I was behind this couple at the Westside Pavillion a couple of nights ago. The excitement they were feeling when it was finally their turn to order from the counter guy was almost sexual. It was certainly infectious. I was imagining their delight as they sat down in their seats with a double-large popcorn tub with extra butter, an extra-large Red Twisters, two hot dogs with mustard, two half-gallon-sized cups of Coke. It was playtime. They were really happy.

The centerpiece of Lionsgate’s Hunger Games campaign “has been a yearlong, four-phase digital effort built around the content platforms cherished by young audiences,” writes N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes. “A near-constant use of Facebook and Twitter, a YouTube channel, a Tumblr blog, iPhone games and live Yahoo streaming from the premiere.

In so doing, Lionsgatemarketing honcho Tim Palen “appears to have created a box-office inferno.

“Analysts project that the The Hunger Games, which cost about $80 million to make and is planned as a four-movie franchise, could have opening-weekend sales of about $90 million — far more than the first Twilight and on par with Iron Man, which went on to take in over $585 million worldwide in 2008.”

“Selling a movie used to be a snap,” Barnes writes. “You printed a poster, ran trailers in theaters and carpet-bombed NBC’s Thursday night lineup with ads. Today, that kind of campaign would get a movie marketer fired [as] the dark art of movie promotion increasingly lives on the web.”

There is ample evidence that young females are by far the shallowest and most myopic moviegoers in existence as they (a) tend to financially support the worst kind of romantic crap, and (b) otherwise support movies that cater to their delusional dreams (romantic idealism and young-female empowerment) while showing no interest in films that portray reality as most people on the planet earth perceive and understand it. They live in their own membrane.

Palen’s genius is (a) he understands and respects the passion that drives the under-30 female demographic, and (b) has taken this understanding and learned how to exploit it.

Film restoration guru Robert Harris has inspected the forthcoming Chinatown Bluray and called it, from his grain-monk perspective, lacking. “It doesn’t look film-like,” he says, possibly due to “too much de-graining.” There are shots of Jack Nicholson, he adds, “that have no visible grain whatsoever.”

Plus the base transfer used for the Bluray “probably goes back to around 2005-6,” he notes, “and was probably the basis for the earlier DVD. Unfortunately, or fortunately, a great deal has occurred technologically since that time.

“That said, and let me make this point loud and clear, 99% of viewers are going to love this Blu-ray. It’s colorful, clean, and, well…pretty.”

What Harris means by “pretty,” of course, is that the Chinatown Bluray looks nice and shiny. Which means that the Bluray rubes (i.e., people like myself) will be delighted.

I don’t feel proud of being a Bluray bumpkin, but my eyes like what they like and they don’t like what they don’t like. I was a bit conflicted about but nonetheless pleased with Universal Home Video’s shiny Spartacus Bluray for the simple fact that it looks three or four times better than the Criterion DVD version. I am also a huge fan of Universal Home Video’s DNR’ed Psycho — easily one of the most beautiful black-and-white Blurays in existence, partly because it was made to look shiny.

At the same time I love Criterion’s straight-from-the-elements Sweet Smell of Success and Paths of Glory Blurays.

“For the record, I’m not suggesting that [the Chinatown Bluray] not be purchased,” Harris states. “I”m just saddened by the fact that what I’m seeing is not what it might have been.”

HTF commenter named Mark VH responds: “So, in other words, it’s right up Jeff Wells’ alley. Lovely.”

Chinatown laser disc signed by the film’s producer, Robert Evans, in 1995.

HE regulars and dilletantes had reactions, I presume, to 21 Jump Street? Did the critics overpraise or get it right? The Sony release will have $35 million in the bag by late tonight, which is…what, $5 million more than John Carter‘s opening?

I wasn’t invited to any Casa de mi Padre screenings, and I probably would have been on the fence about attending, to be perfectly honest, as I’ve come to presume that all Will Ferrell films, in whatever language, are likely to be (a) problematic and (b) not funny. But the Spanish-language Lionsgate release, which has a stinko 45% Rotten Tomatoes rating, pulled in $2.2 million at only 282 locations for a $7800 per-screen average.

I was standing near the ticket booth at the AMC Universal Citywalk Stadium 19 last night. A 20something Latino couple was studying the lobby board. The guy walked forward, got into line and turned to the girl. “You wanna comedy? Or…what, action? A comedy?” The girl half-shrugged, seemed a bit bored. “I dunno…whatever,” she said. He shrugged also, turned back to the board, and then turned and said to her, “How about Casa de mi Padre?”

I can’t wait to get my full-blast hate-on for this apparent obscenity, this go-for-broke CG nightmare, crafted by the beastly, thick-fingered, mouth-frothing Timur Bekmambetov — an enemy of restraint and therefore a dispenser of boredom.

“You see, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of…anything!” I’m posting this because Paramount Home Video’s Chinatown Bluray streets on 4.3, or two and a half weeks from now. I’ve never fully savored the subtler aspects of John Alonzo‘s widescreen cinematography, but I will soon.

Note: The spelling of the last name of Jack Nicholson‘s character is “Gittes,” but John Huston pronounces it “Gitts” all through the film.

Longer, talkier, more intense, fuller, creepier, screamier, etc.

36 hours ago Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy posted a “yeah, not bad, pretty good” review of The Hunger Games (Lionsgate, 3.23), declaring that “the arrow hits an outer circle of the target in this faithful adaptation of Suzanne Collins‘ young-adult best-seller, which could have used a higher blood count in more ways than one.”

