Woody Allen‘s To Rome With Love opened in Italy today, and NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports that Italian critics have shown “no love” for it. “Allen is a cult figure here, but reviews of his newest movie were lukewarm — nowhere near the charm, critics said, of last year’s Midnight in Paris. Critics called the movie superficial, banal and full of stereotypes, and said it lacks the irony and scathing satire present in most Italian postwar cinema.

“Several complained that Allen’s Rome is the one foreigners have in their mind’s eye even before setting foot here. And it’s a vision filtered through the prism of the 1 percent — the characters lodge in grandiose baroque-style rooms in five-star hotels and enjoy grand vistas from terraces the average Roman can only dream about.

“Paolo d’Agostini of La Repubblica quipped, ‘Can you imagine a Roman traffic cop living in an apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps?'”

The fact that Allen’s film has been dubbed (the lingua originale version is completely unavailable even in upscale Roman venues) probably diminishes some of the charm.

“The movie is a magnificent postcard of the eternal city,” Poggioli writes, “a carefree romp along cobblestone streets nestled between ancient ruins and Renaissance palaces. A soft yellow glow pervades every scene. It projects an image of the sweet life with all the charms under the Italian sun, set to the tune of old standbys like ‘Volare’ and ‘Arrivederci Roma.’

“Allen has said he grew up watching Italian cinema and was influenced by its grand masters. While there’s nothing neorealist in his latest movie, it has an echo of Fellini‘s The White Sheik, and Penelope Cruz‘s performance in one segment calls to mind Sofia Loren’s high-end call girl in Vittorio de Sica‘s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

“The movie is made up of four separate vignettes about love swaps, mistaken identities and the cult of celebrity. One features Allen himself playing a retired, neurotic opera director who tries to make a star out of a man who can sing Pavarotti-quality opera, but only in his shower.

“In another episode, Alec Baldwin plays a famous architect vacationing in Rome, reminiscing about his youth in the city. Along the way, he meets a young American student, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who is love-struck by Ellen Page, playing a narcissistic young actress.”

The English-language version of To Rome With Love opens in the U.S. on June 22nd.

I was stunned and heartbroken by Google’s decision earlier this year to shut down Picnic, a photo-editing website that was clean and efficient and dumb enough for the likes of myself. There are various website and app options out there, but I needed a cropping, resizing, sharpening, tinting and contrasting tool that was really and truly moron-level. I wrote in early February that “it’s unconscionable of Google to remove a popular photo-editing software without offering some kind of replacement option.”

Well, Google or somebody heard the cries. Picnic ended this morning but there was a link to a site called Picmonkey, and it’s the best photo editing site for dumbasses that I’ve been able to find. I don’t know who created it or why I couldn’t locate Picmonkey until now, but thank God there’s a first-rate Picnic replacement that I can live and work with without breaking a sweat.

“If Hollywood is high school with money, Washington is high school with power,” writes New York‘s Matt Zoller Seitz in his 4.15 review of Veep, the HBO comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, the vice-president of the United States, from British writer-producer Armando Iannucci.

“All of the characters are overgrown adolescents — bitchy, pouty, and narcissistic. And as it happens, they’re employed in a field that equals showbiz in its immaturity, treachery, and obsession with surfaces.”

Yeah…and? Pretty much anyone with a life and a job and a semi-palatable reputation has learned to act and communicate like an adult. But high-school attitudes and arrested adolescence are bigger factors in the human undercurrent than some of us like to admit. Emotional cruelty and shallow judgments and clannish cliques are inescapable. This is what I love about Ianucci’s humor. It squats right down into the sandbox.

“At times the series feels like a live-action version of Doonesbury,” Seitz says, “but minus the sociopolitical context, and with baroque profanity and scatological metaphors. ‘If you can get a Senate-­reform bill through the place it’s designed to reform,’ a senator says, ‘that would be like persuading a guy to fist himself!'” That’s a pretty good line, I think.

“The world can always use one more amusing sitcom, but for all its madcap goofiness, Veep doesn’t say or add up to much — which, in a way, suggests it’s the right satire for a political era marked by stupid feuds, inertia, and superficiality.”

Shades of caveat emptor: I haven’t seen any Veep episodes and for all I know Seitz’s opinion is dead-on, but I’m a huge In The Loop fan, and I suspect that MZS, due respect, is not a guy who really gets or relishes smart-ass but skin-deep adolescent vulgarity as manifested in adults. He’s a fine fellow and an excellent writer but he has too much of an allegiance to quality and profound metaphors and compositional beauty and artful brushstrokes and thematic depth to really get into somewhat shallow material about small-minded government types and their little fucking games. He seems to lack a natural affinity and appetite for casually cruel cynicism.

