One of the below images is the word APPARITION converted to Russian cyrillic letters; the other is the new logo of Bob Berney and Bill Pohlad‘s Apparition, a just-announced distribution company that will bring out The Young Victoria and Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life. Which is the Russian version and which is the logo? And what’s the reason for the Russian/KGB/Alexander Nevsky ‘tude in the first place?

“That Empire fighter ship is dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.” Art by Jim Hance. Link from i09 via In Contention.

I’m about to describe another scene in Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein Co., 8.21) that rubbed me the wrong way after I saw it last week for the second time. I actually found it infuriating. Movie-experience purists and spoiler whiners are again advised to steer clear, although this scene has already been described many times.

More an extended POV shot than a complete scene, it shows young Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) running like hell from a small French farmhouse seconds after her family has been killed by German soldiers under the command of Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter.” The shot uses Landa’s farmhouse perspective. The camera looks out on a sprawling green field with the edge of a thick forest located slightly to the left, and maybe 150 yards off. And yet Shosanna avoids this shelter, staying wide open and fully exposed until the scene ends.

Now, any two-legged or four-legged living thing knows that the best way to escape a predator is to run for the trees. Especially if the predator has a pistol. Obviously. So the idea that Shosanna might choose to ignore the safety of the forest and run across the open field instead is really — no other term for it — ludicrous. The dumbest animal in the grip of the worst kind of blind idiot panic would head for the shade. The reason Shosanna doesn’t, of course, is because Tarantino wants to prolong his shot of her running across the field so Waltz has time to peer out, aim his pistol at her, change his mind, shrug, smile wistfully and say “Au revoir, Shosanna! Until we meet again!”

My blood runs cold when a director ignores basic animal-instinct reality in order to flaunt his/her moves. The interesting thing is that Tarantino’s description of this scene (Part 1, page 16) makes repeated references to Soshanna running for “the cover of the woods” and “the safety of the trees.” So he used common sense writing the scene but ignored it when he shot it. Brilliant.

The other dopey aspects of this portion of the film are so lame you have to laugh at them, or at least shrug. They’re used as components of the film’s arch absurdity, I suppose. You’re supposed to hoot, etc. But at the same time you’re supposed to absorb what’s happening with a certain solemnity.

When Col. Landa interrogates the French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) inside the farmhouse he asks if they might speak English since Landa’s French has been exhausted and he’s heard that Padite speaks it fluently. A silly idea, of course. Fluent English-speaking Parisians were a relative rarity in the 1940s, and even today French salt-of-the-earth rurals speak little if any English.

Landa then asks about the names of the absent Dreyfuss family, and Lapadite says that the son’s name is “Bob.” QT is paying hommage, I suspect, to Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Bob Le Flambeur. This despite the fact that no rural French family would have named a son Bob in the 1940s, i.e., before widespread Coca-Colanization of France began to take hold in the mid-to-late ’50s.

This scene also ties into a stupid math error. A title card says the farmhouse scene is happening in 1941, and the next time we see Shosanna she’s changing the letters on the marquee of a Parisian movie theatre, and a title card informs that it’s now “1944 — four years after Shosanna’s escape” (or words to that effect). Uhm, no…that would be three years after. The Landa visit happens in warm weather, or in the spring or summer or early fall of ’41. The 1944 portion of the film happens before D-Day invasion which began on 6.6.44, so the latest calendar mark would be the late spring/early summer. So there’s really no wiggling out of this. The Inglourious Basterds post-production team either ignored or never mastered basic math, or they did and QT wouldn’t allow them to fix it due to whatever.

My choices for the best newly-released stills from Werner Herzog‘s My Son What Have Ye Done? and Neil Jordan‘s Ondine. Obviously Michael Shannon and Chloe Sevigny in the Herzog (top); Colin Farrell and Stephen Rea in Jordan’s dramatic fantasy (bottom). Both headed for the Toronto Film Festival.

Why is it that the best films (according to one definition) are always ones you admire more and feel a lot better about after watching them than during the actual sit-and-contemplate? It’s true. I’m not being facetious. The movies that seem to finally matter are the ones that…okay, are clearly delivering a profound or thoughtful undercurrent as you watch them, but which don’t kick in big-time until a day, a week or a month later. These are the films you want to write home to grandma about.

Scene from Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (Sony Classics, 12.25).

“I have sibling rivalry with Orson Welles. I don’t think he’s that good…all right? I have sibling rivalry with him and Stanley Kubrick” — Inglourious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino to Charles Osgood on CBS Sunday Morning, as reported by “Page Six.” (Is there a YouTube clip? I looked, failed, gave up. Then I found this excellent 14-year-old clip of QT flipping off and spitting on Chris Connelly.)

