In Dan Fogelman‘s Danny Collins (3.20.15), Al Pacino plays a successful but creatively frustrated songwriter who apparently decides to churn out deeper, more personal songs after learning that John Lennon wrote him a fan letter in 1971. That’s 43 years ago. Pacino’s titular character couldn’t get his more soulful mojo going on his own? Got to strike your own match. On top of which Pacino/Collins thinking he might have developed his artistic potential if only he’d read Lennon’s letter in ’71…? Forget it. And not getting around to this until his 70s? Pacino/Collins is also hoping to rekindle his relationship with a son (Bobby Cannavale) and perhaps bask in a little forgiveness for being a selfish shit, but of course that doesn’t come easy. I think we’ve seen this story a few dozen times. The only “formerly selfish old guy looking for forgiveness and redemption from his kids” movie I’ve ever half-liked was Wes Anderson‘s The Royal Tennenbaums. Oh, and I can’t roll with the name Danny. I have this very stubborn, deep-rooted resistance to it, as I explained five and a half years ago.

I was roaming around a Macy’s on Tuesday night. The combination of the treacly, mildly sickening Christmas carols playing on the sound system (my feelings about “Jingle Bells” are best not expressed) plus coming upon a row of gold-toe socks in various designs and colors…wow. Just a passing moment but I fell into a dark place, especially as I thought about the general holiday thing. I like the jingle vibe as much as the next guy, but I always feel relieved on January 2nd. I began to feel this distance when I was in my 20s. It went away when the kids came along, especially during their toddler years, but then it came back. And that’s fine.

The happiest Christmas moment of my adult life was at a party at Robert Towne‘s home in mid-November of 1997. Towne had hired three professional singers to roam around his large Pacific Palisades abode and sing Christmas carols in perfect harmony, all dressed in Dickensian garb such as top hats, shawls, bonnets, gloves and hoop skirts. Towne’s home smelled of cinnamon, turkey, cigar smoke, turkey gravy, stuffing, egg nog….glorious. Curtis Hanson was there; ditto Jerry Bruckheimer. Everyone was buzzing about Hanson’s L.A. Confidential and what seemed like a good chance of it winning the Best Picture Oscar. And then some guy told Hanson he’d just seen Titanic. “It really works,” the guy said, and I think on some level (and I felt badly about this) Hanson knew. An inkling of what was to come. The dashing of his dream. And if he didn’t sense it, I sure did.

Due respect for the enthusiasm and elation that followed an 11.17 New York screening of Ava DuVernay‘s Selma, but a potential Best Picture Oscar winner has to be about more than the ideals and convictions and historical events that may be recreated on a screen, and it certainly has to be about more than the pride and delight that an audience feels upon recognizing the transformative goodness and nobility of these events. The movie itself has to sing. It has to make its own magic. It has to be its own magic. The acclaim for any film has to be about that film. The cultural significance or the emotional baggage or the grand triumph of the events portrayed, however stirringly, are not enough. If Selma ends up winning, fine. I’ll understand; everyone will. But other qualities in other films should be weighed and given their just due. To be fair, I mean.

Just as a 5 pm screening of Paul Schrader‘s Dying of the Light was ending, the stories about Bill Cosby‘s latest and 15th accuser, Janice Dickinson, began to break. Three or four hours later the news broke about Netflix cancelling their Cosby special, which would have aired on 11.28. How many more women are going to come forward now? Are you telling me that NBC is going to go ahead with that new Cosby series in the wake of all this? Get outta here. The 77 year-old Cosby, who brought all this upon himself by his own hand (and particularly his own you-know-whatty), is about as finished as a once-high-riding, top-of-the-mountain superstar can be. 11.19, 10:45 am Pacific Update: It’s being reported that NBC has pulled the plug on Cosby’s planned series.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the kindly and serene Abderrahmane Sissako, director and co-writer of the well-crafted Timbuktu, the Mauritanian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Timbuktu was respectfully received at Cannes last May, but it’s one of the grimmest films I’ve ever sat through. Grim. My personal idea of misery is no wifi or sitting through an awful film or being dropped by a beautiful girlfriend who was magnificent in the sack. Misery in Sissako’s film, which is set in the Timbuktu region of Mali, a mostly barren African nation that few people in this country have heard of and wouldn’t give a shit about if they have, is much more hard-core. Forget about it. Shot in Mauritania, it’s about the 2012 occupation of Timbuktu by Ansar Dine, a relentlessly purist, wacked-out Islamic militia dedicated to enforcing Sharia law and order. The film was partly inspired by a public stoning of an unmarried couple in Aguelhok, in eastern Mali, but that’s just another pebble in the pond. I think we all know about the pitch-black souls of nutter Islamics by now.

Timbuktu director and co-writer Abderrahmane Sissako, translator Myriam Despujoulets during our interview at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center.