The above headline is probably accurate to a large extent, although I’m sure it doesn’t fully explain why Walt Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross has been whacked. Deadline‘s Nikki Finke has declared that Ross “was fired — make no mistake about it.” Ross inherited John Carter, but he presided over the marketing and whatnot, and somebody, apparently, had to take the fall for the $200 million loss incurred by the Ishtar of fantasy space epics. (The headline is a nod to a famous Variety headline that ran when Frank Price lost his job at Universal following the titanic failure of Howard The Duck — i.e., “Duck Cooks Price’s Goose.”)

There are three pieces of significant information contained in the Vulture-exclusive, Bob Balaban-narrated clip promoting Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom. One, the action (young love, Boy Scout troop, the usual Anderson eccentrics doing the deadpan thing) takes place on a small island called New Penzance, obviously an allusion to Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. Two, the film is set in early September, 1965, or three months before the release of Rubber Soul. And three, a “well-documented storm” that will “strike in three days time” occurs, presumably in the third act.

Except the parts about late summer/early fall 1965 setting and the big storm a’brewin’ were revealed months ago so I guess the only stands-outs are New Penzance and Rubber Soul. (I’m not claiming that this famous Beatles album is referenced in Moonrise Kingdom in any specific way, but if you know anything about Anderson’s musical tastes and soundtrack implementations, you know that Rubber Soul is more than just an album — it’s a mood dream and a state of mind that is very much woven into 1965 as well as 2012.)

Moonrise Kingdom will premiere in Cannes on 5.16, and then open stateside on 5.25. It costars Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Marc Rizzo, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Balaban snd Harvey Keitel.

A slightly longer, more atmospheric Spanish-language teaser trailer for Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Impossible (Summit/Lionsgate, 10.11) has popped up. Longer than the one that posted on 12.27.11, I mean. It’s time for an English-language version, I think.

Last August I passed along information about The Impossible straight from Bayona.

“I can only say that we’re on schedule and working really hard on the editing and visual effects. We finished principal photography last February [2011] and did three weeks of technical shooting (scale models and water) in June. The film will be completed in early 2012.”

Summit acquired domestic rights in May 2010, which means Lionsgate has them now.

The Impossible is a true account of a family swept up in the tsunami that slammed into the coast of Thailand and neighboring countries seven-plus years ago. Naomi Watts and Ewan Macgregor are the stars. Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Holland, Gitte Julsrud and Marta Etura costar.

Bayona’s last film, The Orphanage, is one of the great adult horror films of the 21st Century. The same team that worked on The Orphanage (writer, production manager, cinematographer, composer and editor) have reunited for this.

The Impossible was largely shot in Alicante, Spain and on location in Phuket, Thailand, beginning in the vicinity of May 2010. Post-production came to a close a month or so ago (or something like that).

My heart lifted when I read that Bayona had described it as an “ambitious, high-quality European film” which will be “competitive on an international market.” In other words, not made for American mall idiots.

“Marvel’s cinematic master plan for its comicbook all-stars pays off in extravagant fashion with The Avengers. Like a superior, state-of-the-art model built from reconstituted parts, Joss Whedon‘s buoyant, witty and robustly entertaining superhero smash-up is escapism of a sophisticated order, boasting a tonal assurance and rich reserves of humor that offset the potentially lumbering and unavoidably formulaic aspects of this 143-minute team-origin story.” — from Justin Chang’s Variety review, posted this evening at 9 pm.

I was informed earlier today by a Universal executive that my complaint about the appearance of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo at last Friday night’s TCM Classic Film Festival screening was “right” — accurate — and that the reason for the film’s poor appearance was a technical glitch. Somebody miscalculated and pushed the wrong button or entered the wrong code when the restored version of Hitchcock’s classic was scanned for a DCP, the exec confessed. Simple human error. It happens.

I thanked the executive for telling me this as I was starting to ask myself why no one else had complained. It was very comforting to hear that I wasn’t wrong. And it was admirable of Universal to admit to a mistake, I thought. I was also informed that Vertigo is currently undergoing preparation for a restored Bluray version, which will hit the market sometime later this year. I’ve heard from an off-the-lot source that a Rear Window Bluray is also being prepared.

