JFK assassination conspiracy mania peaked with the 1979 conclusion by the House Select Committee that President Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” But the tide began to turn in the wake of Oliver Stone‘s fascinating but much-assailed JFK (’91) and the subsequent publishing of Gerald Posner‘s “Case Closed” (’93), which argued that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I not only feel that JFK is one of Stone’s finest films, but that it’s close to absurd to completely dismiss the scores of hints and indications that Oswald wasn’t the only shooter that day in Dealey Plaza. I’ll admit that it’s theoretically possible that Oswald acted alone, but this has always seemed highly unlikely to me. There is simply too much smoke. Nonetheless Posner’s and Vincent Bugliosi‘s book “Reclaiming History” (’07) have made viewpoints like mine seem a bit dated and outre.

This background makes the recent publishing of Joseph McBride‘s “Into The Nightmare: My Search For The Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit” — an unregenerate, balls-against-the-wall JFK conspiracy book that thoroughly and painstakingly dismisses the lone-gunman theory — seem extra-nervy. Especially considering that the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder on 11.22.63 is less than four months off, and the fact that two films that embrace the Posner-Bugliosi scenario are opening this fall — Peter Landesman‘s Parkland (Open Road, 9.20) and the National Geographic Channel’s Killing Kennedy, which will air sometime in November.

At almost the same time that a great nuclear life-force in a suitcase was destroying a Malibu beach house in Kiss Me Deadly, an attractive waitress working at a seaside cafe was entangled with sinister spies in Shack Out On 101. You can’t deny that 1955 was one humdinger of a year for scumbag spies, short-order sex, nefarious doings and national defense secrets playing three-card-monte somewhere between Trancas and Santa Barbara!

After roughly two and three-quarter years of bizarre, byzantine delays, the Great Ishtar Bluray Delay Release Saga will finally conclude on Tuesday, August 6th, when Sony Home Entertainment’s Bluray will “street.” That day will sadly mark the end of a special time in the life of yours truly and Hollywood Elsewhere, as I came into possession of an accidentally sold Ishtar Bluray in January 2011 (i.e., a copy that escaped from a Toronto DVD store just before the Bluray was officially yanked). I just want to state for the record that for roughly 31 or 32 months I, Jeffrey Wells, was the only journalist residing on the North American continent who possessed a copy of the Ishtar Bluray.

Roman Polanski-philes now have James Greenberg‘s Roman Polanski: A Retrospective to add their biographical collection. I’ve torn through about half of this 287-page book since returning from New York on Thursday night, and I can say without question that Greenberg’s essays on Polanski an∂ his films are as authoritative, perceptive and well-finessed as F.X. Feeney‘s in his 2006 Polanski book, and that the photos in this coffee-table hardback are second to none. It’s both easy to read and easy not to read, but you’ll want to read it.

Greenberg and I did a phoner this morning around 10:30 am — here’s the mp3.

Yesterday morning Deadline‘s Mike Fleming quoted Monuments Men director-star-cowriter George Clooney about Sony shareholder Daniel Loeb, who recently ripped into Sony honchos Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton for the tanking of After Earth and White House Down: “I’ve been reading a lot about Daniel Loeb, a hedge fund guy who describes himself as an activist but who knows nothing about our business,” Clooney began, “and he is looking to take scalps at Sony because two movies in a row underperformed? When does the clock stop and start for him at Sony?

“Why didn’t [Loeb] include Skyfall, the 007 movie that grossed a billion dollars, or Zero Dark Thirty or Django Unchained? And what about the rest of a year that includes Elysium, Captain Phillips, American Hustle and The Monuments Men? You can’t cherry-pick a small time period and point to two films that didn’t do great. It makes me crazy.

Having missed last Tuesday’s screening of Paul Schrader‘s The Canyons at the Walter Reade, I finally caught it yesterday afternoon on my Macbook Pro while waiting at Newark Airport for my Virgin America flight to LA. Obviously it’s not that great but it’s not that bad either. Or at least it didn’t seem that bad after reading all those shitty reviews. The characters couldn’t be chillier or more spiritually vacant, but that’s the idea, right? It’s present-day Los Angeles as a kind of Dante’s Inferno. Everyone lies, nobody trusts anyone, a rancid scene every which way. The film has issues (including technical ones) but I got through it. I wasn’t greatly offended.

The best films always start off impressively or at least respectably, and then they get better (i.e., richer, deeper, more dazzling) with each successive viewing. Kubrick’s films always do this. In this sense Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Last Tango In Paris is an exception as far as my own reactions are concerned. I was so knocked out by my first viewing that I wound up seeing it five or six times within a two- or three-month period, but over the last couple of decades (and especially during my most recent viewing via Bluray) it’s been falling off and generally losing its potency. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen it too often, but portions of this landmark film almost irritate me now. I can’t stand those scenes between Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud, for example.

With the exception of a 24-hour visit to George Clooney‘s Monuments Men set in rural Germany roughly three months ago and then a two-day visit to Lauterbrunnen in early June I’ve been living in intense, thundering, big-time cities over the last three months — New York, two weeks in Berlin, 10 days in Cannes, 20 days in Paris, five or six days in Prague, back to Paris and then a straight 40-day bunkdown in New York’s financial district (i.e., since 6.20) with the highly significant girlfriend.

The best elements in Billy Bob Thornton‘s Jayne Mansfield’s Car “are the performances from Robert Duvall and John Hurt,” London Evening Standard critic Derek Malcom wrote last February from Berlin. “To see these two pitted against each other is sheer cinematic joy. To watch Billy Bob, Kevin Bacon and Tippi Hedren too is an additional pleasure.”

The 86th Academy Awards will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres…okay. She’ll be fine. EDG was nominated for an Emmy after emcee-ing the Oscar telecast in ’07 so whatever. The song-and-dancey, Vegas-minded Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will again executive produce. The show will air on Sunday, March 2nd — seven freaking months from now. And the 2013 Oscar season begins less than 30 days hence with Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York…bang, bang, boom. Get ready, cadres. It’s gonna be a long bumpy ride. Well, a long one anyway.

When it comes to Machete flicks, slapdash genre-wanker Robert Rodriguez — a man who has lived in torment for 20 years over his inability to make another movie as good as El Mariachi, his debut film which cost $7000 — morphs into Zucker Abrahams Zucker. Amusing as a trailer (the Charlie Sheen menage a trois gag works), probably very trying as a feature. You can’t sustain this kind of tonal attitude over 95 or 100 minutes — it turns into cottage cheese. No name-brand director is as deeply opposed to infusing his films with thematic or spiritual content as Rodriguez. He would sooner slit his throat than have one of his films deliver subtext (except for his “let’s have fun with this or that exploitation cliche by overcranking it” bullshit). You’ll never get more than what you see when you watch a Rodriguez fick.

I need to speak to someone who can tell me how to pronounce David Oyelowo‘s last name. I hesitate every time I try to say it. My tongue shrinks from the challenge. Oh-yay-low-woe? My inner ten-year-old wants to say oh-yellow.