The idea of Obama not just spending time with this distracta, but knowing it well enough to riff about this and that team…amazing. That’s the point, I guess. The bigger the burden the more you want to hide away in the fantasy cave and feel like a 19 year-old.

Several Paris metro stations have IKEA lounge furniture installed for general public comfort. The installations will remain until 3.24. It’s utterly impossible to envision this happening in the New York subway system. There would be vomit and urine stains all over the furniture in no time, not to mention discarded condoms and the odor of booze and beer, etc. Bums would take up permanent residence.

How, then, is this happening in Paris without apparent incident? The answer is that Paris, quite simply, is somehow better regulated and managed regarding its homeless underclass. Less crude and coarse than Manhattan — smoother, cleaner, silkier. How else to explain the IKEA experiment? Am I wrong about Manhattan subways and the skanky element they seem to attract or at least accomodate?

N.Y. Observer/Daily Transom’s Reid Pillifant notes that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “continued his charm offensive” in a relatively long sit-down with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night.

He spoke a lot about the “innocent victims” of the crisis, how he felt a deep “personal responsibility and obligation” to prevent another crisis, said bonuses made for a “crazy way to run a financial system,” and made it a point to reiterate that he has never actually worked at a bank — or even a hedge fund, for that matter.

But Geithner couldn’t bring himself to fall too far onto the sword, saying the Fed made some mistakes but was still “the strongest, the best, most able of those regulators, in the United States and around the world.”

“I think this is a just war,” he said of the administration’s push to pass a financial regulation bill. In case you couldn’t tell, the White House would very much like to get this done, and soon.

Obsessed With Film‘s Matt Holmes (a named inspired by Matt Helm?) wrote this morning that “a London-based SFX industry chum” has passed along post-production dirt about the state of Clash of the Titans (Warner Bros., 4.2), which has been undergoing a rushed, late-in-the-day 3D conversion.

“Apparently they’ve had hundreds of Indian SFX sub-contractors working round the clock to 3D it,” Holmes reports.

First of all, this is the kind of 3D that Jim Cameron was making fun of at that Santa Barbara Film Festival party I attended last month. He was calling it “cardboard pop-up Christmas greeting-card 3D,” or words to that effect. So it’s a joke going in.

Secondly, if I was Jeff Robinov I’d be concerned about Indian guys with extremely polite manners and impenetrable accents and bad clothing finessing the 3D images of Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson, etc. “Hello, sir, can I help you?” I hate these guys for always opening the manual and telling me what it says. Not once have I dealt with a brilliant Indian tech-support guy who seems to think for himself (or herself). I don’t care if they’re working at call centers or FX houses — I feel I know those Mumbai guys very well. They’re cautious to a fault and committed to following the rules so they can feed their families. They’re not rocket scientists.

“The SFX teams that did the primary effects aren’t overly pleased [with what the Indian guys are doing],” Holmes’s friend is saying.

“Everyone knows and expects by now that Clash of the Titans will be the Diet Coke of 3D. This is common knowledge. Any movie that is shot in 2D and later post-converted into 3D is an inferior product and just won’t have the same effect on the eyeballs as films shot with 3-D camera’s.

“This message needs to be delivered to the masses who will be unsuspecting. They will see 3D and expect an Avatar-like experience every time they lay down their extra few quid/dollars but it’s just not going to happen with post-converted tinkering.”

The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman has written about the “bad blood” at Universal following the Green Zone debacle which may, she hears, result in a loss for the studio of $40 to $50 million. And it’s not just the fact that $130 million was spent on an Iraq movie. The marketing, she believes, was also to blame — i.e., “[it] sank like a stone and confused the hell out of me, for one.”

I wasn’t confused by the marketing. When Universal bumped Green Zone out of award season and into March 2010, the unmistakable message was that (a) they had a problem on their hands, and (b) they’d decided it would lose less if they could avoid Oscar-season ad pressures. That decision, in effect, was the marketing as far as I was concerned.

