The first teaser for The Canyons, a Paul Schrader-Brett Easton Ellis collaboration, was nothing — static magic-hour shots of Los Angeles. The second Canyons teaser, out today, is about retro fiddling. The title, the teaser and the movie are ironic imitations of a trailer for a late ’60s Roger Corman or Sam Arkoff film. In other words, it’s still about nothing. Schrader used to make movies about the world he was living in, or had lived in. The Schrader stamp meant something.

Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln will face an audience of smirking Manhattan wiseacres at the New York Film Festival tonight. I’m expecting the first tweets around 10 pm Eastern. I would really and truly love to hear that (a) Lincoln is much better than Amistad, (b) Daniel Day Lewis‘s Walter Brennan-by-way-of-Matthew Modine voice is a component in a great Oscar-worthy performance, (c) John Williams‘ score doesn’t suffocate or infuriate and (d) Guido Bazin needs to go back to New Jersey and stay there because he’s wrong about the boredom.

One of the reasons that Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash and that movies like Chicago, The Artist, Driving Miss Daisy and Forrest Gump have won the Best Picture Oscar is that you have a lot of retro-minded sentimental deadwood voters in the Academy. By this I mean over-the-hill actors or below-the-liners who haven’t worked on anything since the ’80s.

No offense but the influence of these people needs to be respectfully minimized. The opinions of voters who are actively contributing to movies being made today or have at least have worked in some capacity within the last five or ten years should count for more than deadwood viewpoints. I don’t see how anyone can say this isn’t a fair way of looking at it. Seriously.

The basic idea is that the more important you are, the more your vote counts. Major contributors (actors, directors, writers, producers, dps, production dersigners) who’ve worked on any kind of semi-serious, semi-significant film within the last decade (starting in ’02) get five votes. Below-the-liners who’ve worked on any kind of semi-serious, semi-significant film within the last decade get three votes. Major contributors or below-the-liners who haven’t worked on anything since ’02 but who at least worked on films during a 15 year period prior to ’02 get two votes. And hangers-on who have a trunkful of memories but who’ve been out of the industry for all practical purposes since ’87 or before would get what they have today — one vote.

Why is that such a terrible idea? It’s obviously fair. I’m 98% sure if it my system had been in place in ’06 Brokeback Mountain would have won the Best Picture Oscar because the homophobic geezer vote would have been minimized. Tell me I’m wrong.

If you want to know how radiantly aware and plugged-in Blake Lively is, read this excerpt from Ben Affleck‘s Details interview with Mark Harris:

“When I was doing The Town, I’d tour the actors around Boston,” Affleck tells Harris. “I was with Blake [Lively], and I saw Matt’s childhood home. And I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s where Matt grew up.’ And she said, ‘Who?’ And I said, ‘Matt Damon.’ And she said, ‘Oh my God! You know Jason Bourne?!’ She really didn’t know. And I thought, ‘There it is. The first age of people who are adults who missed the whole Matt-and-Ben propaganda campaign!’ Mostly, it just made me feel old.”

Lively, born in August 1987, was ten when Good Will Hunting came out and also when Affleck and Damon won their Best Screenplay Oscar, so she wasn’t paying attention. But she never once heard or read about their collaboration and friendship in the years that followed? And when she got hired to be in The Town (which came out in ’10), she never went online to learn about Affleck’s past? Even if she’s not engaged or curious enough to do online searches, her agent or manager never gave her the rundown? Breathtaking.

Ben Affleck has offered a “thank God that‘s over” recap on the bad old Bennifer days in a Details interview with Mark Harris. I can relate. I can look back at my life in ’02 or ’03 and feel good about this or that thread being absent from the current fabric. But when you’re “there,” you’re there. You have to play what’s dealt.

Harris: “By 2003, you were the star of two potential franchises, Daredevil and The Sum of All Fears, that didn’t go forward. We probably knew more about your romantic life than you would have preferred. And then Gigli. I don’t think a lot of people would have said, ‘By 2012, this guy will have directed three very good movies.'”

Affleck: “In our culture, we get very much into shorthanding people. And I got shorthanded as That Guy: Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless dilettante, solipsistic consumer blahblahblah. It’s hard to shake those sort of narratives. If you were looking at that one-liner on me in 2003, which was definitely the annus horribilis [laughs] of my life — it’s funny how that rhymes with Sacha Baron Cohen‘s pronunciation of ‘ah-noose’…

Harris: “Well, you were kind of in that place.”

Affleck: “Exactly! I made a bunch of movies that didn’t work. I was ending up in the tabloids. I don’t know what the lesson is, except that you just have to find your compass.

“I liked Sum of All Fears. Daredevil I didn’t at all. Some movies should have worked and didn’t. At a certain point, it’s just up to the movie gods. Anyway, this image becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I just said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. This is horrible. I don’t want to be in this spotlight, this glare, in this way. It’s tawdry, it’s ugly, it’s oppressive, and it’s inane. So I’m going to try to get away.'”

