No matter how you slice it a Rotten Tomatoes score in the low ’80s is cause for comfort. One out of every five critics having an issue with the film in question is nothing to sweat. RT ratings almost never seem to place in the ’70s or high ’60s. Once they drop below 80 they tend to plummet down to the low 60s. If they don’t do this it’s unusual.

This is all to say in a half-assed, mealy-mouthed, beating-around-the-bush sort of way that Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects is a smart, tightly wound, character-driven thriller of sorts. I saw it before Sundance and I was going to tap out my review today. Tomorrow for sure.

Yesterday Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney complained in an open letter to Steven Spielberg that Lincoln has dishonored the reputations of two Connecticut Congressmen as well as Connecticut itself by incorrectly showing that said Congressmen voted against the 13th Amendment when the votes were taken on January 31st, 1865. Courtney wants Spielberg to publicly admit the mistake before the 2.24 Oscar telecast, and also dub it out before the film goes to DVD/Bluray.

“As a Member of Congress from Connecticut, I was on the edge of my seat during [Lincoln‘s recreation of the] roll call vote on the ratification of the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery,” Courtney writes on his website. “But when two of three members of the Nutmeg State’s House delegation voted to uphold slavery, I could not believe my own eyes and ears. How could Congressmen from Connecticut — a state that supported President Lincoln and lost thousands of her sons fighting against slavery on the Union side of the Civil War — have been on the wrong side of history?

“After some digging and a check of the Congressional Record from January 31, 1865, I learned that in fact, Connecticut’s entire Congressional delegation, including four members of the House of Representatives — Augustus Brandegee of New London, James English of New Haven, Henry Deming of Colchester and John Henry Hubbard of Salisbury — all voted to abolish slavery. Even in a delegation that included both Democrats and Republicans, Connecticut provided a unified front against slavery.”

I figured Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner, a man of honor and respect, had to have a good reason (perhaps a dramatic one?) for, according to Courtney, ignoring the historical record, so I asked Disney publicist Stephanie Kluft if this matter could be explained. She ignored me but studio publicists are always slow on the pickup. Update: Kushner’s husband Mark Harris wrote back promptly (I didn’t see his reply right away — it was hidden in the folds of the original message) and explained that Kushner was on a plane and thus unreachable. So there it is.

With Peter Landesman‘s Parkland currently shooting in Austin, I’m once again asking if anyone can send a PDF of the script. I want to know if Landesman has followed my advice (which I posted on 10.6.12) to set the whole film, which is about JFK’s murder in Dallas on 11.22.63, in and around Parkland hospital and nowhere else.

Update: The answer to my question was answered in a 1.25.13 Collider post, and the answer is no — FORGET THE HE VERSION. Parkland may or may not turn out to be a half-decent film, but architecturally it’s going to be a totally run-of-the-mill historical enactment using all kinds of different perspectives and locales. The purity of my keep-it-at-Parkland concept has been rejected.

Here‘s the original piece: “So Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman have hired Landesman to direct his script of Parkland, which is basically about JFK’s murder on 11.22.63 as principally experienced by the staffers, victims and various onlookers at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital.

“Note to Landesman: I haven’t read the script but please, please just lock your movie down at the hospital from start to finish and don’t leave.

“Please, please don’t show us the shooting at Dealey Plaza, and please don’t introduce us to Abraham Zapruder…none of that. It’s been done to death by too many other films and filmmakers. Don’t compete with that. Just stay at the hospital and wait for the world and its traumatic injuries to come to Parkland. It will soon enough. All you have to do is hang tight and introduce us to three or four doctors and nurses (you can make them up, if you want) and a couple of senior administrators and ambulance drivers and whatnot, and show them making the rounds and talking about Kennedy’s visit and so on.

“I don’t care if you’ve written a lot of scenes that happen in other parts of Dallas. If you have, throw ’em out. Forget ’em, burn ’em. The only stylistic edge you’ll have to is to keep it all at Parkland. The ER rooms, the hallways, the offices, the parking lot. In fact, you might want to think about doing it all in one long take.”