Three-plus weeks ago Examiner.com’s Bryan Young asked Steve Sansweet, Lucasfilm’s Fan Relations chief, about plans for a Blu-ray Star Wars box set. Sansweet said “the best time” such a set might be timed to the fact “that there’s going to be a new live action [Star Wars] TV series.” He then said that “at some point in the next several years there will be a complete set of Star Wars movies and lots of extras and deleted footage and anything anyone could want.” Then he re-phrased: “In the next few years there will be an ultimate box set and certainly a Blu-ray set.”

So he’s saying that a Blu-ray of The Empire Strikes Back — the only Star Wars movie I care about — will be released sometime before the end of Barack Obama‘s second term but almost certainly not before the 2012 election? Spoken like a true flunkie for Satan Incarnate. Isn’t there a generally understood difference between the terms” few” and “several”? Few usually means more than two but less than five…right? And several tends to mean five or more.

“There’s a back story to the town meeting protests,” writes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in an 8.14 Huff-post. “The health care industry in America is doing everything it can to stop reform. Incredibly, it has spent $130 million just in the last quarter trying to influence Congress. The Washington Post has reported that $1.4 million a day is being spent by well-paid lobbyists to do everything they can do to stop health care reform. There is a reason, naturally, for that intense opposition.

“Private insurance companies in America are reaping huge profits. Drug companies in America are charging the American people, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Of course, they don’t want health care reform. Of course, they’ll do everything to try to stop us.

“If what you want is a real debate, let’s have it. Let’s ask why countries around the world have better health care outcomes than we do at half the cost. Let’s ask why we are the only nation in the industrialized world that does not have a national health care program guaranteeing health care for all of their people. Let’s ask why some 60 million Americans, including many with health insurance, do not have access to a physician on a regular basis. Let’s ask why private insurance companies, which pay their CEOs outrageous compensation packages, deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions or refuse to extend their policies when they need it most. Those are the kinds of questions that we ought to be discussing.”

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In a 8.14 Auteurs essay, Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny summarized for history and posterity the Elbert/Scott/Maher/Yours Truly/McWeeny/H.G. Wells/George Pal/Morlock & Eloi meme, a.k.a. “You Damn Kids.” And at the conclusion — I love this — Kenny notes that “the age argument seems played out [as] Wells is onto a new class of people who suck: Chicks, ’cause they won’t go see The Cove.”

I haven’t begun to even ask which Toronto films without name-level actors and directors I ought to see. All I’ve done is list the ones I intend to see because of my familiarity with the actors and directors behind them. They comprise a pretty amazing list so far. Here they are in no particular order:

Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air; Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s Micmacs; Werner Herzog‘s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans; Tom Hooper‘s The Damned United, Dagur Kari‘s The Good Heart, Joe Dante‘s The Hole, Fatih Akin‘s Soul Kitchen, Brian Koppelman and David Levien‘s Solitary Man, Atom Egoyan‘s Chloe, Jon Amiel‘s Creation (even though it’s the festival -opener, which is always regarded as a black spot), Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low, and Terry Gilliam‘s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (12).

Plus Jean-Marc Vale‘s The Young Victoria (another black spot due to its selection as the closing-night film), Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Air Doll, Manoel de Oliveira‘s Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, NOT Jane Campion‘s Bright Star (having seen it in Cannes); NOT Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces (having seen it in Cannes); Ruba Nadda‘s Cairo Time; NOT Lone Scherfig‘s An Education (having seen it twice); possibly Brigitte Berman‘s Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel; Tim Blake Nelson‘s Leaves of Grass; Todd Solondz‘s Life During Wartime; NOT Alejandro Amenabar‘s Agora (having seen it in Cannes); possibly Jan Kounen‘s Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. (13 minus 4 = 9)

Plus Carlos Saura‘s I, Don Giovanni; Don Roos‘ Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (wow…bad title); Grant Heslov‘s The Men Who Stare at Goats; Rodrigo Garcia‘s Mother and Child; Giuseppe Tornatore‘s Baaria; John Hillcoat‘s The Road; Derrick Borte‘s The Joneses; Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu‘s Les Derniers Jours du Monde; Werner Herzog‘s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done; Tom Ford‘s A Single Man; Claire McCarthy‘s The Waiting City and Miguel Arteta‘s Youth in Revolt. (12).

That’s 33 films so far and as I’ve said I haven’t even begun to decide on those I haven’t heard anything about or don’t feel at ease with due to lack of name talent. If it was only these 33 I’d maybe see 25 of these, at best. It always works out this way. Which is why I’m always asking NY or LA publicists if they intend to show any of their TIFF films before the festival begins. In fact, this is what I’m doing right now in a public way — i.e., asking for early look-sees.