Every now and then it hits me that the term “movie godz” really is swimming and swirling around out there, even if some people spell it wrong.

“And most of the way I did that was by not acting. I said, ‘I’m going to steer myself toward directing. I’m going to do something that takes me toward a place where the work that I do is reflective of what I think is interesting dramatically.’ People bring up 2003, and I get it. Jennifer Lopez, and Gigli, and all this shit just kind of blew up. But, you know, in 2003, Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois! Okay?”

JFK: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” HE commenter: “What kind of submissive socialist shit is this? He’s gonna tell me about priorities with all the tom-catting he’s done, and all his family money? I’m not supposed to watch out for myself? I need to offer up my mind, my strength and my imagination to my country while my mortgage and ability to feed my family hangs by a thread? Fuck that.”

David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook won another audience award yesterday. The 20th Hamptons International Film Festival was the bequeather on the heels of last month’s Toronto Film Festival audience award. It appears as if Hamptons and Toronto film lovers need to be straightened out, possibly by In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone plus any other Silver Linings pooh-pooher who want to join in.

What do Hamptons-residing filmgoers know anyway? Just a bunch of well-to-do lah-lahs lying around on their divans and drinking Merlot. Perhaps we need to set up a community Skype chat in which Kris and Sasha can explain what they’re missing or what’s not good enough about Russell’s film? Followed by a q & a with Hamptons film lovers? One way or another the air needs to be cleared and the rubes need to be schooled.

Janet Tobias‘ No Place on Earth, a documentary about caves in the Ukraine that sheltered Jews during World War II, took the Hamptons’ documentary audience award.

Dr. No (’62) will always be my favorite 007 film, in part because Sean Connery has a leaner frame and a narrower face in this than in any 007 film, and because he’s not wearing a toupee. (The first rug appeared two years hence in Goldfinger.) Please notice the black windowbox bars, which create the 1.66 aspect ratio. 1.66 is the correct a.r. for this and From Russia With Love, as they were framed according to British standards. The series went 1.85 with Goldfinger.

About a half hour ago Deadline‘s Mike Fleming reported that veteran publicist Lois Smith, 85, died today at 2 pm in Hebron, Maine, where she had gone to honor her husband, Gene, who was being honored by his alma mater, Hebron University. She fell and hit her head and suffered a brain hemmorhage, Fleming reports. Hugs and condolences to friends, family, colleagues and former clients. I’m very sorry.

Lois was one of the co-founders of Pickwick p.r., which began in 1969 and later merged with Maslansky/Konigsberg to become PMK, which was the big high-powered agency in the ’80s and ’90s with all kinds of hotshot clients. The big PMK triumvirate was Smith, Pat Kingsley and Leslee Dart (who now runs 42West). It was always more pleasant to deal with Lois on stories than Kingsley, who was PMK’s bad cop to Lois’s good cop. But Smith really wasn’t a “cop” at all — she was too alpha-minded and compassionate for that. And she was always calm and collected whatever the story was, and she never barked at me or threatened and she always took time to talk to me as a human being and not as an enemy reporter.

Lois was always fair and honest with me. She sometimes told me stuff I didn’t want to hear, but she was a good person. I liked her. I’m sorry she’s gone.

Lois Smityh (r.), daughter Brooke Smith.

Incidentally: Joe Leydon has pointed out that in their story/obit, TheWrap initially ran a pic of actress Lois Smith (East of Eden, etc.) instead of the publicist. TheWrap currently has a correct photo running.

Today is a nice lazy Sunday with sunny skies. I recorded a podcast this morning, and I’m doing a little column-writing now. The usual weights-and-treadmill ordeal awaits, and then two movies — Summer Window, a 2011 German film with Barbara‘s Nina Hoss, at the American Cinematheque at 5:30 pm, and then Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Sheltering Sky (’90), which I haven’t seen for a good 15 years, at Santa Monica’s Aero.

Meanwhile in other regions of the city, people are actually paying money to see Taken 2 with Liam “paycheck” Neeson, and The Paperboy, which opened limited. I don’t know what to say about this except that different people have different tastes and priorities. I know for a fact that I live in a more enlightened (or at least enlightenment-seeking) realm than those who are taking out their wallets and paying money to see Taken 2, which has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 20%, but what of it?

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and I kicked it around this morning. Les Miserables and the mysterious “Snuggle 4.” The Zero Dark Thirty vs. Argo situation (i.e., similar covert-mission plots, Middle Eastern milieus, hoodwinking Islamic authorities). Feelings and conclusions about Spielberg and Tarantino. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link. New Saul Bass-styled Oscar Poker art by Mark Frenden.