Marshall Fine has more or less dismissed It’s All About You (NY 1.4, LA 1.6), a doc about John Mellencamp by Kurt and Ian Markus. I did the same during last March’s South by Southwest in a review called “Need Mellancamp Doc That Won’t Drive Me Crazy.”

I was told four years ago about an HE quote used in German-language posters and trailers for Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Orphanage; never saw the trailer until this morning. Very cool font, brown-parchment backdrop.

The Upside Down Wiki page says this French-produced sci-fi romance, written and directed by Juan Diego Solanas for $50 millon with Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst, began principal photography in Montreal in February 2010 (!). Hollywood finance partner[s] declined due to “cultural differences.” Opening later this year.

That kid singing the national anthem again…

I saw A Separation for the third time this evening. A hefty crowd attended the 7 pm show at West LA’s Royal. Word-of-mouth has obviously gotten around. I could feel the concentration in the room, and they applauded the closing credits. I felt just as riveted as I did my first time four months ago.

Anyone attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for the first time is advised to avoid a restaurant called 350 Main. Here’s how I put it last year in a piece called “Butch Boss“: “What defines a must-to-avoid ‘townie’ restaurant in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival? The host has a suspicious, guard-at-the-gate attitude when you walk in and say you’d like to hang at the bar, as I did last night at 350 Main.

“No well-mannered restaurant host in Manhattan would dare adopt a look of faint alarm and a confrontational tone and say ‘do you have a dinner reservation?’

“I was about to say ‘no, but I’ve got 15 minutes to kill and thought I’d chill’ but the hostess was a mixture of Faye Dunaway in Network and a barkeep in a Sean O’Casey play and the confrontational vibe was like a Queen lyric — ‘We will, we will stop you!’ Things went downhill from there.

“I’ve always gotten this attitude from 350 Main staffers. ‘Are you riff-raff or are you here to sufficiently spend?,’ they seem to be saying. ‘You don’t much look like a skiier and that worries us. Don’t come in here with any sort of journalistic-swagger attitude because we have a business to run, bub.’

“The bartenders are like this too. They’ll ignore and ignore and ignore you, and then they’ll finally serve you after you’ve tried to catch their eye for 12 or 15 minutes. The entire staff is poison in this sense. They’re really bad people. Ugly, I mean.

“I know that Sundance attracts crude simian types to Main Street and I don’t blame any high-toned establishment for wanting to keep out the flotsam and jetsam, but townie eateries always overdo it.

“Another Park City establishment that I wrote off years ago for having this ‘hold it, fella!’ attitude is the Grub Steak, located across from Prospector Square.”

January is mostly about dumps. Which is why the Palm Springs and Sundance film festivals are welcome diversions. Commercially there are four standouts: Miss Bala (1.12, limited, highly recommended), Coriolanus (1.20, limited), Haywire (1.20, highly recommended), and Declaration of War (good, honest true-life French-made film about parenting and illness). I can’t honestly recommend We Need to Talk About Kevin (1.20, NY& LA). I haven’t seen Contraband, The Grey or Man on a Ledge.

The implication in this tweet is that Rupert Murdoch got around to seeing The Descendants, a film funded and distributed by a division of Newscorp and which was viewable by all senior Fox execs many months ago, only recently. Or is he just throwing this out there for something to say or to up the stock value? I love his statement about Alexander Payne‘s film “maybe” being Oscar-worthy.

N.Y. Times guy Brian Stelter reports that “Murdoch IS tweeting himself, according to News Corp’s top spokeswoman, Teri Everett. When I asked if it’s really him, she wrote, ‘Oh yes.'”

With no screenings happening this week (which only lasts three days since I’m heading out to Palm Springs on Thursday), I’ll be settling in and watching tomorrow night’s Iowa caucus returns. Whatever happens, we all know Romney more or less has the nomination in the bag. (Here’s Nate Silver.) If I was a Republican I’d be voting for Huntsman.

“This is the first year that I think my productivity has dropped because [of my media consumption]. I’m looking at the coming year and thinking, what am I going to give up? Am I going to give up following the NFL? Am I going to give up listening to music and going out and seeing it? Am I going to give up riding my bike? Or am I going to cut back on some of these digital habits I have that are eating me alive?” — from a 10.27.11 NPR “Fresh Air” interview with N.Y. Times reporter David Carr(i.e., “A Media Omnivore Discusses His Diet“).

I can certainly relate to the being eaten alive part. Doing a daily column sucks you in, hour after hour. I think about doing this or that, and before I know it it’s 4:30 pm and then it’s 6:25 or 6:30 pm and I have a screening to get to and I haven’t showered. I did a fair amount of walking around when I lived in Manhattan but that has stopped in Los Angeles. The only exercise I do now is lifting weights for five or ten minutes a day. It’s not good. I have to change the routine. But first I have to believe in my heart, as Michael Corleone once said, that “I have the strength to change.”

The guy who made The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino and even The Age of Innocence would’ve never even toyed with the idea of making something as theme-parky and kid-friendly as Hugo. His decision to “go guerilla” with After Hours is what saved him 27 years ago, and it’s what he needs to do again, right now.

Early ’80s to early ’90s Scorsese — doesn’t get much better than that. Better than his ’70s period and way, way better than the aughts.

When Daniel Craig first visits Rooney Mara at her apartment in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, she turns around and we see she’s wearing this T-shirt. Sony has been sending this shirt to certain journalists. They don’t think highly enough of me to send it my way, but I wish they would.