I used to think I was some kind of half-Libertarian, half-lefty hybrid, but I’m not. I’m basically a tax-and-spend, Polanski-coddling, hunt-down-the-rightwing-nutters-and-put-them-in-green-reducation-camps Rooseveltian elitist liberal, but I respect Libertarians, and I like listening to Penn Jillette explain the basic Libertarian drill. I don’t agree with him (how could he be for a weak and ineffective government in the wake of the BP Gulf spill?), but I admire his phrasings.

Sixtyish Rich Guy: “Nice shootin’, son. What’s your name?” Young Cop: “Murphy.”

The greatest thing about this finale is that when this moment unspooled during my first viewing of Robocop, in July of ’87 at Grauman’s Chinese, a guy right next to me knew what Peter Weller‘s final line was going to be before he said it. As soon as the Old Man asked, he said “Murphy.” Everyone knew that line! That‘s when a movie is really working.

Congratulations to Rose Kuo on being named the new executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She’s replacing Mara Manus, who stepped into the job only two years ago. So what happened with Manus? I”m not one to voice unwarranted suspicions, but people generally don’t give up prestigious high-paying gigs with the Film Society of Lincoln Center unless formidable forces have allied against them.

“[Manus] has been persona non grata over there for a long while,” a New York distribution source says. “She tried to relationship things in a positive way over the last six months, but I think it was too little, too late. It’s a little shocking that she left so soon, after only two years, but it’s not surprising that she’s left.”

“Mara Manus stewarded us through significant organizational changes during a difficult period for all non-profit organizations and we are grateful for her contributions,” said Ann Tenenbaum, chair of the FSLC’s board of directors, in a statement. That’s an allusion to Manus having discharged several long-time FSLC stalwarts when she first arrived in ’08, earning a rep as a tough hatchet lady.

But then the FSLC board wanted these firings to happen, so it’s not like Manus did this on her own. It’s suspected that some kind of blowback from Manus’s management style was a factor in her departure.

“The board hated her,” a well-placed source says. “Rose Kuo was the one [FSLC chief programmer] Richard Pena wanted when they hired Mara.”

This is an okay, down-to-business trailer for a very decent little character drama, which Samuel Goldywn & Destination are bringing out on 11.5. But why doesn’t the footage look a little more vivid? And I think it’s probably a good idea to never use the word “sometimes” in a trailer slogan, as in “sometimes it takes a stranger to help you see the world outside.” That may be true, but it hurts to hear that.

It would be nice, by the way, to forego commentary alluding to hormonal reactions of any kind. Thanks.

Yesterday morning Salon‘s Matt Zoller Seitz posted a q & a with Matthew Wilder, director of the possibly forthcoming Inferno , a Linda Lovelace biopic that Lindsay Lohan has agreed to star in. My humble opinion is that his comments suggest the mind and values of a delusional, self-promoting, truth-denying weasel.

Not once does Wilder allow that Lohan might have even a mild substance-abuse problem, or that she might have caused her troubles by being reckless and ignoring court orders. With Iagos like Wilder giving support and comfort to Lohan, you can see why she might have trouble understanding or accepting the ways of the actual world.

Here’s the interview link but if you’re pressed for time here’s a translation of what Wilder says:

“I’m not only directing Lindsay’s next movie but I’m also her staunchest supporter, so don’t expect a fair-minded appraisal of her situation. I’m standing by my star, and I’m shilling. On top of which this poor pure-hearted girl, who is ready and willing to simulate extraordinary sexual humiliation in my film, did absolutely nothing to deserve 90 days in the pokey. Well, nothing I want to talk about. It’s just a ‘get Lindsay’ mentality out there, chiefly among the predatory press. If she were a guy she wouldn’t be hammered as much. But however you slice it she is who she is and she’s agreed to be in my film and thereby push along my career, and that’s all. So I don’t care about anything except portraying Lindsay as a victim, and…you know, sending out the message to others in the creative community that whatever I might really think, I sure as hell won’t share it with the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz.”

One of Wilder’s statements to Seitz was that “it’s important for people to understand…is that all the bile spewed [about Lohan] in the press here, and indeed the sentence itself, [is] based on a cooked-up narrative, one that bears no more or less relationship to reality than that of a reality TV show.”

Seitz replies by saying “it sounds like you’re saying it wasn’t Lindsay Lohan that was sentenced, but her image.”

And Wilder answers: “There is a weird ‘meta’ thing with our movie that is morphing into the real world. Lindsay, like Linda Lovelace, is a screen onto which people project their fantasies, anxieties and rages. And as with Linda, that can mean that person gets cookies and cake, or it can mean that person is subject to public shame and abuse.

“I think people idealize…and when someone doesn’t fit their fantasy, they are enraged. And the system, the entertainment press, is enraged too. And so a narrative is formed and that person is demonized.

