In a Rachel Abramowitz/L.A. Times interview that ran yesterday, Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes asserted that April Wheeler, played by Kate Winslet in the film, “is one of the great feminist heroines. She’s the only person in the movie [who’s] big enough to face the truth.

Revolutionary Road director Sam Mendes, star Kate Winslet

“You know well this is not a movie about a woman who wants to go to Paris,” Mendes says. “It’s a movie about a woman who wants her life back and can still remember the dreams she once had and is finally waking up, which a lot of people do in their 30s and 40s, who go, ‘How did I get here? This is not what I wanted. But I never made the decision, this all happened in increments — I had a child and I had to compromise and I had to do this and that and suddenly I’ve lost my way. Now I’m just like everyone else and I thought I was special.'”

April’s lament is the secret (or not-so-secret) inner story of, I would guess, at least 85% or 90% of the U.S. populace right now. Probably a much smaller percentage back in the conformist ’50s, I’m guessing. I’m also guessing that people of the present are sensing that Revolutionary Road is pushing a certain spiritual reckoning (i.e., the failure to live up to early dreams and ideals) that they’d rather not consider, especially with the continuing economic tremors out there. Hell, the collapse of the temple.

It used to be that people accepted their unexceptional but comfortable middle-classness. But ever since the ’70s (i.e., the Me Decade), the goal of across-the-board self-fulfillment — creative, professional, spiritual, sexual, economic — has been the standard, and very few have measured up.

A lot of people have money and good jobs (or had, I should say), although the general sense of social instability out there is profound right now. (The one bright light is the prospect of gradual betterment offered by Barack Obama.) A decent percentage probably feel they’re at least somewhat sexually satisfied (i.e., looking/hoping/in the game) and have a spiritual life that works for them to some extent.

But most people, I suspect, feel creatively unfulfilled to a large degree. In some cases not at all. And many feel, like April, that the main reason for this is that they caved in to conventional jobs and mass-market comforts too many times in their 20s and early 30s. Most people are probably semi-okay with this, or are telling themselves that they have a reasonably fulfilling life, but they don’t want to be nagged about any failures of spirit.

I have many shortcomings and weaknesses, but I didn’t cop out with a conventional job and go, as Al Pacino‘s detective put it in Heat, for a “regular-type life.” And this may be one reason why Revolutionary Road works for me — why, in fact, I think it’s a near-great film. Because it’s saying what I believe to be the real truth about middle-class conventional values, and about the general sense of diminishment that is always the dividend when you opt for safety above all. For me, “normal” has always been a four-letter word.

Here‘s a scan of the letter of transit that caused all the rumpus in Michael Curtiz‘s Casablanca. It’s one of the extras in the relatively new Casablanca Blu-ray box-set. Notice, however, the date that Paul Henreid‘s Victor Laszlo is travelling on — 22 Juillet 1941. And then notice the date on the gambling voucher signed by Humphrey Bogart‘s Rick at the beginning of the film — 2 Decembre 1941.

Official Casablanca letter of transit with Victor Lazlo’s name and other data filled in.

Gambling voucher signed by Humphrey Bogart’s Rick during the film’s opening minutes

Since Laszlo and Ingird Bergman’s Ilsa Lund leave on the Lisbon plane two or three days after they first walk into Rick’s Cafe Americain at the fim’s beginning, the date on the Laszlo letter of transit should obviously be 12.4 or 12.5, so we’re talking about a fairly significant screw-up here.

If I’d been in charge of putting together the Casablanca Blu-ray extras package, it would have been very, very easy to correct the date before the materials went to press. Hey — Warner Home Video did this, not me! I’m not trying to be an obsessive. I’m just reading and comparing and making a simple logical conclusion. Okay, WHV doesn’t have to fire the person who let this one slip by. It’s a forgivable blunder.

The Blu-ray Casablanca is heavenly, by the way. I’ve been watching this film since I was twelve years old, and there is a significant Blu-ray uptick in terms of ultra-minute details, tonal range and gradation (deep-midnight blacks!) and that wonderfully vivid silvery sparkle effect that great black-and-white films can and should deliver when properly mastered. I knew watching it that I was looking at something that Michael Curtiz probably never saw — not this level of picture quality. I could watch it again right now. It’s magnificent.

