I’ve chosen not to make time for the 2012 Olympics, thanks. At best I’ll catch the late-night or BBC or Today show sum-ups. But even I, uploading MV photos in a motel room, saw the Gabby Douglas gymnastics triumph last night, and I couldn’t be dispassionate. You just knew she’d win. Superb form, pretty face, elfin (4′ 11″), killer smile and…did you notice?… exquisite eye makeup. A torrent of monetary favorings await. She needs to keep it classy.

Monument Valley is eternal, of course, but it suddenly got better, deeper and more transporting for yours truly late this afternoon. A Navajo guide named Larry took us out around 4 pm Pacific, and we bumped around dirt roads and basked in the glory of the place and took dozens of photos and shared a Navajo spiritual moment under a massive sandrock shelter as Larry and his cousin and some other guy sang Navajo songs. It was beautiful. I forgot about the annoying stuff. This land was made for you and me.

I’m sorry but Monument Valley isn’t knocking me dead so far. It’s fine, it’s okay…but I don’t feel as emotionally affected as I was by the snow-capped Bernese Alps. I guess I built it up too much in my head. The brownish-red colors against the green scrub and bright blue sky are as beautiful as they’ve always seemed in those John Ford films, and the huge mesas and chimney-shaped peaks, the wind-sanded cliffs and the general enormity and flatness of the valley itself…whew. But there’s something faintly meh about it. And Goulding’s is way too touristy.

As long as the costs stay low and the big revenues continue, Paramount will keep churning these things out. I liked the first one, half-liked the second one but didn’t get around to the third, even though it was do-directed by the Catfish guys, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Paranormal Activity 4 opens on 10.19.

The reported “official synopis” of Lars Von Trier‘s The Nymphomaniac, which will play at Cannes next May with Nicole Kidman in a minor role: “[This] is the light and poetic story of a woman’s erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, Joe, [a] self-diagnosed nymphomaniac,” it reads. “On a cold winter’s evening Seligman, an old bachelor, finds Joe semi-unconscious and beaten up in an alleyway. After bringing her to his flat he sees to her wounds while trying to understand how things could have gone so wrong for her.

“Seligman listens intently as Joe, over the next eight chapters, recounts the lushly branched-out and multi-faceted story of her life, rich in associations and interjecting incidents.”

The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth reports that filming will begin “this summer” — i.e., sometime this month? — “and will arrive in both hardcore and softcore variations, with porn actor doubles being used for the raunchy stuff.”

Von Trier spoke of a planned porn film during 2011’s Melancholia press conference. Some thought he was joking. He has to somehow get past this phase in which anything that pops into his mind or shows up inside his belly-button is material fit for a film.

Even in a liberal, well-educated college town like Flagstaff, you can feel the staunchly conservative Arizona vibe. It’s friendly and gracious with the twangy accents and all, but the motel parking lots in Dump City (i.e., the area where I’m staying outside of town) are jammed with SUVs and pickup trucks with monster-sized tires. And the rightie bumper stickers (“So far the change sucks”) and ads on TV are creepy. I haven’t seen any pickups with gun racks but you can sense the folksy firearm attitudes. “Naahs to meet yew…how ya dewin’?…you all right?…want a coffee?” I’m not looking for trouble but this is foreign territory. O give me the comforts of Prague or Bern or Munich. Can’t wait to get out of here. But first, breakfast at Brandy’s.

I’m posting this from the craphole-ish Knights Inn in Flagstaff. Three hours and 45 minutes from LV’s McCarran Airport. I drove 80 to 85 mph, but I always stay behind another guy going a little faster (i.e., the stalking-horse system) so the Arizona fuzz will pull him over before they come after me. But there were no bulls anywhere. All I know is, this place smells like Lysol disinfectant.

Last night I caught Hope Springs (Sony, 8.10), which is not what the trailers are selling — i.e., a chuckly, easy-going “comedy” about a 60ish straightlaced couple (Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones) rediscovering sex and romance through therapy. I would instead call it a modest, agreeably honest, dialogue-driven two-hander about…well, heart and trust and intimacy and such. And very well acted, especially by Streep.

Intimacy is never easy for guys, particularly conservative boomers, but you can’t live any kind of life without it and we all need to give it up, and so you have to give Hope Springs credit for trying, at least, to nudge us in the right direction. It was said last night that “this movie is going to change lives.” I don’t know about that, but it’s nice that a commercial movie is even poking at this subject.

It’s seasoned with light humor and…okay, one laugh-out-loud gag set in a movie theatre, but it’s mainly an appealing, plain-spoken relationship “talk” piece that fiddles with sadness and old-age melancholy without digging into it too deeply. It’s honest and respectable with making things too uncomfortable. Love sustains and refreshes and makes it all worthwhile, but who wants to get into facing the last third of your life and being past your sexual prime and not working out like you used to and popping Cialis? Gnarly stuff, that. Certainly not the stuff that sells popcorn.

Imagine what the great Mike Leigh or somebody on his level would do with a story about a 63 year-old housewife looking to jazz things up with her husband of 30-odd years. Something a bit bolder and more invasive than Hope Springs would emerge, I’m thinking, but at the same time something less commercial, even with the great Meryl Streep in the lead. So it seems right that Hope Springs doesn’t try and drill too deeply. It feels like it’s aimed at those who wants to believe what it’s selling — i.e., over-40 women and couples.

The feeling I got last night (I saw it with an older crowd at the Aero) is that the audience was content with Hope Springs and definitely respectful of its originality and intentions, but at the same not exactly lifted out of their seats. But they seemed happy with it, agreed with it, liked it.

