Five years ago, at age 53, Liam Neeson had a rep as a soulful prestige-level actor (Schinder’s List, Husbands and Wives, Kinsey, Gun Shy) with a soothing Irish brogue. Then he started to take macho gravitas paycheck roles (Batman Begins, voicing the Narnia lion, Kingdom of Heaven). And then Taken — the biggest hit of his career — happened in ’08, and now he’s became a total paycheck popcorn-movie guy.

It’s gotten to the point, I’m afraid, that when I see Neeson’s face on a poster or in a trailer, I immediately say “okay, what’s this piece of shit?” Next to Neeson Harrison Ford looks like Jim Broadbent.

Chloe was painful. After.Life was agony. Clash of the Titans was 3D agony. The A-Team was mute nostril agony. And now Unknown, obviously a forgettable programmer. No one’s seen Paul Haggis‘s The Next Three Days, in which Neeson plays the desperado who helps Russell Crowe bust Elizabeth Banks out of jail, but the word from a recent exhibitor convention is that it’s somewhere between good, not bad and okay.

I’ll allow that ’09’s Five Minutes of Heaven wasn’t exploitive and tried to do it right, but it still wasn’t very good. I certainly don’t mean to criticize Neeson for wanting to provide for his kids, particularly in the wake of the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, in a freak skiing accident last year. But I miss the Liam Neeson whose choice of roles didn’t make me wince or sigh with exasperation. I miss the guy from the early to mid ’90s.

Neeson actually had an earlier run of shit paycheck roles and macho bellowers in the late ’90s and early 21st Century when he made The Phantom Menace, The Haunting, Gangs of New York and Love Actually. Okay, there was also the eminently decent K:19 and the aforementioned Gun Shy — no shame in either of those.

Update: A tipster claims that Neeson’s role in The Next Three Days is miniscule. “He has a one-scene cameo…what you see in the trailer is pretty much his entire role.”

Clint Eastwood may not be up on the fake Jimmy Kimmel-Matt Damon feud, but apart from his thighs looking a little bony he looks and sounds terrific for an 80 year-old. That’s a result of fighting what naturally happens at that age with serious daily work-outs. On top of which brown suits can be lethal, as I explained in a recent riff about James Stewart‘s brown suit in Vertigo. And yet Clint looks good in his.

Last September Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn wrote a problematic paragraph about George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack, to wit: “The opening shot finds Kevin Spacey in full-on Travis Bickle mode, staring at himself in the mirror and pronouncing a fatal one-liner: ‘I’m Jack Abramoff, and I work out every day.'”

“Fatal”? This line is not about laughter but showing a psychological core. It’s about the way plugged-in, full-of-beans guys like Jack Abramoff tend to see themselves. They’re special, they’re believers, they’re committed, they’re stronger and smarter than you or me, and if they can get paid what they’re getting paid then screw it — they damn well deserve it and Average Joes had better roll with that and get with the program.

For me, the greatest Blurays of older films are the ones that look much better than the finest projected image in a theatre could possibly achieve. And which look better, even, than what the director or studio guys saw in a private screening room when they were catching dailies fresh from the set. That’s what the just-out Psycho Bluray is like. It’s beautiful. Although I still say they should have issued two aspect-ratio versions — one in 1.33, the other in 1.78.

I can’t go to the 10.30 Stewart-Colbert D.C. rally. It’ll cost too much and I just can’t afford it. I don’t want to drive down. The Acela is too expensive, and the Huffington Post buses are too crowded. And I don’t believe in the message. They’re about projecting sanity and rationality, and I believe in putting Tea Party rurals into green re-education camps.

Former 42West Adam Kersh told me last summer he was starting his own p.r. and marketing company. And now, finally, the official announcement has been issued, and the company, co-launched and co-partnered with digital marketing guy Tom Cunha and Jean McDowell, is called Brigade. Sounds kinda Irish. They’re calling themselves a “next-generation” outfit, which is code for (a) “we’re looking to appeal particularly to the under-45 set” and (b) “our monthly fees aren’t as high as those for 42West or other long-established agencies…for now.”

Brigade is currently working with more than a dozen film and TV distributors in various capacities. The initial client list includes Anchor Bay, CBS Television, Elephant Eye, Film Buff / Cinetic Rights Management, IFC Films, Lionsgate, MPI Media Group, Phase 4 Films, Relativity Films, Roadside Attractions, Screen Media, Sony Pictures Classics and Universal Pictures as well as a number of independently released films, filmmakers and talent. Best of luck, full speed ahead.

