In my 80% positive 11.12 review of Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper I mentioned a scene that I found hugely irritating. And still do, having seen the film twice now. Sniper‘s been playing four or five days now so some will know what I’m referring to. It’s an Act Two scene in which Bradley Cooper‘s Chris Kyle is suddenly caught in a Iraqi firefight while phoning his wife Taya, played by Sienna Miller. She’s naturally startled, and as the battle quickly intensifies she gets more and more riled and as she cries out to Cooper, asking him what’s going on and is he okay and so on (“Baby? Baby?”). As soon she said those words, I went nuts. What does she expect him to say? Does she actually think he’s going to put down his weapon and explain to her what’s going on, as if she can’t figure it out?

Miller knows, of course, that Cooper is in a combat zone in order to shoot guys, and that firefights are part of the basic drill. So why does she freak out? Is she hoping he’ll get back on the line and say, “Hi, baby…yeah, yeah, I know…they’re shooting at us now…but don’t worry! Anyway, I can’t really talk right now, okay? I might get, you know, killed if I don’t defend myself so if it’s cool I’ll call you back later. I’ll be okay, sweetheart. I just have to put the phone down and focus on killing the enemy. You understand, right? It’s not that I don’t love you or don’t want to talk to you. It’s just now is not the best time to talk…okay?”

This is not only a solid professional job, but the casting choices for a 1946 version of Into The Woods are spot-on. I’m looking around for the name of the artist.

When you learn in real life that you’re toast the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But there are four stages when facing imminent tragedy in comedy — disbelief, indignant anger, pleading and acceptance. Imagine a guy who’s accidentally locked himself out of his house and has decided to try and gain entry through an open second-story window. He manages this by climbing up a nearby tree and crawling along a branch toward the window. But as he climbs halfway out on the branch, he hears a cracking-snapping sound.

Disbelief: At first the guy almost whispers “no” and then gradually turns up the volume — “No…no!” He’s stunned at first, and then unable to accept what’s about to happen. The branch is part of a tree that’s on my property, I give the tree plenty of water and it gets lots of sunshine, and I keep it nicely trimmed. Therefore the branch won’t do this to me because that would be, well, at the very least inconsiderate.

Indignant anger: The “no!” exclamations become impassioned, adamant. You can’t be doing this to me! Why are you doing this? I did’t crawl out on some flimsy little branch, and you’re not a brittle Tulip tree and I’m not that heavy…there’s absolutely no reason for this to be happening and it’s not right!

2015 has already gone down in history as The Year of Hollywood’s Ultimate Cultural Genocide — a sulfuric, suffocating cavalcade of something close to 23 fantasy-franchise superhero blockbuster films, rolling in like digital lava and perhaps occasionally getting it right and perhaps even creating a kind of magic here and there but more often and certainly more dependably polluting the cultural water table with a greater concentration of formulaic toxins than ever before in the history of motion pictures. Brands, brands, brands. It’s a measure of our times and our souls that these films don’t seem to be generating advance hate as much as advance…lethargy? Maybe I’m reading it all wrong. What do I know, coping with jet lag on a Sunday afternoon?

Is there some kind of 2015 franchise-dismissal list — movies that people have already written off and are looking forward to ignoring no matter what?

A year and a half ago Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predicted a coming franchise implosion due to a constant reliance on “conservative programming choices and rapidly evolving distribution schemes.” If there is a God, that implosion will happen in 2015. The more 2015 franchisers that fail or under-perform, the more likely (or so I’m telling myself) that zombie execs will be forced to try out semi-original material. The franchise mentality has to “fall down…let it fall down, let it all fall down.”

When North Korea’s internet went dark last Monday it was widely assumed and almost-but-not-quite confirmed that Obama administration cyber-seals were behind it. Very cool. And now it’s down again, according to China’s Xinhua news agency, only this time North Korea’s 3G mobile networks are also toast. Bitches talkin’ shit? Gettin’ slapped for it.

Saturday’s blackout was presumably a response to a statement from Pyongyang’s Policy Department of the National Defense Commission, issued yesterday, that said (a) the release of The Interview would “[hurt] the dignity of the supreme leadership” of North Korea while “agitating terrorism,” and that (b) President Obama, “reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” was the “chief culprit” behind Sony’s release of the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg film along with “wicked conservative forces.”

I’m told I shouldn’t read too much into Deadline‘s Pete Hammond having posted last night that many Academy members still haven’t seen Boyhood, which has been called a presumptive Best Picture favorite for months. Hammond wrote the piece for a print version of Awardsline that was due in early December, and the Boyhood DVD had only been mailed a couple of weeks before it was written.

But you have to wonder why people were still dragging their feet a week after Thanksgiving with Boyhood having opened last July and many screenings having occurred over the previous couple of months. The reason seems obvious to me but let’s call it a guess.

