Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go has been limping along in limited release. It doesn’t seem fated to break out — let’s face it. 20 days I ago I mentioned the possibility that it might have been cursed by a certain hard-working fellow whose unbridled enthusiasm for films in the early stages has tended to spell doom. I’m sorry this has happened, but if I’d been calling the shots at Fox Searchlight I would have said ixnay to any film about young people meekly submitting to a cruel early death.

At last night’s Social Network party a British journalist who absolutely loves NLMG was reminding me that the donors (Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield) don’t rebel or try to escape because they’ve been conditioned from birth to never think along those lines. Those born into slavery under the Roman empire were conditioned the same way, I replied, but Spartacus and several other men broke out of gladiator school regardless and formed an army and defied Rome.

I’m sorry for preferring Spartacus to Never Let Me Go, but hot dog-eating peons like myself are always responding along these lines. NLMG is obviously a more subtle and “tasteful” and restrained film than Spartacus, but Dalton Trumbo‘s screenplay, based on Howard Fast‘s novel, is much more compelling. Why? Because unlike the donors, the gladiators refuse to just sit there and take it.

I won’t go along with the idea of Ben Affleck‘s The Town deserving a Best Picture nomination, and neither, I suspect, will a certain percentage of Academy members. (I spoke to a top-tier director-screenwriter at last night’s Social Network party who said The Town is “really not very good.”) But Anne Thompson‘s idea (voiced during yesterday’s Oscar Talk podcast with In Contention‘s Kris Tapley) about Affleck being the new Sydney Pollack is perfect.

What she meant, I think, is that Affeck has shown he has the chops to be the industry’s leading dispenser of smart, upscale, money-making MOR films that aren’t too twitchy or problematical. The kind of movie that has name actors and feisty dialogue and a highly professional sheen but with a earnest romantic element. Not one that necessarily ends with a kiss (Pollack’s romances mostly ended with the relationship in question not working out) but which has a straight, deeply felt quality.

I knew Pollack slightly (a few interviews, several social occasions) and he would have been the first to tell you he was in the business of making movies that people wanted to see. But his films always had a classy veneer, and were always adult-minded and about a theme or arc that Pollack had worked out in his head before shooting. Pollack knew his stuff and then some. He wasn’t Jean-Luc Godard (and he would have been the first to tell you he didn’t have that kind of DNA), but he was one of the best MOR behind-the-camera guys for the better part of four decades.

If Affleck can live up to Pollack’s standards and level of caring and concentration over the next two or three decades, he’ll have reason to be proud.

I say this every year so here we go again. I recognize that some blogger-columnists feel that sitting on the sidelines during awards season and gauging the industry’s political and emotional sentiments regarding this or that nominee is what they do and should do, and that this is both important and expected of them and so on. I’ve never gone along with this. In fact, my reaction to this philosophy has always been “what?”

I believe that the proper role of a good Hollywood columnist is not just to report on the conversation (which passes the time and is occasionally interesting), but to lead it — to stand tall at the lecturn and be an advocate and to put wood into the fire and keep the passion going for the right films and the right filmmakers. To celebrate art before politics. And to argue against awarding mediocre films, which is what most people are always inclined to do — i.e., be supportive of their friends and colleagues because it’s a friendly, neighborly thing to do.

The highest calling of a Hollywood columnist during awards season is to be a strong and impassioned shepherd and show the sheep where the good grass is. This doesn’t imply that sheep don’t have a nose for good grass on their own. Of course they do. But there is crabgrass, grass, decent grass, better grass, higher-quality grass and world-class gourmet grass. I would humbly submit that shepherds have an eye and a nose for grass, and that life is short so why eat regular grass when all you have to do is trudge up the hill a bit and sample the really good stuff?

In this light I feel that a statement to the effect that “it doesn’t matter how good an actor is in a given movie….there’s no way he/she will be awarded for this work” — a statement made yesterday by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson — is, from my vantage point, wrong-headed. No matter how accurate this assessment may be in a political sense (and I’m not saying for a second that Thompson is incorrect), it is wrong to dismiss good creative work or to suggest that it’s not even worth considering in an award-season sense, even if it doesn’t have a political prayer.