To properly absorb this rote holiday item, you need to click and listen — that’s all. Everyone’s allowed to dip their toe into the swamp of sappy sentimentality around the time of year. As long as you keep yourself in check.

HE Xmas tree — Sunday, 12.14.08, 6:25 pm

Hoboken’s Willow and 7th Street — Sunday, 10.31.08, 3:40 pm

Consider the Dickopedia profile of MSNBC’s David Gregory, the very thought of whom makes me growl like Clint Eastwood‘s Walt Kowalski.

Watch this and tell me there isn’t at least a small part of you that doesn’t enjoy watching George Bush duck as an Iraqi journalist throws not just one but two shoes at him, in tandem. “All I can report,” Bush joked of the incident, “is a size 10.”

I for one am willing to temporarily buy Chris Weitz‘s statement of devotion and sincerity regarding his direction of New Moon, the sequel to Twilight. I happen to feel Weitz (The Golden Compass, About A Boy) is a weak choice, feeling as I do that he’s a sensitive, well-intentioned but fatally middlebrow journeyman. I’ve also said before that given the chaste female sensibility of the Twilight novels that a woman director would have been a more natural fit. (Like The Hurt Locker ‘s Kathryn Bigelow.)

I also think that Weitz’s statement-to-the-fans is politically correct b.s., but one may as well as accept that he’s got the gig. I just can’t put aside knowing that Weitz and Summit’s president of production Eric Feig are longtime pallies. I can just see them playing poker together, smoking cigars together, watching ESPN together, going to Lakers games together, lending each other waders for fly-fishing, going to Scores together when they’re in Manhattan, etc.

Today the Boston Society of Film Critics tied on their choice of 2008’s Best Picture, splitting their top honor between Slumdog Millionaire and WALL*E. Except they also gave WALL*E their Best Animated Film award. Due respect, but this seems to me like muddled thinking.

If you’re giving WALL*E your Best Picture award (along with Milk), you’re saying, “This Chaplinesque robot movie is so good it deserves honor and glory outside the animation ghetto.” Which is fine and good. But you can’t then turn around and say, “Oh, and it’s also the Best Animated Film.” That’s like a Catholic male convincing his Jewish wife to take vows as a Catholic so they can get married in St. Patrick’s, and then turning around and getting hitched a second time in her father’s synagogue as an honorary Jew.

One or the other, I say. Choose. If you need to answer nature’s call, get it done inside one bathroom and in one toilet stall.

The BFCA also split their Best Actor award, giving it to both Milk’s Sean Penn and The Wrestler‘s Mickey Rourke.

And of course Happy Go Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins — this year’s Amy Ryan — won for Best Actress.

The Beantowners gave their Best Supporting Actor prize to The Dark Knight‘s Heath Ledger, and Vicky Cristina Barcleona‘s Penelope Cruz won for Best Supporting Actress.

A Boston-only award enthusiasm for Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park was revealed when the BFCA handed their Best Director trophy to Van Sant for Milk and PP, and when they handed their Best Cinematography award to Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li for Paranoid Park

The Best Screenplay nod went to Dustin Lance Black for Milk.

The Best Documentary award went to James Marsh‘s Man on Wire , and Let The Right One In was named Best Foreign-Language Film. The Best Film Editing award went to Slumdog Millionaire‘s Chris Dickens , and the Best New Filmmaker award went to In Bruge director-writer Martin McDonagh. The Best Ensemble Cast award went to the Tropic Thunder guys. Does this mean Tom Cruise might fly to Boston to co-accept?

Every three or four months the Zapata obsession pops through, especially on weekends. When, why, what, what’s the problem, etc.?

“A question has been nagging me for a while and recently intensified upon seeing Frost/Nixon,” writes a reader named Mat (one “t” — not a typo). “Why are Hollywood biographies so vapid? Every one i see is ‘just line ’em up and knock ’em down,’ straight facts, predictable arc. it leaves each film at the mercy of how interesting the given subject is, but rarely captures the essence of said subject.