If Landesman is shooting Parkland the HE way, it might be good. If not, all bets are off.

“I think that you can’t start to pick apart anything out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it’s all going to become undone. If you take one out or change one law, then why wouldn’t they take all your rights away from you?” — Bruce Willis speaking to an Associated Press reporter about…what’s he talking about? Because banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and instituting tougher background checks in no way weakens or even faintly challenges the Second Amendment.

Say you’re Seth Rogen or Paul Rudd and you’ve been invited by a Samsung exec to come to Century City to talk about an endorsement deal. And once you sit down the Samsung guy says “pitch me something”? I’d pitch him something, sure. I’d stand up and pitch a nice clean stream of warm yellow liquid onto his conference-room rug before, you know, politely excusing myself.

I’m posting this without comment, but this morning Buzzfeed’s Adam B. Vary posted “The Complete Annotated Oscar Nominees Class Photo,” which provided some commentary about some of the Oscar nominees who posed for a big wide group shot on Monday, 2.4, following the Oscar nominees luncheon. Vary was either there or he had a source who was. In any event he reports the following:

“Getting all the nominees onto the risers [i.e., six bleacher-seating amphitheatre platforms] was a long, long process. One by one their names were called out, and the room applauded as they came forward, shook Academy President Hawk Koch‘s hand, and took their places. The risers were loaded in roughly from the top to the bottom, meaning those placed on the top had to stand in place for around a half-hour while the full class assembled.

“There was one man who did not have to stand in place, however: The penultimate name called was that of Lincoln producer and director Steven Spielberg, the closest thing Hollywood has to a godfather these days, who gamely rose from the comfort of his table and was squeezed in on the end of the second row.

“A big theme of this Oscar season, which of late has been dominated by the Argo comeback, is how director Ben Affleck has come across as modest, self-effacing, and gracious, compared with Spielberg, access to whom is strictly controlled and whose operation smacks to some of high-handedness. In the case of the Oscar class photo, it should be noted that Affleck, in comparison to Spielberg’s last minute walk-on, was one of the very first called and stood in position the entire half-hour at the top of the bleachers, smiling happily.”

‘Nuff said?

There are only three February releases that I’ve seen and am certain are worth the price of admission. They are (a) Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects (Open Road, 2.8), which I’ve been too distracted to run a review of thus far); (b) Abbas Kiarostami‘s Like Someone In Love (IFCFilms, 2.15), which I praised last May in Cannes; and (c) Pablo Larrain‘s No (Sony Classics, 2.15), which I also went apeshit over in Cannes and would win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar if it wasn’t for Amour.

A Good Die To Day Hard (20th Century Fox, 2.13) looks to me and everyone else on the planet like another slick empty corporate-crap franchise action flick. I wasn’t able to catch last night’s all-media screening of Identity Thief — apologies. I’ve been marginally impressed by the trailer for Scott Stewart’s Dark Skies (Weinstein Co., 2.22) so here’s hoping.

So maybe there are five or six films worth a tumble before March comes along. But only three for sure. That’s February for you — always a sucky month.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s “Best Job” commercial has been up since December, and I only just watched it today. AGI won a DGA award for the Procter and Gamble spot three nights ago. Parents supporting kids, Olympic victories, emotion pours out. I had heard it gets you and so I watched it skeptically. It does.

I sincerely apologize for posting a YouTube song with loathsome ’60s graphics, but I haven’t listened to the 16-minute version of the Chambers Brothers‘ “Love, Peace and Happiness” for centuries, but I just did and Brian Keenan‘s drumming is really amazing, especially starting at the 7-minute mark and especially if you listen with headphones with the volume way up. I like the primitive analog quality. It sounds so ancient it’s cool. I have an idea that Barack Obama has danced to this track alone in the Oval Office.