Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises: “Greetings from the Humungous! The Lord High of the Wasteland…the Ayatollah Rock ‘n’ Rolla!”

Lifted from a 5.21 post by Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet. The video is a no-go on my iPhone — laptop viewing only, apparently.

An appealing shot, yes, of Drive‘s Ryan Gosling and director Nicholas Winding Rfen, but my strongest reaction was/is to Gosling’s blue tuxedo. Tuxes shoudn’t be gaily colored or frilly or foo-foo or anything but straight black and modestly cut…period. If Cary Grant had worn this kind of tux in To Catch A Thief the film might have bombed.

Ron Dicker is penning a new column for AOL/HuffPo about the financial intrigues of celebrities called The Price of Fame. A tough row, you might think, if his focus ever strays outside the realm of the highest-paid. One thing I’ve never heard from an actor at a press junket: “I did it because the writing wasn’t too bad, but mainly because I needed to put a down payment for the construction of my home in Vancouver.” Column suggestion: “The Straight-Paycheck Role: How Much Whoring Out is Too Much?”

In his review of Curtis Hanson‘s Too Big To Fail (HBO, debuting on Monday, 5.23), Media Life’s Tom Conroy notes the “paradox of [how] good historical dramas can be engrossing and suspenseful even when we already know that, for example, Apollo 13 is going to land safely and Mark Zuckerberg is going to wind up running Facebook.

The docudrama “tells a story that might seem unfilmable — the near collapse of the American economy in 2008,” he writes. “[But] the cast of well-known and, more importantly, skilled actors, though somewhat distracting, helps to make the movie both graspable and gripping.”

For me Paul Giamatti playing Ben Bernanke is a closer in and of itself. Not to mention William Hurt as Hank Paulson and Billy Crudup as Timothy Geithner.

Has it really been 20 years since Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture? It’s some kind of thinking-man’s horror flick (despite the Wiki page calling it “a psychological-religious drama”), and one of the most chilling and profoundly creepy films ever. I think of it now as a marvellous bitchslap directed at Godfreaks and the religious right. Bill Maher should have somehow referenced it in Religulous.

The Rapture weirded me out on a level that I didn’t fully comprehend at first. So much so that I’ve only watched it twice. It’s not what you’d call a “pleasant” film, but it sinks in and spreads a strange malevolent vibe — a feeling of profound unease, disquiet — into your system.

Mimi Rogers hit her absolute career peak playing a telemarketing swinger-turned-convert who (a) sends her daughter to God with a bullet in the head and then (b) tells God to shove it when He/She is levitating Rogers up to Heaven during the finale.

David Duchovny and Will Patton costarred. I was so taken by Patrick Bauchau‘s performance as a libertine that I sought him out at a party sometime in the late ’90s and wound up interviewing him at his Hollywood home.

It’s only fitting that this minor masterpiece be mentioned in lieu of today’s rapture event, which I presume will be happening sometime during daylight hours in the States. The whackers will naturally want to experience it fully awake; I should think God would be all-too-willing to oblige.

I didn’t mention this in Thursday’s Driver review, but I felt that Bryan Cranston‘s supporting performance as Ryan Gosling‘s mentor-employer is one of the few things in that film that doesn’t quite work. His character basically runs at the mouth in the manner of a meth freak (ironic in lieu of Breaking Bad). The first thing that comes to mind when he starts motor-mouthing is “shut up already.” On top of which Cranston manages to sound like a British or Irish actor trying to do an American accent…queer.

A year ago Constantin Film AG had the YouTube Hitler parodies removed from YouTube. Some believed it was just as well, that the string had played out. I more or less felt the same, I suppose, and wasn’t even going to watch this. And then I did. When they’re good, the Hitler YouTubes are one of the few things that can make LQTM types like myself laugh out loud.

I know. How can I compose that protest petition draft and then laugh at something that perpetuates a stupid media meme that was misrepresentational in the first place? I guess it’s the LexG-in-Hitler-guise patter. I’m sorry but it’s funny.

I claim crashing and flopping rights after ten days of the Cannes Film Festival. Baked, etc. Australian journalist Sam Cleveland, whom I’ve written and linked to a few times but have never met, has invited me to a party tomorrow night in southwestern

Paris. And then there’s the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Cinematheque Francais (51 rue Bercy). And whatever else.

I’m scratching my head about Colin Farrell, who became reborn when he curtailed the boozing and began providing rich, indie-level character perfs (Cassandra’s Dream, In Bruges, Pride and Glory, Crazy Heart, The Way Back), playing a vampire in a remake of a 1985 Tom Holland film. I don’t know Craig Gillespie, director of the new version. Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse costar.

Not to mention playing one of three Horrilble Bosses (7.8). I guess this goes with being a character actor. I guess it’s called expanding your range and upping your employability, etc. At least Farrell hasn’t signed for a costarring rile in Jerry Bruckheimer‘s The Lone Ranger.

Those Cannes tweets about Paolo Sorrentino‘s This Must Be The Place, the Sean Penn/aging goth-rocker/Nazi-hunting drama, are fairly negative. Now I see why my efforts to catch a possible early screening on the rue d’Antibes (which sometimes occur for buyers) didn’t even get a reply.

“I thin they’re keeping it under wraps,” a buyer speculated two or three days ago. “Under

wraps?,” I replied. “Then why screen it at Cannes at all?”

It’s now 12:25 pm. I’m standing in front of my Paris pad at 11 rue Victor Cousin, waiting for Cedric-the-landlord who said he’d meet me at 11:30 am. I don’t like this. (Who would?) My mood is growing darker by the minute. Then again it’s a nice day and I have my health, etc.

After double-checking the SNCF train schedule pamphlet and then going the extra mile by revisiting the Cannes gare yesterday and re-confirming with an information-booth person, I had every reason to believe that I’d be able to take a 5:40 am train from Cannes to Nice. But of course, I couldn’t and didn’t. Because this particular train doesn’t run on Fridays, I was told this morning. Thanks, SNCF staffers! So I had to take a cab to Nice Airport, and it set me back 80 euros.

Nice Airport departure lounge — Friday, 5.20, 7:05 am.

Final Cannes snap — Thursday, 5.19, 8:55 pm.