There’s no telling what Yogi Berra really thinks of Moneyball, to go by Jason Gay‘s 11.7 Wall Street Journal article. Berra is a national treasure, but aging’s definitely a bitch. Your ears and nose get larger, your eyes turn pink and bloodshotty, and your teeth either turn yellow or get smaller, or both.

During this morning’s Oscar Poker chat (to be posted later tonight or tomorrow morning), Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino voiced a data-based hunch that The Artist (Weinstein Co., 11.23) is going to do “Hurt Locker-level business,” or a domestic gross south of $15 million. Which is what it’ll probably make if every over-40 film Catholic buys a ticket. Which is what I’ve been urging this crowd to do all along. But if it stops at $12 million or so, what will this mean in terms of a potential Best Picture nom…if anything?

I’m a little surprised that Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo (20th Century Fox, 12.23) runs only 90 minutes. (Or so says the Wiki page.) That feels a little slender. Substantial films need to run 100 to 110 minutes and beyond, no? On top of which the poster gives me pause. It feels so Dean Jones, so family-friendly, so sunshine-smiley, so Paul Simon Kodachrome-d.

Crowe has had his ups and downs, but he’s an ambitious director-writer of depth. Or at least he was the last time I checked. Why is Fox marketing his latest film as the kind of thing that people like me are going to scowl and crack wise about?

** Obviously there are exceptions — Days of Heaven, Zelig, etc.

One of the more significant takeaways from Truman Capote‘s “In Cold Blood” was a belief or theory that on their own, neither Perry Smith nor Dick Hickock would have killed the Clutter family in November 1959; but together they formed a combustible third personality. They goaded each other into a homicidal frame of mind.

By the same token I think that the popularity of bad, coarse or synthetic high-impact films happens due to groups of under-25s choosing to see them because the films are reductive and lowball and crowd-friendly and can be more readily “enjoyed” by a group of three or four than smarter or more subtle or serious-minded films, which are primarily made for and aimed at semi-thoughtful individuals or couples.

On their own Beavis or Butthead might not be all that interested in seeing The Immortals or Jack and Jill; but as a moviegoing wolf pack they form a more primitive third personality that prefers to see something that, yes, might be ludicrously awful but which they can at least have fun reacting to, going “tee-hee-hee” together and snorting between sips of Coke and so forth.

So it’s not really under-25 viewers on a personality-by-personality basis who have idiot taste buds but groups of under-25s — that’s the thing. A smart film like Moneyball will play well with singles and couples, but not so much to young wildebeest herds.

I was dumb enough to recently buy the non-restored, public-domain One-Eyed Jacks Bluray the other day. I had this idea that it might look a tiny bit better than the version sitting on YouTube. Or perhaps in the realm of the laser disc version I owned in the ’90s, which was tolerable. Well, the Bluray is awful — positively the cruddiest-looking film I’ve ever seen on any home-video format, including broadcast TV.

YouTube capture #1

It’s just tragic. The elements of this, Paramount’s last VistaVision film, are, I’ve been told, in good or very good shape, and it could look like a jewel on a remastered Bluray if the copyright issue could be somehow resolved. It’s been a public doman title for several years.

The only film directed by Marlon Brando, One-Eyed Jacks “has been hailed by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino,” Jeremy Richey wrote in early ’08, “one that signaled the rise of a more violent and cynical cinema, but for some reason it’s never really gotten its due.

“The main reason for its continuing dismissal in some circles is that it remains a compromised film. After a gruelling six months worth of shooting Brando either ran out of steam while editing, or the film was finally just taken away from him or most likely, both.

YouTube capture #2

“It is known for sure that Brando’s original five hour cut was whittled down to the 141 minutes we have now, and the incredibly bleak ending (Pina Pellicer being shot and killed by Karl Malden during the final gun battle) was changed.

“Even in it’s compromised state One-Eyed Jacks remains a visionary film and a totally unique one. It’s impact can be felt in the American Westerns that followed by Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman and Arthur Penn; and also in the European westerns that would gain prominence just a few years later.

“One-Eyed Jacks seems like a clear precursor not only to Sergio Leone but to a breed of mystical European Westerns like Sergio Corbucci‘s The Grand Silence and Enzo Castellari‘s Keoma.”

YouTube capture #3

Is there a divide between critics/bloggers and paying audience over J. Edgar? Or are most people seeing it, like I did, as a half-and-halfer — highly impressive Leonardo DiCaprio performance and assured direction but a generally drab sit, meh subject matter, pounds of makeup, etc.?

The only half-interesting films opening this weekend are Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia and Willliam Monahan‘s London Boulevard. Interesting failures, I mean. Which I’d rather see any day of the week over stuff like The Immortals and Jack and Jill.

Boulevard starts nicely but doesn’t come together. The second half is a mess, but it’s the kind of floundering mess that only a person of talent and vision (i..e, director-writer William Monahan) could create. Melancholia has flashes of brilliance, but is mostly morose and enervated. But it’s “out there,” at least, and that’s always worth a looksee.