“There are all these people out here whom the folks at home think are saints and walk on water. And you know as well as I that that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s quite arbitrary who gets a halo and who gets horns. And in this case, I think the press wanted a tale of repentance, of humility, and they didn’t get it.

“The entertainment press wants the repentant story: I bought a house, here’s my boyfriend, here’s my dog, here’s my yoga class, see, I’m nice, now. And when they didn’t get that, they went into Annihilation Mode.

“I encounter people all the time — people in real life, fancy people with money — who say, “Oh, are you the guy doing that movie with Lindsay Lohan? God, I can’t stand her. I wish she’d drop dead.” What? Who ginned that up? Where do people feel that ease in saying that? And why, precisely, are people barking for her extinction instead of putting Tony Hayward or Lloyd Blankfein in their imaginary electric chair?”

Seitz reports Wilder’s assertion that Inferno is “fully financed” and “will start shooting when Lohan’s jail term is done and she’s ready to work again.”

Having seen Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal‘s Predators, I was shocked this morning to see a Rotten Tomatoes riff-raff rating of 71%. Some film critics are just go-along whores. Anyone who tells his/her readers that Predators is some kind of rock-out popcorn thriller is just slacking off. All it is, at best, is a time-passer. No tension, no originality, no rooting factor. It’s a re-tread and a re-hash, which is what you always get when Rodriguez, who produced, is behind the curtain in any capacity.

The opening shot is of Adrien Brody, playing a Max Max-ian mercenary, free-falling through the clouds. He’s a few thousand feet up, having been pushed out of a plane or something, and is writhing and groaning because he can’t open the chute. Now, the 2010 edition of The Bullshit Action Movie Manual states that the hero can never extricate himself from any tight situation until the last possible instant. So the question is whether or not Brody’s chute will open sooner than expected, or whether he’ll use a little ingenuity (like cutting open the chute packet with a knife) to release it, or whether something a little bit unexpected will occur. What happens? More writhing and groaning, no ingenuity with a knife, and the chute opens at the last possible second, or about 250 feet above ground.

As soon as this happened I knew this movie was basically dead meat, and I along with it. I knew it might throw in a twist or two, but that it would adhere to the usual cliches and expectations. That’s what it does, all right. I sat there in a trance, my mouth half open, slumping like a cancer patient with tubes in my arms.

The set-up involves a crew of violent types who’ve all been dumped onto some jungly Predator Planet as prey for the beasts. There’s no rooting factor for the characters because there’s no way off the planet (that’s for the sequel) so it’s basically a Ten Little Indians thing set in an outdoor prison, so who cares? It boils down to who’s going to get killed first, and how.

And there’s no particular thrill to the Predators because they’re just played by these tall muscle-bound guys with gray-skin makeup and Predator masks. (There are two Predator species in this film — the dominant wolves vs. the less-powerful dogs.) And I hate that stupid gurgly sound they all make. Hell, that all monsters make. King Kong throwing up, gargling with vomit, a pig getting his throat cut.

We all know that gradual group kill-offs are always determined by ethnicity, repellent characteristics and/or likability, and star power. The two biggest names (or the actors with the biggest roles) always survive to the end, although they usually come very close to dying during the last ten minutes, and are usually saved at the last second by a character who’s been a selfish prick all along but who decides to show the better angels of his/her nature just before the bell. Non-Anglos are usually the first to die followed by the morally repellent, although now and then an ethnic male will survive until fairly late in the game. (Not this time, Trejo.) Then it’s time to kill off the likable characters played by no-name actors. It works this way every damn time. And especially if the filmmakers are being led around by a genre-wallowing stooge.

Antal “directed” and the script is by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, but Rodriguez was the spokesperson and pep-talker for Predators at the 2010 South by Southwest festival…okay? The guy made one cool and disciplined little movie, El Mariachi , in ’92 and has basically been Herschell Gordon Lewis ever since — a sloppy sex-and-blood freak. I mean, he saunters around Austin in his straw cowboy hat and his shitkicker boots and he cranks out genre cheese. To watch a Rodriguez film is to sink into warm and familiar quicksand. His films will always deliver a certain B-movie proficiency (i.e., slick values tempered by a modest budget) and plots that never stray too far from the path.

What gets you through are the performances. Especially Larry Fishburne‘s Act Two cameo. He plays some kind of eccentric commando who’s been hiding out inside a crashed space ship on Predator Planet for God knows how long. Fishburne flew into Austin, did two or three days at Troublemaker Studios, collected his check and flew back out. He’s like a cross between Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now and Jon Voight’s nutjob in Anaconda, except he might weigh more than Brando and Voight put together. He was a skinny teen in Apocalypse Now and in reasonably good shape in the first Matrix movie…what happened?