I have to leave for Monument Valley in an hour or so so all I can do is repeat that this modestly-made film, produced by Todd Black and Guymon Casady and directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) after Mike Nichols bailed, is deeper and more touching than what those lying-ass trailers have been selling, and that the script by Vanessa Taylor isn’t exactly dense with plot turns but it does have an arc — when will Jones finally open up and let intimacy take its course? When will he finally treat Streep with a little romantic respect and show a little vigor in the sack?

I’ll have plenty more to say this weekend or next week. I wasn’t going to write anything but I heard last night that the embargo had been lifted so I dove in as much as I had time for.

The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II have been shit-canned by the dweebs who vote in the Sight and Sound “greatest films of all time” poll, which publishes its list of toppers every ten years and has just released the 2012 results. Francis Coppola‘s twin crime classics occupied the fourth place slot in the 2002 poll, but a new rule was imposed for the 2012 ballot — i.e., “related films that are considered part of a larger whole are to be treated as separate films for voting purposes.” Apparently none felt that either film was strong enough on its own so that was that.

But the 2012 poll delivered good news, at least, to fans of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo, which finally pushed past Orson Welles‘ Citizen Kane to take the top position. If the Sight and Sound poll wasn’t regarded as some kind of anecdotal tabulation of fringe-dweeb thinking — a far cry from what it used to mean in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s — the fall of Citizen Kane would be close to an earth-shaking headline. Kane sat at the top of the list for 50 years — a full half-century! — and now it’s been deposed. Kane is over, long live Scotty Ferguson.

The other films on the S&S 2012 Top Ten list were the usual venerated hand-me-downs….Yasujiro Ozu‘s Tokyo Story, Jean Renoir‘s The Rules of the Game, F.W. Murnau‘s Sunrise, Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, John Ford‘s The Searchers, Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (which I’ve never even seen), Carl Dreyer‘s The Passion of Joan of Arc and Federico Fellini‘s 8 1/2.

These salutations have changed very little over the decades. They’ve just been passed along from decade to decade, from older critics to younger critics. It’s like being in the mafia, except you’ll never hear about a pair of Young Turk film critics striding into a Little Italy restaurant and metaphorically shot-gunning a couple of older critics like Carmine Galante got it in 1979. The bottom line is that it’s much easier to go along with the crowd than stand alone and think boldly for yourself. Which isn’t to say or even imply that Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, et. al. aren’t truly great films. Of course they are. But we’re sick of seeing them just sit there on this list, decade after decade after decade.

“Two and a half hours after it finished screening in the Grand Palais, Lee Daniels‘ The Paperboy is being primarily spoken of as the Nicole Kidman-pees-on-Zac Efron flick. Her line before she does so — ‘If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me’ — is also tweeting around.

“In other words, the press gang at Cannes thought The Paperboy was mostly a joke.

“Which is what Daniels apparently intended on some level — to flavor or season it with foolery. I love it when referenced goof humor is thrown into a drama, but the film has to be believable in the usual ways — you have to accept the bedrock reality of the story and characters — but almost all of The Paperboy reeks of fake. Bits and flourishes are pasted on and thrown at the wall. The result is something sloppy, inept and — sorry — appalling.

“Defenders (like Guy Lodge) have called it a camp classic and…whatever, an instant midnight movie for stoners. I actually think it might find some traction in this vein. But most reactions have been mocking and derisive. The response at the end of the 8:30 press screening went beyond boos. A guy somewhere to my right got a case of the giggles around the two-thirds mark and couldn’t stop…’Hoo-hoo-hoo…oh-hee-hee-hee!'” — from my 5.24.12 Cannes Film Festival review.

As someone who’s fairly anal about aspect ratios, I always notice if a film is being shown in Scope or 1.85 or 1.37, but Average Joes rarely notice or remember. Even Hollywood professionals are clueless. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve asked film journalists or seasoned publicists if a film is in Scope or standard Academy ratio and they’ve answered “Uhm, I forget” or “what do you mean?”

So all in all, maybe 2000 or 3000 people in the entire world, if that, are going to notice that The Master was shot in 1.85, which is a departure, yes, for Paul Thomas Anderson.

But why shoot only half (or something close to half) of The Master in 65mm and the remainder in 35mm? To save money? Why not go whole-hog? I also wonder how many viewers will be able to tell which portions were shot in 65mm (which becomes 70mm when projected) and which portions were shot in 35mm. I’d like to think that I could tell the difference, but with today’s sophisticated lenses and ultra-sensitive film stocks plus high-end digital running through everything nowadays and even seasoned professionals not being able to tell the difference between film and digital, or at least not being 100% sure?

I honestly don’t think it matters that much anymore. Kodak is dead. Celluloid is almost dead. We have a ways to go before I can write that film is “dead, dead, deader than dead” but we might as well face facts and admit that it’s just about finished now and the only thing keeping it afloat are PTA and Chris Nolan and Wally Pfister and Reed Morano and a few other dps +Davy Crockett, Colonel Travis and Jim Bowie.

Can anyone imagine any director today shooting the final dialogue scene of a film — not a dialogue but a soliloquy scene, actually — in which the eyes of the lead actor are covered by the brim of a hat? This is one of the most brilliantly composed shots in any Hollywood drama, ever. The director of The Ox-Bow Incident was William Wellman; the dp was Arthur C. Miller (Young Mr. Lincoln. How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, A Letter to Three Wives, The Gunfighter).