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Denis Villenueve‘s Prisoners (Warner Bros., 9.20) “has been a little over-hyped by critics,” I wrote on 8.31 from Telluride. “Don’t get me wrong — this is a moody, meandering, well-crafted thriller by a director who’s obviously a cut or two above the norm. It’s anything but standard issue. Set in the grimmest, coldest, rainiest part of Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, the story (written by Aaron Guzikowski) is about the kidnapping of two young girls and the efforts of a lone-wolf cop (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the girls’ vigilante-minded dads (Hugh Jackman and to a lesser extent Terrence Howard) to find them. Not in synch, of course.

West 54th just west of Sixth Avenue. Taken this morning — Friday, 9.20 — at 11:25 am.

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Every year a Hollywood Foreign Press Association committee decides that this or that award-quality film should be categorized as a comedy or musical. Their calls are sometimes bizarre, to put it mildly. A story by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg says that Blue Jasmine, for example, will end up in a Musical/Comedy slot because it costars “funnymen” Alec Baldwin, Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay. This for a film that is clearly modelled upon and in many ways resembles A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the great dramatic tragedies of the 20th Century.

Feinberg also foresees the HFPA labelling Before Midnight, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska and Philomena as comedies — the standard apparently being that if characters in the above films say anything snippy or snarky or sardonic or smartly allusive (which they do on occasion)…anything that results in a slight chortle or guffaw during a screening…they’re comedic. June Squibb briefly flashes her privates in Nebraska? It’s a comedy. The snooty Steve Coogan makes a few smart cracks at Judy Dench‘s expense in Philomena? It’s a laugh riot. I’ve at least agreed with the HFPA in one respect — Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man (’09) is definitely a comedy.

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I would describe myself as a fairly good guy to have around when it comes to light carpentry and trimming trees (I worked as a tree surgeon in my 20s) and painting interiors and crawling under homes and stapling insulation to the floorboards and moving furniture. I’m not much for changing tires, but otherwise I’m pretty good at being handy and can therefore recognize this in others. And if you ask me Josh Brolin has a steady, authoritative “man of the house” manner in Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day. His character is probably a little too gentle and refined and devoted to baking pies for someone who’s done time for manslaughter, okay, but I believed in that anchored, down-to-it, let’s-get-this-done vibe. I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels after catching this Paramount release in Telluride, but Brolin’s performance compensated to some extent.

The first U.S.-market trailer for this 10.25 Sundance Selects release is very nicely edited — all gliding moods and smooth weaves and ripe emotional fruit. Tip of the hat to the person[s] who put it together.

I knew what IOS7 was going to look like (my son Jett installed a Beta test version of it months ago) but I’m not having too many problems with it. It’s just taking some getting used to. A lot of people are angry, pissed, shocked but I’m taking my time with it, letting it settle in, rolling with it, learning the new moves. The only thing I hate and got rid of right away was the four-digit pass code that the new software requested. After punching that code six or seven times I 86’ed that shit.

In Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut, Dr. Ryan Stone, struggling with a do-or-die situation that’s initially beyond her technical abilities. When high-speed debris destroys a space shuttle she’s manning with two others (including George Clooney‘s Matt Kowalski, a space-flight veteran), Stone not only has to survive with limited air but somehow return to earth — a tough order. In this sense Bullock is playing (I know how this sounds but it’s true) a variation on Doris Day‘s role in Julie (a terrified stewardess has to man the controls of a plane that has lost its pilot and co-pilot) and Karen Black‘s in Airport ’75 (a terrified stewardess has to fly a crew-less 747 before Charlton Heston can board and land it). Gravity is miles above and beyond these two mediocre films, technically as well as dramatically, so I’m not trying to diminish Cuaron’s film by making this comparison. Gravity is a brilliant experience. But Bullock is essentially playing, like Black and Day did earlier, a novice who has to grim up and find inner steel when the going gets tough. And the fact of the matter is that Black, Day and Bullock’s performances are roughly similar with much of the emphasis on “oh my God, I don’t know if I can handle this…what am I going to do?”

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It was announced yesterday that Amat Escalante‘s horrific Heli is Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. You’ll have to search far and wide to find a colder, more repellent film than this, and I therefore admire the bravery…okay, the resolve of the Mexican officials who made this call. “This is an animalistic landscape, a territory lorded over by serpents and psychopaths,” I wrote after seeing Heli in Cannes. “It’s hugely unpleasant to watch, but I’ll give Escalante this — he shows violence as a brutally blunt and horrific tool. Which is exactly how it feels in real life.”

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A new Montages.no article about Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac reports that while a softcore version will open theatrically in Denmark and Norway (in December 2013 and January 2014 respectively), the pornographic version, for which “the lower part of the actors is said to be digitally substituted with bodies of pornographic performers…will most likely be saved for a Cannes premiere in 2014.” Terrific. If this happens it’ll be highly unlikely that the XXX version will screen in festival competition. “It is not inconceivable that the hardcore version ultimately has to be experienced on DVD and Blu-ray,” the article cautions, adding that “it is still possible that the producers or the festival [will change] their minds.”

What the world needs now is a brand-new Contempt — a film about 21st Century filmmaking that has nothing to do with Jean-Luc Godard or Alberto Moravia or memories of Michel Piccoli or Jack Palance. The focus would be on the pathetic refusal or inability of under-50 filmmakers to submit to even a semblance of realistic period aroma or behavior — they have to recreate all films set in the past according to their contemporary jackoff imaginings and comic-book mythologies. Hence Fury — David Ayer‘s World War II action thriller that is obviously aping Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt as Sergeant Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop….War Daddy, I mean…and a five-man crew (Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena and some guy I’ve never heard of) on a “deadly behind-enemy-lines mission…striking at the heart of Nazi Germany,” blah blah splat.

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This currently-running Burns Family/Pepcid s&…4() an I pot somehow connected with me on some gut level. It’s a!
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A 7.18 Brooks Barnes‘N.Y. Times story reports (a) an attempt by Nikki Finke to buy back Deadline from bossman Jay Penske with the help of a Phoenix-based private equity guy named Jahm Najafi, and (b) an interest on Finke’s part in wanting to start fresh with a new site, NikkiFinke.com, because her Deadline duties have taken the edge off her hammerhead reporting. The gist, it seems, is that TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman wasn’t entirely off the mark when she reported last June…well, not that Penske had whacked Finke (that was a bit out-there) but that there was serious trouble in River City between them.

“At least in some corners of the show business capital, the Finke-Penske fight has turned into a lurid spectator sport,” Barnes writes. “[And yet] the tit-for-tat entanglement may simply boil down to another example of the corporate difficulties associated with brands that are so closely linked to one personality, especially one as ferocious as Ms. Finke.”

I’m sorry to admit that when I heard of the death of Ken Norton, the first thing I thought was “whoa, the Sammmy-stud Mandingo guy who did the deed with Susan George is gone.” I’m sorry for thinking a cheesy Quentin Tarantino thought. On top of which Norton’s character in that detestable 1975 Richard Fleischer film wasn’t called Mandingo — it was “Mede” or “Gannymede.” I should have said to myself that the honorable boxer who broke Muhammud Ali‘s jaw has died. Norton’s last big fight was against Larry Holmes in ’78. He was only 70 years old. The poor guy hasn’t been in the best of shape due to a series of strokes. He was also hurt pretty badly from a car crash in the mid ’80s. Condolences to family, friends and fans.