Monahan’s film “is more concerned with style than story,” I wrote last month. “It feels oddly misshapen and off-balance at times. It devolves into a bloody body-drop festival about halfway through, the color looks oddly washed out and Monahan uses The Yardbird’s “Heartful of Soul” on the soundtrack three times. It’s telling or curious that Monahan casts himself (or someone who looks an awful lot like him) as a Knightley-stalking paparazzo who stares but never shoots.”

I’ve posted my Cannes Film Festival Melancholia review twice now, but maybe if I re-arrange the graphs it’ll seem fresher.

Melancholia “is a stylishly nutso, half-intriguing, semi-bombastic ensemble piece about despair in the face of eventual ruination. It’s never ‘boring’ but only rarely gripping. It’s Von Trier, after all, but when all is said and done it’s basically a downhill swamp-trudge with tiny little pop-throughs from time to time.

“It’s a morose, meditative in-and-outer that begins stunningly if not ecstatically and concludes…well, as you might expect a film about the end of the world to wrap itself up.

“‘It isn’t about the end of the world but a state of mind,’ Von Trier said during last May’s Cannes press conference. My thinking exactly. But it’s also a more striking thing for where it starts and what it attempts than how it plays.

“And yet I believe it’s the best…make that the gloomiest, most ambitious and craziest film Kirsten Dunst has ever starred in. Way bolder than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s kind of La Notte-esque, now that I think about it. Dunst pretty much scowls all through Melancholia and does three nude scenes. What I really mean, I suppose, is that she’s never operated in such a dark, fleshy and grandiose realm.

“I felt elation only in the very beginning, and somewhat at the very end. But otherwise it mostly felt like a meditative slog. It’s not without its intrigues but it lacks tension and a through-line and a story, really, of any kind.

“After the stunning, tableau-like, slow-motion opening, Melancholia gets down to basic business. Situation, circumstance, character, mood.

“Justine (Dunst) is getting married to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) and her control-freak sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has orchestrated the wedding with her husband’s (Keifer Sutherland) money, and not the funds of Dunst’s father (John Hurt). Charlotte Rampling has a couple of scenes as Dunst’s blunt, cynical mom.

“But right after the wedding Justine slips into gloom-head nihilism and suddenly stops being attentive to Skarsgaard and starts meandering and moping around and fucking some guy (Brady Corbet) she barely knows near a golf course sandtrap.

“Did I mention that the Earth is apparently on some kind of collision course with a planet called Melancholia, which has recently emerged from behind the sun? And that no one turns on a TV news station throughout the whole film, and that Gainsbourgh goes online only once?

“The movie is never ‘boring’ but only rarely gripping. It’s Von Trier, after all, but when all is said and done it’s basically a downhill swamp-trudge with tiny little pop-throughs from time to time.

“There’s an overhead tracking shot of two horseback riders galloping down a trail during a foggy morning that’s heartstoppingly beautiful. That plus the beginning I will never, ever forget.

“Death dance, death art…when worlds collide. Von Trier had a mildly intriguing idea here but didn’t know what to do with it, or he perhaps didn’t care to try. All he does is riff about how tradition and togetherness are over and very few of us care. My sense is that Von Trier experimented and jazz-riffed his way through most of the filming.

“All I know is that I feel the way Dunst’s Justine feels during most of the film, and I’m not dealing with the end of the world. Vaguely scared, unsettled…something’s coming.”

To me a birthday is simultaneously meaningless and a reminder that you’re a little closer to death than you were at this time last year. But today’s is difficult to ignore with all the Facebook greetings coming in, and with three friends (Svetlana Cvetko, Sasha Stone, Tom O’Neil) hosting a little birthday brunch this morning. Nice mood pocket.

People of interest and accomplishment who were born on November 12th include Ryan Gosling, Jacques Tourneur, Neil Young, Auguste Rodin, Tonya Harding (yeesh), Anne Hathaway, Grace Kelly, Alexandra Maria Lara (Control, Downfall), Patrice Leconte, Charles Manson (good God), Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, director Richard Quine, Wallace Shawn, Sammy Sosa, Jo Stafford and DeWitt Wallace.

Svetlana Cvetko, Sasha Stone — Saturday, 11.12, 11:20 am at Le Pain Quotidien.

I was able to do about 20 minutes with the legendary Pedro Almodovar a bit after 6 pm yesterday, or just before heading over to the depression of Tintin. Our talk happened in a hilltop bungalow attached to the Chateau Marmont. I love talking to Almodovar because he’s so open and expansive. Ask him a tiny little question and he’ll give you a big sprawling answer. He’s also a huge film buff and a Bluray fanatic, and can go on and on about any film, actor, director, Bluray…anything.

Pedor Almodovar —

Pedro’s English is easy and precise and fluent, but every now and then he relies on an interpreter, a dark-haired woman in her early 30s who really knows the language of film and Almodovar’s work in particular. I love this recording because Pedro says what he says in English and Spanish, and this brilliant woman fills in the occasional gaps.

