I wince almost every time I read a Tim Gray Variety report about the latest award-season screening or event. The only fall release he hadn’t done ecstatic cartwheels over is All Is Lost. (A week or two ago Gray suggested that the title sounds too downish and despairing for the make-us-feel-good crowd.) Otherwise he’s been thumbs-uppy about nearly everything. At the same time I understand all too well why Gray and other glad-handers play it this way. If you want those advertising bucks you have to keep things groovy and backrubby. You don’t have to love everything you see but you’d be wise to write your reviews and riffs in a way that emphasizes the fluttery alpha.

Even the auteur-level directors you’ve admired for years will keep you at arm’s length and maybe pass along a complaint or two to the marketing guys if you don’t pleasure them. Even an interest in wanting to talk to an actor you really like and admire, like Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern, won’t pan out if you’re not 100% loving the movie or if you say that Dern should have gone for Best Supporting Actor because if he did he’d (a) definitely get nominated and (b) would most likely win. (Every time I’ve said this I’ve added that it’ll be terrific if he defies the odds and gets nominated for Best Actor — go, Bruce!) But that’s not good enough. Right now I have a better chance of interviewing Vladimir Putin than Dern.

You could make a Band of Brothers-like miniseries about all the young men who’ve ever suffered and died on a battlefield. Young soldiers fight for their countries, not ideologies or policies or political parties. Any war, any army is grist for this mill. You could even make a case for the genocidal Serbians if you did it right. (Although that would be tricky.) You know what I’d like to see one day? An HBO miniseries about four young Vietcong cadres fighting against the Americans in a seven-year saga, starting with the January ’68 Tet Offensive and ending with the last U.S. helicopter flying out of Saigon in April ’75. No American producer would have the cojones to do this, of course.

Word around the campfire is that The Challenger Disaster (airing Saturday, 11.16 on the Discovery and Science channels) is an engrossing, well-made docudrama. I haven’t seen it yet, but I wonder if it will mention the ghastly revelation that at least three crew members survived the explosion and were conscious until the shattered crew compartment smashed into the ocean at 2000 mph — a drop of 65,000 feet that took about two minutes and 45 seconds.

When I was a young lad, I always envisioned Noah as a wisened, oldish, bent-over type. Spirited and spiritual but with a white beard, walking staff, heavy cloak, etc. Ian McKellen‘s Gandolf. The concept behind Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe‘s Noah is sexier, of course. He’s basically an older Robin Hood. Fit, brawny, studly, deep-voiced, spear-carrying. A solemn, caring and sensual Noah who sees to the erotic satisfaction of his wife Naameh (Crowe’s Beautiful Mind costar Jennifer Connelly) every so often.

The usual Clockwork Orange drill would have to apply if I were to see Maleficient, I’m afraid. Straightjacket, eyelid-clamps, guy in white coat applying eyedrops, etc. Contorted, unrepentant, forked-tongue evil is the flip side of pure-as-the-driven-snow goodness. Blame the corporate entertainment mentality for delivering the same kind of villain in film after film after film.

Cold Case JFK, airing tonight on PBS at 9 pm, re-explores the JFK assassination with expert testimony and fresh technology. The big takeaway is that firearms experts Lucien and Michael Haag have concluded that the magic bullet — the one that caused seven two wounds in President John Kennedy and five in Governor John Connally, and yet was found on a stretcher in pristine shape — is not a joke. The most ridiculed shooting scenario in the history of modern forensics is scientifically supportable, they’re saying. Bad news for the conspiracy gang, of course, but they’re used to that by now.

The first American Hustle journalist screenings will happen a few days before Thanksgiving. As I won’t be back from Vietnam until late Sunday, 11.24, I may as well resign myself to everyone else seeing it (and perhaps posting reactions) before me. It won’t be tragic if this happens — just irritating.

