“Trauma is not just the result of major disasters. It does not happen to only some people. An undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence. I like to say that if we are not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder. There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster. One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us. Nobody is immune. Our world is unstable and unpredictable, and operates, to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advancement, outside our ability to control it.” — from Mark Epstein‘s 8.3 N.Y. Times Op-Ed piece, “The Trauma of Being Alive”

If Gregory Peck had been clairvoyant and under the influence of a truth drug on the night he won the Best Actor Oscar for To Kill A Mockingbird in March 1963, he might have said, “Well, this is it…the peak moment. I’ve been lucky enough to play starring roles for the finest producers, directors and writers in the business for the last 18 years…Spellbound, Duel In The Sun, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Paradine Case, Twelve O’Clock High, Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Moby Dick, The Bravados, The Big Country, Pork Chop Hill, On The Beach, The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear…and it’s been wonderful. I’m saying this because for the next 40 years it’s going to be all downhill. Oh, I’ll make a few interesting films over the next couple of decades but my charmed career period is over and I know it. Some actors only get lucky for ten years or so. I nearly had 20. And for that I’m very grateful to the industry and especially to the public. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

There’s one thing I’ve learned when a rich person buys a long-established company, and that’s to always ignore any optimistic, forward-thinking statements about the company’s future he/she might put out in a press release. Don’t kid yourself — Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is going to slice and dice and make a whole new kind of omelette out of The Washington Post. I’ve been hearing for years that the Post has one or two dinosaur-brain editors who can’t quite wrap their heads around the online publishing thing, so at least they’ll be whacked before long. That, as T.E. Lawrence said about General Murray’s departure in Cairo, will be “a step in the right direction.”

The descriptions of Too Much Johnson (1938), that long-lost Orson Welles “film” that’s now being restored for a 10.9 premiere in Italy and a 10.16 screening at the George Eastman House, suggest that it’s no big deal. For one thing it’s not a “film” but three shorts that Welles shot as prologues for the three acts of his adaptation of William Gillette‘s 1894 comedy. And for another the play died out of town. So we’re basically talking about an old cinematic sideshow, a diversion, a bauble.

“This is by far the most important film restoration by George Eastman House in a very long time,” said Paolo Cherchi Usai, the curator who supervised the project for George Eastman House…oh, blow it out! “Holding in one’s hands the very same print that had been personally edited by Orson Welles 75 years ago provokes an emotion that’s just impossible to describe”…oh, take it easy!

I think we all understand that Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25) is a revisiting of Cormac McCarthy‘s cutthroat drug-trade realm a la No Country for Old Men minus the sardonic refinements of the Coen Bros. and the rueful lamentations of Llewelyn Moss. Slicker, more uptown, present-day, cheetah on a leash, babes in towels and bikinis, uglier.

I don’t like the name “Theodore Twombly” — way too nerdy and fanciful — and I didn’t like the first 10 or 15 seconds of this trailer. But I fell for it the instant that Joaquin Pheonix said “hi” because it’s obvious he’s totally jettisoned his tongue-flicking alcoholic serpent personality from The Master (which I was afraid was going to pop up again and again) and is exuding a new openness and warmth and vulnerability. Spike Jonze‘s Her could be something else. I find it interesting that it’s not going to Venice or Toronto or New York, and that it’s just opening on 11.20. I think that means something. Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt and Scarlett Johansson costar.

Jonze hasn’t made a feature film about adult humans since Adaptation, which came out 11 years ago.

The participation of dp Hoyte van Hoytema (The Fighter) is a huge plus.

This was apparently taped ten or more years ago, but I knew right away that Steven Spielberg was again misremembering. He’s right about the vibe inside the wooden pen before Kirk Douglas‘s fight to the death in the Capua arena, but the unsettled expressions are exchanged not so much between Douglas and John Ireland, as Spielberg recalls, but Douglas and Woody Strode. Strode’s face conveys a certain dark resignation and even a kind of morbid amusement whereas Douglas…well, his expression isn’t quite as layered.

Music is a very intimate thing. The best songs seep right into your soul but the connection often evaporates if you share it. (Although sometimes it doesn’t.) Last night I was flipping through a magazine in Century City and came upon a piece called “Great Summer Songs,” and one of the respondents mentioned Fleetwood Mac‘s “Over My Head.” Fleetwood Mac was never a hip band, but they became fatally uncool after “Don’t Stop” played at the finale of the 1992 Democratic National Convention. And yet some kind of “Over My Head” memory turned a switch (I hadn’t listened to it in years) and to my everlasting shame I immediately bought it on iTunes.

Last night President Obama told Jay Leno that he’ll be attending the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, but this morning he cancelled a planned summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Russia’s refusal to send Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence analyst, to the U.S. to face leaking charges. Leno brought Putin into the conversation last night, but Obama’s team obviously felt it wouldn’t be fitting to blow off Putin while chatting amiably on the Tonight Show couch.

Sight unseen the only problem I have with Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds (1966) is the 1.75 to 1 aspect ratio, which is too close to the dreaded 1.85. Ditto the 1.75 cropping of The Manchurian Candidate. Frankenheimer’s The Train was released a year before Seconds and the DVD was/is cropped at 1.66. Frankenheimer’s golden period runs from The Young Cannibals to Seconds, and I think all his films should all be opened up to 1.66. Frankenheimer began in live TV, remember — he was accustomed to framing his shots within a boxy a.r. It’s clear that 1.66 is the best compromise.

Any ex-wife or ex-girlfriend can trash their ex-husband or ex-boyfriend with authority. They can slice you up like sashimi. Nobody comes away clean from a relationship. Bad reviews are inevitable. But people with a sense of class don’t post reviews of their exes on Rotten Tomatoes. Unless your ex is/was a total loon, the only fair thing you can say is that he/she had their good sides and not-so-good sides but that was then and this is now and you’ve moved on, etc.

The late James Gandolfini plays a mild-mannered bear in Nicole Holofcener‘s Enough Said (Fox Searchlight, 9.13), and Catherine Keener plays her usual contentious snippy crab-head. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a massage therapist who falls for Jimbo. Problems arise when Dreyfus accidentally befriends Keener and yaddah yaddah.

Yesterday Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a list of 2013’s likeliest Best Picture contenders along with lists from Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil. For what it’s worth my own list is as follows (and in this order): American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, All Is Lost, August: Osage County, Gravity, Fruitvale Station, Saving Mr. Banks, Inside Llewyn Davis, Captain Phillips, The Monuments Men, Before Midnight, 12 Years A Slave, Foxcatcher, Parkland…what is that, 14? Maybe half of these will be nominated. Okay, eight or nine.

But we also know that one or two will be subjected to takedown campaigns for this or that reason. It’s in the nature of what Oscar campaigning has become over the last 10 or 15 years.