97 year-old Kirk Douglas sat down and tapped out a short tribute piece for The Hollywood Reporter about the recently-passed Lauren Bacall, whom Douglas first met in 1940 when they were attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Douglas was 24, Bacall was 16…I won’t ask. In ’46 Douglas’s lead performance in The Wind Is Ninety, a Broadway play, won good reviews. At an L.A. party Bacall told producer Hal Wallis to see it for Douglas’s sake and “he actually listened to her,” Douglas writes. “Did I mention she was persuasive? Soon after I was on my way to Hollywood with a meaty role as Barbara Stanwyck‘s husband in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.” Which, by the way, is a fairly dreadful film. But it led to Out of the Past and, in ’49, Champion.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Two Days, One Night has either opened or is due to open around Europe over the next month or two, and it will screen at both TIFF and the NYFF on 10.5. But U.S. distributor Sundance Selects is still thinking things over. I would be too if I was distributing. After seeing it in Cannes last May I called Two Days, One Night “another line-drive single…a low-key, no-frills, ploddingly earnest drama about factory workers being asked to make a choice between humanity and expediency after a co-worker (Marion Cotillard) has been told she’s being laid off…it’s a decently made but far-from-inspired film, roughly on the level of the Dardennes’ The Kid With The Bike.”

The Toronto International Film Festival has decided to partner with the Weinstein Co. to launch what appears to be an imminent “Bill Murray in St. Vincent for Best Actor” campaign. A celebration of “Bill Murray Day” on Friday, 9.5, will include free screenings of three Murray classics — Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day — at the Bell Lightbox. The world premiere of St Vincent, Murray’s latest and a possible (though unproven) basis for a Best Actor campaign, will cap things off. Above and beyond the merits of Murray’s performance (i.e., a semi-alcoholic, loose-shoe babysitter), the campaign theme will almost certainly be “Murray is owed.” He was shafted, of course, when the Academy didn’t even nominate his note-perfect performance in Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore (’98) and his Best Actor-nominated performance for Lost in Translation lost to Mystic River‘s Sean Penn.

You know what would have been great, seriously? If Barack Obama had dumped the ice on his head. Why not? Everyone’s been getting to the act, it’s for a good cause, and it would feel like justice all around. Inside Obama’s head as he dumps the ice water: “I’ve been meaning to pass along a personal thanks for that huge financial catastrophe you left me to deal with when I took office in January 2009, so thanks…felt good!”

The Criterion guys know that Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (’60) was shot 55 years ago (i.e., summer of ’59) with an understanding that a likely majority of cinemas would screen it at 1.66 or perhaps even at 1.37, particularly those in rural Europe. They know it looks exquisite at 1.66, and they know there are ample references to 1.66 as the preferred or default a.r., and they know that 1.77 is so close to the severity of 1.85 that it’s barely worth comparing the two. And yet, as they did with their Bluray of La Notte, Criterion has decided to slice off the tops and bottoms in order to render it at 1.77. Thanks very much, Mr. Becker. History will speak fondly of you for sparing Antonioni fans all of that unnecessary headroom. At least there’s a selected-scene commentary from Olivier Assayas to look forward to. Criterion’s Bluray streets on 11.25.

I ignored the math a few days ago when I mentioned the BFI London Film Festival showing of David Ayer‘s Fury. The fact that the BFI called the 10.19 showing a “European premiere” means that some U.S.-based festival will be also be showing the Brad Pitt-starring WWII combat film before it opens on 10.17. I don’t think Fury and Telluride are an aesthetic fit, but maybe. It would certainly be cool and unusual if that happens, but would you book an envelope-pushing, Joe Popcorn-angled, ultra-violent war film if you were Tom Luddy or Gary Meyer or Julie Huntsinger? If you ask me a surprise showing at the New York Film Festival is the more likely scenario, sometime after the centerpiece showing (i.e., Inherent Vice) but before the closing nighter (i.e, Birdman).

The Deadline gang has a lot of balls posting a photo of Paul Rudd standing near the Golden Gate bridge in a hoodie and calling it “the first look of Rudd in Ant-Man,” which began shooting yesterday. I hate this movie and they’ve barely rolled film on it, although I do notice that the regular-guy-proportioned Rudd has lost weight. Peyton Reed‘s Ant-Man, which also stars Michael Douglas, opens on 7.17.15. Does anyone remember the name of Anthony Zerbe‘s crooked narco in Karel Reisz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain? Antheil.

Vocal fry murmur among 25-and-under actresses has become so pronounced and consistent and increasingly hard to understand that I brace myself whenever a younger actress pops up in a film or TV drama. Will I be able to understand her at least partly or will I be leaning forward and cupping my ears and wondering what I missed? And don’t say it’s me — VFM is a completely recognized and routinely-analyzed epidemic. It’s been implanted in younger women along with uptalk, and it’s the responsibility of the director to recognize that they become all but indecipherable if they sink too deeply into their vocal murmur, and that they have to be told, “I realize that you’re being natural and real, but you have to figure some way to do that and be understood by people who’re accustomed to greater degrees of vocal clarity.”