I’m not stupid. I know that the chances of The Beaver‘s Mel Gibson ever winning praise from the Hollywood community are all but nil. But there’s something in me that can’t help but recoil when I hear a statement like Thompson’s. If an actor (even a racist-minded actor) has delivered an exceptional performance then he/she has delivered an exceptional performance — period. You have to always consider the long-term view and not get too parochial in your thinking. Because there’s the judgment of history — a judgment unaffected by the moody political currents — to consider.

There is nothing more banal or dismissable in the game of evaluating the best in a given field than for people to say “yeah, but I don’t really like him/her” or “but he/she is so nice!” There’s no getting away from this, but the Movie Godz are constantly asking us to not think or judge according to to the current political ether, which is to say the mentality of a group of junior high-schoolers hanging out during recess.

To put it another way, the “I’m just taking the pulse of the town and staying out of the argument ” columnists are like Judean shepherds on a hillside near Mount Sinai. Shepherd #1: “Look at those sheep over there, eating all that yellow grass and those weeds.” Shepherd #2: “Yeah, I know, and with that really nice looking patch of rich green grass to the left about 100 yards.” Shepherd #1: “Why don’t we get our staffs and scoot them over in that direction?” Shepherd #2: “No, no, that’s not our proper role. We’re here to just chill and observe and keep an eye on whatever the sheep are up to…nothing more.”

Bringing Up Baby died commercially and wasn’t even reviewed all that well when it opened in 1938. Obviously the critics and the public didn’t get it. Shouldn’t we all strive to recognize and celebrate good films or performances when they are in fact really good, regardless of the prevailing mood or peer-pressurings or whatever?

“Why is everyone so high on The Fighter?,” Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson asked In Contention‘s Kris Tapley during their latest Oscar Talk discussion. More to the point, why is Thompson so skeptical about this film sight unseen? Her first explanation: “Mark Wahlberg?” But her second comment gets down to the nub of it.

“I’d like to bring up the topic of [Fighter director] David O. Russell ,” she begins. “Right, no shortage of enemies,” Tapley replies. “That is an understatement,” Thompson said. “There is no single entity who is more widely loathed in Hollywood, perhaps. He’s really not liked. Put him in the Mel Gibson category.

The Fighter (Paramount, 12.10) “will have to be really good [to become an Oscar contender] — that’s all I want to say. I mean, this is the guy who has tapes all over the internet of him berating his cast…even George Clooney, whom everyone loves, called him on it [about bad behavior] during production of Three Kings. I’m not saying it can’t be neutralized, but I’m saying it’s a big hurdle to get over.

“[Russell] is talented, extremely talented,” she notes. But that ain’t enough. “People don’t necessarily coddle up to Sean Penn, but he’s respected [for his talent] and admired for his humanitarian efforts, for wearing his convictions on his sleeve. I don’t know that David O. Russell has earned that kind of gravitas. His films have always lacked heart and humanity. Three Kings, I would submit, is an idea movie. I would argue that his films are cold as ice.

“What are the great films that Russell has directed?,” Thompson asks. Tapley mentions Three Kings. He also speaks fondly of I Heart Huckabees. My own view is that Flirting with Disaster is a near-great film, certainly one of the funniest and most originally written adult comedies of the last 20 years.

“I want to see The Fighter, and when I do I will judge it objectively…I really will. I’m trying to explain what some of the negatives might be.”

Later in the conversation Thompson belittles the notion, primarily floated by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond (and seconded by Nikki Finke), that Mel Gibson could have a Best Actor shot if Summit decides to release The Beaver at year’s end.

“It doesn’t matter how good Mel Gibson is in the movie….there’s no way,” Thompson says. “Even if it does well commercially, even if it gets good reviews….the Academy will never give Mel Gibson an Oscar nomination, ever. It’ll never happen. The Academy is very liberal and accepts the sexual piccadilloes of Roman Polanski or Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen, but racism and anti-Semitism they do not forgive.”

Pure Oprah kiss-assery. What everyone gets when they come on the show. An infomercial about your boundless enthusiasm, kindness, optimism, humanity, and wonderfulness. “It’s a movie, it’s fun,” Zuck says about The Social Network. “This is my life so I know it’s not that dramatic….maybe it’ll be fun to remember it as partying and all the crazy drama.”

