In his 2.10 review of Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, Toronto Star critic Peter Howell says director Barry Avrich “didn’t just pick a hostile target [but also] a moving one, which makes his film both very timely and somewhat the victim of circumstance.

“This time last year, everybody was playing taps for the career of Weinstein, whose Miramax Films had redefined the indie landscape in the 1980s and 1990s, with such hits as Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Shakespeare In Love. By 2010, Weinstein was beset with debts for his struggling post-Miramax firm The Weinstein Company and deemed to be yesterday’s mogul.

“Now it’s 2011 and Weinstein is very much back in the fray, with a leading 12 Oscar nominations for his current smash The King’s Speech and a recent round of aggressive deals from Sundance.

“How does a filmmaker keep up with all of these fast-changing developments? Avrich’s answer is not to pretend to be the last word on the subject but instead to do a solid job telling the back story, not just about Weinstein but about the rise of independent film in general.

“Having explained Old Hollywood with 2005’s The Last Mogul, his doc on power player Lew Wasserman, he now does the same with Weinstein’s New Hollywood environs.”

“Harvey’s this fantastic enigma, this larger-than- life man,” Avrich recently told CBC News’ Margo Kelly. “He’s huge, he comes from a tough background, the exterior is extraordinarily gruff but he has the sensitivity of a swan when comes to making some of the great monumental foreign and indie films ever.”

“I’m not making this film as a hatchet job,” Avirch states. “It’s called unauthorized not because it’s scandalous — it’s called unauthorized because he didn’t participate. This is a film for people who love Hollywood and Hollywood stories.”

Avrich’s documentary will soon screen on HBO Canada. IFC Films has the U.S. rights, and will presumably offer an on-demand option.

What life’s natural process does to all of us in the end, even the luckiest and most beautiful and most magnificently endowed, is fairly horrific. It was the love of Elizabeth Taylor‘s life, Richard Burton, who came up with the above nickname during the shooting of Cleopatra.

Which of the following unpronouncable, unspellable names is the title of an established Massachusetts-based film society that hands out annual awards?: (a) Klastchbuddlekin, (b) Colbustisch, (c) Chlotrudis, (d) Specialsphincter and/or (e) Axolotl?

Jay Roach will direct a dramatic adaptation of Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin‘s best-seller about the ’08 election, for HBO. Which means he’ll be casting actors to portray Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and Reille Hunter. Question: If you were Roach would you reach out to Tina Fey to play Palin in a realistic, non-comedic, non-caricature vein, or would you start fresh with someone else?

“What’s ‘defining’ about The Social Network is the way it shows a generation losing touch with its humanity,” says Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers. “The satire in Aaron Sorkin‘s script isn’t aimed at what you call the ‘cool kids,’ the creative, non-narcissistic users of the internet who don’t use ‘friend’ as a verb. They are in the minority.

“Who’s the majority? Go to any multiplex to see a movie — I just came back from Sundance — and you’ll see a lightshow of iPhones and Blackberrys at every performance. Not before or after the movie, but during. The guy next to me (from your generation) was checking his e-mail and updating his Facebook status. No apology. No shame. He just shot me a look. Like I wasn’t there. Like the audience wasn’t there. Like it was just him and a glowing screen.”

At the end of Joe Morgenstern‘s Wall Street Journal column today comes this: “With The King’s Speech gaining the Oscar traction it deserves — the latest boost being an expression of approval from Queen Elizabeth — I can’t resist going public with a story that I’ve relished telling to friends, and to the people who made the movie.

“Several weeks before it opened, I had a conversation with Rupert Murdoch, who popped a question familiar to movie critics: What should he see?

“I suggested The King’s Speech, and, not wanting to spoil it with too many details, gave a shorthand description: Colin Firth as King George VI, who has a terrible stutter, and Geoffrey Rush as a raffish Australian speech therapist.

“‘Yes, he replied, Lionel Logue.

“‘So you know the story.’

“Not the story of the movie, he said. ‘Lionel Logue saved my father’s life.’

“When I responded with speechlessness, he explained that his father, as a young man, wanted passionately to be a newspaper reporter, but couldn’t interview people because he stuttered. Then he met Lionel Logue, who cured him in less than a year.”

In their self-financed FYC Oscar ads, The Alamo‘s Chill Wills and The Color Purple‘s Margaret Avery “traded recklessly and shamelessly on their nominated roles,” writes Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow. “Melissa Leo did nothing of the sort. Instead, she brought home the message that unless a mature working actress like herself boasts a high degree of chic or a record of box-office clout, you rarely see her in fashion ads or on slick paper. I don’t think Leo hurt her chances with anyone who saw the ads. She may even have helped her chances if a few people got the point.”

John Landis‘s Schlock (’73) is one of the funniest low-budget comedies I’ve ever seen, and I’ve only seen it once. Anchor Bay released it on DVD ten years ago. The 21 year-old Landis directed, wrote, produced and starred in the title role. Rick Baker did the makeup. It’s actually more than a genre spoof. It’s a combination of stoner humor and social satire in the vein of the old Ernie Kovacs show. The sequence below is a riff on an old Laurel & Hardy routine.

Here’s another bit when a kid on a baseball field, and another with a blind girl — both of them riffs on a famous scene in James Whale‘s Frankenstein (’31). I remember a mildly hilarious piano-playing sequence shot in The Old Place, a storied restaurant in the hills of Agoura, near Malibu.

All over Manhattan and across the other four boroughs, tens of thousands of people get happy, mildly buzzed or half-bombed every night. Tens of thousands. And yet people are still getting popped at alarming rates for getting mildly and harmlessly baked. I have no dog in this fight at all (I haven’t turned on since the ’70s) but I find it astonishing that New York City cops, 45 years after pot consumption began to explode in the mid ’60s, are expending so much chickenshit energy to bust people for doing next to nothing.

“Because of a long-standing policy at Paramount, The Fighter‘s distributor, Melissa Leo has not been the subject of solo ‘for your consideration” ads highlighting her as an individual, presumably…because the studio doesn’t want to offend Amy Adams, who is nominated in the same category.” — from Scott Feinberg‘s 2.8 article called “In Defense Of My Friend Melissa Leo.” In other words, Paramount changed its mind.

I’ve made fun of the Poland curse, but I’m no exception when it comes to comedies. The general rule has always been that if I really like something that I consider to be funny (Election, Rushmore, Greenberg, Hot Tub Time Machine), it’s going to be some kind of commercial shortfall with Joe Popcorn. So it’s moderately comforting, at least, to see that Cedar Rapids, which I admire except for the third-act conclusion, has an 80% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It opens limited this weekend.