(l. ro r.) Brigade’s Adam Kersh, Tom Cunha, Jean McDowell.

“I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more riveting or emotionally moving hour and a half in a theater as I did last night watching 127 Hours,” Sasha Stone wrote this morning. “It confirms that [director] Danny Boyle is a genius visually, intellectually, emotionally. He knows this film isn’t just the story of how Ralston got out of that canyon.

Rather, it’s about “that key bit of truth we all must remind ourselves of everyday. Life is not lived alone. We need each other. We need to be able to ask for help.”

Which is precisely what James Franco‘s real-life character, Aron Ralston, doesn’t believe in very strongly as the film begins. He’s no hermit but is pretty much the model of a rugged solo guy, and seems more than a little cocky about his ability to face and/or navigate around whatever tough situation that chance or nature may throw at him. Yes!

But then after putting himself into one of the worst situations any outdoor person could possibly face, he mans up and does what’s necessary. He cuts right through his arm with a nickel-and-dime pen knife, slicing through skin, muscle, soft meat, tendons and nerves, and fracturing his two forearm bones. Good effin’ God. But he does it and he lives, and watching him do this — living and screaming through it with Franco/Ralston — somehow makes you feel more alive.

Could I have done this? I don’t want to think about it. But there’s no way I’d do the lone-wolf thing in the wide-open wilderness. I’m thick but I’m not stupid. But I have to say I’m glad, very glad, for having “faced” this situation in a manner of speaking with a watching of 127 Hours. And I think I’m good for another viewing. I really think I am.

“Badass” is basically an insincere concept. It has to be used ironically. To me the best definition of a “badass” personality is Jack Nicholson‘s Badass Budusky in The Last Detail — i.e., a timid and boastful man looking to prove how tough he is, and other times just a regular shmoe who wants to hide out and drink. Which is why I’m down with Badass Digest.com, the new Alamo Drafthouse site that Devin Faraci is now running, and chuckling at the same time.

Badass Digest intends to “put the fun back in being a nerd,” Faraci writes. And yet the site isn’t about an attitude or a mode of behavior but about “the badass generation.” He’s presumably referring to the under-40 comic-book-reading geeks who go to San Diego Comic-Con…right? In all fairness and without intending to slag anyone, if you roam around San Diego Comic-Con the term that most frequently comes to mind is not “bad ass” but frankly (and I mean no harm) “fat ass.” Guys like Josh Gad and that line of country. Am I wrong?

“A badass is someone who is unique, uncompromising and dedicated to following their vision,” Faraci continues. “Someone blazing their own path, someone setting the standard…fashion and fads come and go but badass is forever.”

It’s okay with me. All the best to Faraci and fellow badasses Roger Erik Tinch and Moises Chiullan.

Boiled down, Michael Cieply‘s 10.21 N.Y. Times article reports that a solution has been found regarding Michael Douglas‘s performances in Anchor Bay’s Solitary Man and 20th Century Fox’s Wall Street 2 being possibly competitive in the Oscar derby.

“After toying with the idea of promoting Mr. Douglas as a leading man for his work in Wall Street 2, Fox executives in the last few days have leaned toward putting him in contention as a supporting actor,” Cieply writes. “That would stave off a potential conflict with Solitary Man, in which Mr. Douglas is clearly the lead, and with Anchor Bay, an independent company that has not previously been a major player in the Oscar game but is serious about it now.”

And what will most likely happen is that Fox’s Best Supporting Actor campaign will dominate, in part because Wall Street 2 is a bigger attention-getter than Solitary Man, and in part because many feel a sentimental attachment to Douglas’s original Gordon Gekko performance in Oliver Stone‘s 1987 Wall Street.

Douglas’s longtime publicist Allen Burry tells Cieply that his client is “doing well” after going through “a grueling course of radiation and chemotherapy that lasted for eight weeks,” adding that he “underwent the last, and heaviest, of the chemotherapy sessions only last week.” The “residual effects will probably put him under wraps again until at least the end of November,” Cieply explains.

And yet Douglas hopes to be ready for the public again “by the time the awards galas are in full swing,” Burry says.