The trailer and one-sheet said the following: “Okay, here’s Matt Damon looking pensive and sweaty and Bourney…whatever. On one level it’s another shakey-cam type deal, but the monochrome poster image tells you it’s not a slam-banger — that it’s on the somber or conflicted side. It’s all in Matt’s facial expression. He’s going ‘I’m hot, I’m anxious and I’m running around, and I have a lot more running around to do before the film is over.’ So you know…it’s your call but we can’t even rouse ourselves into any state of excitement about this thing.”

I need some help with the math, though. Green Zone cost $130 million to make and you have to figure what…maybe $25 or $30 million to market? (I haven’t made any calls but I know Universal tried to keep costs down in this respect.) So you’re looking at a total outlay of $160 million, and the film has so far brought in less than $20 million theatrically in the US. Maybe the video will do decently and bring in…I don’t know what it will bring in. Nor do I have an intelligent estimate of future worldwide theatrical to pass along. But a projected loss of $40 to $50 million seems modest.

The message from Universal co-chiefs Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley — i.e., former Universal co-chiefs Marc Schmuger and David Linde did it — is a totally standard, completely justifiable duck-and-cover response.

It wasn’t our idea. We just tried to make the best of a bad situation. This sucker should have cost $40 or $50 million, all in. If Universal had any cojones it would have told Damon and Greengrass’s agents to shove their quotes up their asses. Iraq movies are Kavorkian injections. If you’re going to make one, you have to do it super-cheap. It shouldn’t cost any more than what Hurt Locker cost, if that. How did this elemental reality escape Schmuger and Linde’s attention? Beats us, but we didn’t start the fire, okay?

“You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor,” James Brolin‘s character said in Traffic. “He said, ‘When you get yourself into a situation you can’t get out of, open the first letter and you’ll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can’t get out of, open the second letter.’

“Well, soon enough, this guy found himself into a tight place, so he opened the first letter. Which said ‘Blame everything on me.’ So he blames the old man and it worked like a charm. Then he got himself into a second situation he couldn’t get out of, and he opened the second letter. It said, ‘Sit down and write two letters.'”

Anyone who puts down Hot Tub Time Machine (MGM/UA, 3.26) as…whatever, unfunny or not funny enough or insubstantial or that it’s only for 35-and-overs is at least somewhat clueless. Or dead inside. I just came out of a HTTM screening at the AMC 34th Street, and this ridiculous/gimme-a-break/hellzapoppin’/gross/outrageous/brilliant time-space-continuum comedy played like a friggin’ riot. Well, as a very clever and funny piece for the first two-thirds and then like a riot during the last third — how’s that?

It’s Back to The Future with vomit and madness and Crispin Glover absurdity and nostalgic ’80s satire, and even a guy pretending to be Biff, that pudgy, obnoxious, one-expression dickhead in all three Back to the Future flicks. It’s Groundhog Day with black-guy semen splattered over its face. Well, not really semen but facial soap that looks like it. The “movies”, you know.

Hot Tub Time Machine is complete bullshit and sloppy as hell, but it takes you on an inventive, anarchic and clever-ass ride that makes you laugh, and then laugh more loudly, and then say to yourself, “Is this really happening? Is a straight guy really being forced to blow his straight friend in front of a crowd of hooting maniacs?”

The director is Steve Pink — heretofore to be recognized as the kind of sick madman that Hollywood youth comedies need and must have. The screenwriters are Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris, working from a story by Heald.

God bless the sensibility of producer-star John Cusack for bringing this truly sick, in-and-out hilarious and philosophically reprehensible comedy to the big screen. Cusack is a hoot in this thing, as you might expect, but the real breakout is Rob Corddry, who plays the wild-card wildass in the group of four (Cusack, Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke ) who visit a broken down ski resort and travel back to their youth in the mid ’80s and…don’t ask.