Oh, one more — Rachel Ward‘s Beautiful Kate. That’s 34.

So here I am, the last guy in the world weighing in on Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9. It’s obviously a semi-thoughtful, hard-jolt, sit-up-in-your-seat thing from a young director out to make a name for himself. I was never bored and knew all the time I was watching a riveting, exception-to-the-rule sci-fi actioner. It’s certainly the best film I’ve ever seen that has the name “Peter Jackson” in the opening credits. It’s hard and mean and fast and fat-free, so Jackson must have left Blomkamp alone. Hard to accept but the proof’s in the pudding.

The racial apartheid/crappy ghetto metaphor fueling the story of alien “prawns” having been abandoned on earth like alien “Marielitos” and being kept in a kind of outdoor concentration camp/shanty town….all to the good. I fell 100% in love with that static image of the massive alien mother ship hovering over Johannesburg. The way the dust and polluted sunlight made it look slighty hazy in the distance…perfect.

But then I began to half-wonder why it was hovering, frankly. When you think of the energy required to counteract earth’s powerful gravity to keep a 150-million ton craft from crashing to earth…so much waste! And all because Blomkamp wanted it kept in the air because it looks cool.

Sharlto Copley‘s performance is…well, okay. He starts out as a smiling dork who’s married the boss’s daughter only to screw up when he’s asked to direct the relocation of the prawns confined to District 9 to another concentration camp….this is a sloppy sentence. But I’m not going to fix it. I’m the last guy to review this film so I can take liberties.

Copley, a sort of poor man’s Daniel Day Lewis, was, for me, too much of a grinning dork during the first 15 minutes, and then once he’s infected with the liquid and starts growing a prawn arm all he does is run around with wild eyes and breathlessly going “oh my gawd,” “no!,” “please!,” “I love my wife!” and so on. He never gets in front of the situation and studs-up. I wanted him to channel a little Clint Eastwood but he never lets go of the dork moves.

It’s a style movie in the sense that Blomkamp decided early on to desaturate the color and create an experience that was all about piss and beans and dust and garbage and gooey-gross-outs and scuzzy Nigerians. It’s an exceptionally well-honed and vigorous film for its type (i.e., the political sci-fi actioner), and I think it’s fair to say Blomkamp has cut his teeth and made his bones in the tradition of the first two Mad Max films.

But it’s not a movie that sent great waves of pleasure surging through my system. I liked it and respected the craft that went into creating the dusty, crappy-ass look of it. But bit by bit I began to feel a little trapped, and I gradually began to think about escaping. I wanted to see it through to the end, but watching it began to feel like being in a room with no a.c. during mid July, and I didn’t care for the sensation.

There’s so much garbage, dirt, dust and detritus in this film that I started to feel physically dirty after a while. I almost began to smell the stench. I began to feel like taking a shower or at least using some sanitary wipes.

If someone had come up to me and said “if you give me $20 bucks I can fix it so that the movie will stop with the dust and the desaturated color and all the scuzzy gooey stuff and cut to a full-color scene in a fashion mall with a couple of pretty women talking about nothing over margaritas,” I would have given him the money. Dust! Fucking smelly dust and skanky garbage and black goo leaking out of wounds! I needed to get away from this for a minute or two.

And I wasn’t all that rocked by the way the story rocks and lurches, taunting you into thinking “aah, okay, things are going to work out” only to pull the plug and leave you in the lurch, only to push the plug it back into the wall again. Up, down, in and out, oh my God!, here we go!, hair-trigger, cliffhanger. Writing a story along these lines is a wanker’s game. Come to think of it, it’s an old Peter Jackson tactic.

And I’m not a big fan of “the cackling villain who can’t be killed & shan’t be killed until the very end” cliche. Nor do I admire endings that leave everything & everyone hanging in the lurch in preparation for the sequel. District 9 is definitely playing this game.

But I agree with those who’ve been saying that Michael Bay could learn a thing or two from Blomkamp. District 9 is watchable and inventive and alive on the screen, which is more than you can say for Transformers 2.

District 9 director-writer Neill Blomkamp (r.), guy who plays the ultimate bald/studly/heavily-armed bad-ass.

I’m not trying to sound like a simpleton, but an association came to mind when I first saw the Na’vi hybrids during the showing of the 24-minute Avatar reel at ComicCon. “I’ve seen those ears before,” I told myself. It finally hit me today what that association is. It came after I saw this just-released photo of Sam Worthington and a submerged Na’Vi hybrid. No biggie. Just sayin’.

Na’vi hybrid in James Cameron’s Avatar; morph victim in Walt Disney’s Pinnocchio.