Timbuktu is in no way boring. Sissako knows how to tell a riveting tale and keep you engrossed, but good God. This is a film about dirt-poor hardscrabble types living in various states of misery and deprivation, powerless, at times terrified and always subject to rigid judgments and brutalities. An awful way to live. If there’s an uglier, crueler, more inhumane, more rancid belief system or culture than Islamic fundamentalism, I’d like to know what it is. The earth needs to be absolutely cleansed of this scourge. Welcome, western audiences, to life in one of the worst ideological desert prison camps ever created. Watching Timbuktu, for me, was like squatting on dirt at the bottom to a mine shaft, accompanied only by the flame of a single candle and surrounded by snakes and rats and bugs. Call Orkin, the extermination specialists.

Yesterday AMC Theatres began offering an unlimited Interstellar ticket to AMC Stubs members for those wishing to immerse themselves in Chris Nolan‘s masterpiece as many times as they wish. The prices vary from $19.99 to $34.99, depending on the location. (Presumably the lower end of the pricing scale applies to Interstellar fans who live in outlying regions.) Some 330 AMC theaters are participating in the promotion. I’ve seen Interstellar twice, but that’s all for now. I’ll be seeing it one more time when the Bluray comes out so I can watch it with subtitles. How many HE readers have seen Interstellar two or three times, and how many find AMC’s unlimited viewing offer attractive?

It seemed to me that Sony Classics’ classy, upmarket ads and trailers for Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher were having a limited effect. But the coarse, mass-market cartoon-ization of Foxcatcher (this four-day-old trailer, that poster for Tom Shadyac‘s Foxcatcher) has struck some kind of chord, and suddenly this somewhat gloomy, unquestionably well-made melodrama seems to be “happening” in the same way that There Will Be Blood began to “happen” when mp3s of “I drink your milkshake” were heard over and over. If Sony Classics’ marketers were bold, they would create a new stop-motion “animated” teaser of their own that makes some kind of metaphorical use of foxes, badgers, weasels, etc. You know something is happening here but you’re not quite sure what to do with it, are you, Mr. Pirrone? Does George Orwell‘s “Animal Farm” ring a bell?

Legendary L.A. Times arts editor, film critic and columnist Charles Champlin passed yesterday at age 88. I knew him only slightly (i.e., to chat with at parties) in the ’80s and ’90s, but he was never less than elegant, gracious and considerate with me, each and every time. (The best people always make marginal, not-so-important people feel otherwise — that was Champlin.) His L.A. Times heyday lasted 14 years, 1967 to 1980, when he was the top critic. That was a helluva time, of course — the most exciting era in 20th Century filmmaking. Champlin was as sharp as any major critic of his day, and during those flush years he knew the filmmaking community like few others, and I mean on a first-name basis…up, down, over and sideways. Filmmakers loved him (he was known for kind reviews) and respected him as a guy who really got it, who recognized and celebrated the best films and filmmakers. He did very well on his watch.

I made it clear on Twitter today, and I’m making it clear again here: I’m a respectful admirer of Selma as far as it goes and I certainly appreciate the things it does right, and I’m not engaged in any kind of campaign…please. I was told the other day that it has a certain heat, that it gives people something to vote for, that it could even win, etc. So I took a close look at how some of the Gurus of Gold guys are rating it…that’s all. Selma is fine. James Rocchi loves it. It has a good heart. Let that shit go.

Everyone understands that Universal has an embargo on all Unbroken reviews until 11.30 (or is it 12.1?), but I’m nonetheless surprised that last night’s premiere in Sydney, which was pretty much open to anyone willing to buy an expensive ticket, hasn’t yielded a single renegade review, a descriptive tweet or two, a comment-thread critique…nothing. Let’s presume for the sake of presuming that Unbroken will be assessed two weeks hence as good but not great, quite intense and occasionally violent, and that audiences will love it a bit more than critics, who will probably be somewhat mixed. Which will matter not as far as the Academy is concerned. The Brangelina cocktail is about as potent right now as it’s ever been, and the Academy really wants them attending the 2015 Oscar ceremony because they want that electric feeling on the carpet and in the seats, and so one way or the other, I’m guessing, it’ll be nominated for Best Picture. No win but all the flush gala trimmings leading up to a loss. That’s probably a fait accompli.

“Starting with Magnolia my initial exposure to Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have felt like stretching exercises or mindfucks of one kind or another — never easy, always a climb or a tangle, always in front of the line and beckoning to the folks in the rear…c’mon, guys…don’t hang back. And then with the second or third viewing they seem more engaging, less gnarly…of course! But you always have to come to them — they never come to you. And that’s cool. I just wish I could have been a little more engaged as I watched Inherent Vice. I never felt like I was ‘in the car.’ I constantly felt like I was running alongside or eating the exhaust.” — from a 10.5.14 piece called “Morning After Respect.”