It’s all too crazy and sick to recount, but it has a philosophical point, which is that your fate and your future are not set in stone, and that you only have to man up, throw the dice and change what you don’t like.

Everyone behind and in front of the camera was almost certainly on mescaline when it was written and made, and I know that I have to see it again soon, and at a theatre that doesn’t muffle the fucking sound like those ayeholes at the AMC 34th Street did tonight.

Will Hot Tub Time Machine make as much money as The Hangover? Maybe, maybe not…but I know one thing — this movie is smart and nuts and anarchic in a way that redefines the term. It’s my idea of what truly insane, throw-it-out-the-window, fuck-all smartass comedy should ideally be and feel like.

It’s better than The Hangover — funnier, sicker, more insane but also with a much trippier and crazier script. It looks like some grubby New Line comedy from 1992, but the pace is relentless and it gets funnier and funnier and funnier. Stupidly, okay, but accelerated with a seriously brainy bent.

The people saying that Hot Tub Time Machine was made especially for Gen-Xers and others who remember the ’80s are…okay, maybe half-right. But any age group should (and I think will) be able to recognize true batshit insanity when they see it.

It’s the first daylight-savings business day of 2010, and the air smells clean and fresh and the sun is still shining at 6:20 pm. Spring is here and the mucky, gloppy weather is, I’m hoping, over for the most part. Update/Correction: This was actually the second daylight-savings business day of 2010, but it was the first day in which I really felt it — the air, the light, the warmth and the whole renewal thing. I live indoors and online for the most part. It takes me longer to wake up to the symphony au natural.

I haven’t yet seen Hot Tub Time Machine — an hour to go — but I may have done it a disservice by asking if it had the horses to become this year’s The Hangover. Inflating expectations doesn’t help anyone. I’ve had this notion in my head, you see, and then Jett said all his Syracuse homies were totally down for it. And so I flew by the seat of this intuition and went for it and wrote “could this happen?”. Maybe it’ll only open to $20 million, or maybe a tad less — who knows?

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as mascara-wearing Jack Sparrow-type guys operating as 2010 pirates, right? My understanding is that they’re all scurvy scumbags. Which is why I’d love to see a movie about a crew of skilled, hard-core, well-funded mercenaries who roam the seven seas on a sailboat, looking for these bastard pricks. The idea would be to pretend to be easy marks (i.e., scared tourists, know-nothing nouveau riche) so as to encourage pirate attacks, and then when the pirates come aboard they fake ’em out and shoot ’em down like dogs. I would absolutely pay to see this. If not as a feature film then as reality series. What authorities would say “no, you can’t do that — pirates have rights and the Bible says ‘thou shalt not kill'”?

I guess you could describe Movie Review Intelligence as a slightly more accessible, less nerdy-buffy movie-review casserole site for people with short attention spans who…what, find Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic too challenging? The “we don’t like sifting through ratings or numbers” crowd. The titles and numbers are nice and orderly and easy to get a fix on — I’ll check it out regularly — but MRI’s one-word characterization summaries are too generous, I think.

She’s Out of My League averaged 51.4% positive and they call that “moderate.” I call that a failing grade because it’s actually lower, of course, because the 51.4% has been propped up by easy-lay go-along critics who look for ways to be nice or kind to crap-level mainstream studio comedies. MRI is calling the 65.7% positive response to Green Zone “good.” I’m sorry but a 65% rating is moderate at best. “Good” is 70% to 75%. This suggests they’re not that tough either when it comes to assigning a number grade to a review. What’s the science behind that exactly?

Avatar will be released on DVD/Bluray on Thursday, 4.22 — i.e., the 40th anniversary of Earth Day — and Fox Home Video doesn’t have cover art yet? It’ll be in stores in 34 days! If the Digital Bits, Bluray.com and Amazon.com don’t have it, nobody does. I foresee at least a triple-dip on this title — initial release, longer director’s cut, and 3D Bluray/DVD in ’11 or ’12.