I wouldn’t listen again to Arcade Fire‘s “Afterlife” with a knife jammed in my ribs…not if I was driving through the desert and bored out of my skull…but stand-up cheers for the (curiously dark-haired) Greta Gerwig dancing and hopping around and baring her soul and keeping this video together for three minutes plus, “all on her own” so to speak. And it was shot live three nights ago! Phenomenal choreography, brilliant camerawork, inspired sets and lighting cues. The spell is broken when Arcade Fire band members make their entrance, but it’s still a very special piece. Hats off to director Spike Jonze.

Since catching Stephen Frears and Steve Coogan‘s Philomena (Weinstein Co., 11.27) at the Toronto Film Festival I’ve been expressing how appalled I felt by a bizarre offer of forgiveness that the film ends with — a pass given to an obviously reprehensible old-crone nun who has brought considerable anguish into the lives of an elderly Irish mother and her late son. Why can’t I accept forgiveness in this instance? A Cardinal rule of drama is that the main characters (and particularly the main evil-doer) have to meet with some form of justice at the end, and yet Philomena Lee, the real-life mother played by Judi Dench, can’t shake off a feeling of loyalty to the Catholic Church plus she doesn’t want to live with anger. And so evil skates because old ladies need their serenity.

The question, of course, is will Nikki Finke be able to launch Nikkifinke.com early next year, as she has stated she’d like to do, or will her contract with Penske Media firmly and irrevocably stand in the way of that until the terms end in 2016?

Nobody remembers William Friedkin‘s Deal Of The Century (’83). It’s pretty much a forgotten film that wasn’t all that great in the first place, but this scene is classic. It works better if you know that Gregory Hines is playing a former arms dealer who has accepted Christ in his heart. It’s not just satisfying when people who chosen a gentler calling and a higher path succumb to base impulses — it’s actually kind of wonderful.

The way I see it Dallas Buyers Club‘s Jared Leto is the guy to beat for Best Supporting Actor. Deadline‘s Pete Hammond called it right after the Toronto Film Festival debut screening of Jean-Marc Vallee‘s film — in pop-through terms Leto’s Rayon, a compassionate if self-destructive draq queen who helps Matthew McConaughey‘s Ron Woodruff distribute non-FDA-approved drugs for fighting HIV, is a strong echo of Chris Sarandon‘s Leon in Dog Day Afternoon (’75) — a performance that was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

It’s a putdown, of course, if someone describes your film as History Channel-like. It means cut-rate history programmers made by second-tier contributors. Which slightly undercuts enthusiasm, no offense, for the History Channel’s just-announced plans to remake Roots, the famed ’70s TV miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book and produced by from David L. Wolper. Are you going to sit there and tell me the idea to do this didn’t come out of 12 Years A Slave, or more particularly a belief that at the end of the day the Academy will succumb to pressure to give Steve McQueen‘s film the Best Picture Oscar?

I recently wrote Oliver Stone about my mid-November Vietnam visit, and asked about “any particular places that had/has some particular meaning for you? Places where something happened that you’ll never forget?” He got back and suggested the Cu Chi tunnels near Saigon, the Michelin rubber plantation, Quang Tri near Hue, An Khe in the Central Highlands and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) itself. “These were my locals,” he said. “You might also visit Da Lat, a fabulous old French resort on the lakes of the Central Highlands.”

There are two trailer-revealed aspects of Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac that have me worried thus far. One, the use of the term “the whoring bed” by Uma Thurman‘s character. And two, the possibility of having to watch (or more precisely avert my eyes from) Shia Labeouf‘s junk. Sex is all in your head and hands and olfactory glands. And in your soul. I don’t even want to glance at my own package, thanks. I happened to do that by chance when I was with a girlfriend in a lighted room with a ceiling mirror. Good God.

Nicole Kidman‘s Vanity Fair cover story, written by Sam Kashner, is basically a personal issues article about focusing on family and accepting the gradual diminishment of marquee power. But what’s the promotion angle? I’m presuming the cover was originally intended to promote her starring role in Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which was going to open on 11.27.13 before getting bumped into a March 2014 date in late September, or roughly six weeks ago. It couldn’t be her supporting role in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues — that’s a movie about a big moustachioed doofus and three medium-level doofuses. And it can’t be her costarring role in Railway Man, which no one was very excited about in Toronto and doesn’t appear to be opening this year in the U.S.

Criterion’s recently released Bluray of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s La Notte (1961) is damn near perfect. I don’t even have a beef with the l.85:1 aspect ratio, even though my eyes were crying for 1.66 all through the viewing. But the bottom third of the subtitles are chopped off, and don’t give me that “there’s something wrong with the calibrations” crap. Everything looks dead-perfect with every other Bluray I’ve watched on my 60-inch Samsung plasma (except for the grainstorm-afflicted — let’s not go there now). The aspect ratio of the screen, of course, is 16:9 or 1.78:1, and the 1.85 image is sliced off precisely as it should be on the tops and bottoms. And I can read the subtitles, but it’s weird that a portion is missing.

It was almost exactly ten years ago when I was asked by Razor magazine to tap out a profile piece on Mulholland Drive costar Laura Harring. Yeah, I know…”who“? But she was kind of happening back then. Razor wanted one of those Esquire-style “Women We Love” pieces, but editor Craig Vasiloff forgot to convey that in advance. He asked for a soft rewrite after I turned my first draft in, and then killed it altogether because it wasn’t soft enough. I got a lousy $150 kill fee, or 10% of the original $1500 fee. Vasiloff caved in part over pressure from Harring’s manager. Harring felt that my including info about her past boyfriends was too invasive.

I’m mentioning this because I happened to re-read the article last night and I think it reads pretty well so here it is again. I’ve also included an account of the writing and killing of the pice by Luke Ford, which he posted in early December 2003. Here‘s the piece that never saw print except when I posted it on Movie Poop Shoot:

Almost dying has to have a big effect on how you live your life. It has to shake you up and teach you to not be content with drifting along, but to live it, senorita…really live it.

When she was 12, Laura Harring was shot in the head. Grazed, actually, by a bullet that hit the top-right portion of her skull but missed her brain by a millimeter or two.