“I’m thinking specifically of Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan doc of a few years ago (i.e., No Direction Home), which brought such a vivid feel to the man’s life and experiences instead of just telling the reader what happened in his life. An interesting life is one thing, but what makes the subject unique is what I’m after, and nothing ever seems to capture that. Or am i simply asking for too much?

“Frost/Nixon is a good movie because it’s an interesting story, but i felt no closeness to it. This happens over and over again and now, as I prepare to see Milk — a movie i want to like — I fear another by-the-numbers only-as-good-as-the-subject biopic coming at me. Is it strange to ask for more than just a vivid recreation, or are we shortchanging these stories by accepting that there is nothing more? Can you suggest any films for me which transcend the genre to get more of what i’m thinking of?”

Wells to Mat: Frost/Nixon isn’t a biopic — it’s a compressed situational drama about a specific chapter in the life of Richard Nixon. Milk is absorbing as ar as it goes, but if you want to really bask in the light of what made Harvey Milk exceptional, you need to see Rob Epstein‘s The Times of Harvey Milk. My favorite biopics with exceptional and particular flavorings: Viva Zapata, Patton, Raging Bull, Sergeant York, Lawrence of Arabia, Lust for Life. These are the ones that come to mind, at least.

For those HE readers who thought it perverse or presumptuous that I addressed Phillip Seymour Hoffman as “Philly” at a Doubt party a week and a half ago, listen to Jon Stewart as he welcomes Hoffman on-stage in this clip from the show.

I’m sick of running Daily Show embed codes because they go on forever (lines and lines and lines of coding) and sometimes they’re not properly written (i.e.. no closing div tags) and because I don’t care for the smallish size of these Daily Show clips. Why can’t the tech guys create a coding that adjusts to the size of a given column area, like any YouTube clip? You know what? Screw these guys. That’s it for Daily Show clips on this site until further notice.

Click here before reading the following: Mira Nair’s Amelia (Fox Searchlight, 10.23.09) was research-screened last Wednesday in Pasadena, according to what Nair told L.A. Times/Envelope columnist Scott Feinberg the day before. If anyone saw it (or knows someone who did) and has heard anything at least vaguely encouraging, I’d be curious to hear some particulars. If the word isn’t so hot then forget it, for obvious reasons.

Hilary Swank as famed aviator Amelia Earhart; the real McCoy sometime in the early ’30s.

Feinberg writes that “it has long amazed me that there has yet to be a major motion picture about Earhart.” Well, in its time Flight for Freedom, a 1943 RK0 Earheart biopic with Rosalind Russell in the lead and Fred MacMurray as a fictional aviator boyfriend, was considered to be at least moderately major.

Apart from being an early feminist figure admired for her aeronautical dash, Earhart’s legend is largely anchored in the mysterious circumstances surrounding her disappearance and death during an attempt to make a round-the-world flight in 1937. The plane carrying Earhart and co-pilot Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

“Their fates have caused boundless speculation since then,” according to an IMDB summary. “Most likely they ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific. In 2000 a shoe was found on an island near Howland, but there was no real evidence it belonged to Amelia or Fred. Attempts to do a thorough undersea exploration for wreckage has not worked out.

“Aside from the obvious solution is the theory that Amelia (a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt) was on a spy mission against the Japanese, who shot down her plane. A rumor spread in the 1960s that she and Noonan were captured, she was starved or shot and Noonan was beheaded. But attempts to find human remains in the spot they were buried at proved a failure.

“Still the possibility of Amelia dying in the service of the country was always an appealing solution to the mystery. Flight for Freedom was made during the war against the same Japanese in the Pacific. Rosalind Russell has the role based on Amelia, and Fred MacMurray is her ‘Noonan’, except he is not in the plane when she dies. He is around at the end to fight in the Pacific to try to avenge her death.

“It’s not a perfect fit. Howland becomes ‘Gull’ Island in the film. There is no marriage to George Putnam (i.e., Richard Gere‘s character in the Swank film), the publisher who helped Amelia’s literary career. But the film was so obviously built on the career of Earhart and her demise that there was no trouble for an audience to recognize her.

“And even if there is no truth in this solution to her fate, the amount of dislike for the Japanese in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the ‘death march’ at Bataan, and other similar actions, made the solution not only plausible but one that the American movie going public could actually approve of.”