A.O. Scott‘s observation that the second films in a franchise (The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Spiderman 2) tend to be the best ones is true, I think. David Carr: “Is there any chance that Hangover 3 will by any good?” Otherwise they’re performing a kind of superficial forced joviality in quotes. What else are they gonna do? Let it all out and just hate on the whole corporate summer avalanche? No — lighthearted chuckles.

I was sufficiently impressed with Scott McGehee and David Siegel‘s What Maisie Knew to want to attend yesterday’s junket gathering at the Tribeca Grand hotel. I spoke to the directors plus Julianne Moore (who gives a brave but dislikable performance as a sociopathic ego-monster Mother From Hell), Alexander Skarsgård (who plays a good guy — a low-key, zero-ambition bartender whose parenting skills for outshine Moore’s or those of her estranged husband, played by Steve Coogan), young Onata Aprile (strikingly low-key but magnetic as the film’s titular character) and Joanna Vanderham.

Alexander Skarsgard, Onata Aprile during yesterday’s What Maisie Knew round=table discussion.

I told Onata that I once saw another actress draw on a pad during a round-table interview — Cate Blanchett. It was for The Good German. I was drawn to Blanchett’s method of concentratig or hiding or whatever, but it was touching.

“Misery loves family” is a pretty good slogan, but why use a different Weston house than the one we’ll see when August: Osage County opens on 11.8.13? Why create a fictional version? I ran a photo of the home, a.k.a. “the historic Boulanger home north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma” — last March. According to Osage News It was purchased by August OC Film for $250,000.” That can’t be right. $250 grand for a home like this?

An old friend is renting a large place in Paris for the month of June, and she’s invited me to stay and provide occasional guidance and security so that’s the plan. A month…actually closer to five weeks in Paris after Cannes, and then returning to L.A. on 6.30. I won’t spend any more over there on food and transportation than I would in West Hollywood so it’s not going to hurt financially. What will I miss? Not the big blockbusters as they open day-and-date over there. I’ll also be attending regular Paris press screenings of most of the stuff I’d see in L.A. Yeah, I’ll probably miss a few L.A. screenings of certain indie titles but there are always the (a) screener-in-the-mail or (b) online viewing-with-a-password options.

Trailer #2 for Roland Emmerich‘s White House Down (Sony, 6.28) offers a greater emphasis on characters (principally Channing Tatum‘s Jone Cale, a D.C. cop of some kind, and Jamie Foxx‘s James Sawyer, the U.S. President) and humor. You can’t beat that shot of the U.S. Capitol exploding from within and collapsing. As Burt Reynolds‘ character says at the start of the Deliverance canoe trip, “This gonna be fun!”

Last night’s screening of William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer (’77) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was fine. A packed house filled with cool people. (I sat right next to Glenn Kenny!) No Tangerine Dream overture on the print — a huge disappointment — but maybe it’ll turn up on the Bluray. Variety critic Scott Foundas handled the q & a with Friedkin following the screening. Clip #1 is about the genesis of the project, and clip #2 is about Friedkin’s discussions with Steve McQueen about playing what became the Roy Scheider part.

I’ve seen Sorcerer (a terrible title in terms of what the 1977 Joe Popcorn crowd was led to expect) six or seven times, but until last night I’d never wondered about the gas. The two trucks make a 200-mile journey through the jungle, and driving entirely in first and second gear. Surely they couldn’t make the trip on a single tank each, and yet I didn’t notice any extra cans of gas strapped to the flatbeds. And how long did the journey take? Two days? A single day? Three? The film gives you no real clue about the clock.

And Scheider getting iced at the very end seems wrong. The trip was hell but he made it through and had earned redemption by delivering the nitroglycerin. I wanted hsi character to taste the satisfaction of a job well done, and perhaps a little serenity. Scheider apparently wasn;t happy with how he came off. From the Wiki page: “Scheider was angry that in the final cut Friedkin removed a subplot that showed his character in a more sympathetic light; it involved him befriending a small boy from the village. For that reason, Scheider consistently refused to comment on the film.”

In about 90 minutes I’ll be seeing what I understand will be a mint-condition print of William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer (’77). I heard the Tangerine Dream overture once and only once, when I saw this near-great remake of The Wages of Fear at the Post Cinema in Westport, Connecticut. If it’s not attached to tonight’s print there will be trouble — that’s all I have to say.

I’m presuming this Wolf of Wall Street teaser poster isn’t legit, but if it is I have a problem with the slogan “The Rise and Fall of a White-Collar Gangster.” Is “bankster” not a commonly used term these days? It should be “The Rise and Fall of a Bankster” or, better yet, “The Rise and Fall of a Gangsta Banksta.” Why run a slogan that sounds like like it was written by one of Charlie Rose‘s staff writers?

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini‘s The Girl Most Likely (Lionsgate/Roadside, 7.19) screened at the Toronto Film Festival under the title Imogene. Michelle Morgan‘s screenplay is about a playwright (Kristen Wiig) who stages a suicide in an attempt to win back her ex, only to wind up in the custody of her gambling-addict mother (Annette Bening). Matt Dillon, Christopher Fitzgerald and Darren Criss co-star.

The just-released one-sheet for Lars Von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac. Yeah, I get it.

“Would you still be attracted to me now if we happened to meet for the first time…today, as I am now? Would you come over and talk to me and try to pick me up if you saw me on a train?” Answer: Damn straight, no hesitation, in a New York minute. Is that an honest answer? Perhaps not, but any wife who asks her husband of 10 or 15 years that question doesn’t want candor. She wants to hear that the current is crackling and the batteries are still charged. She doesn’t want to feel like a leftover. Who does?

That said, I think it’s fair to say that guys will rarely toss ambush questions at their wives or longtime girlfriends. When women ask them they’re basically saying “okay, here’s your chance — will you give me the answer I want to hear or not?” Guys never do this. Guys never say “I want to believe in a fantasy — will you tell me that this fantasy is real? Because if you don’t, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”

Tom Shone has posted a complaining but moderately favorable review of Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby, which had its big U.S. premiere last night at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The operative terms are “handsome,” hectic” and “very impressive yet slightly boring at the same time.” Leonardo DiCaprio‘s rendering of Jay Gatsby is “the most rock-solid presence in the film,” Shone feels. He gives it a B-minus at the end of the review, but it reads more like a C-plus to me.

The funniest…okay, the only funny paragraph addresses the narration by Tobey Maguire‘s Nick Carraway character: “”No act of Dionysian revelry is quite as laborious as the one narrated in voiceover by Tobey Maguire,” Shone states. “He’s all over this movie, regrettably. Luhrmann has clearly tried his utmost to rev up Maguire’s notoriously lethargic delivery, he still he manages the excitement levels of a small marsupial, recently awoken from hibernation by the roaring twenties and now anxious to get back to sleep.”

What’s the point of my quoting any further? Just read the piece.