Brody, all buffed up and covered with spray sweat and slinging a machine gun, handles the cryptic machismo thing pretty well. Alice Braga knows exactly how to make so-so lines sound better than they are, and more than holds her own. (On top of which she had a first-rate hair stylist standing by the ready, carefully misting her black hair and making it fall across her forehead and face in perfect curly tendrils.) Topher Grace , not playing a mercenary but a wimpy middle-class doctor with a secret, does his usual wise-ass yuppie thing.

Aaahh, this is more like it — a 50% Rotten Tomatoes elite rating. If you remove the blow-jobbers from the equation you’d have ratings that make more sense. Predators is passable to sit through if you don’t care about anything, but it’s a soul-sucker if you do. The Rodriguez virus will get you every time. Don’t expect the dopes to figure this out.

This is better than that grizzly western in which everyone was lathered with chicken grease, and more spiritually resonant than The Road. (Well, how could it not be?) The narration sounds Terrence Malicky, obviously. The music is what finally makes it. Where’s it from?

A New York media guy who’s seen Phillip Noyce‘s Salt (Columbia, 7.23) says it “plays like gangbusters. It’s a thoroughly entertaining piece of popcorn that may very well launch a new franchise for Angelina Jolie (forget those horrible Tomb Raider abominations — this really is her Bourne).

“Clearly it’s more accessible than Inception and goes down a whole lot more easily (not to mention it’s at least 30 minutes shorter). That said if I had to guess both Sony and WB will be quite happy with what they get back on these. Inception will no doubt be the cool film to see this summer, but Salt might be the most fun.”

Well and good, but this guy has one of those spirited buoyant personalities. I’d like to find a Salt snitch with a brainy-but-gloomy thing going on. You know…a shlub who wears khakis and flannel shirts with a vaguely morose, Woody Allen-ish attitude. If a guy like that thinks Salt is the shit, then I’ll feel 100% comfortable.

David Fincher‘s The Social Network (Columbia, 10.1) will be the 9.24 opening night attraction for the 48th New York Film Festival. I’ve said plenty about this film — I don’t think I need to repeat myself. Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield costar. The NYFF runs from 8.24 through 10.10.

The Scott Rudin-produced drama, in other words, wont be playing at the Telluride, Venice or Toronto film festivals. So when’s the press screening? When should I definitely be home from Toronto, I mean?

A slightly longer version of Avatar with a bit more than eight minutes of added footage will be released in theaters on 8.27 in both Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. One presumes that the Jake-and-Neytriri sex scene will be included. In a statement Cameron only said that the footage will contain “new creatures and action scenes.”

Cameron told me at a Santa Barbara Film Festival gathering last February that he and 20th Century Fox believed that Avatar could have kept going and going if it hadn’t been for 3-D theatrical commitments made to Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland.

There’s a “Cinefamily” screening tomorrow night at L.A.’s Silent Movie theatre of L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller‘s The American Dreamer, a 1971 doc about the late Dennis Hopper. The 90-minute feature, which hasn’t been seen in eons, will begin at 9:30 pm. (Following a 7:30 pm showing of Easy Rider.) It’s the kickoff attraction for Cinefamily’s Hopper tribute series.

Carson will regale with Hopper stories after the show ends, or roughly around 11 pm. I wrote Carson and asked for a sample. He wrote back with the following: “Hopper’s 50th birthday hit while we were shooting Texas Chainsaw Masaacre 2 in Texas in May ’86, and on the birthday party night Hopper insisted on cutting the cake with a chainsaw — laughing and shouting ‘gotcha 5-0!’ I don’t think Dennis ever thought he’d actually die.”

“The wild, unexpected success of Easy Rider ushered in what is now seen as one of the most significant turning points in film history, making pathologically rebellious Dennis Hopper an unlikely King Of Hollywood for a day,” the notes read. “Incredibly, that day was filmed — and not just filmed, but captured by two innovative and inventive filmmakers. Co-directed by L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller, The American Dreamer is many things: an insightful document of a complex artist in the midst of his creative process, a self-reflective exploration and explosion of verite filmmaking tropes, and a playful and entertaining snapshot of the private life of one of Hollywood’s most eccentric stars at the peak of his newly found fame.

“Hopper boldly allowed access to his crazy life in all its aspects: firing his rifles off in the desert, editing The Last Movie, stripping naked and walking through downtown Taos, New Mexico, pontificating about art and life, and holding forth guru-like to a room full of naked women. Fortuitously timed, fantastically made, and virtually unseen, The American Dreamer is the great ’70s film doc you always wished existed.”

If anyone has PDFs of the scripts for (a) David Guggenheim‘s Safe House, the Denzel Washington project, and (b) Dustin Lance Black‘s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which Gus Van Sant will direct, please send along. Thanks.