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[Warning: spoilers contained herein] Ben Stiller‘s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (20th Century Fox, 12.25) is a smooth and supple dreamscape romance about a timid, do-little Manhattan daydreamer (Stiller in the title role) who suddenly morphs into a fearless adventurer at the drop of a hat, and in so doing gets the girl (Kirsten Wiig) at the end. To me it’s an odd duck fable — smart but soft, manipulative but emotionally plain-spoken for the most part — that’s aimed at the none-too-brights who went for Forrest Gump and/or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In my book it tries too hard to soothe and mollify to rate as an Oscar contender. That’s not a putdown, just a qualifier. The fact that Mitty is playing the New York Film Festival almost three months before its Xmas day opening suggests that Fox and Stiller are expecting award-season traction. Well, at least it’ll make money. Watching it is like sitting in a warm bath. It’s comforting. Every frame says “steady as she goes.”

Mitty is a first-rate thing in terms of Stiller and Wiig’s performances and in several below-the-line ways. (The subtle CG is excellent and often elegant.) But the second half is really quite silly or at least willfully bizarre, and I’m sorry for that. As a longtime Stiller fan I was really hoping to be stirred or even mesmerized. Nope.

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Simultaneous New York and Los Angeles press screenings for Ben Stiller‘s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (20th Century Fox, 12.25) are happening this morning. Reviews will be fair game when the film shows at the New York Film Festival a short time hence. My Fox lot screening will begin exactly 59 minutes from now and I haven’t yet showered. The obviously intelligent, smoothly intriguing trailer suggests that Stiller’s film has resonance and finesse way beyond the level of the 1947 Danny Kaye version. Costars include Kristen Wiig, Paton Oswalt, Adam Scott, Sean Penn and Shirley MacLaine.

A healthy percentage of HE regulars surely caught Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity last night, so what’s the verdict? My basic Telluride response was that Gravity is technically dazzling and audacious as hell and absolutely unmissable for that, but (a) it lacks the meditative depth and resonance of J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, which is roughly the same film (a solo traveller struggles to survive when catastrophe strikes) on a smaller scale and (b) that Robert Redford‘s stoic performance is much more satisfying than Sandra Bullock‘s, which struck me as too on-the-nose emotional. Here again is my Telluride review:

Gravity “is the most visually sophisticated, super-immersive weightless thrill-ride flick I’ve ever seen. If Stanley Kubrick were around he would freely admit that 2001: A Space Odyssey is no longer the ultimate, adult-angled, real-tech depiction of what it looks and feels like to orbit the earth. Nifty and super-cool from a pure-eyeball perspective, Gravity is certainly the most essential theatrical experience since Avatar. You can’t watch a top-dollar 3D super-flick of this type on anything other than a monster-sized IMAX screen.

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How could any serious film lover not prefer to see Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity in IMAX 3D? The bloom is off 3D these days, of course, but if any film has been tailor-made for this format it’s this one. And yet less than 10% of viewers even have this option, give or take. Of the 3,575 screens that Gravity opened on yesterday, a mere 323 are IMAX. (425 screens are showing it in 2D.) I myself haven’t seen an IMAX-3D presentation — my Telluride viewing early last month was in straight 3D. So I intend to catch an IMAX 3-D showing at Universal Citywalk around 8 pm this evening. I wonder how many of the 323 are genuine vs. ersatz IMAX? Probably a small percentage. (The AMC Century City plex is definitely offering “fake” IMAX.)

Gravity “is a brilliant, visionary and groundbreaking film, and a great gift to exhibitors because it makes the theatrical experience an absolutely necessary component,” I wrote on 9.11.13. Deadline‘s Nikki Finke is projecting $48 million for the The Warner Bros. release by Sunday night.

An actual obit that some Breaking Bad fans put into the Albuquerque Journal. Everyone’s already reported this today but I figured I might as well join in as Hollywood Elsewhere has become a kind of emotional Ground Zero for fans of this now-mercifully-concluded AMC series. Bonus points for those who can remember which “deceased” actor in which film was referred to as a “tough monkey” after his demise?

With the post-apocalyptic dystopian thing completely spent and in the wake of Cloverfield and Pacific Rim, who outside of 14-and-unders wants to watch more of this?

Directed, written and produced by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Bridegroon (Virgil Films, 10.4 in NYC/10.18 in Los Angeles) is about how tragedy separated a committed gay couple, Shane and Tom, and then how Shane Bitney Crone, the survivor, was stunned and angered when faced with familial and “legal” anti-gay prejudice. Shane posted a video tribute to his partner called “It Could Happen to You.” The video went viral and garnered over four million views. A release states that Shane “wanted it to serve as a warning to other LGBT couples, and show the world what can happen when two people are legally barred from having equal rights and equal protections under the law to marry.” I’m attending a screening of Bridegroom on Tuesday, 10.15, at the Academy theatre.

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The sound on my Macbook Pro sound stopped working yesterday due to a faulty installation of OSX 10.8.5. So I had to re-download and re-install that system and then restart, blah blah. The sound was fixed. And then, at the Apple guy’s suggestion, I went into all three cache folders and emptied everything out. (Which I should do every week except I forget.) This somehow killed the sound again. Plus the operating system is slow and gunked up. I made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon to drop off this soundless Macbook Pro plus the other broken MBP (i.e., faulty keyboard) to the Geniuses at the Mac store at The Grove. (Which I despise, spiritually and environmentally, because of that phony bullshit Disneyland vibe.) On top of which the four-year- old iMac that I bought in Manhattan is all but worthless. So everything is basically breaking down from overwork so I’m thinking I need a new Macbook Air. It may sound fickle but I need a computer that, you know, works, especially with the two Pros being in the shop for two or three days.

Chris Pine as Robo-Ryan — Jacksnapper injected with video-game DNA. Seemingly related to Captain Kirk. Kenneth Branagh provides the robo-direction. David Koepp wrote the robo-screenplay. My, how sensibilities have changed since Clear and Present Danger came out in ’94 (i.e., the Pleistocene era). Not Patriot Games, not so much Hunt for Red October, not The Sum of All Fears. [Note: Despite two restarts on two computers the sound isn’t working. On anything. I’m presuming this is my problem alone.]

“All Is Lost is amazing, deeply moving, and a harking back to an age when the best mainstream films might be the best pictures America made,” says New Republic critic David Thomson in a 10.3 posting. “It is an adventure and an epic with one person. I am warning you that it may win Best Picture, and that its one person, Robert Redford, deserves what has never come to him before, an Oscar for best actor. He is as noble, vulnerable, and harrowed as Gary Cooper at his best.

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My first thought when I saw the new Philomena poster was “where have I seen this before?” I’m sure there are dozens of other posters that put out a similar look and attitude. It says “this is a very safe and tidy film about safe and tidy people…trust us, it will not threaten or challenge you in the least.” It’s also gives Judy Dench a nice little nip and tuck — she looks about 40 or 45 here.