I loved what Pedro said about liking thrillers more and more, and that getting to this place of admiration required a certain maturity. Most people, I think, would probably say that a mature movie fan is one who has found his or her way into introspective personal films, foreign-language dramas, quirky indie stuff, documentaries, silent films. Thrillers are generally thought to attract unsophisticated viewers…no?

We didn’t even talk about the new Almodovar Taschen book, which I got to leaf through a bit before our sitdown.

The subject at hand was The Skin That I Live In, of course. “See it at a midnight screening with a hip gay crowd,” I wrote last May, “and prepare for doses of exceedingly dry humor and strange-itude in the general vein of David Cronenberg‘s Dead Ringers and Georges Franju‘s Eyes Without A Face.

“For this is a highly perverse and, typical for Pedro, lusciously sensuous film about a mad plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas), a man with wealth and elegance to burn, recreating his dead wife and daughter with…well, let’s not say.”

I helped myself to an apple in the kitchen of Pedro’s bungalow. I placed it in front of me as we spoke. As I was leaving and making my farewells, Pedro pointed to the apple and said, “You want another? Is one enough?”

Half of Lane Browne‘s Grantland analysis about the Tower Heist shortfall focuses on who got hurt the worst. Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, Brett Ratner and Universal Pictures are the top four. The quotes come from a high-level agent and a producer.

Best quote: “Between Heist‘s low numbers and his withdrawal from the Academy Awards, Eddie Murphy’s comeback has been pretty thoroughly derailed. ‘The shame of it is, Murphy would have killed at the Oscars,’ the producer says. ‘I was really looking forward to him as the antidote to Franco. I think he’s an incredibly smart and talented guy who has had so much success and been told how great he is for so long that he has no idea anymore who he really is.”

Ratner’s coarse comments “will hurt his career,” says the agent. “He isn’t talented enough to deal with the baggage that will linger for some time. This is a guy who started in music videos. Russell Simmons was his mentor. Not Martin Scorsese. He learned how to market and self-promote but not how to direct.”

The agent blames Universal for spending $75 to $100 million on Heist. “If they’d made [it] responsibly and for less money, an opening weekend of $25 million wouldn’t have been that bad,” he says. “The movie still wouldn’t have been a hit because it isn’t a good enough movie, but they wouldn’t have gotten hurt. That’s the key to the studio business — release a portfolio of movies and hope a few hit and no one movie wipes you out. Tower Heist is going to hurt them.”

In an 11.13 N.Y. Times interview with Frank Bruni, The Descendants helmer Alexander Payne talks about a theory that all good directors have a magic decade. “They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you’re given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist — when you’re relevant,” he says. “And I’m aware of that, and I don’t want my time to go by.”

Alexander Payne

Let’s apply this to various directors. John Ford‘s charmed decade ran from My Darling Clementine (’46) to The Searchers (’56). Alfred Hitchcock‘s window of deep greatness was only nine years — Strangers on a Train (’51) to Psycho (’60). Billy Wilder‘s was an even ten — Sunset Boulevard (’50) to The Apartment (’60). Francis Coppola‘s window ran from The Godfather (’72) to One From The Heart (’82). Oliver Stone had a 13-year window — Salvador (’86) to Any Given Sunday (’99). So far Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu has had a decade-long grace period — Amores perros (’00) to Biutiful (’10). David Fincher has enjoyed an eleven-year window so far — Fight Club (’99) to The Social Network (’10).

At the end of his article, Bruni asks if the seven years between Sideways and The Descendants ate up some of Payne’s charmed decade, or is that decade just beginning now? Payne is silent a few seconds. “I have no idea,” he says.

While I did pretty well as a journalist and a columnist in the ’90s and early aughts, I think my big decade began in ’06 when I took HE in to a several-posts-per-day bloggy-blog format. I honestly feel like things are crackling on all four burners right now.

Bella Swan “kisses abstinence and mortality goodbye in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 in which the vampire-loving teen gets hitched, knocked up and almost destroyed from within by her little bundle of joy.” But the film, in the view of Variety‘s Justin Chang, “is rich in surface pleasures but lacks any palpable sense of darkness or danger.

“Though filmed with the utmost soft-focus, duvet-wrapped tastefulness, the couple’s wedding night leaves Bella covered with bruises, the bed in tatters, and the audience, presumably, in a puddle of ecstasy. Surely this must be the first movie series so innately fearful of sex (and yet so dependent on its leads’ sex appeal) that even proper conjugal relations come with a note of caution

“Every time the film shifts away from Bella and Edward to address the larger group dynamics, the narrative goes flat and the ensemble’s line readings turn to wood, in large part because this style of dramatization is so at odds with the thrust of the source material.

“Like any commercial behemoth, The Twilight Saga by nature resists any attempt at transcendence, experimentation or risk; that’s especially unfortunate in the case of Breaking Dawn, which is by far the most out-there novel in the series and would have benefited from a dash of Cronenbergian body-horror and, commercial restraints notwithstanding, a willingness to push past a PG-13 rating.

Director Bill Condon “takes the reins capably enough here, though his approach suffers from a certain stylistic anonymity that seems endemic to the material.”