If nothing else Bill Maher‘s latest Christine O’Donnell clip fortifies David Robb‘s 9.22 Hollywood Reporter piece that said, without being so bold as to mention Teabaggers, Sarah Palin and/or Christine O’Donnell, that yahoo sentiments voiced in Inherit The Wind are alive and well in 2010 America. Extra: O’Donnell’s greatest hits.

My second viewing of The Social Network kicked up the impact by 25% or 30%, and the swanky after-party at the Harvard Club (44th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) was the absolute epicenter of the New York entertainment world between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am. Everyone was there (including Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach). Except I didn’t try hard enough to snap decent photos. I spoke with Justin Timberlake for three minutes (an achievement!) and never got a decent shot of him; ditto Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield.

Greenberg director-cowriter Noah Baumbach, Fantastic Mr. Fox director Wes Anderson at Social Network after-party at Harvard Club — Saturday, 9.25, 1:10 am.

Social Network producer Scott Rudin — Friday, 9.25, 11:50 pm.

One of the two main ballrooms at the Harvard Club.

I’m running this shot of the back of Justin Timberlake’s head as an after-the-fact criticism of my lack of aggressive paparazzi skills during the Social Network after-party.

Eight months ago I saw and reviewed Rodrigo Cortes‘ Buried out of Sundance 2010. It opens today via Lionsgate. I may as well re-run it, but know once again that a kind of SPOILER is contained within.

“I’m giving this Ryan Reynolds-trapped-in-a-large-coffin movie an A for execution and a C-minus for story because I’m a nice guy. It really deserves an F because it jerks you around on a nail-bitten popcorn level (escape from a tight spot) with no intention of paying off on that level. Great filmmaking, shitty payoff = overall C grade, at best.

“All the critics having kittens over this film are praising Cortes’ Hitchcock-like ingenuity in making an engrossing feature that takes place entirely in a small enclosed space. And they’re correct about this. Cortes is as inventive a filmmaker as Hitchcock was in making Lifeboat, if not more so. But these praising critics are deliberately ignoring how unsatisfying Buried is in terms of denying Joe Popcorn’s natural wishes while watching such a tale.

“Knowing the basic premise, you may assume going in that Buried will be a harrowing mental ingenuity/physical feat/engineering movie about a guy managing to free himself from a large coffin-sized crate that’s been buried two or three feet underground. (There’s enough room in the crate for Reynolds to wriggle around and lean on his side and shift around, etc.) But what it is, really, is a darkly humorous socio-cultural message flick about selfishness and distraction — i.e., how everyone is too caught up in their own agenda to give a shit about a person who really needs help.

“Reynolds’ character — a truck-driver contractor working in Iraq — manages to speak to several people on a cell phone that he’s found inside the crate. The prolonged joke is that each and every person he turns to for help (with the exception of his wife) tells him that they need him to address or answer their needs first before they”ll give him any assistance.

“Boiled down, the movie is kind of a metaphor for dealing with tech support or any corporate or bureaucratic employee who specializes in driving complaining customers crazy. Everyone Reynolds speaks to patronizes him, tells him to calm down and speak slowly, asks stupid questions and in one way or another blows him off or fails to really engage and provide serious assistance.

“Buried is going to be a bust with audiences once they see what it is. I felt aroused and stimulated here and there in a film-dweeb sense, but I felt pissed off and fucked with at the finish. Cortes has excellent chops and a great sense of style (the opening credits sequence is the best thing about Buried) and Reynolds may have delivered the most impressive performance of his career, but…well, I’ve said it.”

I got so caught up in posting photos and videos from this morning’s Social Network press conference and writing my “Zuckerberg vs. King George” piece that I didn’t jot down any quotes from the Social Network team. So here’s a pretty good summary from Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale.

You can’t lament the ridiculous right-wing persecution of President Bill Clinton for an Oval Office blowjob and then turn around and say you can’t wait for an alleged N.Y. Times story about an alleged affair between House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner and a lobbyist named Lisbeth Lyons. The only politicans who deserve to be outed are gay ones who’ve voted against gay-rights issues. Otherwise they should be left alone. Even wretched rightwing obstructionists like Boehner.

Scott Feinberg‘s recent “Citizen Zuck” piece points out several similarities between The Social Network and Citizen Kane. A stretch in a couple of ways, cosmetic in others, in other ways interesting. But a piece that no one on The Social Network team would want to be taken seriously. They’re slapping their foreheads right now and muttering to themselves, “Please, Scott — you’re hurting us!

