I can remember when the word “problem” referred to either (a) a mathematical challenge or (b) some kind of difficult development that could probably be solved with sufficient smarts and patience and whatnot. It was almost synonymous with “issue” and next door to “riddle.” Then it became an aggressive allusion to an argument or annoying behavior — “What’s your problem?” or more precisely “What’s your effing problem?” For the last 20 or 25 years “problem” has lost almost all of its currency in the mathematical realm and has come to mean (a) a major personality deficiency and/or (b) a very dark situation that could involve death or torture or some other form of devastation.

When an old mafia goon was explaining to Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas why Joe Pesci had just been whacked, he began by saying “well, we had this problem.” When Brad Pitt called Michael Fassbender in The Counselor to explain that a cocaine shipment they’ve invested in has been hijacked, he began with “we have a problem” or something close to that. If a character in a film has a “problem,” it doesn’t mean things have taken a turn for the worse as much as he/she might be toast.

Vanity Fair‘s just-appointed film critic is saying with a straight face that Anthony and Joe Russo‘s Captain America: the Winter Soldier (Disney. 4.4) is pleasing enough and decently assembled but should basically be viewed as a warmup to the next Avengers film. I don’t know what to say to Richard Lawson. He’s indicating he was more or less delighted with Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers, which I described 22 months ago as “basically a bludgeoning,” and that he can’t wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron (5.1.15). This is the blindness of geek aficionados (which the George Lucas-resembling Lawson apparently is to some extent). To them bigger, rompy-stompier, more avalanche-like and titanically proportioned CG action films are better than smarter, faster, restrained, character-driven, tighter and more precise ones. I didn’t hate The Avengers but it was mostly a form of punishment — “big, noisy as shit, corporate piss in a gleaming silver bucket.”

Note: I meant to say that Lawson resembles George Lucas as he looked 25 or 30 years ago.

As David Denby noted in a 10.4.12 New Republic piece, the basic strategy of corporate zombie studio execs is to primarily (only?) greenlight films that are not “execution dependent.” Brand-name franchises, movies based on board and video games, remakes, comic-book fantasies but never (or almost never) movies that have to be good to be successful.

In short, the Disney zombies who gave the go-ahead to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (4.4) did so believing it would more than likely turn a handsome profit even if it turned out to be a numbing, eardrum-killing CG suffocation device like The Avengers. Now that it’s clear the new Captain America flick is good enough to win the admiration and allegiance of a comic-book-movie hater like myself, will it make even more money than if it turned out to be shite…or will it make no difference? Do fanboys go to these films no matter how poorly reviewed? Does anyone care if a comic-book movie is a diamond in the rough?

More to the point, will the thinking of zombie execs be affected even slightly by this welcome surprise? I think not. All the evidence indicates it doesn’t matter to them. That’s why I call them zombies. They have no heart, no soul, no feeling for Movie Catholicism — for the legend of movies as not just rides but hugs and sermons and spiritual turn-ons, and movie theatres as churches. They don’t give one infinitesimal fuck if a movie is good or dull or ghastly — they just don’t want it to lose money.

Part one of Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac is playing theatrically and has been VOD-accessible for a while now. Part two is also viewable at home and opens theatrically on 4.4. A fair portion of the HE community has presumably taken the plunge. Reactions would be appreciated. I called the first installment “an intelligent, jaggedly assembled, dispassionate wank [making] faintly satiric philosophical points…an assortment of explicit sex depictions are made to seem quite clinical and occasionally tedious, and vaguely repellent from an emotional/spiritual standpoint.” I described the second installment as “a downward spiral in the fate of Charlotte Gainsbourgh‘s Joe…her narrative goes in a darker and colder direction with less and less oxygen…where Volume One used dry satire to mitigate a somewhat arid and clinical tone, Volume Two is a cinematic equivalent of a ‘cold spot’ in a haunted house.”

I suddenly decided earlier today to attend Cinemacon in Las Vegas. I want to catch Tuesday’s screenings of Neighbors and Draft Day and Wednesday morning’s showing of Million Dollar Arm plus a Chris Nolan-Todd McCarthy q & a that won’t include any footage of Interstellar. But I can’t see dropping $750 bucks on this ($425 for RT Southwest flight from Burbank, $150 for a nearby budget hotel room, $150 or more for cabs, food and incidentals) so I’m going to risk my life by driving there and back in the span of 36 hours. That’ll just cost me gas plus $40 for Motel Eight plus incidentals — maybe $250 all in.

Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah is set in ancient times but the clothing (designed by Michael Wilkinson) is medieval — close to the sartorial styles worn in Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood (’10) and Kevin Reynolds‘ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (’91). The material looks superficially rugged (i.e., leather, unbrushed suede, burlap) but the duds have clearly been designed and tailored with great professional care. It strains credulity that pre-historical characters, living in scrubby, hand-to-mouth, close-to-caveman-level conditions, would be wearing cool-looking threads that would probably fly off the racks if they were offered in designer shops in downtown Manhattan. But Hollywood Biblical epics have always dressed their characters in fine-looking apparel.

Wells to Aronofsky, sent this morning after seeing Noah last night: What a myth! What a severe, surreal, eye-filling, Old Testament buzzard of a 21st Century Bible movie, and with rock giants yet! Defenders and ark-construction helpers who stand 20 feet tall and speak with the weathered, synthesized voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella but who sound to me like Optimus Prime. Noah isn’t perfect but it’s certainly a mad, imaginative leap off the high-dive board. Some of the scenes are mind-blowing, shattering. (Especially those creepy depictions of Noah’s underwater hallucinations and that Terrence Malick-like story-of-creation sequence.) It’s not soothing, not comforting, not conventional — it’s really and truly out there on its own planet.

It’s a dead-serious fantasia, Noah is. And in no way does it resemble anything more or less than a fevered hallucination in a certain filmmaker’s head.

Deranged as it is, the first three-quarters of Noah exudes a spiritual clarity of mind and absolute certainty of righteousness that few have but many seek. The problem is that this righteous clarity is borderline psychotic. Most of Noah is about harsh judgment and penalties and zero tolerance for even the slightest divergence from the path, and the very last portion is about mercy (Russell Crowe gets to re-do that John Wayne moment in The Searchers when he finally catches up with Natalie Wood) and charity and hope.

The latest word is that several Christian leaders and Catholic audiences in Mexico are cool with Noah, and that haters like Glenn Beck are off on their own beam.

Rightwing Christian wackos are apparently objecting to the ecological metaphors about tending the garden and whatnot. Conservatives have always felt it’s their right to have absolute dominion over the earth, and in today’s context that means an absolute right to despoil all they want so they can swagger around and live in McMansion vacation homes in Wyoming or Idaho so I’m not surprised this aspect bothers them. Who are we to obey the earth? The earth obeys us, and we can burn fossil fuels any time we feel like it. We have our lifestyles to enhance!

I’ve just hung two framed Czech movie posters from the ’70s (bought last February) in my living room. (Notice the condition of Faye Dunaway‘s left eye in the top image.) The natively-created posters were bought in a street-level shop inside Prague’s Kino Svetozor, a film lover’s theatre located in the cellar of an office building just off Wenceslas Square. Two theatres plus a nice wifi cafe downstairs. The vibe is perfect.

The admired James Rebhorn has passed at the relatively young age of 65, taken out by melanoma. Hugs and condolences to family, friends, fans. Rebhorn’s most noteworthy 21st Century gig was playing the father of Claire Danes‘ Carrie Mathison on Homeland. But for me and, I suspect, a great many others his biggest moment was playing that boys’ school dean — an officious, stick-in-the-mud prig — during that climactic scene in Scent of a Woman (’92) in which Redhorn got his ass handed to him by Al Pacino. This is what it’s often like when you’re a skilled and trusted character actor — the most legendary scene in your career is owned by someone else, and almost everyone who sees this scene comes away with a sneaking suspicion that you just might be an asshole off-screen.

As I was driving down Olympic Boulevard late yesterday morning, I began to (a) feel envious of all the people who were up to their usual Saturday activities, wearing their workout duds and sipping lattes and strolling in the sunshine and preparing to go hiking or…whatever, roaming the aisles of Home Depot in search of the right floor tiles and (b) I began to resent my daily Hollywood Elsewhere burden (five or six stories). Every few months I just can’t man up and bang it out, and yesterday was one of them. (I take off about two days per year.) Plus I was suddenly seized by the idea of doing a spring cleaning and throwing out piles and piles of crap. So I took a long afternoon break and did that. And then I took a nice bike ride and ate a kale salad and went to a 7:30 pm Noah screening at Paramount Studios. And then I ended the day at Lucy’s El Adobe Cafe, the simple interior of which hasn’t changed since the 1960s. The waiters are just as cool also. The only thing that’s changed is the clientele, which is bit more slovenly and downmarket today (but that’s true of everything and everywhere).