It’s not just actresses. Vocal fry is everywhere, and it’s alienating or pissing people off in all walks of life. Here’s an 8.12.14 Business Insider piece that says vocal-fry women are hurting their chances of getting hired and/or advancing. Second graph: “Vocal fry involves dropping one’s voice to the lowest register, causing the vocal chords to flutter, which creates a creaking sound.”

Shailene Woodley was bugging the shit out of me last night as I watched Gregg Araki‘s White Bird in a Blizzard (Magnolia, 10.24). Sometimes I was able to hear her words and other times she would say “uhm…duhcantuhfaylee” or “muhrduhraffah” or “defayzmoreuhmnet.” It depends on how intimate and low-down the setting is. If she’s angry or agitated Woodley is fine (“Why are you doing this? Thank you for, like, totally embarassing me in front of my friends!”). But if she’s laid-back and serene and speaking quietly to a boyfriend on a couch or in a car, forget it. I’d say that her VFM obscures between 25% to 33% of her dialogue in this film.

Woodley has probably decided that enunciating is anathema to expressing her core emotions, and she’s probably told herself, “Marlon Brando was given shit for mumbling and slurring when he was young but it never hurt him any.” That’s actually bullshit. There’s not a single line that’s hard to decipher in any early Brando film. By any case Brando’s mumbling (in what, A Streetcar Named Desire?) pales next to vocal fry.

HE’s last Toronto Film Festival priority slate (posted on 8.12) had 26 hard picks, 30 if you want to be liberal about it and 33 if you really want to bend over backwards. Today the last few titles were announced, and one of them is a keeper — Vincent Melfi‘s St. Vincent with Bill Murray portraying a stonier, less-well-off version of himself, and costarring Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd, Jaeden Lieberher.

The Compson family in James Franco’s The Sound and the Fury, one of the just-announced additions to the 2014 Toronto Film Festival.

I very much want to see Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi‘s The 50 Year Argument, which HBO will debut on 9.29…but how necessary-to-see alongside everything else? Should I put the New York Review of Books on hold until the HBO airing? Or possibly catch it at the NYFF? Krzysztof Zanussi‘s Foreign Body and Raoul Peck‘s Murder in Pacot sound like near-essentials. Okay, priorities. Okay, films I’d like to see if the schedule allows.

Forget Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s extra-long, time-hogging, schedule-killing Winter Sleep, which I resent anyway because the Cannes jury gave it the Palme d’Or while nickle-and-diming Leviathan with a Best Screenplay award. I’ll see Sleep in Los Angeles when I have the time to spare and not before. If it was screening here before Toronto I’d see it in a heartbeat. Ceylan is a master of his realm and a world-class auteur, but no way am I surrendering 196 minutes to any one film during the Toronto Film Festival.

This is where it is now, what we’ve come to. Our hearts, minds and souls thrive in text messaging or not at all. Whatever you might offer verbally these days is strictly follow-up, explanation and elaboration. If it all works out it leads to touch and warmth, of course, but that’s across the river and into the trees. Otherwise the screen rules. Say it with feeling and conviction, open up and let it in…but we live on and more essentially within our screens. I sure do, I can tell you. And happily, for the most part. But what would Ernest Hemingway or Jack London say?

Which reminds me that I’m pissed that the bigger of the forthcoming Apple 6 phones (what is it, the 5.5 inch?) may be delayed until early ’15. I’m not springing for the 4.7 inch version. No half measures.

What follows is a rash, imprecise, certainly unfair impression. I’ve developed this vague idea that Chaz Ebert‘s rogerebert.com has a general inclination to go easy, and that the critics who bang out reviews and essays for the site are…well, not necessarily inclined to err on the side of friendliness but they certainly have this in the back of their minds. I think the site reflects Chaz’s nature to some extent, and her understandable interest in keeping things on an even keel. I especially expect kindness from Matt Zoller Seitz, whom I used to think of as this cool New York guy but whom I now regard as this gentle, kindly papa bear figure. I’ve admired and respected MZS for a long time but since he’s been with the Ebert site I see him as Mr. Greenjeans — a first-rate writer and top-notch critic who will always radiate a certain alpha vibe.

I’m not saying that the entire Rogerebert.com crew (Christy Lemire, Glenn Kenny, Simon Abrams, Godfrey Cheshire, Susan Wloszczyna, etc.) is committed to butter not melting in their mouths, but it seems this way (emphasis on the “s” word). Like I said, what I’m saying lacks precision and exactitude. Of course the site is not all about turning the other cheek. Of course it’s staffed by first-raters. But when I think of rogerebert.com, I think of a bunch of people who are not just smart and gifted but nice. Does the site have one asshole, one snarly snapdragon who doesn’t give a shit? They could use one, let me tell you. Am I the only one sensing this ?