But I thought of Citizen Kane as I read David Poland‘s Social Network review, a mostly positive response that nonetheless says “where’s the metaphor?” It struck me that a critic could have said some of the same things about Kane in 1941.

“Okay, a richly photographed and very entertaining film about a brilliant headstrong visionary who builds a powerful empire and hurts some people along the way (including a couple of women) and fucks over a friend and who doesn’t seem to be an emotionally healthy human being at the end of the day…..and? That’s it? He ends up in a silly extravagant castle called Xanadu and dies and then workmen toss the sled into the furnace….and that’s all? Audacious directing by the young Orson Welles and fine acting and great cinematography by Gregg Toland and all, but I don’t get the undercurrent. I mean, I’m not there is one, to be honest.”

There are admirable, top-of-their-class movies that tell you what they’re about. Movies that tip their hand and convey in a dozen or fifty or a hundred different ways what they’re saying deep down. Movies that let you know the chefs who created the food you’re eating did so with the idea that you’d be eating a lot more than just food. Movies that state their intentions, pay off emotionally, wear their hearts on their sleeves and/or sell a certain kind of emotional seepage (understated or grandiose or in-between).

These are the films (please don’t ask for examples) that most people recognize as being full of meaning and metaphor. The ones that tend to inspire extra-long applause and win extra-passionate praise because they’re obviously about something — metaphors, parables, sum-uppers. Movies through which rivers run and choruses are sung that “this movie is about us.”

And then there are admirable, top-of-their-class movies that just are. They don’t choose to “say” what they’re about — no nudging, no speeches, no summing-ups, no heart moments — because the director feels what he/she has done adds up to a certain kind of precision and completeness that make dramatic flourishes (metaphor, thematically-expressive dialogue, touchy-feelyness) unnecessary or beside the point. These films have all kinds of echoes and interior currents and are beautifully made, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily invite every last movie pundit out there to say, “Wow, this is exceptional…it really adds up to something!” They are what they are. Either you get them or you don’t.

For me, United 93 was such a film. Zodiac was such a film. And The Social Network is such a film. All of them are procedurals of a kind, and in a sense are all about tactical somethings that happen, have happened or are about to happen. Films that are dry and succinct and smart as a whip, and none with a whole lot to share emotionally. And yet all three, I contend, will play like gangbusters 50 or 100 years from now.

A smart older critic and a younger columnist both told me within the last couple of days that as good as The Social Network is, it’s not really Academy material. It doesn’t make you want to hug your son or your father or your wife or your dog. Bite your tongue, I said to both.

If The King’s Speech takes the Best Picture Oscar instead of The Social Network there will be so great a cry throughout the land that Pharoah will surely let my people go. No…what I mean is that Black Swan beating out The Social Network would be okay. I would have no problem with a film as good as Darren Aronofsky‘s winning. But to give it to The King’s Speech would, no offense to Harvey Weinstein and Tom Hooper, constitute a huge backslide and a cultural capitulation to middle-of-the-road cinematic values. It would be a vote for a backrub over art. It would be like voting for Ordinary People over Raging Bull, or Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas.

I truly admire The King’s Speech — it’s a very fine film for what it is, and is superbly performed by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter — but a King’s Speech Best Picture win would be the wrong thing to see happen in 2010. The King’s Speech is the new Best Picture of 1993, and there’s nothing wrong with that. No, I don’t mean that. A King’s triumph would be cause for not just mourning but weeping in the streets. That’s what I mean.

The Social Network is now and The King’s Speech is then. It’s not a matter of one being better than the other, but I do feel that those who vote for the traditional strategies and emotional bromides in the The King’s Speech over the crackerjack pacing, procedural neutralism and 21st Century instant-mythology of The Social Network will have written their social-industry epitaph. I don’t mean to sound like a hard-ass, but either you get with The Social Network program (or the agenda of another film that’s as strong and distinct) or you risk being seen as out of it — there’s no third way. This is pretty much a generational dividing-line issue. A “no” vote for The Social Network doesn’t mean you’re clueless or moribund or lacking in taste, hardly — but it does sorta kinda mean that the 21st Century way of seeing and processing life hasn’t exactly gotten through to you and yours, and that you’re basically looking more to the past than to the future to fill your plate.