Clint Eastwood‘s Hereafter isn’t just a critical bust. I think it’s his least satisfying film since Firefox (’82). Perhaps the biggest letdown aspect is that it doesn’t impart a sense of tranquility or acceptance about what’s to come, which is what most of us go to films about death to receive, and what the best of these always seem to convey in some way.

Terrence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth in Stephen Frears’ The Hit.

They usually do this by selling the idea of structure and continuity. They persuade that despite the universe being run on cold chance and mathematical indifference, each life has a particular task or fulfillment that needs to happen, and that by satisfying this requirement some connection to a grand scheme is revealed.

You can call this a delusional wish-fulfillment scenario (and I won’t argue about that), but certain films have sold this idea in a way that simultaneously gives you the chills but also settles you down and makes you feel okay.

Here’s a list containing some top achievers in this realm. I’m not going to explain why they’re successful in conveying the above except to underline that it’s not just me talking here — these movies definitely impart a sense of benevolent order and a belief that the end of a life on the planet earth is but a passage into something else. I’ve listed them in order of preference, or by the standard of emotional persuasion.

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ. 2. Stephen Frears‘ The Hit. 3. Brian Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol. 4. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait. 5. Henry King‘s Carousel (based on Ferenc Molnar‘s Lilliom). 6. Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice. 6. Michael Powell‘s A Matter Of Life And Death, a.k.a. Stairway To Heaven. 7. Albert Brooks‘ Defending Your Life.

I’m also giving a pat on the back to that old Twilight Zone episode called “Nothing in the Dark,” in which Robert Redford played a kind of angel of death in the guise of a wounded policeman.

For me the four worst films about death — the shallowest and most phony-manipulative and least reassuring — are Ghost, Flatliners, What Dreams May Come and Death Becomes Her. These are movies that pull down their pants and play cheap little games for the enjoyment of those in the audience who are scared shitless of death and need to fantasize or joke about it in order to allay their fears.

And the single most terrifying film about death as envisioned by fundamentalist Christian wackos is Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture. One look at that film and you’ll be able to at least consider the idea that hardcore Christians have taken something naturally serene and peaceful and created a terrifying new-age mythology that would give Satan pause.

Update: I don’t know why I forgot to mention Wim Wenders ‘ Wings of Desire. Because it’s doesn’t fit the mold, I suppose. It’s not about passage from life to death as much as passage from death to life, being about an angel (Bruno Ganz) who falls in love with a circus girl (Solveig Dommartin) and wants to be mortal so he can experience love and pain and all the rest of it.

Sgt. Adam Sniffen from the 101st Airborne Division parachutes into Michigan Stadium just before the start of a Michigan vs. MSU game — 10.9.10. Posted 7 days ago.

Ed Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs (20th Century Fox, 11.24), which I saw earlier this evening, is first and foremost a hit. It’s charming and affecting and likable in a “good Eloi” sort of way, or in the way that cultivated mainstream audiences tend to go for. It’s sharp and polished and beautifully shot and acted and cut, and just grooves right along with sass and wit and generous nudity and undercurrents that are Jerry Maguire-ish at times.

I’m not claiming that the overall tone matches the James L. Brooksian brand in the classic ’80s sense, but it certainly flirts with this and does in fact reach that pinnacle from time to time. For my money Love and Other Drugs is Zwick’s finest film yet — hell, it is his best. But how ironic that he’s hit the jackpot by putting aside his passion for heavy historical dramas.

It’s a very tight and assured romantic dramedy (or “emotional comedy,” as post-screening moderator Elvis Mitchell put it tonight) that delivers an intensely sexual, emotional hair-trigger relationship story about two avoider-dodgers (played with wonderful verve and assurance by Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, both delivering the most appealing performances of their careers).

I’d been told that Hathaway’s performance is the killer, and it is, I suppose, because you can read every emotional tick and tremor on her face, and because your heart goes out to any character coping with a debilitating disease (stage-one Parkinson’s) and who wants to keep herself aloof and in control. But Gyllenhaal gives his most winning performance ever — not the deepest or darkest or saddest, perhaps, but 100% likable with no audience-alienation issues except for emotional avoidance. They’re quite a pair, these two. All you want is to see them keep it together and somehow make it work.

Love and Other Drugs costars Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway following tonight’s screening at the Regal E-Walk on 42nd Street.