Water finds its own level, and to my way of thinking director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, Water for Elephants), a middle-range craftsman and hired gun who knows how to make things look good and deliver a generic studio film in a straight-ahead, highly competent way, is a perfect choice to direct Catching Fire, Lionsgate’s sequel to The Hunger Games.

I don’t know anything but what I’ve read and seen in screenings, but Lawrence doesn’t appear to be too exacting or auteurist in his thinking or technique (unlike, say, the great Bennett Miller, who is way, way above the level of director Lionsgate needed to find). Lawrence strikes me as an adapter and a go-alonger, and Lionsgate producers will be able to work with him or…you know, push him around to some extent. No, I didn’t mean that. What I mean is that Lionsgate will adapt to Lawrence and he will adapt to them.

TheWrap‘s Tim Kenneally reported earlier today that
Lionsgate “is preparing to make an offer to Lawrence,” etc.

Levon Helm, the 71 year-old Band drummer-singer who died today in Manhattan, was one of my all-time favorite drummers. He was a kind of personal hero. I used to drum in a couple of garage-style blues bands and I half-modelled my style on his. Helm’s snare-drum and tom-tom hits were spare and minimalist — as far from flamboyant as could be imagined — but they felt just right and dependable and mathematically dead-on.

“In Mr. Helm’s drumming, muscle, swing, economy and finesse were inseparably merged,” N.Y. Times critic Jon Pareles wrote in Helm’s obit. “He gave his drums a muffled, bottom-heavy sound that placed them in the foundation of the [Band’s] arrangements, and his tom-toms were tuned so that their pitch would bend downward as the tone faded. Mr. Helm didn’t call attention to himself.”

And I loved his yokelish, back-country voice. If I’m not mistaken, Helm is the principal vocalist on “Jemima Surrender” and “Rockin’ Chair.”

I remember thinking when I saw Helm play Sissy Spacek‘s coal-miner dad in Michael Aoted‘s Coal Miner’s Daughter (’80) that he looked quite weathered for his years. He was right around 40 at the time, and he looked to be in his late ’50s or early 60s. Maybe it was just makeup.

Yesterday Gordon and the Whale‘s Joshua Brunsting passed along a clear implication in Criterion’s latest newsletter that a Bluray of Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby is indeed on the way from that connoisseur-cultivating company. I’ve mentioned this before and I don’t want to harp on it, but let’s just hope and pray that Criterion doesn’t try to crop this thing at 1.78 or 1.85.

“Pierced ears and piercing eyes” — Maurice Evans’ Hutch describing Sidney Blackmer’s Roman Castevet in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

My hunch is that this could happen, even though there are ample indications that this 1968 film plays best at 1.66 and that Polanski intended it to be seen that way.

Criterion had better watch it, that’s all. They’d better think twice and perhaps a third time if they’re thinking of whacking it down to 1.78 or worse. Because if they do we’ll be looking at the equivalent of an all-out Vietcong guerilla war. Constant sniping and derision, Occupy Criterion, speeches and petitions in Union Square, etc.

A friend who moderates an LA screening series says Lawrence Kasdan‘s Darling Companion (Sony Classics, 4.20) plays really well with 60- and 70-somethings. And Kasdan, he says, has stated that he more or less made it for this demo. And that’s fine. But so far this lost-dog boomer relationship dramedy has gotten killed by most critics. It has a 10% positive on Rotten Tomatoes and a 37% average on Metacritic.

Here’s most of what I posted when Darling Companion opened the Santa Barbara Film Festival in late January:

“It’s basically about an older, well-to-do Denver couple (Kevin Kline, Diane Keaton) getting in touch with their empty-nest issues through a relationship with a mixed collie they’ve adopted after Keaton and her daughter (Elisabeth Moss) find him huddling on the side of a road. The dog is soon being attended to by a friendly vet (Jay Ali), enjoying a nice hot bath, and given the name of Freeway.

“During a Rocky Mountain vacation Kline, an emotionally curt surgeon who’s constantly phoning and texting, lets Freeway slip the leash…gone. Keaton, emotionally invested in her relationship with Freeway in lieu of a dry and distant one with Kline, is hugely pissed and is soon leading a major log-cabin campaign to find the dog.

“Helping out are Kline’s sister (Dianne Wiest), her easygoing boyfriend (Richard Jenkins), Penny’s doctor son (Mark Duplass) and a sexy exotic European (Ayelet Zurer) who has gypsy-like, extra-sensory insight into Freeway’s whereabouts. And a local sheriff (Sam Shepard) is aware of the hunt and peripherally involved.

