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A guy who’s always talking to Academy members says they’re mentioning Amour a lot. On its own, no prompting. I’m mentioning this in the wake of Michael Haneke‘s film having won four European film awards today — Best European film, best director, actor and actress. And I’ve seen it three times now (once in Cannes, once at a screening, once on a screener). So I’m reading the signs and feeling the juju and I don’t know what else.

Just an attaboy to the Participant Media designer or subcontractor who threw this invite together. Nice. I’m doing a post-screening q & a with Ava Duvernay, I’m told. The Help director Tate Taylor is co-sponsoring or co-inviting or whatever. MON star Emayatzy Corinealdi will also attend.

I’m not shocked by the crib death of Andrew Dominik and Brad Pitt‘s Killing Them Softly this weekend. It did a lousy $2.4 million Friday and is expected to earn no more than $7.5 million by Sunday night. It’s playing in 2424 situations for a possible average of $3,094 per screen. The Thanksgiving-to-mid-December period is always slow, but what’s up with the F CinemaScore rating? The film has issues, okay, but I figured it would rate a B or a B minus. F isn’t rational. F is crazy. F is people beating up ushers as they leave the theatre.

Is it the hammering of the political metaphor that turned people off so much? Is it the glum, greasy downish vibe with the darkish lighting and everyone smoking cigarettes all the time? Is it because Ben Mendehlson‘s character sweats like a pig in Manila? Is it because everyone in the film drives gas guzzlers and muscle cars? Is it because James Gandolfini shows up, checks into a hotel, does nothing and goes home?

I realize that today’s mass audience is too stupid or not hip enough incapable of appreciating the grubby poetic flavor of the Boston-area crime realm of George V. Higgins, and I realize that if Pitt and Dominik had re-shot The Friends of Eddie Coyle frame-for-frame a la Gus Van Sant‘s Psycho it would die just as quickly as Killing Me Softly has, but why the F? That’s nuts.

I need to hear from Joe Bomowski about this. He knows what the dumbasses want and why they don’t like this or that.

After sleeping four and 1/2 hours on the Tokyo-to-LAX flight and then landing yesterday morning at 10:15 am and being up all day (which included the Richard Gere luncheon and a 6pm screening of The Hobbit), I crashed this morning around 2 am, which is 5 pm Hanoi time and 7 pm Tokyo time, and then woke up at 11:40 am or 2:40 am Hanoi time and 4:40 am Tokyo time. I don’t who I am or who anybody else is. Seriously, the thing to do is now is last through the day and try to crash no later than midnight.

Roadside threw a luncheon today for Arbitrage star and possible Best Actor nominee Richard Gere at Pizzeria Mozza (641 N. Highland Avenue). Gere delivers one of his career-best performances in Nicolas Jarecki‘s film, but yes, the Best Actor field is very crowded this year. But the equation is (a) Gere is exceptional in Arbitrage plus (b) he’s also been humping it hard and long and honorably for 35 years now, so give it up for the guy.

Arbitrage star Richard Gere at Pizzeria Mozza — Friday, 11.30, 12:55 pm.

For some reason Robert Pattinson showed up toward the end of the luncheon. I’m taller than he is. He has a kind face and a warm smile, but his eyes kinda blank out when he listens to someone talking. When he’s trying to concentrate or show respect to whomever is speaking, I mean, his features go flat. That’s L.A. Times reporter John Horn to RPatz’s right (or our left) and Arbitrage director Nicholas Jarecki (right).

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A passel of “welcome back from Vietnam” screeners sitting on my dining-room table when I got in just before noon. No Les Miz although I’ve been told it would be here, or that it’s been mailed at least.

Tokyo is an architecturally dull, dull town. This section (a couple of miles east of downtown) looks a lot like Cleveland or Joliet, only less cultured. There are some city streets you can gaze at from inside a passing train and say “wow, look at that!” or “hey, that’s cool.” You can sense the history and the flavor and the intrigue. No such luck with Tokyo.

The misty rain and dense fog covering Los Angeles delayed the landing of my flight from Tokyo…so? I’m now in a cab on La Cienega, thinking once again of that Charles Bukowski line about how “the stink of L.A. gets into your bones.” I was lucky enough to chat with Bukowski for 90 minutes or so when I was writing the press notes for Barbet Schroeder‘s adaptation of Barfly. His spirit lives on at Hollywood Elsewhere, as far as it goes. Back then it was Bukowski; today it’s Bomowski.

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday “to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state of the United Nations, a triumph for Palestinian diplomacy and a sharp rebuke to the United States and Israel,” says a N.Y. Times report. The naysayers were the U.S. , Israel, the Czech Republic, Panama and an assortment of nickle-and-dime Pacific Island nations. The vote passed 138-9 with 41 abstentions.

I’m sitting here stranded in Tokyo and doing my best to deny it. And I’m really hating the puerile Japanese daytime TV programming that I’m watching. This culture is drunk on helium emotions and attitudes. They’re like six year olds. But all the way from Tokyo I can almost smell what will happen Monday morning when the New York Film Critics Circle vote for Best Picture, and I haven’t even seen Zero Dark Thirty so what do I know? But I think they’ll go for it nonetheless.

I think the NYFCC’ers will want to go hard and real as a swing away from the intense emotionality of Les Miserables, and the consensus is that Zero Dark Thirty is sharp and hard and austere. It also contains an allegedly stirring lead performance by Jessica Chastain, who may even beat out Silver Linings‘ Jennifer Lawrence…maybe. I suspect the NYFCC’ers have gotten over their first encounters with Lincoln by now, and they know what it really is and that giving it Best Picture trophy will land with a thud across the land. I’m also presuming that Silver Linings haters (David Denby and Rex Reed possibly leading the charge) are going to do everything they can to block a majority for David O. Russell‘s film. And I can’t imagine there being enough of a head of steam to put Life of Pi over. And The Master has gone down to the sea in ships.

But the biggest surge of feeling, to repeat, will be about the NYFCC wanting to give a big “eff you” to the Manhattan theatre-queen contingent that will be pushing Les Miserables.

I think they’ll give their Best Foreign Film award to Amour or Holy Motors or….No?

Other guesses or divinings?