LAOD is set in mid ’90s Pittsburgh and partly based on James Reidy‘s “Hard Sell: Evolution of a Viagra Salesman,” and has been co-written by Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz and Charles Randolph.

It’s about Jamie Randall (Gyllenhaal), a Phizer salesman on the make, and how he falls in with Maggie Murdock (Hathaway), an emotionally brittle and guarded (and yet openly sexual when so inclined) woman coping with the Big P, and how things brighten and then deepen for them and then get gnarly and strained and then fall apart, and…that’s all I’ll say. It’s set against the mid ’90s Viagra boom, which is introduced about 40 minutes into the narrative. Jamie has been selling Zoloft for Phizer with middling results, but when Viagra comes along it’s champagne-fizz time.

Oliver Platt plays Gyllenhaal’s mentor, and I wish he had more screen time because you can sense potential…but he isn’t quite allowed to bring anything home. Hank Azaria has a lightly layered, medium-sized role as a randy physician, and Judy Greer has a small part as Azaria’s sweet-tempered receptionist. George Segal and Jill Clayburgh play Gyllenhaal’s parents in one early scene and that’s all.

Josh Gad is Gyllenhaal’s Jonah Hill-ish younger brother — a boorish man-child fatso who reps the film’s only serious mistake. Gad is in another film entirely. His presence eventually got so bad that he turned me off just by being. He didn’t have to say a word.

Love and Other Drugs isn’t a deep-well soul film, but it plays its own game in a sharp and likable way, and sometimes quite movingly.

Or…whatever, it won’t qualify in that regard and will just please audiences and capture the admiration of most critics (apart from the Eric Kohn-Guy Lodge nitpick crowd) and make money hand over fist. And that’ll be enough. It’s not Alexander the Great. It just works, is all. LOAD has charm and pizazz and, okay, sometimes strained humor, and yet it never slows down or goes off the rails, or at least not to any worrisome degree.

So forget all that Bill McCuddy crap (passed along in this column on 9.7) about it being “a light romantic comedy” that is “mediocre” and “facing shaky prospects at the box-office.” The guy I spoke to last February about a Pasadena research screening was much closer to the mark.

And I’m not kidding about it having the potential to wangle its way into Best Picture contention. Unless, that is, certain people get pissy about it. A guy I talked to in the men’s room after the screening was going “eeew, it’s two different movies…eeew, it doesn’t blend…eeew, it veers too sharply between broad comedy and disease-anguish and hot sexuality and heartfelt love and heavy emotionalism.” So you can be Eric Kohn and go “no, no…I want something else! This doesn’t fit into my comfort-blanket idea of how movies like this are supposed to work.” And that’s fine, Eric. Go to town and send me a postcard,

LAOD isn’t any one thing, and that’s the fascination of it. It’s not dark enough to be The Apartment, it’s not easy and it’s not “farce” and it’s not just hah-hah funny, and it’s not dramedy as much as comedy with a thorny and guarded edge. The tone is farcical one minute, dry and glib the next, and then it devolves into Josh Gad-Jonah Hill-level humor, but thankfully not too often or for too long. And then it turns melancholy.

Love and Other Drugs director Ed Zwick, moderator Elvis Mitchell following tonight’s screening

Hathaway is so intense and hard-cased that she ups the movie’s overall game. We can spot her theme from the get-go. She doesn’t want a real love affair with anyone because she knows it’s not going to last because she’s doomed in the long run. We’re introduced to her as someone dealing with stage-one symptoms like intermittent jitters and losing the physical ability to use scissors and her taking drugs to control this, but her condition is never over-dramatized.

The film spends some time on the Parkinson’s effects. Maggie and Jamie go to a big drug fair in Chicago, and she discovers an alternative convention across the street focusing on organic Parkinson’s remedies, and goes over to this event. We see some real Parkinson’s people talking up their personal stuff the way the unemployed talked for Up In The Air, only on a stage with a mike. There are two or three scenes in which Maggie is shown taking senior citizens across the border to get cheaper drugs in Canada.

The core of the romance is Jake’s overcoming his shallow relationship history, and Anne overcoming her emotionally aloof thing. And both Hathaway and Gyllenhaal make their characters come vividly alive. It’s a pleasure to get to know them and share the time. I’m looking forward to catching this at least a couple more times.