“I thought maybe Kasdan might be up to something clever here. Perhaps using the lost-dog plot as a way into a kind of Big Chill flick about four or five old farts hanging around a Rocky Mountain cabin and evaluating their lives and times…something like that. But for the most part, Darling Companion is just about finding the dog. Okay, Kline comes around to admitting that he’s too aloof and work-oriented, but this is hardly the stuff of keen audience engagement.

“A septugenarian Big Chill would make sense as Kasdan isn’t concerned in the least with Freeway’s whereabouts or adventures. All we do is hang out with the oldsters and Duplass and Zurer and blah blah, and then the story comes to a nice wholesome conclusion.

“At one point Kline and Jenkins encounter a kind of Unabomber guy living in a rundown cabin in the woods, and there’s an implication that Freeway might have been kidnapped and/or is being held by this dog of a human being, but this possibility is quickly discarded.

“Why does Freeway run away from Kline in the first place? Dogs don’t just run away from their masters. Are we to suppose that Freeway is just as put off by Kline’s selfish cell-phone existence and can’t wait to escape his company? That’s a stretch.

“Darling Companion made me feel really old on top of everything else. I’ve known Kline, Keaton, Weist and Shepard since the late ’70s and early ’80s, and they’re all looking and especially acting like people in their late 60s and early 70s with their aching joints and arms falling out of their sockets and their gray hair and Shepard’s teeth looking small and gnarly with his pot belly hanging out…Jesus! Shepard was a smooth romantic figure in the ’80s.

“If you’re going to be an older working actor, you have to look younger than you are. That’s the absolute rule. If you’re 75, you have to look 60 or 65 after you’ve just had a facial and been worked on by a skilled hair colorist (i.e., a little gray around the edges). If you’re 60 or 65, you have to look like a 50 or 55 year-old physical trainer. No limping, no paunch, in good shape, and no complaining about aching joints. Because I’m telling you it’s really depressing to watch Kline and Keaton stumbling along a mountain trail like refugees from a retirement community.

“And yet the film’s best scene happens on that same mountain trail when Kline’s right arm becomes dislocated and Keaton has to help him pop it back in.

“My basic reaction as I left the screening room was ‘why is Kasdan degrading his once-proud brand with a feathery little project like this? A movie about finding a fucking dog in the Rocky Mountains? That‘s what the once-great Kasdan is up to?’

“Kasdan’s last truly tasty film, Mumford, came out 12 and a half years ago. I will never stop respecting or believing in his craft and vision, but over the last decade he’s generally been regarded by the media mob as M.I.A. or ‘on hold’ or past it. As soon as I heard about Darling Companion I began wondering if it’s a potential rebound or a place-holder or what. Because my suspicions were, no offense, skeptical. And now I know — it’s a place-holder. It’s actually kind of a mild embarassment.

“I don’t mean to speak dismissively of one of the strongest and most distinctive director-screenwriters of the ’80s and ’90s. Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, The Accidental Tourist, Grand Canyon, Wyatt Earp, Mumford — that’s a hell of a 20-year run. But writer-directors have only so much psychic essence, and the prevailing view is that after they’ve shot their wad (as most wads are lamentably finite), that’s it.

“For whatever reason Kasdan tells us that the mountain-search portion of the film is happening in Telluride, Colorado, as we’re shown an establishing shot of Telluride’s main street. But it was shot in and around Park City’s Wasatch Mountains. I’m betting that part of the pitch to the Darling actors was ‘you get a nice five or six-week vacation in the Rockies as part of the deal.'”

My two favorite cherry-picked review quotes so far:

“How much more fulfilling it would have been to spend those hundred-odd minutes chasing a squirrel, taking a nap or disemboweling a stuffed animal on the living room rug?” — A.O. Scott, N.Y. Times.

“Bursting onto the Hollywood scene in the early ’80s as the writer-director of Body Heat and The Big Chill, not to mention the principal screenwriter for Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Kasdan was one of the hottest guys in the business for at least a decade. Today, although he’s younger than Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese (and only a few years older than the Coen brothers, for instance), Kasdan looks like a flailing, irrelevant has-been.

“His entire career, and his unfortunate and completely uninteresting new movie, Darling Companion, which is about a bunch of rich white people looking for a lost dog, illustrates the dangers of attaching yourself firmly to a generational identity. In other words: Ask not for whom the mutt woofs, Lena Dunham — it woofs for thee.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.