While passing along news that United Talent Agency has dropped Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt as a client, Deadine‘s Nikki Finke mentioned that she’d “never heard” of Pitt when this development crossed her radar screen. Where was she from ’02 to ’05? Pitt was unmissable and almost blazing when he starred in Barbet Schroeder‘s Murder By Numbers, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers and Gus Van Sant‘s Last Days.

I’m grappling with Pete Hammond’s theory that recent disputes between the two top Republican presidential candidates about treatment of Mexican illegals may somehow raise the award-season profile of A Better Life.

Hammond notes that Texas Governor Rick Perry attempted three days ago to change an opinion that he’s soft on Mexican illegals because he once signed a bill allowing children of illegal immigrants to have their tuition paid under Texas’s education system. He did so by accusing Mitt Romney of hiring illegal gardeners at his home several years ago. And Hammond is saying, I gather, that the general rumpus over this issue might amplify interest in A Better Life.

I don’t think so. I think A Better Life sinks or sails under its own steam.

I had to make a couple of minor changes in the three contributor-funded Hollywood Elsewhere press screenings of Tyrannosaur, but they’re now set in cement. Screening #1 will happen at the Aidikoff Screening Room on Thursday, 10.27, at 3:30 pm. Screening #2 occurs at the Ocean Avenue Screening Room on Monday, 10.31, at 7:30 pm. And Screening #3 will happen at the Sunset Screening Room on the Strip on Wednesday, 11.2 at 4 pm.

Earlier today Strand Releasing’s Jenna Martin sent out her own emailed invitation to all Los Angeles press. Please RSVP to strand@strandreleasing.com. Friends of HE who didn’t receive Jenna’s invite or who contributed to the screening fund and would like to attend can rsvp to me via Hollywood Elsewhere.

I know I’ve posted this clip before, but it’s the only atmospherically intriguing, emotionally affecting moment in Lewis MIlestone‘s otherwise humdrum Ocean’s 11. And this fact raises a question. What other films are mostly unremarkable except for their finales? Mostly offbeat or mediocre affairs that somehow pulled it all together and brought it home with just the right ending?

The only other scene that works in this over-rated caper flick is when Richard Conte has his heart attack on the Vegas Strip and goes down saying “never the luck! never the luck!”

Remember — we’re looking only for movies that mostly blew chunks except for their last few minutes. They can’t otherwise be half good or somewhat passable. Their endings have to be the only truly decent thing about them.

The Ocean’s 11 finale is shot in front of the old Sands, which was destroyed in ’96 and was located in what is now the front approach area of the Venetian.

Set within the Serb-Bosnian conflict and particularly in a Serb-run concentration camp, Angelina Jolie‘s In the Land of Blood and Honey (Film District, 12.16) is a riff on the Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story disparate-lovers theme. A Bosnian woman (Zana Marjanovic) submits to the tender passions of her Serbian captor (Goran Kostic), but the soup is spoiled when Kostic’s father (Rade Serbedzija, constantly cast as a crude, low-minded brute) plants seeds of doubt.

“U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House, canceled his scheduled speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business because if was going to be open to the first 300 people who showed up. Given that hundreds of Occupy Philadelphia protesters were planning to march from City Hall to the campus to protest the speech, that could have been lively audience.” — from Chris Brennan’s report in recent 10.21 posting in the Philadephia Daily News.

The two best films opening this weekend are Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene and J.C. Chandor‘s Margin Call. The mob will be pouring into Paranormal Activity 3, of course. But Margin Call is the movie of the moment if the Occupy movement means anything to you.

It’s basically a 24-hour pressure-cooker piece about top analysts and brass at a Lehman Brothers-like outfit getting wind of the impending 2008 financial collapse, and about the various players deciding whether to make a clean breast of it, or sell off assets while the rest of the world is still in the dark.

Here’s what I wrote after seeing it at last January’s Sundance Film Festival: “Margin Call is a moderately engaging Wall Street drama — I’m giving it a 7.5 — that uses reasonably well-sketched characters in a brokerage firm to dramatize the 2008 meltdown. It’s a decently made film with one especially riveting boardroom scene, but without much snap or tension overall, and it radiates a fair amount of gloom.

“It provides solid, workmanlike performances from Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. Jeremy Irons is the standout as the ruthless top dog.”

Yes, I called it “moderately engaging.” But the Occupy movement has given this above-average drama an extra dimension. So much so that I’m thinking of paying to see it this weekend. Paying!

If I was in Libya right now, I would assemble a mob to hunt down the guy who shot this video. “Severe punishment to all atrocious cell-phone video shooters!” would be our war cry. Once we capture him and have him down on his knees, men in the crowd will shout, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him! He has no talent but we need him alive!” And the shooter will likely say, “What do you want? Don’t kill me, my sons.” (Video on jump.)

I’ll be attending the Savannah Film Festival the weekend after next, from 10.28 through 10.31. It’s been ten years since I last attended. I was brought down by NY publicist and Savannah native Bobby Zarem, who introduced me that year to Jane Fonda and Stanley Donen . The lures this time around are Ellen Barkin and Another Happy Day, and the company of Alec Baldwin, James Toback and Ray Liotta. And the ghosts, of course. Savannah is filled with them.

Two thoughts after seeing David Cronenberg‘s A Dangerous Method for the second time last night. Keira Knightley is still the spark of the film — things would be too dry and measured without her jaw-jutting intensity. And the talkiness plays better the second time. You go in knowing what it is and accepting that, and you settle into Christopher Hampton‘s script like an easy chair. Here‘s my original review.

Following last night’s Academy screening of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method (l. to r.): Sony Pictures Classics co-honcho Michael Barker, Cronenberg, producer Jeremy Thomas, SPC co-honcho Tom Bernard.

A Better Life director Chris Weitz, wife Mercedes Martinez.

Laura d Holesch, director Phillip Noyce at the Dangerous Method party.

Zhang Yimou‘s The Flowers of War (formerly Nanjing Heroes) is about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Christian Bale plays real-life missionary John Magee, an American priest who helps a number of Chinese as they struggle to survive the violent invasion of the city by Japanese troops.

Set to open in China on 12.16.11, pic has been selected as the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.