Boyhood is the Julianne Moore of Best Picture contenders in that the blogoscenti decided long ago that it fully deserves and therefore needs to be a major contender and that it should/could even win, and since this perfect storm of opinion occurred the Academy and guild members have had it on their “to do” lists but…with…some…degree…of…procrastination. Just like their attitude about Still Alice, which nobody in the world feels even vaguely excited about and yet people are nonetheless sluggishly resigned to Moore being the big Best Actress lockdown.

It’s a tragedy that more of these pics aren’t in color — those marquees really popped at night — but the ’50s reality was that color photography was cost prohibitive.

In a 12.25 post called “Take…No, Respect The Pain” I asked for reactions to Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, but more importantly I asked how “the room” felt. “How did it seem to play with Joe and Jane?,” I wrote. “Seriously…I’m asking. Maybe on some level it’s connecting. What do I know?” Well, Unbroken is connecting. $15,592,000 earned on Christmas Day, and close to $50 million expected by Sunday night.

Except half the critics said “nope” and the film itself isn’t, to be bend-over-backwards fair, traditionally comforting or nourishing. It’s a well-made, handsomely captured slog about a guy enduring all manner of pain, trial, deprivation and torture. So something is happening here, Mr. Jones, but what? I think it’s the fans of Laura Hillebrand’s 2010 book plus fans who are looking to kiss the proverbial Jolie glamour ring plus the same people who ten years ago wrapped themselves in the blessed spiritual agonies of The Passion of the Christ.

And yet when I asked if anyone felt tremors in the ground only two readers, “Sams” and “Actionman,” answered in the affirmative. Everyone else navel-gazed. The HE community failed. I’d like explanations, please.

I would honestly refuse to watch Jeremy Garelick‘s The Wedding Ringer (Screen Gems, 1.16.15) if someone offered to pay me $20 to do so. I’m not sure $50 would do it. I might fold if someone slipped me a Ben Franklin…maybe. My general rule is that I’ll never watch a Kevin Hart film, and I don’t see that ever changing. I appreciate that Josh Gad has dropped a few pounds in hopes of being occasionally cast as a boyfriend or fiance, but my mind, my life and the general rules of human behavior won’t allow the notion of a smart, alert, good-looking girl looking like Wedding Ringer costar Kaley Cuoco open to mingling with a porky, bespectacled, pasty-faced geek…no way in hell.

For years I’ve been visiting Coming Soon, mainly for easy access to movie release dates and links and generally the whole calendar year…it kept you to up to date on everything. CS also posted news stories and access to new trailers and yaddah yaddah. A few days ago all of that went away. Coming Soon has been transformed into a boring, nothing, bullshit site that I have no use for. It used to be geek-friendly, a kind of haven for guys like myself…no more. A shame. Where do I go now for an easy rundown of what’s coming out on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis…no muss or fuss?

In order to compose a thorough, no-holds-barred saga of his drug-addled past in “Night of the Gun,” a riveting 2009 memoir, N.Y. Times columnist David Carr relied on the accounts of first-hand witnesses, gathered by diligent shoe-leather reporting, rather than his own memory. I’m mentioning this because a friend reminded me last weekend of an eccentric episode that happened, he said, in my early 20s. When, he also reminded, I was living a colorful, dissolute life. The story made an impression because I didn’t remember all that much. But then certain details began to come back into focus. My friend’s account was probably exaggerated, but I realized that if I ever write a history of my own wild tales I’ll have to get out the pad like Carr.

Here, in any event, is my best recollection:

I was crashing with a married couple, Frank and Karen, in a smallish Boston apartment in the general vicinity of Symphony Hall and Hemenway Street. They had a linebacker-sized friend named Eddie who lived nearby and was also hanging out a lot. Mainly the four of us sat around in the evenings and got high. I distinctly remember not rolling joints as much as tapping the tobacco out of filtered cigarettes and then-filling the cigarette with what I recall was low-grade pot. Moderately potent, lots of stems and seeds.

One night around 10 pm or so we decided we needed a straw. That may have meant we were looking to snort something but I really don’t recall what. Maybe we were looking to suck in hash smoke. (A tiny chunk of hash placed on the burning embers of a cigarette, etc.) No, I don’t remember why we didn’t just use rolled-up dollar bills. Probably because it would’ve been unsanitary. I recall that it was fairly cold out and that we were probably broke or close to it, and so going to a market and buying a pack of straws was out. So I decided to start knocking on doors and asking Frank and Karen’s neighbors if they had a straw to spare. It wasn’t just the vaguely strange notion of a long-haired guy in jeans and boots with bloodshot eyes looking to bum a straw from strangers, but that it was too late to knock on doors and bum anything from anyone.