Less than a week after catching Yuval Adler‘s Bethlehem I saw another ace-level melodrama about the Palestinian-Iraeli conflict last night — Hany Abu-Assad‘s Omar. It tells a roughly similar story about a Palestinian youth informing for the Israelis and being suspected by his own. In fact, my description of Bethlehem — “a lucid, tightly wound thriller that regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a filter of double-agenting, family matters, betrayal and anxiety” — pretty much applies to Omar. I’m not sure which film is better, but they’re both expert grippers. So we’ve got two superb films about similar subjects — Bethlehem the official Israeli entry and Omar submitted by the Palestinian territories. How can the Academy’s foreign-language committee select one and not the other?

This presumably provocative Neil LaBute film premiered at last April’s Tribeca Film Festival. I was wondering when it would reappear. HE correspondent HE Clayton Loulan, who attended, wrote that “the question on everyone’s mind was will this film erase or mitigate the sins of LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace and The Wicker Man? The short answer is yes, but the longer answer likely has to do with how the ending hits you.”

Three and a half years ago I described Criterion’s Stagecoach Bluray as “the worst-looking, worst-sounding Bluray of a classic black-and-white film in history.” Last night I looked at sections of Warner Home Video’s new Bluray of George Stevens‘ Giant, and I can say without reservation that it’s the worst-looking Bluray of a classic color film in history.” Forget the gravel-sized chunks of grain blanketing most of the outdoor footage. It’s the fuzziness of the damn thing that drives you nuts. Every now and then a shot looks sharply focused and well-balanced and generally attractive, but 80% of the time Giant looks soft and imprecise and hazy as a dust storm. It’s so bad that the word “blurry”can actually be applied. Why did Stevens and his dp, William C. Mellor, care so little about sharpness? Why would anyone want to look at a movie that looks this bad? For what purpose, to what end? I’m presuming that Stevens and Mellor wanted it to look soft-focus-y, but why the hell should I or anyone with any kind of taste in high-end cinematography want to watch it? This Bluray is a stain on the reputation of a great filmmaker. Don’t buy it. Don’t even think about it.

This is a publicity shot of Tarnished Angels director Douglas Sirk conferring with costars Dorothy Malone and Rock Hudson. Is Hudson’s bored, ‘I’m somewhere else, man” expression affecting or what? Call me eccentric but I think this is one of the most honest and penetrating capturings of Hudson I’ve ever seen. He lived in his own realm, after all, and so much of what he performed on-screen was very much of an “act,” at least in terms of his deep-down personality and sexuality. This is Hudson all by himself, “all alone” in a sense, surrendering to whatever was running through his not-very-deep head. One of the things I dislike about Sirk films (and in fact almost all dramas and melodramas of the ’50s and earlier) is that no one is ever shown spacing out. Each and every character is always engaged in the moment, paying attention, saying something necessary or asserting themselves or reacting full-on. Everybody spaces out, especially creative types. Some of my best thoughts and insights come from my zone-out vacations.

It’s a bit gauche to mention (much less talk about) anatomical fetishes but I don’t think I’m pushing the bounds to note that most men have special areas of intrigue, film critics included. Most average guys have run-of-the-mill likings for anything cantaloupe-y. Andrew Sarris used to say he was a “leg man”, or so I recall. Billy Wilder was into legs and particularly ankles, if Double Indemnity is any indication. Francois Truffaut was…now I’ve forgotten. Quentin Tarantino is understood to be a foot fetishist. Some guys like women with boyish bods (narrow hips, flat chests). I once knew a guy who said he liked wide-hipped women with big-mama arms. All to say that feet can make a difference on this end. If a woman has large feet and particularly if her big toes are German-sized (if you’ve been to Germany you know what I mean), that’s a problem. And if her feet are exquisitely proportioned that’s a huge plus. I’m mentioning this because there’s a shot in Tarnished Angels that resulted in my pulling back a bit from Dorothy Malone. Very few directors allow foot shots (even quick ones) into their films. There’s a reason for that. Some people take feet very personally. Not judging, just saying.