I arrived in summer-hot Las Vegas at 12:45 pm. I left West Hollywood at 8:35 am and got on the 134 east around 9 am. I did a 10-minute stop for gas and a stretch so it really took me three hours and 35 minutes. I averaged 80 mph. My stalking horse method worked just fine. I saw a CHP hiding behind a bridge piling just beyond Baker but saw no bulls pulling anyone over. I’m staying in a spartan shitbag Motel 8 (opposite the Mandalay Bay) for $45 and I don’t care. I’m now sitting in the Ceasar’s Palace press room with my ADMIT ONE (i.e., first-class) press pass and Neighbors tickets in my pocket. The first screening is Ivan Reitman‘s Draft Day at 4 pm (an hour and 50 minutes from now). I don’t gamble and I never will, but I’m in like Flynn.

If I leave by 8:30 am I should be in Las Vegas by 12:30 or 1 pm, and picking up my Cinemacon pass by 1:45 pm or 2 pm at the latest. I haven’t done this drive since the late ’80s. I’m mindful, of course, of the notorious CHP speed-trap area approaching Barstow and then beyond to the Nevada state line. What I generally do is find a couple of “stalking horses” who are moving as fast as I want to go and then stay eight to ten car lengths behind them. If the bulls are going to pull anyone over they’ll go for the horses rather than myself — that’s the theory, at least.

The trick with Las Vegas is to stay there no longer than 24 hours. By the 36-hour mark the plasticity and toxins begin to seep into your system. 48 hours and you’re staggering around like Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A..

John Wayne‘s anti-Communist proclamations and behind-the-scenes maneuverings in the late 1940s and ’50s and were fairly relentless and strident. To go by some accounts he was a kind of swaggering Rush Limbaugh-like figure within the Hollywood community when it came to ferreting out “reds” and “pinks.” Wayne didn’t approve of Kirk Douglas having brought Dalton Trumbo out of the shadows as a screenwriter with Spartacus, and he resented High Noon. But alongside today’s rightwing nutters he wasn’t that extreme and was by all accounts an entirely decent guy on personal terms. As far as I can discern Wayne was a kind of Barry Goldwater conservative, which was defined as a traditional preservationist position and almost liberal by 21st Century standards. (The real liberal by 2014 standards is Richard Nixon, of course.)

The 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating for Cesar Chavez (3.28, Participant) indicates that director Diego Luna was too impressed by the legend of the renowned labor leader to do anything exceptional or daring. Sight unseen I wrote last October that rote “biopics of revered political underdogs can only tell the tale — modest beginnings, protagonist shows mettle, rise to power, complications from adversaries, big climax, end coda.” The rule of thumb in making a good political saga is to avoid deification by concentrating on a challenging or traumatic episode that revealed or brought forth character. Two noteworthy examples: Stephen Frears‘ The Queen or Dore Schary‘s Sunrise at Campobello. Raoul Peck‘s Lumumba, Gus Van Sant‘s Milk and Oliver Stone‘s Nixon are probably the best political biopics that take the broader “this happened and then that happened” approach.

Trailers for Jon S. Baird‘s Filth have been online for 11 months now. I took notice of the first one in April 2013. Last July I remarked that it’s been “over-trailered.” It opened in England last September and I know I saw it on a flight to Europe not long ago. It will finally appear domestically on VOD on 4.24.14 and then theatrically on 5.30.14. Filth is raw and rancid and not half bad. I’d like to see it in a decent screening room or theatre. Watching a film on a steerage mini-screen doesn’t cut it.

Noah director Darren Aronofsky called just before 4 pm Pacific, and we talked for about 18 minutes. We kicked it around as best we could in a compressed time frame. “For me, ‘different’ is the way to go,” he said early on. Couple that with his interpretation of a “super-powerful myth” and an artistic process that has been going on since Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel and you’ve got Noah, a movie that that clearly began with crackling images in Aronofsky’s head. The greatness of it is that you can feel that creative ferment all the way through. As well as a sense of cosmic creepiness that I haven’t felt since Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture.

Noah director and co-writer Darren Aronofsky.

Aronofsky and Noah star Russell Crowe during filming.

Most Sam Peckinpah fans regard Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (’74) as one of his best. Below The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and Ride The High Country but above all the rest. I haven’t seen it in years but my recollection is that the Warren Oates factor aside (shades, unshaven, piano-playing, laconic attitude), it’s Peckinpah doing his schtick in a relatively rote and uninspired way. That’s not an eternal opinion — just a recollection. The main problem is Peckinpah’s persistent sexism, particularly the way his screenplay (co-written with Gordon Dawson) depicts Isela Vega‘s Elita character as a slut with a heart of gold. That fantasy didn’t travel all that well to begin with and it certainly doesn’t fly today. That scene in which Vega agrees to have it off with Kris Kristofferson in exchange for KK and his biker buddy not killing Oates is just icky and strange. In my book Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia is below The Getaway, Junior Bonner, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Major Dundee. The limited Bluray is out now.

I’m doing a 20-minute phoner with Noah director Darren Aronofsky a little after 4 pm today. That’s barely enough time to scratch the surface but if any HE readers have a good smart question (i.e., nothing to do with The Fountain) I’ll ask it and mention the name of the questioner. (Or not if you want to be anonymous.) I’ll be posting the interview in a mp3 form later today or tonight. I think it’s fair to ask about the shaved heads — i.e., how Noah managed to give himself a perfect buzz cut in the year 3500 B.C. and whether Aronofsky’s buzz cut was Noah-inspired. Maybe I won’t ask that if better questions come to mind.

Simple question (and please be honest): what in this trailer for Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg‘s X-Men: Days of Future Past strikes you as surprising or unexpected in any way, shape or form? What does it seem to suggest or promise that could fairly be described as “putting something new or fresh on the table”? I’m not making any judgments — I’m just asking.

I can remember when the word “problem” referred to either (a) a mathematical challenge or (b) some kind of difficult development that could probably be solved with sufficient smarts and patience and whatnot. It was almost synonymous with “issue” and next door to “riddle.” Then it became an aggressive allusion to an argument or annoying behavior — “What’s your problem?” or more precisely “What’s your effing problem?” For the last 20 or 25 years “problem” has lost almost all of its currency in the mathematical realm and has come to mean (a) a major personality deficiency and/or (b) a very dark situation that could involve death or torture or some other form of devastation.

When an old mafia goon was explaining to Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas why Joe Pesci had just been whacked, he began by saying “well, we had this problem.” When Brad Pitt called Michael Fassbender in The Counselor to explain that a cocaine shipment they’ve invested in has been hijacked, he began with “we have a problem” or something close to that. If a character in a film has a “problem,” it doesn’t mean things have taken a turn for the worse as much as he/she might be toast.

Vanity Fair‘s just-appointed film critic is saying with a straight face that Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: the Winter Soldier (Disney. 4.4) is pleasing enough and decently assembled but should basically be viewed as a warmup to the next Avengers film. I don’t know what to say to Richard Lawson. He’s indicating he was more or less delighted with Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers, which I described 22 months ago as “basically a bludgeoning,” and that he can’t wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron (5.1.15). This is the blindness of geek aficionados (which the George Lucas-resembling Lawson apparently is to some extent). To them bigger, rompy-stompier, more avalanche-like and titanically proportioned CG action films are better than smarter, faster, restrained, character-driven, tighter and more precise ones. I didn’t hate The Avengers but it was mostly a form of punishment — “big, noisy as shit, corporate piss in a gleaming silver bucket.”

Note: I meant to say that Lawson resembles George Lucas as he looked 25 or 30 years ago.