimes a change of pace works also. Before Birdman Inarritu was more or less regarded as Darkman — an explorer of random tragic fate in Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful. Then something happened.

In a post-Golden Globes analysis piece (dated 1.12), Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg states a general rule about musical scores, i.e., “The score you hear the most in a good film is usually the one that wins [awards]” Okay, then why didn’t Antonio Sanchez‘s all-percussion score for Birdman win last night instead of Johan Johannsson‘s score for The Theory of Everything? Johansson’s score swirls around the film and viewer alike, lifting both into state of simulated cosmic wonderment, and so you can understand why it won. But Sanchez’s all-drumming score is a visceral knockout, all jazzy and punching and popping like corn on a skillet, totally unlike any score….oh, wait, it’s not actually “music”, is it? And so it’s not really a “score.” And so a regular-sounding score with violins and a piano and a brass section is preferable. Feinberg’s amended rule: “The traditional musical score you hear the most in a good film is usually the one that wins awards.”

I’m basically a motorcycle/scooter rider anyway so I’m easily down with buying a three-wheeled, Sting Ray-sized Elio for only $7 grand and change. It’s basically a motorcycle with a hefty engine and many of the comforts of a car (two seats, heat and air conditioning, protection from rain, iPad/GPS screen, radio with auxiliary input), and a relatively light (1200 pounds), energy-efficient thing that security-minded women will avoid like the plague. (Celebrities and young mothers are the main reason why there are so many SUVs on the road — both groups are convinced that big fat tanks are safer, and that the sensation of “safety” they bring is more important than the environment.) If I join the 38,000 who’ve already taken the plunge I’ll have a new black Elio in my garage by late ’15, or so they’re saying. Sales will slow down after somebody gets killed in a freeway accident but until then it’ll be smooth sailing. I’m no more afraid of an accident in an Elio than I am of getting into an accident on the Yamaha. It’s simply a matter of identifying the idiots, drunks, 80something slowpokes and road-ragers before they can hurt me. On top of which I rarely drive on freeways, which is where the bad stuff usually happens. I’m serious — I’m buying one of these things.

Now that he’s President of the United States, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) can’t figure out ways to keep his hands clean? I realize that sociopaths can’t escape their basic natures but isn’t it supposed to be a whole lot easier to avoid the mud and the blood when you’re in the Oval Office? Presumably Underwood’s sordid past (like the murder of Kate Mara‘s Zoe Barnes) will come back to haunt him and he’ll have no choice but to shut people up by any means necessary. I for one want Frank to stay in office. No impeachment, no resignation, no dark fate. I want him to transcend his bullshit and become a better man.

Last night’s HE’s own Leviathan won the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film…terrific. A nice boost in the minds of Oscar voters. But during the presentation, the off-screen announcer and Lupita Nyongo both flubbed the pronouncing of the title. They called it “LuhVEEyaTHON” rather than the correct “LuhVYathun” — the “vy” rhyming with eye. It’s not like Leviathan is some wildly exotic term that only scholars and academics use. Would it have killed Nyongo and the announcer to simply check online for the proper way to say it? Which would have taken…what, two minutes? They sounded like idiots, and Nyongo is college-educated and was raised by highly educated, professional-class parents. On top of which the announcer pronounced the last name of director Andrey Zvyagintsev as “VAHgintsev”– basic research would have revealed that Russians say “ZvYAHgintsev.” By the way, isn’t Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida pronounced “EYEdah” and not “EEdah,” as the GG announcer called it?

Some of the comments last night suggested that I should bring on a columnist who focuses entirely on TV and cable fare. And another who would post two or three times weekly on superhero-fanboy ComicCon cultural-genocide crap. I would do that in a heartbeat as that would broaden the readership, but finding somebody good enough to cover either of those realms means paying them a decent salary and I’m already splitting HE’s ad revenue with my ad guy as it is. And if they’re really good they always move on to the next gig within a year or so and then you have to find someone to take their place. And hardly anyone would be willing to keep up with the day-to-day like I do. It’s a huge pain in the ass. If someone just wanted to post on their own — frequently, I mean — and manage to generate ad revenue on their own, fine…but finding that person would be a needle-in-a-haystack procedure. I tried working with other columnists seven or eight years ago and it just didn’t seem worth it in the end. For better or worse HE is a one-man-band operation, I’m afraid. It’s not like I ignore TV-cable fare. I pay attention with some degree of regularity (The Leftovers, The Affair, House of Cards, Mad Men, etc.) Plus I write about other stuff in life (sobriety, women, travel, party elephants, shrieking girls in cafes). Plus I’ll be running GoPro footage in a month or two. I cover a wide swath.

I’m thinking in particular of Emmanuel Lubezski‘s hand-held photography in Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life…photography that swoops and glides and swirls and float-pans in dizzy circles and basically goes “oooh, wow…the wonder of nature and life and the whole quiet, gobsmacking symphony of it all!” Well, the GoPro footage in this 18 month old promotional video beats Lubezski’s stuff all to hell because it can get into and top of more places and POVs. The result, I think, of GoPro‘s constantly expanding visual realm is that Lubezki-like nature-encountering photography will lose (or has already lost) its lustre because no director of photography can beat the GoPro stuff — the “wow” element is totally unchallengable. Which leaves the aesthetic of the cinematographer as the only distinguishing characteristic that can possibly matter at the end of the day — restraint, particularity, focus, stillness, this or that form of transcendence, etc. Or good old, straight-on cinematography that tells a story without getting in the way.

The big surprise of the Golden Globe awards, of course, was Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel taking the Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical award. Some had claimed it was surging; others sensed that it was. Bad for Birdman, you say? I don’t think so. I’ve always loved Budapest Hotel but I think the Hollywood Foreign Press just likes to go quirky and regional every so often and spread it around. A filmmaker friend, however, thinks that Budapest might be bouncing out of the GG awards and surging bigtime in the Oscar race, and that it might elbow Birdman aside.

(l. to .r) Grand Budapest Hotel guys Adrien Brody, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson at the Fox Searchlight after-party.

Birdman director Alejandro G. Inarritu, director Rodrigo Garcia in the Birdman corner of the Fox Searchlight party.