Still, director Gary Ross “gets enough of what matters in the book up on the screen to satisfy its legions of fans worldwide.

“A speculative fiction piece about a 16-year-old expert hunter, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), who becomes one of 24 teenagers to compete in an annual televised combat spectacle from which only one will emerge alive, Collins’ tale rips along on the page with unflagging momentum while generating legitimate suspense and a strong rooting interest in its resourceful heroine.

The film has “visual spectacle but, along with it, a feeling of being slightly shortchanged; the long shots of gigantic cityscapes, of a fast train gliding silkily through the country, of massive crowds gathered to see this year’s gladiators before they set off to kill one another, of the decorative flames emanating from the leads’ costumes as the pair is presented to the public for the first time — all are cut a bit short, as if further exposure would reveal them as one notch below first-rate.

“Most noticeable of all, however, is the film’s lack of hunting instinct. The novel conveyed a heady sense of blood-scent, of Everdeen’s lifetime of illegal hunting paying off in survival skills that, from the outset, make her the betting favorite to win the 74th edition of the Hunger Games. While present, this critical element is skimmed over onscreen, reducing a sense of the heroine’s mental calculations as well as the intensity of her physical challenges and confrontations.

“One senses that the filmmakers wanted to avoid showing much hunting onscreen, for fear of offending certain sensibilities; stylistically, one longs for the visceral expressiveness of, say, Walter Hill in his prime. It’s also clear that the need for a PG-13 rating dictated moderation; a film accurately depicting the events of the book would certainly carry an R.”

Variety‘s Justin Chang feels the same way: “The first novel in Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy is a futuristic fight-to-the-death thriller driven by pure survival instinct,” he notes, “but the creative equivalent of that go-for-broke impulse is absent from director Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games.

“Proficient, involving, ever faithful to its source and centered around Jennifer Lawrence’s impressive star turn, this much-anticipated, nearly 2 1/2-hour event picture should satiate fans, entertain the uninitiated and take an early lead among the year’s top-grossing films. Yet in the face of near-certain commercial success, no one seems to have taken the artistic gambles that might have made this respectable adaptation a remarkable one.”

All of the “wow” intrigue generated by the recently-popped Prometheus dialogue trailer gradually drained out of me — drop by drop, granule by granule — as I watched this Yahoo fan q & a with costars Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron.

One-quarter down, three-quarters to go. Almost. Two weeks left but it’s all over but the shouting. The Hunger Games is the last film of any real intrigue set to open in March. The way I see it 2012 has delivered six films of serious distinction and seven or eight that could be called pretty good, not bad or relatively decent.

I’ve singled out 43 films in all, not counting Hunger Games. I’m 100% certain I’ve missed something. Please, have at it.

Best So Far: Haywire, Miss Bala, Michael, Rampart, 21 Jump Street, The Grey (6)

Won’t See It Until Monday Night: The Hunger Games (1)

Good or Relatively Decent But Curiously Not Enough To Inspire Any HE Jottings: Jeff Who Lives at Home, Declaration of War, Coriolanus, Footnote, Friends With Kids, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Woman in Black (7)

El Floppo, And…Okay, Tolerable In Certain Respects: John Carter (1)

Entirely Decent Tony Scott Film With An Ending That Underwhelms: Safe House (1)

Mildly Gripping: Silent House (1)

Mildly Likable, Amusing: Wanderlust (1)

Mute Nostril Asian Martial-Arts Agony: The Raid: Redemption (1)

Best Docs: Undefeated, Bully, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Pray for Japan, The Island President (5)

Slow-going: Turn Me On, Dammit!, 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2)

Lesser Dardennes: The Kid With A Bike (1)

Unfulfilling, Irksome, Bad: Contraband, Red Tails, Man on a Ledge, One for the Money, Flowers of War (5)

Labored, Less-Than-Likable Family Relationship Dramas: Being Flynn, The Snowtown Murders, Boy, The Deep Blue Sea, W.E. (5)

Didn’t See (Apologies): Chronicle, Act of Valor, The Forgiveness of Blood (3)

Avoided Like Plague: Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, Let the Bullets Fly, Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, A Thousand Words (4)

When I was married I visited Ireland in October 1988. Myself, my now ex-wife Maggie and Jett, who was then four months old. We stayed at the 200 year-old home/farm of Chris Ryan in the town of Knocklong in County Limerick. Ryan runs a fabled riding-to-hounds business out of his home. Several horses and something like 40 black-and-tans reside in the rear stables and kennels. I felt safe at home, nourished. I wanted to hang around for months.

So don’t tell me about St. Paddy’s Day and what it really means or feels like to be Irish. Because I’ve been to the heart of it, and it hasn’t left me.

My first thought when I arrived in Ireland was “I could die here.” That country is about kindness, warmth and tranquility, and exhilarating gradations of green and brown flora. Every small Irish village has a tavern (the cliche is true), and the locals will often raise a glass, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Those of Irish descent (real or imagined) who live in New York City are notorious on this day, of course, for gettng stinko, stumbling around and retching on the sidewalk. But they don’t get it, and most of them probably never will.

Incidentally: There’s a limited edition book about the Ryan family tradition, written by Michael MacEwan, called “The Ryan Family and the Scarteen Hounds.